3,142 research outputs found
âIn shape and mind transformedâ? Televised teaching and learning Shakespeare
Reality television offers the BBC the opportunity to fulfil its dual imperatives of education and entertainment, frequently constructed as anathematic. This article considers three recent examples of televised teaching and learning Shakespeare: When Romeo Met Juliet, Macbeth, the movie star and me, and Off By Heart: Shakespeare. It demonstrates the programmesâ fit with the reality genre through their common ingredients of authenticity, contained locations, hybridity, experts, fallible and flawed participants, articulation and reconciliation of social difference. Moreover, all three share an emphasis on a reality television staple: transformation, in terms of the participantsâ knowledge, skills and personal growth, but also in relation to television audiences and the British education system. The programmes might thus usefully be understood as part of a reality television subgenre, evolving in Britain since the late 1970s, of Shmake-over. This article is published as part of a collection to commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeareâs death
Can Heavy WIMPs Be Captured by the Earth?
If weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in bound solar orbits are
systematically driven into the Sun by solar-system resonances (as Farinella et
al. have shown is the case for many Earth-crossing asteroids), then the capture
of high-mass WIMPs by the Earth would be affected dramatically because
high-mass WIMPs are captured primarily from bound orbits. WIMP capture would be
eliminated for M_x>630 GeV and would be highly suppressed for M_x>~150 GeV.
Annihilation of captured WIMPs and anti-WIMPs is expected to give rise to
neutrinos coming from the Earth's center. The absence of such a neutrino signal
has been used to place limits on WIMP parameters. At present, one does not know
if typical WIMP orbits are in fact affected by these resonances. Until this
question is investigated and resolved, one must (conservatively) assume that
they are. Hence, limits on high-mass WIMP parameters are significantly weaker
than previously believed.Comment: 8 pages + 1 figure. Submitted to Ap
Integral group actions on symmetric spaces and discrete duality symmetries of supergravity theories
For a split, simply connected, semisimple Lie group of rank
and the maximal compact subgroup of , we give a method for computing
Iwasawa coordinates of using the Chevalley generators and the Steinberg
presentation. When is a scalar coset for a supergravity theory in
dimensions , we determine the action of the integral form
on . We give explicit results for the action of the
discrete --duality groups and on the
scalar cosets and
for type IIB supergravity
in ten dimensions and 11--dimensional supergravity in dimensions,
respectively. For the former, we use this to determine the discrete U--duality
transformations on the scalar sector in the Borel gauge and we describe the
discrete symmetries of the dyonic charge lattice. We determine the
spectrum--generating symmetry group for fundamental BPS solitons of type IIB
supergravity in dimensions at the classical level and we propose an
analog of this symmetry at the quantum level. We indicate how our methods can
be used to study the orbits of discrete U--duality groups in general
Accurate Neutralino Relic Density Computations in Supergravity Models
We investigate the question of the proper thermal averaging of neutralino
annihilation amplitudes which possess poles and thresholds, as they impact on
the calculated neutralino relic density and therefore on the cosmological
viability of supersymmetric models. We focus on two typical resonances, namely
the boson and the lightest Higgs boson (). In the context of
supergravity models with radiative electroweak symmetry breaking, an
exploration of the whole parameter space of the model is possible and the
overall relevance of these sophisticated analyses can be ascertained. As an
example we chose the minimal supergravity model since the presence of
such poles is essential to obtain a cosmologically acceptable model. We find
that the proper thermal averaging is important for individual points in
parameter space and that the fraction of cosmologically acceptable points is
increased somewhat by the accurate procedure. However, qualitatively the new
set of points is very similar to that obtained previously using the usual
series approximations to the thermal average. We conclude that all
phenomenological analyses based on the previously determined cosmologically
allowed set remain valid.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures (available upon request as uuencoded file or
separate ps files), tex (harvmac) CTP-TAMU-14/9
Dual Projection and Selfduality in Three Dimensions
We discuss the notion of duality and selfduality in the context of the dual
projection operation that creates an internal space of potentials. Contrary to
the prevailing algebraic or group theoretical methods, this technique is
applicable to both even and odd dimensions. The role of parity in the kernel of
the Gauss law to determine the dimensional dependence is clarified. We derive
the appropriate invariant actions, discuss the symmetry groups and their proper
generators. In particular, the novel concept of duality symmetry and
selfduality in Maxwell theory in (2+1) dimensions is analysed in details. The
corresponding action is a 3D version of the familiar duality symmetric
electromagnetic theory in 4D. Finally, the duality symmetric actions in the
different dimensions constructed here manifest both the SO(2) and
symmetries, contrary to conventional results.Comment: 20 pages, late
Chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy: the modified total neuropathy score in clinical practice.
BACKGROUND: Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is a common, potentially reversible side effect of some chemotherapeutic agents. CIPN is associated with decreased balance, function and quality of life (QoL). This association has to date been under-investigated.
AIMS: To profile patients presenting with CIPN using the modified Total Neuropathy Score (mTNS) in this cross-sectional study and to examine the relationship between CIPN (measured by mTNS) and indices of balance, quality of life (QoL) and function.
METHODS: Patients receiving neurotoxic chemotherapy regimens were identified using hospital databases. Those who did not have a pre-existing neuropathy were invited to complete mTNS, Berg Balance Scale (BBS), timed up and go (TUG), and FACT-G QoL questionnaire. mTNS scores were profiled and also correlated with BBS, TUG and FACT-G using Spearmans correlation coefficient.
RESULTS: A total of 29 patients undergoing neurotoxic chemotherapy regimens were tested. The patients mTNS scores ranged between 1 and 12 (median = 5), indicating that all patients had clinical evidence of neuropathy on mTNS. No significant correlations were found between mTNS and BERG (r = -0.29), TUG (r = 0.14), or FACT-G (r = 0.05).
CONCLUSIONS: This study found a high prevalence of CIPN in patients treated with neurotoxic chemotherapy regimens. The mTNS provided a clinically applicable, sensitive screening tool for CIPN which could prove useful in clinical practice. mTNS did not correlate with BBS, TUG or FACT-G in this sample, possibly due to relatively mild levels of CIPN and consequent subtle impairments which were not adequately captured by gross functional assessments
Design of light concentrators for Cherenkov telescope observatories
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the largest cosmic gamma ray
detector ever built in the world. It will be installed at two different sites
in the North and South hemispheres and should be operational for about 30
years. In order to cover the desired energy range, the CTA is composed of
typically 50-100 collecting telescopes of various sizes (from 6 to 24-m
diameters). Most of them are equipped with a focal plane camera consisting of
1500 to 2000 Photomultipliers (PM) equipped with light concentrating optics,
whose double function is to maximize the amount of Cherenkov light detected by
the photo-sensors, and to block any stray light originating from the
terrestrial environment. Two different optical solutions have been designed,
respectively based on a Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC), and on a purely
dioptric concentrating lens. In this communication are described the technical
specifications, optical designs and performance of the different solutions
envisioned for all these light concentrators. The current status of their
prototyping activities is also given
Neutrinos From Particle Decay in the Sun and Earth
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) may be indirectly detected by
observation of upward muons induced by energetic neutrinos from annihilation of
WIMPs that have accumulated in the Sun and/or Earth. Energetic muon neutrinos
come from the decays of leptons, , , and quarks, gauge bosons,
and Higgs bosons produced by WIMP annihilation. We provide analytic
expressions, suitable for computing the flux of upward muons, for the neutrino
energy spectra from decays of all these particles in the center of the Sun and
Earth. These analytic expressions should obviate the need for Monte Carlo
calculations of the upward-muon flux. We investigate the effects of
polarization of the gauge bosons on the neutrino spectra and find that they are
small. We also present simple expressions for the second moments of the
neutrino distributions which can be used to estimate the rates for observation
of neutrino-induced muons from WIMP annihilation.Comment: submitted as a complete encapsulated postscript file, archived with
uufiles 32 pages, IASSNS-HEP-94/45, SU-HEP-4240-58
Helicity, polarization, and Riemann-Silberstein vortices
Riemann-Silberstein (RS) vortices have been defined as surfaces in spacetime
where the complex form of a free electromagnetic field given by F=E+iB is null
(F.F=0), and they can indeed be interpreted as the collective history swept out
by moving vortex lines of the field. Formally, the nullity condition is similar
to the definition of "C-lines" associated with a monochromatic electric or
magnetic field, which are curves in space where the polarization ellipses
degenerate to circles. However, it was noted that RS vortices of monochromatic
fields generally oscillate at optical frequencies and are therefore
unobservable while electric and magnetic C-lines are steady. Here I show that
under the additional assumption of having definite helicity, RS vortices are
not only steady but they coincide with both sets of C-lines, electric and
magnetic. The two concepts therefore become one for waves of definite frequency
and helicity. Since the definition of RS vortices is relativistically invariant
while that of C-lines is not, it may be useful to regard the vortices as a
wideband generalization of C-lines for waves of definite helicity.Comment: 5 pages, no figures. Submitted to J of Optics A, special issue on
Singular Optics; minor changes from v.
New Constraints on Neutralino Dark Matter in the Supersymmetric Standard Model
We investigate the prospects for neutralino dark matter within the
Supersymmetric Standard Model (SSM) including the constraints from universal
soft supersymmetry breaking and radiative breaking of the electroweak symmetry.
The latter is enforced by using the one-loop Higgs effective potential which
automatically gives the one-loop corrected Higgs boson masses. We perform an
exhaustive search of the allowed five-dimensional parameter space and find that
the neutralino relic abundance depends most strongly on the
ratio . For the relic abundance is almost
always much too large, whereas for the opposite occurs. For
there are wide ranges of the remaining parameters for which
. We also determine that m_{\tilde q}\gsim250\GeV and
m_{\tilde l}\gsim100\GeV are necessary in order to possibly achieve
. These lower bounds are much weaker than the corresponding
ones derived previously when radiative breaking was {\it not} enforced.Comment: 12 pages plus 6 figures (not included), CERN-TH.6584/92,
CTP-TAMU-56/92, UAHEP921
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