Some Reflections on Liberty : Bruce Winick’s ‘Civil Commitment: A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Model’

In the United States, involuntary hospitalisation of the mentally ill through the civil commitment process results in a curtailment of the fundamental liberty interest of freedom from external restraint; part of the constitutional guarantee. Apart from the loss of freedom through physical confinement, the labelling that inevitably accompanies commitment can give rise to significant social stigma and restricted life chances. In the last fifty-years, the power of doctors to commit on a best interests basis has been replaced by a legal process in which the grounds for involuntary hospitalisation have been restricted and the rights of patients prioritised. The problems inherent to both models have led to the development of therapeutic jurisprudence in which the therapeutic possibilities of law and the legal process are studied with the aim of optimising the therapeutic outcomes of commitment. Any model of involuntary hospitalisation necessarily gives rise to basic philosophical and political questions about the nature of individual liberty, of freedom and of the relationship between the individual and the state. As historically contingent concepts, what meaning can be attached to them and the goal of striving for a better balance in the context of the mentally ill between freedom and coercion

A Simple Introduction to Grobner Basis Methods in String Phenomenology

In this talk I give an elementary introduction to the key algorithm used in recent applications of computational algebraic geometry to the subject of string phenomenology. I begin with a simple description of the algorithm itself and then give 3 examples of its use in physics. I describe how it can be used to obtain constraints on flux parameters, how it can simplify the equations describing vacua in 4d string models and lastly how it can be used to compute the vacuum space of the electroweak sector of the MSSM.Comment: 13 pages, Prepared for Mathematical Challenges in String Phenomenology, ESI Vienna, Austria, Oct 6-15, 200

An explicit example of a moduli driven phase transition in heterotic models

We present an explicit example of a gauge symmetry breaking phase transition in heterotic models, the dynamics of which are not thermal and can be described in a well controlled manner throughout. The phase transition is driven by the evolution of bundle moduli - moduli associated with gauge field vacuum expectation values in the hidden dimensions. We present the necessary parts of the four dimensional effective theory including moduli which describe the embedding of the gauge bundle within the gauge group. We then present exact cosmological solutions to the system before going on to use them to describe the phase transition. The explicit nature of our description enables us to plot how the gauge bosons associated with the symmetries which are broken in the transition gain masses with time. This is in contrast to the use, for example, of a brane collision as a modulus driven phase transition. In the course of this work we find a number of other interesting results. We observe that the Kahler potential of the system is given by the logarithm of the volume of the compact space even when bundle moduli are included. We also note that the dynamics of the gauge bundle mean that small instanton transitions are classically forbidden for all but a set of measure zero of the initial conditions of the system. The paper is written in such a manner that the cosmological description of the phase transition can be read independently of the derivation of the four dimensional theory.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure

The use of Kodachrome slides during the personal interview for the selection of elementary teachers for the Newton Public Schools

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University 2" X 2" slides

[Review of] William P. French, Michel J. Febre, Amritjit Singh, and Geneviève E. Fabre (Eds). Afro-American Poetry and Drama, 1760-1975: A Guide to Information Sources

This bibliographic guide is actually two guides in one volume, both of them quite useful to the student of Afro-American writing. Black writers have often published their work themselves or in limited editions through small and relatively unknown presses

Flux, Gaugino Condensation and Anti-Branes in Heterotic M-theory

We present the potential energy due to flux and gaugino condensation in heterotic M-theory compactifications with anti-branes in the vacuum. For reasons which we explain in detail, the contributions to the potential due to flux are not modified from those in supersymmetric contexts. The discussion of gaugino condensation is, however, changed by the presence of anti-branes. We show how a careful microscopic analysis of the system allows us to use standard results in supersymmetric gauge theory in describing such effects - despite the explicit supersymmetry breaking which is present. Not surprisingly, the significant effect of anti-branes on the threshold corrections to the gauge kinetic functions greatly alters the potential energy terms arising from gaugino condensation.Comment: 40 pages, 1 figur

Gauge Five Brane Dynamics And Small Instanton Transitions In Heterotic Models

We present the first examples of cosmological solutions to four-dimensional heterotic models which include an evolving bundle modulus. The particular bundle modulus we consider corresponds to the width of a gauge five brane. As such our solutions can be used to describe the evolution in one of these models after a small instanton transition. We find that certain properties are generic to these solutions, regardless of initial conditions. This enables us to make some definite statements about the dynamics subsequent to a small instanton transition despite the fact that we cannot microscopically describe the process itself. We also show that an effective description of the small instanton transition by a continuous matching of fields and their first derivatives is precluded by the form of the respective low-energy theories before and after the transition.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

Algorithmic Algebraic Geometry and Flux Vacua

We develop a new and efficient method to systematically analyse four dimensional effective supergravities which descend from flux compactifications. The issue of finding vacua of such systems, both supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric, is mapped into a problem in computational algebraic geometry. Using recent developments in computer algebra, the problem can then be rapidly dealt with in a completely algorithmic fashion. Two main results are (1) a procedure for calculating constraints which the flux parameters must satisfy in these models if any given type of vacuum is to exist; (2) a stepwise process for finding all of the isolated vacua of such systems and their physical properties. We illustrate our discussion with several concrete examples, some of which have eluded conventional methods so far.Comment: 41 pages, 4 figure