Colour Confinement and Deformed Baryons in Quantum Chromodynamics

The confinement of coloured entities in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is traced to colour singletness of the observed entities. This is believed to arise from colour singlet state of quark-antiquark for mesons and a fully colour antisymmetric state for baryons. This demands a spherically symmetric baryon in the ground state. However it is pointed out that a deformed baryon in the ground state has been found to be extremely successful phenomenology. There are convincing experimental supports for a deformed nucleon as well. This means that something has been missed in the fundamental theory. In this paper this problem is traced to a new colour singlet state for baryons which has been missed hitherto and incorporation of which provides a consistent justification of a deformed baryon in the ground state. Interestingly this new colour singlet state is global in nature.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Evidence for Compact Dark Matter in Galactic Halos

Clumped dark matter arises naturally within the framwork of generic cosmological dark matter models. Invoking the existence of dark matter clumps can also solve may unexplained mysteries in astrophysics and geology or geophysics, eg. the galactic gamma-ray halo and the periodic terrestrial flood basalt volcanic episodes. Clumped dark matter is dynamically stable to friction and will not heat the disk. Such clumps may have already been discovered in the form of dwarf spheroidals, and further searches are encouraged by the results of this paper.Comment: Revised Version, includes new relevant references, Latex File, 16 pages, no figure

On Standard Model Higgs and Superstring Theories

It is shown that in the Standard Model, the property of charge quantization holds for a Higgs with arbitrary isospin and hypercharge. These defining quantum numbers of the Higgs remain unconstrained while the whole basic and fundamental structure of the Standard Model remains intact. Hence it is shown that the Higgs cannot be a physical particle. Higgs is the underlying `vacuum' over which the whole edifice of the Standard Model stands. Also on most general grounds it is established here that as per the Standard Model there is no electric charge above the electro-weak phase transition temperature. Hence there was no electric charge present in the Early Universe. The Superstring Theories are flawed in as much as they are incompatible with this requirement.Comment: Latex file, 6 pages. Talk presented at International Symposium on Particles, Strings and Cosmology (PASCOS'99), Lake Tahoe, California, Dec 1999. To appear in the the Proceeding

Cardy-Verlinde Formula of Non-Commutative Schwarzschild Black Hole

Few years ago, Setare \cite{1} has investigated the Cardy-Verlinde formula of non-commutative black hole obtained by non-commutativity of coordinates. In this paper, we apply the same procedure to a non-commutative black hole obtained by the co-ordinate coherent approch. The Cardy-Verlinde formula is entropy formula of conformal field theory in an arbitrary dimension. It relates the entropy of conformal filed theory to its total energy and Casimir energy. In this paper, we have calculated the total energy and Casimir energy of non-commutative Schwarzschild black hole and have shown that entropy of non-commutative Schwarzschild black hole horizon can be expressed in terms of Cardy-Verlinde formula.Comment: 9 Pages, no figures, Accepted for Publication in Advances in High Energy Physics. Some typos remove

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Captivity: The case of Iranian prisoners of war in the Iraq-Iran war

During the Persian Gulf War of Iraq-Iran (1980-1988), thousands of Iranians were taken captive by Iraqi troops. These prisoners of war (POWs) had to find ways to enrich and fill their time in prison camps. Learning English was one such activity. This study was carried out to appraise the motivations of the Iranian POWs for learning English, and to understand more about their textbooks, their classroom environment, the teaching methods and techniques employed, the skills emphasized, the teaching aids improvised, the types of exercises mobilized, as well as the test-taking techniques adopted. A relevant corpus of 21 memoirs and 7 interviews with Iranian ex-POWs were analyzed. The research draws upon Maslow’s (1970) “self-actualization” and Frankl’s (1984) “logotherapy” to shed light on the existential aspect of learning. Findings revealed that for these EFL learners, learning English was an attempt to fulfill their potential and/or to make life more meaningful