Time resolution below 100 ps for the SciTil detector of PANDA employing SiPM

The barrel time-of-flight (TOF) detector for the PANDA experiment at FAIR in Darmstadt is planned as a scintillator tile hodoscope (SciTil) using 8000 small scintillator tiles. It will provide fast event timing for a software trigger in the otherwise trigger-less data acquisition scheme of PANDA, relative timing in a multiple track event topology as well as additional particle identification in the low momentum region. The goal is to achieve a time resolution of sigma ~ 100 ps. We have conducted measurements using organic scintillators coupled to Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM). The results are encouraging such that we are confident to reach the required time resolution.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Trends in health and health inequality during the Japanese economic stagnation: Implications for a healthy planet

Introduction: Human health and wellbeing may depend on economic growth, the implication being that policymakers need to choose between population health and the health of ecosystems. Over two decades of low economic growth, Japan's life expectancy grew. Here we assess the temporal changes of subjective health and health inequality during the long-term low economic growth period. Methods: Eight triennial cross-sectional nationally representative surveys in Japan over the period of economic stagnation from 1992 to 2013 were used (n = 625,262). Health is defined positively as wellbeing, and negatively as poor health, based on self-rated health. We used Slope and Relative Indices of Inequality to model inequalities in self-rated health based on household income. Temporal changes in health and health inequalities over time were examined separately for children/adolescents, working-age adults, young-old and old-old. Results: At the end of the period of economic stagnation (2013), compared to the beginning (1992), the overall prevalence of wellbeing declined slightly in all age groups. However, poor health was stable or declined in the young-old and old-old, respectively, and increased only in working-age adults (Prevalence ratio: 1.14, 95% CI 1.08, 1.20, <0.001). Over time, inequality in wellbeing and poor self-rated health were observed in adults but less consistently for children, but the inequalities did not widen in any age group between the start and end of the stagnation period. Conclusions: Although this study was a case study of one country, Japan, and inference to other countries cannot be made with certainty, the findings provide evidence that low economic growth over two decades did not inevitably translate to unfavourable population health. Japanese health inequalities according to income were stable during the study period. Therefore, this study highlighted the possibility that for high-income countries, low economic growth may be compatible with good population health

D-terms and F-terms from D7-brane fluxes

Using a Kaluza-Klein reduction of the fermionic part of the D-brane action we compute D- and F-terms of the N=1 effective action for generic Calabi-Yau orientifold compactifications in the presence of a space-time filling D7-brane. We include non-trivial background fluxes for the D7-brane U(1) field strength on the internal four-cycle wrapped by the brane. First the four-dimensional fermionic spectrum arising from the D7-brane is derived and then the D- and F-terms are obtained by computing appropriate couplings of these fermionic fields. For specific examples we examine the resulting flux-induced scalar potentials and comment on their relevance in string cosmology.Comment: 1+44 pages, Latex; minor change

The effective action of N=1 Calabi-Yau orientifolds

We determine the N=1 low energy effective action for compactifications of type IIB string theory on compact Calabi-Yau orientifolds in the presence of background fluxes from a Kaluza-Klein reduction. The analysis is performed for Calabi-Yau threefolds which admit an isometric and holomorphic involution. We explicitly compute the Kahler potential, the superpotential and the gauge kinetic functions and check the consistency with N=1 supergravity. We find a new class of no-scale Kahler potentials and show that their structure can be best understood in terms of a dual formulation where some of the chiral multiplets are replaced by linear multiplets. For O3- and O7-planes the scalar potential is expressed in terms of a superpotential while for O5- and O9-planes also a D-term and a massive linear multiplet can be present. The relation with the associated F-theory compactifications is briefly discussed.Comment: 40 pages, typos corrected, discussion of no-scale property improve