A case of autism, learning disability, and refusal of a planned caesarean

When someone has a learning disability, determining that person's capacity and, if necessary, their best interests can be highly complex. Andrew Symon discusses a recent court case.<br/

Compact stars in the standard model - and beyond

In the context of the standard model of particle physics, there is a definite upper limit to the density of stable compact stars. However, if there is a deeper layer of constituents, below that of quarks and leptons, stability may be re-established far beyond this limiting density and a new class of compact stars could exist. These objects would cause gravitational lensing of white dwarfs and gamma-ray bursts, which might be observable as a diffraction pattern in the spectrum. Such observations could provide means for obtaining new clues about the fundamental particles and the origin of cold dark matter.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, contribution to the 42nd course of the international school of subnuclear physics, 'How and where to go beyond the standard model', Erice, Aug. 29 - Sep. 7, 200

Ratchet-Like Solitonic Transport in Quantum Hall Bilayers

The pseudo-spin model for double layer quantum Hall system with total landau level filling factor $\nu=1$ is discussed. Unlike the "traditional" one where interlayer voltage enters as static magnetic field along pseudo- spin hard axis, in our model we consider applied interlayer voltage as a frequency of precessing pseudo-magnetic field lying into the easy plane. It is shown that a Landau-Lifshitz equation for the considered pseudo magnetic system well describes existing experimental data. Besides that, the mentioned model predicts novel directed intra-layer transport phenomenon in the system: unidirectional intra-layer energy transport is realized due to interlayer voltage induced motion of topological kinks. This effect could be observed experimentally detecting counter-propagating intra-layer inhomogeneous charge currents which are proportional to the interlayer voltage and total topological charge of the pseudo-spin system.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Orbital contribution to the magnetic properties of nanowires: Is the orbital polarization ansatz justified?

We show that considerable orbital magnetic moments and magneto-crystalline anisotropy energies are obtained for a Fe monatomic wire described in a tight-binding method with intra-atomic electronic interactions treated in a full Hartree Fock (HF) decoupling scheme. Even-though the use of the orbital polarization ansatz with simplified Hamiltonians leads to fairly good results when the spin magnetization is saturated this is not the case of unsaturated systems. We conclude that the full HF scheme is necessary to investigate low dimensional systems

Electron Scattering on 3He - a Playground to Test Nuclear Dynamics

The big spectrum of electron induced processes on 3He is illustrated by several examples based on Faddeev calculations with modern nucleon-nucleon and three-nucleon forces as well as exchange currents. The kinematical region is restricted to a mostly nonrelativistic one where the three-nucleon c.m. energy is below the pion production threshold and the three-momentum of the virtual photon is sufficiently below the nucleon mass. Comparisons with available data are shown and cases of agreement and disagreement are found. It is argued that new and precise data are needed to systematically check the present day dynamical ingredients.Comment: 27 pages, 24 figure

Exotic Baryons and Monopole Excitations in a Chiral Soliton Model

We compute the spectra of exotic pentaquarks and monopole excitations of the low--lying ${1/2}^+$ and ${3/2}^+$ baryons in a chiral soliton model. Once the low--lying baryon properties are fit, the other states are predicted without any more adjustable parameters. This approach naturally leads to a scenario in which the mass spectrum of the next to lowest--lying $J^\pi={1/2}^+$ states is fairly well approximated by the ideal mixing pattern of the $\mathbf{8}\oplus\bar{\mathbf{10}}$ representation of flavor SU(3). We compare our results to predictions obtained in other pictures for pentaquarks and speculate about the spin--parity assignment for $\Xi(1690)$ and $\Xi(1950)$Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, 6 table

Microscopic Models of Heavy Ion Interactions

An introduction to dynamical microscopic models of hadronic and nuclear interactions is presented. Special emphasis is put in the relation between multiparticle production and total cross-section contributions. In heavy ion collisions, some observables, considered as signals of the production of a Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), are studied. It is shown that they can only be described if final state interactions are introduced. It is argued that the cross-sections required are too small to drive the system to thermal equilibrium within the duration time of the final state interaction.Comment: 39 pages, 18 figures. Lectures at VIII Hispalensis International Summer School, Seville (Spain), to be published by Springer Verla

NN final-state interaction in two-nucleon knockout from 16O^{16}O

The influence of the mutual interaction between the two outgoing nucleons (NN-FSI) in electro- and photoinduced two-nucleon knockout from $^{16}O$ has been investigated perturbatively. It turns out that the effect of NN-FSI depends on the kinematics and on the type of reaction considered. The effect is generally larger in pp- than in pn-knockout and in electron induced than in photoinduced reactions. In superparallel kinematics NN-FSI leads in the $(e,e'pp)$ channel to a strong increase of the cross section, that is mainly due to a strong enhancement of the $\Delta$-current contribution. In pn-emission, however, this effect is partially cancelled by a destructive interference with the seagull current. For photoreactions NN-FSI is considerably reduced in superparallel kinematics and can be practically negligible in specific kinematics.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure