B-quark mediated neutrinoless μ−−e−\mu^--e^- conversion in presence of R-parity violation

We found that in supersymmetric models with R-parity non-conservation the b-quarks may appreciably contribute to exotic neutrinoless muon-electron conversion in nuclei via the triangle diagram with two external gluons. This allowed us to extract previously overlooked constraints on the third generation trilinear R-parity violating parameters significantly more stringent than those existing in the literature.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur

Ultra-precision Machining Process Dynamics and Surface Quality Monitoring

AbstractSurface finish deterioration in the ultra-precision machining (UPM) process is often attributed to dynamic instabilities. Models and approaches to predict UPM process instabilities are in their infancy. In the present work, UPM dynamics and its relationship to surface characteristics are studied using a combined analytical modeling and experimental effort. A one degree-of-freedom delay differential equation model that incorporates the joint effects of shear and ploughing taking place at sub-micrometer scale machining is investigated to capture the source of vibrations in UPM dynamics. A temporal finite element method (TFEM) was used to simplify the model to facilitate validation studies. The model was verified using an experimental UPM setup integrated with three accelerometers, a 3-axis dynamometer and an acoustic emission (AE) sensor. The setup was employed for face turning of 6061 aluminum workpiece using a single point polycrystalline diamond tool at different cutting conditions. The surface characteristics were measured offline using MicroXam®, a confocal optical microscope. Experimental investigations suggest that the model predictions of stability characteristics match 70% of the experimental observations. Additionally, even under stable UPM process conditions determined based on the analytical model, surface roughness of UPM machined workpieces varied significantly due to uncertainties associated with complex chip formation process, thermal effects and other uncontrollable factors. A sensor-based approach based on a nonparametric Gaussian process model was used to estimate surface roughness (Ra) using statistical and nonlinear features from force and vibration signals recorded at UPM process. Over 80% of the Ra estimations under test condition were consistent with the experiment measurements. Hence, by combining the physical and statistical models, we can choose suitable “stable” process conditions to yield surface finish Ra in 10-50nm range, and estimate the surface roughness changes in real-time

A model of ant route navigation driven by scene familiarity

In this paper we propose a model of visually guided route navigation in ants that captures the known properties of real behaviour whilst retaining mechanistic simplicity and thus biological plausibility. For an ant, the coupling of movement and viewing direction means that a familiar view specifies a familiar direction of movement. Since the views experienced along a habitual route will be more familiar, route navigation can be re-cast as a search for familiar views. This search can be performed with a simple scanning routine, a behaviour that ants have been observed to perform. We test this proposed route navigation strategy in simulation, by learning a series of routes through visually cluttered environments consisting of objects that are only distinguishable as silhouettes against the sky. In the first instance we determine view familiarity by exhaustive comparison with the set of views experienced during training. In further experiments we train an artificial neural network to perform familiarity discrimination using the training views. Our results indicate that, not only is the approach successful, but also that the routes that are learnt show many of the characteristics of the routes of desert ants. As such, we believe the model represents the only detailed and complete model of insect route guidance to date. What is more, the model provides a general demonstration that visually guided routes can be produced with parsimonious mechanisms that do not specify when or what to learn, nor separate routes into sequences of waypoints

Direct medical costs in the preceding, event and subsequent years of first severe hypoglycaemia requiring hospital transfer: A population-based cohort study

Aims To estimate healthcare services use and the direct medical costs accrued by patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) in the year of first severe hypoglycaemia (SH), the years before and after event year. Materials and Methods We analyzed a population‐based, retrospective cohort including all DM adults managed in primary care setting from the Hong Kong Hospital Authority between 2006‐2013. DM patients who had first recorded SH during the observation period were identified, and matched to control group of patients without SH based on the propensity score method. Direct medical costs in the years before, during and after the first SH were determined by summing up the costs of health services utilized within respective year. Results After matching, a total of 22,694 DM patients was identified in first recorded SH group (n=11,347) and non‐SH control group (n=11,347). Patients with first SH on average utilized 7.85 outpatient clinic visits, 1.89 emergency visits and 17.75 nights of hospitalization in the event year. Mean direct medical cost in the event year was US$11,751, more than twofold of that in the preceding year (US$4,846, p<0.001) and subsequent years (US$4,198‐4,700, p<0.001), and 4.5 times of that in two years before the event (US$2,481, p<0.001). Incremental costs of SH versus matched control in the event year and preceding year were US$10,873 (p<0.001) and US$3,974 (p<0.001), respectively. Conclusions SH is associated with excessive hospitalization admission rates and direct medical costs in the event year and, in particular, in the year before as compared to patients without SH

Key Performance Indicators for Sustainable Campus Assessment: A Case of Andalas University

Sustainable campus has became an important issue amongst universities around the world. Universities can generate a significant impacts to environment due to the high usage of energy, extensive transportation, massive waste, high consumption of materials, and extensive development of buildings and facilities. Thus, there is a need to assess the sustainable campus performance. This paper proposes a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for sustainable campus assessment consisting of six categories divided into a total of 35 indicators. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is applied to determine the importance weight of the KPIs. The results indicated the most important category for the sustainable campus assessment is education with an importance weight of 0.2665, while energy and climate change is regarded as the least important category. It is hoped the proposed KPIs can assist the universities to achieve the higher performance in sustainable campus

The Nuclear Sigma Term in the Skyrme Model: Pion-Nucleus Interaction

The nuclear sigma term is calculated including the nuclear matrix element of the derivative of the NN interaction with respect to the quark mass, $m_q\frac{\partial V_{NN}}{\partial m_q}$. The NN potential is evaluated in the skyrmion-skyrmion picture within the quantized product ansatz. The contribution of the NN potential to the nuclear sigma term provides repulsion to the pion-nucleus interaction. The strength of the s-wave pion-nucleus optical potential is estimated including such contribution. The results are consistent with the analysis of the experimental data.Comment: 16 pages (latex), 3 figures (eps), e-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]

Book Reviews

Review of New Perspectives in Archeology, by Sally R. Binford and Lewis R. Binford, eds.; The Archaeology of Ancient China, by Kwang-chih Chang; Prehistoric Animals and Their Hunters, by I. W. Cornwall; Contes Malgaches en Dialecte Sakalava: Textes, Traduction, Grammaire et Lexique, by Otto Chr. Dahl; An Ethnographic Bibliography of New Guinea; Archaeology on the Island of Mo'orea, French Polynesia, by Roger C. Green, Kaye Green, Roy Rappaport, Ann Rappaport, and Janet Davidson; Polynesian Culture History: Essays in Honor of Kenneth P. Emory, by Genevieve A. Highland, et al.; Computer Analysis of Chronological Seriation, by Frank Hole and Mary Shaw; Prehistoric Japanese Arts: Jomon Pottery, by J. Edward Kidder and Teruya Esaka; A Selected and Annotated Bibliography of Korean Anthropology, by Eugene I. Knez and Chang-Su Swanson; Die Religionen der Sudsee und Australiens, by Hans Nevermann, Ernest A. Worms, and Helmut Petri; Geschichte und Sozialordnung der Sherpa, by Michael Oppitz; The Vermilion Bird: T'ang Images of the South, by Edward H. Schafer; Fijian Material Culture: A Study of Cultural Context, Function, and Change, by Alan Richard Tippett

Muon-electron conversion in strange quark sea

We study nuclear muon-electron (mu-e) conversion in the general framework of effective Lagrangian approach without referring to any specific realization of the physics beyond the standard model (SM) responsible for lepton flavor violation (LFV). All the possible types of short range interactions (non-photonic mechanisms), i.e. (pseudo-)scalar, (axial-)vector and tensor, are included in our formalism. We show that the mu-e conversion in the strange nucleon sea via the scalar interactions is comparable with that in the valence quarks. This provides an insight into the strange quark couplings beyond the SM. From the available experimental data on mu-e conversion and expected sensitivities of planned experiments we derived upper bounds on the generic LFV - parameters of mu-e conversion sensitive to the relevant u-,d- and s-quark couplings.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, minor changes matching published versio

We’ve Been Down this Road Before: Evidence on the Health Consequences of Precarious Employment in Industrial Societies, 1840-1920

A large body of international scientific research now indicates that the growth of job insecurity, flexible/temporary work and precarious forms of self-employment have had significant negative consequences for occupational health and safety. What is often overlooked in debates over the ‘changing world of work’ is that today’s widespread use insecure and short term work is not new but represents a return to something more resembling labour markets in Australia, Europe and North America in the 19th and early 20th century. As this paper will seek to show, not only were precarious and exploitive working arrangements common during this period but the adverse effects of these on the health, safety and wellbeing was well documented in government inquiries, medical research, press reports and a variety of other sources. Drawing primarily on Australian and British sources, attention here will focus on casual labourers, sweated garment workers, the self-employed and merchant seamen. The paper highlights the valuable role historical research can play in shedding light on contemporary problems and policy debates.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

The modulation effect for supersymmetric dark matter detection with asymmetric velocity dispersion

The detection of the theoretically expected dark matter is central to particle physics cosmology. Current fashionable supersymmetric models provide a natural dark matter candidate which is the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). Such models combined with fairly well understood physics like the quark substructure of the nucleon and the nuclear form factor and the spin response function of the nucleus, permit the evaluation of the event rate for LSP-nucleus elastic scattering. The thus obtained event rates are, however, very low or even undetectable. So it is imperative to exploit the modulation effect, i.e. the dependence of the event rate on the earth's annual motion. In this review we study such a modulation effect in directional and undirectional experiments. We calculate both the differential and the total rates using symmetric as well as asymmetric velocity distributions. We find that in the symmetric case the modulation amplitude is small, less than 0.07. There exist, however, regions of the phase space and experimental conditions such that the effect can become larger. The inclusion of asymmetry, with a realistic enhanced velocity dispersion in the galactocentric direction, yields the bonus of an enhanced modulation effect, with an amplitude which for certain parameters can become as large as 0.46.Comment: 35 LATEX pages, 7 Tables, 8 PostScript Figures include