Why Are Neutrinos Light? -- An Alternative

We review the recent proposal that neutrinos are light because their masses are proportional to a low scale, f, of lepton flavor symmetry breaking. This mechanism is testable because the resulting pseudo-Goldstone bosons, of mass m_G, couple strongly with the neutrinos, affecting the acoustic oscillations during the eV era of the early universe that generate the peaks in the CMB radiation. Characteristic signals result over a very wide range of (f, m_G) because of a change in the total relativistic energy density and because the neutrinos scatter rather than free-stream. Thermodynamics allows a precise calculation of the signal, so that observations would not only confirm the late-time neutrino mass mechanism, but could also determine whether the neutrino spectrum is degenerate, inverted or hierarchical and whether the neutrinos are Dirac or Majorana. The flavor symmetries could also give light sterile states. If the masses of the sterile neutrinos turn on after the MeV era, the LSND oscillations can be explained without upsetting big bang nucleosynthesis, and, since the sterile states decay to lighter neutrinos and pseudo-Goldstones, without giving too much hot dark matter.Comment: Talk given by LJH at the Fujihara Seminar on Neutrino Mass and Seesaw Mechanism held at KEK, Japan, February 2004. 11 pages, 1 figure, 3 table

Internet and cosmopolitanism

No description supplie

Death by a Thousand Signatures: The Rise of Restrictive Ballot Access Laws and the Decline of Electoral Competition in the United States

This Article explores one instance of the countermajoritarian problem in American democracy: how to protect the rights of minor parties and independent candidates participating in an electoral system dominated by two major parties. In particular, this Article focuses on the effect of modern ballot access laws on candidates\u27 rights, arguing that courts ought to treat these laws as a presumptively impermissible form of collusion in restraint of democracy. Although the article borrows the language of antitrust law, this argument is rooted in core constitutional principles and rights guaranteed under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Nevertheless, the analogy to antitrust law is useful as a means to address the decline of electoral competition in the United States and its consequences for the democratic character of our government. Antitrust law also provides a legal framework for distinguishing between nonpartisan and bipartisan legislation, as the analogy helps distinguish between legitimate regulation of the political process by the state and collusion in restraint of democracy by the two major parties. Part II begins with a discussion of elections\u27 function in a democracy, addressing the lack of electoral competition in the United States and identifying prominent anticompetitive features of American democracy, mainly modem ballot access laws. Part II provides a brief history of ballot access laws in the United States and an analysis of their justification. Part III analyzes the Supreme Court\u27s modem ballot access jurisprudence, starting with the first minor party challenge to a modem ballot access law in 1968 and tracing the erosion of candidates\u27 rights since then. Finally, Part IV sketches an approach to ballot access jurisprudence that offers greater protection to candidates\u27 rights by analyzing ballot access laws according to the principles of antitrust law

Late Time Neutrino Masses, the LSND Experiment and the Cosmic Microwave Background

Models with low-scale breaking of global symmetries in the neutrino sector provide an alternative to the seesaw mechanism for understanding why neutrinos are light. Such models can easily incorporate light sterile neutrinos required by the LSND experiment. Furthermore, the constraints on the sterile neutrino properties from nucleosynthesis and large scale structure can be removed due to the non-conventional cosmological evolution of neutrino masses and densities. We present explicit, fully realistic supersymmetric models, and discuss the characteristic signatures predicted in the angular distributions of the cosmic microwave background.Comment: 4 pages, revtex

Perturbative Corrections in SHERPA

The use of Monte Carlo event generators for the simulation of LHC collider experiments, has in recent years driven a demand for greater accuracy of predictions in such generators. This thesis will be concerned with the addition of certain perturbative corrections in the event generator SHERPA. In this vein a framework for the automatic calculation of the real correction terms is presented, based on the the subtraction mechanism of of Frixione, Kunszt and Signer. This resulting framework is implemented in the matrix element generator Amegic, which will then allow the calculation of the real components of an NLO QCD for any process; this can be supplemented with virtual corrections to provide a full NLO QCD prediction. This implementation is then rigorously tested and found to be consistent with known NLO results. This subtraction framework is then utilized to perform a series of tests on the relative efficiency of the FKS and Catani Seymour subtraction methods; these tests are conducted over multiple processes and the affect of the multiplicity of the state is investigated.In addition the contribution of photon induced processes to lepton and W boson production is discussed, taking into account contributions from the QED part of parton distribution functions and from equivalent photons in the Weizsaecker Williams approximation. Typically these processes contribute on the per cent level compared to standard quark and gluon-induced processes; however, when applying various cuts this picture may change and the photon induced processes may become significant

Forschung, Bildung und Transfer in der Kreativwirtschaft von Klein- und Mittelstädten

Städte befinden sich in einem stetigen Transformationsprozess und aktuell rückt die Kreativwirtschaft als Schlüsselbereich und Innovationsmotor für die Gesamtwirtschaft vermehrt auch in das Blickfeld der Stadtentwicklung. Während dieses Themenfeld in Metropolen und Großstädten schon mehrfach städtebaulich und wissenschaftlich untersucht wurde, besteht in Mittelstädten noch Forschungsbedarf. Die zugrundeliegende Forschungsarbeit „Potenzialstudie Kreativ Quartier Detmold“ hatte das Ziel Erfolgschancen, Potenziale, Herausforderungen und Anforderungen an die (Weiter-) Entwicklung der Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft in der typischen Mittelstadt Detmold und ihrer Bedeutung in einer polyzentralen Region zu untersuchen. Hierfür wurde ein Methodenmix angewendet, der sich in Form einer Umfrage mit den Anforderungen der Akteure auseinandersetzt; den Stadtentwicklungsprozess zweier erfolgreicher Fallstudien untersucht; Detmold städtebaulich auf geeignete Orte zur Ansiedlung von Kreativen analysiert und schließlich in Szenarien vergleichend bewertet. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass die Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft der Mittelstadt Detmold ein starkes Bedürfnis hat sich zu vernetzen und insgesamt mehr wahrgenommen zu werden. Es zeigen sich starke Wertschöpfungsketten untereinander und besondere Anknüpfungspotenziale im Umfeld von Hochschulen. Die räumliche Analyse offenbart, dass auch in einer Mittelstadt wie Detmold ausreichend Potenzialräume vorhanden sind. Gleichwohl existiert nicht ausreichend Eigendynamik, dass sich diese Räume selbst und in verdichteter Form entwickeln. Das kreative Potenzial ist also auch in Mittelstädten vorhanden. Es braucht aber gerade in einer Mittelstadt einen gesteuerten Stadtentwicklungsprozess der zusammen mit Förderimpulsen gezielt Entwicklungen in diese Richtung stimuliert

Bounded gaps between primes in number fields and function fields

The Hardy--Littlewood prime $k$-tuples conjecture has long been thought to be completely unapproachable with current methods. While this sadly remains true, startling breakthroughs of Zhang, Maynard, and Tao have nevertheless made significant progress toward this problem. In this work, we extend the Maynard-Tao method to both number fields and the function field $\mathbb{F}_q(t)$

'I am Trying to Believe': Dystopia as Utopia in the Year Zero Alternate Reality Game

A major symptom of postmodernity is the loss of utopian energy, of which the popularity of dystopian cultural production is evident.  The dystopian genre, however, is cautionary, and thus utopian.  Associated is the influence of technology on post-utopian culture—although it has been viewed pessimistically, technology allows for new ways of telling dystopian stories.  One such mode of telling dystopian stories is the Alternate Reality Game (ARG), a narrative, multi-media game, using several different technologies that puts the player in a fictional reality.  One ARG that exemplifies the idea of dystopia as having utopian energy is Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero, which shows that technology can have utopian energy, offering new ways of telling dystopian stories such as via the ARG, thus locating some utopian energy in postmodern culture through the form’s culturally critical structure and interactive nature, which equals a call to action against the dystopian nature of contemporary society