2,610 research outputs found
Bus accident severity and passenger injury: evidence from Denmark
Purpose Bus safety is a concern not only in developing countries, but also in the U.S. and Europe. In Denmark, disentangling risk factors that are positively or negatively related to bus accident severity and injury occurrence to bus passengers can contribute to promote safety as an essential principle of sustainable transit and advance the vision “every accident is one too many”. Methods Bus accident data were retrieved from the national accident database for the period 2002–2011. A generalized ordered logit model allows analyzing bus accident severity and a logistic regression enables examining occurrence of injury to bus passengers. Results Bus accident severity is positively related to (i) the involvement of vulnerable road users, (ii) high speed limits, (iii) night hours, (iv) elderly drivers of the third party involved, and (v) bus drivers and other drivers crossing in yellow or red light. Occurrence of injury to bus passengers is positively related to (i) the involvement of heavy vehicles, (ii) crossing intersections in yellow or red light, (iii) open areas, (iv) high speed limits, and (v) slippery road surface. Conclusions The findings of the current study provide a comprehensive picture of the bus safety situation in Denmark and suggest the necessity of further research into bus drivers’ attitudes and perceptions of risks and road users’ perceptions of bus operations. Moreover, these findings suggest the need for further training into bus drivers’ hazard recognition skills and infrastructural solutions to forgive possible driving errors
D-brane Inspired Fermion Mass Textures
In this paper, the issues of the quark mass hierarchies and the Cabbibo
Kobayashi Maskawa mixing are analyzed in a class of intersecting D-brane
configurations with Standard Model gauge symmetry. The relevant mass matrices
are constructed taking into account the constraints imposed by extra abelian
symmetries and anomaly cancelation conditions. Possible mass generating
mechanisms including perturbative as well as non-perturbative effects are
discussed and specific patterns of mass textures are found characterized by the
hierarchies of the scales where the various sources contribute. It is argued
that the Cholesky decomposition of the mass matrices is the most appropriate
way to determine the properties of these fermion mass patterns, while the
associated triangular mass matrix form provides a unified description of all
phenomenologically equivalent symmetric and non-symmetric mass matrices. An
elegant analytic formula is derived for the Cholesky triangular form of the
mass matrices where the entries are given as simple functions of the mass
eigenstates and the diagonalizing transformation entries. Finally, motivated by
the possibility of vanishing zero Yukawa mass entries in several D-brane and
F-theory constructions due to the geometry of the internal space, we analyse in
detail all possible texture-zeroes mass matrices within the proposed new
context. These new texture-zeroes are compared to those existing in the
literature while D-brane inspired cases are worked out in detail.Comment: 58 pages, 7 figure
Flavor in Minimal Conformal Technicolor
We construct a complete, realistic, and natural UV completion of minimal
conformal technicolor that explains the origin of quark and lepton masses and
mixing angles. As in "bosonic technicolor", we embed conformal technicolor in a
supersymmetric theory, with supersymmetry broken at a high scale. The exchange
of heavy scalar doublets generates higher-dimension interactions between
technifermions and quarks and leptons that give rise to quark and lepton masses
at the TeV scale. Obtaining a sufficiently large top quark mass requires strong
dynamics at the supersymmetry breaking scale in both the top and technicolor
sectors. This is natural if the theory above the supersymmetry breaking also
has strong conformal dynamics. We present two models in which the strong top
dynamics is realized in different ways. In both models, constraints from
flavor-changing effects can be easily satisfied. The effective theory below the
supersymmetry breaking scale is minimal conformal technicolor with an
additional light technicolor gaugino. We argue that this light gaugino is a
general consequence of conformal technicolor embedded into a supersymmetric
theory. If the gaugino has mass below the TeV scale it will give rise to an
additional pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson that is observable at the LHC.Comment: 37 pages; references adde
Dirac Gauginos, Negative Supertraces and Gauge Mediation
In an attempt to maximize General Gauge Mediated parameter space, I propose
simple models in which gauginos and scalars are generated from disconnected
mechanisms. In my models Dirac gauginos are generated through the supersoft
mechanism, while independent R-symmetric scalar masses are generated through
operators involving non-zero messenger supertrace. I propose several new
methods for generating negative messenger supertraces which result in viable
positive mass squareds for MSSM scalars. The resultant spectra are novel,
compressed and may contain light fermionic SM adjoint fields.Comment: 16 pages 3 figure
Flavor of quiver-like realizations of effective supersymmetry
We present a class of supersymmetric models which address the flavor puzzle
and have an inverted hierarchy of sfermions. Their construction involves
quiver-like models with link fields in generic representations. The magnitude
of Standard-Model parameters is obtained naturally and a relatively heavy Higgs
boson is allowed without fine tuning. Collider signatures of such models are
possibly within the reach of LHC in the near future.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, 3 figures. V2: reference adde
FCNC Effects in a Minimal Theory of Fermion Masses
As a minimal theory of fermion masses we extend the SM by heavy vectorlike
fermions, with flavor-anarchical Yukawa couplings, that mix with chiral
fermions such that small SM Yukawa couplings arise from small mixing angles.
This model can be regarded as an effective description of the fermionic sector
of a large class of existing flavor models and thus might serve as a useful
reference frame for a further understanding of flavor hierarchies in the SM.
Already such a minimal framework gives rise to FCNC effects through exchange of
massive SM bosons whose couplings to the light fermions get modified by the
mixing. We derive general formulae for these corrections and discuss the bounds
on the heavy fermion masses. Particularly stringent bounds, in a few TeV range,
come from the corrections to the Z couplings.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figur
Bounds on SCFTs from Conformal Perturbation Theory
The operator product expansion (OPE) in 4d (super)conformal field theory is
of broad interest, for both formal and phenomenological applications. In this
paper, we use conformal perturbation theory to study the OPE of nearly-free
fields coupled to SCFTs. Under fairly general assumptions, we show that the OPE
of a chiral operator of dimension with its complex
conjugate always contains an operator of dimension less than . Our
bounds apply to Banks-Zaks fixed points and their generalizations, as we
illustrate using several examples.Comment: 36 pages; v2: typos fixed, minor change
Electroweak Baryogenesis and Dark Matter with an approximate R-symmetry
It is well known that R-symmetric models dramatically alleviate the SUSY
flavor and CP problems. We study particular modifications of existing
R-symmetric models which share the solution to the above problems, and have
interesting consequences for electroweak baryogenesis and the Dark Matter (DM)
content of the universe. In particular, we find that it is naturally possible
to have a strongly first-order electroweak phase transition while
simultaneously relaxing the tension with EDM experiments. The R-symmetry (and
its small breaking) implies that the gauginos (and the neutralino LSP) are
pseudo-Dirac fermions, which is relevant for both baryogenesis and DM. The
singlet superpartner of the U(1)_Y pseudo-Dirac gaugino plays a prominent role
in making the electroweak phase transition strongly first-order. The
pseudo-Dirac nature of the LSP allows it to behave similarly to a Dirac
particle during freeze-out, but like a Majorana particle for annihilation today
and in scattering against nuclei, thus being consistent with current
constraints. Assuming a standard cosmology, it is possible to simultaneously
have a strongly first-order phase transition conducive to baryogenesis and have
the LSP provide the full DM relic abundance, in part of the allowed parameter
space. However, other possibilities for DM also exist, which are discussed. It
is expected that upcoming direct DM searches as well as neutrino signals from
DM annihilation in the Sun will be sensitive to this class of models.
Interesting collider and Gravity-wave signals are also briefly discussed.Comment: 50 pages, 10 figure
Flavourful Production at Hadron Colliders
We ask what new states may lie at or below the TeV scale, with sizable
flavour-dependent couplings to light quarks, putting them within reach of
hadron colliders via resonant production, or in association with Standard Model
states. In particular, we focus on the compatibility of such states with
stringent flavour-changing neutral current and electric-dipole moment
constraints. We argue that the broadest and most theoretically plausible
flavour structure of the new couplings is that they are hierarchical, as are
Standard Model Yukawa couplings, although the hierarchical pattern may well be
different. We point out that, without the need for any more elaborate or
restrictive structure, new scalars with "diquark" couplings to standard quarks
are particularly immune to existing constraints, and that such scalars may
arise within a variety of theoretical paradigms. In particular, there can be
substantial couplings to a pair of light quarks or to one light and one heavy
quark. For example, the latter possibility may provide a flavour-safe
interpretation of the asymmetry in top quark production observed at the
Tevatron. We thereby motivate searches for diquark scalars at the Tevatron and
LHC, and argue that their discovery represents one of our best chances for new
insight into the Flavour Puzzle of the Standard Model.Comment: 18 pp., 8 figures, references adde
A Hybrid Higgs
We construct composite Higgs models admitting a weakly coupled Seiberg dual
description. We focus on the possibility that only the up-type Higgs is an
elementary field, while the down-type Higgs arises as a composite hadron. The
model, based on a confining SQCD theory, breaks supersymmetry and electroweak
symmetry dynamically and calculably. This simultaneously solves the \mu/B_\mu
problem and explains the smallness of the bottom and tau masses compared to the
top mass. The proposal is then applied to a class of models where the same
confining dynamics is used to generate the Standard Model flavor hierarchy by
quark and lepton compositeness. This provides a unified framework for flavor,
supersymmetry breaking and electroweak physics. The weakly coupled dual is used
to explicitly compute the MSSM parameters in terms of a few microscopic
couplings, giving interesting relations between the electroweak and soft
parameters. The RG evolution down to the TeV scale is obtained and salient
phenomenological predictions of this class of "single-sector" models are
discussed.Comment: 56 pages, 7 figures, v2: discussion on FCNCs and references added,
v3: JHEP versio
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