Do About Half the Top Quarks at FNAL Come From Gluino Decays?

We argue that it is possible to make a consistent picture of FNAL data including the production and decay of gluinos and squarks. The additional cross section is several pb, about the size of that for Standard Model (SM) top quark pair production. If the stop squark mass is small enough, about half of the top quarks decay to stop squarks, and the loss of SM top quark pair production rate is compensated by the supersymmetric processes. This behavior is consistent with the reported top quark decay rates in various modes and other aspects of the data, and suggests several other possible decay signatures. This picture can be tested easily with more data, perhaps even with the data in hand, and demonstrates the potential power of a hadron collider to determine supersymmetric parameters. It also has implications for the top mass measurement and the interpretation of the LEP $R_b$ excess.Comment: 18 pages, including 4 Postscript figures, uses epsf.tex, also available at http://www.hep.anl.gov/theory/mrenna

People who once had 40 cattle are left only with fences: Coping with persistent drought in Awash, Ethiopia

How to support those responding to environmental change in resource-constrained environments is central to literature on climate change adaption. Our research explores a gap in this literature relating to the negotiation of intra-household relations and resource access across different types of household in contexts of social and environmental transition. Using the example of the semi-arid Awash region in North-Eastern Ethiopia, which has experienced drought and alien plant invasion over the past decade, we explore how men and women use changes in household structures and relationships to adapt more effectively. We draw evidence from life histories with 35 pastoralists across three rural, peri-urban and urban communities. Using Dorward et al’s taxonomy, we find Afar people are not only ‘stepping up’, but also ‘stepping out’: shifting from pastoralism into agriculture and salaried employment. As this often involves splitting households across multiple locations, we look at how these reconfigured households support pastoralists’ wellbeing

International forum. an investigation of iron status in blood donors

No abstract availabl