Anti-B-B Mixing Constrains Topcolor-Assisted Technicolor

We argue that extended technicolor augmented with topcolor requires that all mixing between the third and the first two quark generations resides in the mixing matrix of left-handed down quarks. Then, the anti-B_d--B_d mixing that occurs in topcolor models constrains the coloron and Z' boson masses to be greater than about 5 TeV. This implies fine tuning of the topcolor couplings to better than 1%.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, with one postscript figure. Version to appear in Physics Letters B. Minor typos corrected and note added on top-pion contribution to Z to b b-bar deca

Timing disownership experiences in the rubber hand illusion

Some investigators of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) have suggested that when standard RHI induction procedures are employed, if the rubber hand is experienced by participants as owned, their corresponding biological hands are experienced as disowned. Others have demurred: drawing upon a variety of experimental data and conceptual considerations, they infer that experience of the RHI might include the experience of a supernumerary limb, but that experienced disownership of biological hands does not occur. Indeed, some investigators even categorically deny that any experimental paradigm has been employed or any evidence can be adduced to support the claim that disownership experiences occur during the RHI. It goes without saying that RHI experiences can be elusive, and that there is some evidence to support claims that supernumerary limb experiences can sometimes occur. Here, however, we test the claim that the conscious experience of disownership can occur during the RHI. In order to test this claim, we developed two new online proxies—onset time for the illusion and illusion duration—and combined these with established questionnaires that concern the conscious contents of the RHI, in particular ownership/disownership experiences. Both online proxy data and post hoc questionnaire data converge in supporting the claim that disownership experiences do occur, at least when the left hand is the object of investigation. Our findings that onset time and illusion duration are reliable measures suggest that investigations of the RHI stand to benefit by devoting more attention to data collected while the RHI is being experienced, in particular data concerning temporal dynamics

Progress on symmetry breaking and generational mixing in topcolor-assisted technicolor

Topcolor-assisted technicolor provides a dynamical explanation for electroweak and flavor symmetry breaking and for the large mass of the top quark without unnatural fine tuning. I briefly review the basics of topcolor-assisted technicolor, including major constraints and a general approach to satisfying them. The main challenge to topcolor-assisted technicolor is to generate the observed mixing between heavy and light generations while breaking the strong topcolor interactions near 1 TeV. I argue that these phenomena, as well as electroweak symmetry breaking, are intimately connected and I present a scenario for them based on nontrivial patterns of technifermion condensation. I also exhibit a class of models realizing this scenario.First author draf

Technihadron production and decay in low-scale technicolor

We discuss the production and decay rates of the lightest colorsinglet technihadrons, spin-one ρT and ωT and spin-zero πT , in a minimal “straw-man” model of low-scale techicolor. The revised ρT and ωT decay rates affect the technicolor searches planned for Run II of the Tevatron Collider.Accepted manuscrip

Beyond the silo effect : the challenges of collaboration

Women entering the maternity arena in Australia and other Western regimes have suffered incidentally from what is known as the\u27 silo effect\u27. This refers to a clash between the training regimes of the \u27old\u27 professionalism and the \u27new\u27 professionalism. Under the \u27old\u27 professionalism, hierarchies were erected between medicine and the so-called semi-professions such as nursing and social work (Tully and Mortlock 2004) resulting in what Degeling et al (1998; 2000) have documented as oppositional modes of decision-making, styles of working, roles and accountabilities. Within the last decade, a \u27new professionalism\u27 has emerged in many Western regimes, including Canada, NZ, the UK and The Netherlands. (Romanow Report 2002; Street, Gannon and Holt 1991; Victorian Department of Human Services, Australia 2004) depicted by a flatter more egalitarian structure of multidisciplinarity .. An example in Australia is the Future Directions in Maternity Care document released in mid 2004 by the Bracks Victorian Labor government. In Australia, the move towards the \u27new professionalism\u27 can be attributed to a confluence of macro economic factors including the swing away from hospital-based training and towards university-based training for nurses and midwives, the ripple effects of three decades of feminism, the professionalisation of midwifery, the attrition of midwives from the workforce, the rise of health consumerism from the late 1980s and the crippling costs of professional indemnity health insurance for obstetricians leading to a crisis in recruitment.<br /

Fearless Friday: Tiffany Lane

This week, SURGE is highlighting the fearless work of Tiffany Lane, the new director of the Women’s and LGBTQ Resource Center on campus. Although she is a new addition to the Gettysburg community, Tiffany has been working with issues of systemic injustice for much of her life. Her social justice journey began when she was an undergrad at Michigan State University (MSU), where she began to accept her identity as a queer woman. Tiffany was a student leader and activist at MSU and became so passionate about this work that she decided to make a career out of her activism. Tiffany went on to get her masters in social work from the University of Minnesota. Prior to arriving on our campus, Tiffany was the director of an LGBT center, the program coordinator of an LGBT school-based program, and a program coordinator at the University of Michigan-Flint. [excerpt

A Case Study in Dimensional Deconstruction

We test Arkani-Hamed et al.'s dimensional deconstruction on a model that is predicted to have a naturally light composite Higgs boson, i.e., one whose mass M is much less than its binding scale \Lambda, and whose quartic coupling \lambda is large, so that its vacuum expectation value v \sim M/\sqrt{\lambda} << \Lambda also. We consider two different underlying dynamics--UV completions--at the scale \Lambda for this model. We find that the expectation from dimensional deconstruction is not realized and that low energy details depend crucially on the UV completion. In one case, M << \Lambda and \lambda << 1, hence, v \sim \Lambda. In the other, \lambda can be large or small, but then so is M, and v is still O(\Lambda).Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX, with 8 postscript figure