Policy compass: FCM-based policy impact evaluation using public open data

This paper presents how Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) technique can be applied by a policy maker to support the policy impact evaluation using the example of Policy Compass, an EU research project. The practical usage example on interest rate policy shows the potential of FCMs as a policy impact modelling tool. Through the provision of a more intuitive and easier means of using open data based on FCM techniques, the Policy Compass project can play a critical role for both policy maker and lay public to evaluate the policy impact and prepare for future policy making

Madchen

At the end of her shift, Madchen, a young diner waitress, waits for a ride home. But on this particular afternoon, Madchen’s encounters with three everyday people in her life – Leonard: a regular at her diner; Beth: a fellow waitress; and Davis: her boyfriend – shed harsh light on her troubled and restless state. Each meeting magnifies her heartaches as well as her hopes, forcing Madchen to face the conflicting and confining truths of her life. Stranded on a two-lane highway, caught in the gloaming, Madchen teeters between the small-town world she knows and the greater world that is beginning to beckon

Recognize and Accept Me: Consequences of the Drive for Social Identity Validation

According to uncertainty-identity theory (Hogg, 2021a) one of the benefits of group identification is uncertainty-reduction. To reap this benefit fully, it is posited that people also are motivated to have their identities validated, especially if the identity is one that is important to a person’s sense of self. However, people receive various feedback about their identities, and feedback about one’s identity does not come solely from one’s ingroup. While past research has demonstrated that feedback and source of feedback are important factors in social identity validation processes (see Choi & Hogg, 2020b), the current research proposes that uncertainty also may be a key factor in these processes; specifically, those with greater self-uncertainty will have a greater desire for identity validation for identities that are central to their sense of self. Furthermore, such desires can have consequences for how individuals evaluate and interact with their ingroup as well as their outgroup. Three studies were conducted to examine this. Study 1 (N = 139) showed that those with greater self-uncertainty and those whose identity is more central to their sense of self have a greater desire for identity validation. Study 2 (N = 142) showed that there is less ingroup bias when individuals evaluate feedback sources after imagining receiving identity validation from an outgroup source, and self-uncertainty moderates the effect of the feedback source’s group when evaluating the ingroup and outgroup as a whole. Study 3 (N = 142) showed that those who receive ingroup invalidation have a greater desire for identity validation from the outgroup compared to those who receive ingroup validation. Implications for intra- and intergroup dynamics and future research are discusse

Speculations on Isolated Lepton Events at HERA

Speculations on mechanisms which might be responsible for events with an isolated high p_T lepton, a hadron jet and missing energy, as observed in the H1 experiment at HERA, are discussed.Comment: LaTeX, 6 pages, 2 figures, presented at the XXXI Conference of Theoretical Physics "Matter to the Deepest", Ustron, Poland, September 5-11, 200

TeV scale mirage mediation in NMSSM

We study the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model. We consider soft supersymmetry breaking parameters, which are induced by the mirage mediation mechanism of supersymmetry breaking. We concentrate on the mirage mediation, where the so-called mirage scale is the TeV scale. In this scenario, we can realize the up-type Higgs soft mass of O(200) GeV, while other masses such as gaugino masses and stop masses are heavy such as 1 TeV or more. Cancellation between the effective \mu-term and the down-type Higgs soft mass ameliorates the fine-tuning in the electroweak symmetry breaking even for \mu=O(500) GeV. The mixing between the doublet and singlet Higgs bosons is suppressed by (\lambda/\kappa)/tan\beta. Then the lightest doublet Higgs mass naturally reaches 125 GeV lifted by the new quartic coupling. The higgsino and singlino are light and their linear combination is the lightest superparticle.Comment: 24 pages, 24 figures, Numerical analysis is replaced with the version calculated by NMSSMTools. Comments and references are added on the suppressed doublet-singlet mixing and cases in which the 125 GeV boson is the 2nd lightest CP-even scalar. The version accepted by JHE

Inflation with blowing-up solution of cosmological constant problem

The cosmological constant problem is how one chooses, without fine-tuning, one singular point $\Lambda_{eff}=0$ for the 4D cosmological constant. We argue that some recently discovered {\it weak self-tuning} solutions can be viewed as blowing-up this one point into a band of some parameter. These weak self-tuning solutions may have a virtue that only de Sitter space solutions are allowed outside this band, allowing an inflationary period. We adopt the hybrid inflation at the brane to exit from this inflationary phase and to enter into the standard Big Bang cosmology.Comment: LaTeX file of 20 pages including 2 eps figure

Topological quantization and degeneracy in Josephson-junction arrays

We consider the conductivity quantization in two-dimensional arrays of mesoscopic Josephson junctions, and examine the associated degeneracy in various regimes of the system. The filling factor of the system may be controlled by the gate voltage as well as the magnetic field, and its appropriate values for quantization is obtained by employing the Jain hierarchy scheme both in the charge description and in the vortex description. The duality between the two descriptions then suggests the possibility that the system undergoes a change in degeneracy while the quantized conductivity remains fixed.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev.