Theories for the Fermi Scale

I give a short review of our present understanding of new theories of the electroweak scale, with emphasis on recent progress. Plenary talk at the EPS 2007 Conference at Manchester.Comment: 14 pages, EPS 2007 Conferenc

Female Perpetrators in Internal Child Trafficking in China: An empirical study

Through an empirical study, this article explores the overall profile of female traffickers of children in China and their role and performance in the trafficking processes. Its contribution to the human-trafficking literature lies in its focus on female perpetrators in particular. The article provides an overview of the international literature on female traffickers as well as contemporary knowledge about internal child trafficking in China. Empirical data from incarcerated traffickers suggest that portraying female traffickers as active players of criminal networks obscures the structural problems affecting female child traffickers. The short-term result is that the problems of female offenders are ignored, and the long-term impact is policy making that is disconnected from the lived experiences of an important population. From a gender perspective, this study suggests that female child traffickers are offenders as well as victims of social and gender inequalities in China’s reform era. This study also proposes that internal child trafficking in China should be brought in the international and Anglo-American debates surrounding human trafficking

Natural Neutrino Masses and Mixings from Warped Geometry

We demonstrate that flavor symmetries in warped geometry can provide a natural explanation for large mixing angles and economically explain the distinction between the quark and lepton flavor sectors. We show how to naturally generate Majorana neutrino masses assuming a gauged a U(1)_{B-L} symmetry broken in the UV that generates see-saw masses of the right size. This model requires lepton minimal flavor violation (LMFV) in which only Yukawa matrices (present on the IR brane) break the flavor symmetries. The symmetry-breaking is transmitted to charged lepton bulk mass parameters as well to generate the hierarchy of charged lepton masses. With LMFV, a GIM-like mechanism prevents dangerous flavor-changing processes for charged leptons and permits flavor-changing processes only in the presence of the neutrino Yukawa interaction and are therefore suppressed when the overall scale for the neutrino Yukawa matrix is slightly smaller than one in units of the curvature. In this case the theory can be consistent with a cutoff of 10 TeV and 3 TeV Kaluza-Klein masses.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, to match with published versio

Chronology of the sedimentary processes during the postglacial sea level rise in two estuaries of the Algarve coast, Southern Portugal

Four profiles of estuarine sediments obtained from boreholes drilled in the Algarve, Southern Portugal were studied in order to reconstruct the process of sediment accumulation driven by the postglacial sea level rise. In addition to the sedimentological analysis, the Foraminifera Index of Marine Influence (FIMI) permitted assessment of the nature and organization of sedimentary facies in the BelicheeGuadiana and Gilão-Almargem estuaries. The Beliche- Guadiana CM5 and Almargem G2 profiles accumulated in a sheltered environment, with the former presenting an almost continuous record of the sea level rise since ca 13 000 cal yr BP. The G1 and G3 profiles from the Gilão-Almargem area represent a more discontinuous record of the last 8000 years, which accumulated in the more dynamic environment of an outer estuary. The integration of all radiocarbon ages of dated levels, led to an estimate of sediment accumulation rates. Assuming a constant position of the sediment surface with respect to the tidal range and a negligible compaction of sediment, the sea level rose at the rate of 7 mm yr ^-1 in the period from 13 000 to 7500 cal yr BP. This process slowed down to ca 0.9 mm yr 1 from 7500 cal yr BP until the present. The marked historical change in the rate of sediment accumulation in these estuaries also occurred with the accumulation of organic matter and is, therefore, important data for global biogeochemical models of carbon. The main obstacle to obtain higher temporal resolution of the sedimentary processes was the intense anaerobic respiration of organic matter via sulphate reduction, which did not allow any accumulation of peat and, furthermore, led to erasure of the palaeontological record by acid formed from the subsequent oxidation of sulphides.FORMOSE- Sources and Retention of Organic Matter in the Estuarine Zones, PRAXIS XXI program of Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation and project MEGASIG, INTERREG IIIa program of the European Union

Modelling the spectral energy distribution of galaxies. V. The dust and PAH emission SEDs of disk galaxies

We present a self-consistent model of the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of spiral galaxies from the ultraviolet (UV) to the mid-infrared (MIR)/far-infrared (FIR)/submillimeter (submm) based on a full radiative transfer calculation of the propagation of starlight in galaxy disks. This model predicts not only the total integrated energy absorbed in the UV/optical and re-emitted in the infrared/submm, but also the colours of the dust emission based on an explicit calculation of the strength and colour of the UV/optical radiation fields heating the dust, and incorporating a full calculation of the stochastic heating of small dust grains and PAH molecules. The geometry of the translucent components of the model is empirically constrained using the results from the radiation transfer analysis of Xilouris et al. on spirals in the middle range of the Hubble sequence, while the geometry of the optically thick components is constrained from physical considerations with a posteriori checks of the model predictions with observational data. These geometrical constraints enable the dust emission to be predicted in terms of a minimum set of free parameters: the central face-on dust opacity in the B-band tau^f_B, a clumpiness factor F for the star-forming regions, the star-formation rate SFR, the normalised luminosity of the old stellar population old and the bulge-to-disk ratio B/D. We show that these parameters are almost orthogonal in their predicted effect on the colours of the dust/PAH emission. The results of the calculations are made available in the form of a large library of simulated dust emission SEDs spanning the whole parameter space of our model, together with the corresponding library of dust attenuation calculated using the same model. (see full abstract in the paper)Comment: 39 pages; accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics; For a higher resolution version of Fig.1 and Fig.20 see http://www.star.uclan.ac.uk/~ccp/index.shtm

Heavy quarkonium: progress, puzzles, and opportunities

A golden age for heavy quarkonium physics dawned a decade ago, initiated by the confluence of exciting advances in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and an explosion of related experimental activity. The early years of this period were chronicled in the Quarkonium Working Group (QWG) CERN Yellow Report (YR) in 2004, which presented a comprehensive review of the status of the field at that time and provided specific recommendations for further progress. However, the broad spectrum of subsequent breakthroughs, surprises, and continuing puzzles could only be partially anticipated. Since the release of the YR, the BESII program concluded only to give birth to BESIII; the $B$-factories and CLEO-c flourished; quarkonium production and polarization measurements at HERA and the Tevatron matured; and heavy-ion collisions at RHIC have opened a window on the deconfinement regime. All these experiments leave legacies of quality, precision, and unsolved mysteries for quarkonium physics, and therefore beg for continuing investigations. The plethora of newly-found quarkonium-like states unleashed a flood of theoretical investigations into new forms of matter such as quark-gluon hybrids, mesonic molecules, and tetraquarks. Measurements of the spectroscopy, decays, production, and in-medium behavior of c\bar{c}, b\bar{b}, and b\bar{c} bound states have been shown to validate some theoretical approaches to QCD and highlight lack of quantitative success for others. The intriguing details of quarkonium suppression in heavy-ion collisions that have emerged from RHIC have elevated the importance of separating hot- and cold-nuclear-matter effects in quark-gluon plasma studies. This review systematically addresses all these matters and concludes by prioritizing directions for ongoing and future efforts.Comment: 182 pages, 112 figures. Editors: N. Brambilla, S. Eidelman, B. K. Heltsley, R. Vogt. Section Coordinators: G. T. Bodwin, E. Eichten, A. D. Frawley, A. B. Meyer, R. E. Mitchell, V. Papadimitriou, P. Petreczky, A. A. Petrov, P. Robbe, A. Vair

Underwriting Apophenia and Cryptids: Are Cycles Statistical Figments of our Imagination?

This paper re-examines the evidence in favour of the existence of underwriting cycles in property and casualty insurance and their economical significance. Using a meta-analysis of published papers in the area of insurance economics, we show that the evidence supporting the existence of underwriting cycles is misleading. There is, in fact, little evidence in favour of insurance cycles with a linear autoregressive character. This means that any cyclicality in firm profitability in the property and casualty insurance industry is not predictable in a classical econometric framework. It follows that pricing in the property and casualty insurance industry is not incompatible with that of a competitive market