The MCLR Reporter

Contains Salute to Jack Metzgar, Conference Puts Forth New Vision, MCLR Research Dept. News

Measurement of ϕs\phi_s at LHCb

The study of CP violation in $B_s^0$ oscillations is one of the key goals of the LHCb experiment. Effects are predicted to be very small in the Standard Model but can be significantly enhanced in many models of new physics. We present the world's best measurement of the CP-violating phase $\phi_s$ using $B_s^0\to J/\psi KK$ and $B_s^0\to J/\psi\pi\pi$ decays.Comment: Presentation at the DPF 2013 Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields, Santa Cruz, California, August 13-17, 201

Pollen analysis of core DS7-1SC (Dead Sea) showing intertwined effects of climatic change and human activities in the Late Holocene

The Dead Sea sediment holds the archives of a complex relationship between ever-changing nature and ancient civilisations. Here the detailed pollen analyses of core DS7-1SC (off-Ein-Gedi) are presented for the first time. The record covers the last 2500 years. The facies changes from halite (when no freshwater flows in the Dead Sea) to laminites (when rainfall provides sufficient inflow for the Jordan and subsidiary rivers) a couple of times through the record. The pollen diagram (supported by the facies change) shows a wetter Roman-Byzantine period, which allowed intensive arboriculture and a wetter period at the end of the XIXth and beginning of the XXth centuries, the latter in good relation with historical and instrumental data. Based on radiocarbon chronologies on several pollen diagrams along the western Dead Sea shore, the transition to drier climates and the transition to pastoralism are suggested to take place between a few decades before the Islamic period and close to this transition. A high-resolution palynological study of the individual laminae forming the laminites (aragonite and gypsum in the summer versus detritics in winter) confirms the seasonal character of the laminae, but throws a note of caution as for their regular annual character

Mismanagement: Labor\u27s Rightful Cause

[Excerpt] Mismanagement is so widespread and its effects upon job security, wages and standards are so damaging to labor that unions must expand the traditional boundaries of their authority and begin to experiment with ways to challenge management prerogatives. While some people may argue that such a direction will lead to enterprise unionism, those arguments have many of the same weaknesses as those against worker ownership and power-sharing. The alternative in our current situation is to passively allow managers to continue to destroy jobs and communities. Those who hope to rebuild our economy based upon more humane principles will need a constituency which includes union members who have, at the local level, really dug in and challenged mismanagement, posing alternatives to save jobs. The discussion below covers the most common and damaging forms of mismanagement; the rest of this issue of Labor Research Review shows what unions can and have done to challenge bad management. It does nor cover subjects which many of us consider mismanagement of the overall economy, such as socially destructive deregulation, laissez-faire trade policies, or the massive diversion of precious financial and technical resources to the military. While not ignoring such national economic issues, the training for empowerment for more grass-roots control of the economy has to begin with local campaigns where local unions and their allies have immediate organizing handles

Vegetation cycles in a disturbed sequence around the Cobb-Mountain subchron in Catalonia

A 52 m-long lacustrine sequence has been recovered from the basin of Bòbila-Ordis, near Banyoles (N-E Spain). The presence of Early Biharian rodent teeth (Early Pleistocene) and of a c. 9 ka-long palaeomagnetic reversal (Cobb-Mountain subchron) suggests an age centred on 1.2 Ma, making this sequence one of the very few well-dated terrestrial sequences of that age in Europe. The first 22.5 m (with an interglacial character) are very homogenous owing to sedimentation affected by underwater springs. In the middle part of the sequence, palynological analyses, supported by sediment visual description, ostracod and mollusc assemblages, allow the reconstruction of one glacial-interglacial cycle, with vegetation succession. A second incomplete climatic cycle is recorded in the top part, within a shallower lake. These brief interruptions in the two climatic cycles are possibly linked to lake bank collapse caused by Hippopotamus amphibius or faulting linked to karst. The succession is likely to correlate to MIS 36-33. The Bòbila-Ordis lacustrine series (including two other nested lakes) covers altogether some sections of four glacial and four interglacial periods, not all contiguous

From natural hazard to environmental catastrophe: Past and present

The number of environmental catastrophes is rising, mostly owing to an increase in hydrometeorological hazards. The number of disasters is escalating as the world population grows and people settle in marginal areas. In order to improve preparedness, the geological and archaeological records must be investigated as they hold a wider range of possible events than the much shorter instrumental record. Catastrophes will gain amplitude with rapid onset, long duration, larger affected area, inflexible society and, of cause, convergence of threats. Too often, it seems that today’s societies resist learning from the past and therefore tend to repeat errors. A new field of science is emerging: the science of environmental catastrophes, which requires not only robust chronologies to firmly link cause and effect, but also bridges the crossing between the geosciences and social sciences