The Flavour of Natural SUSY

An inverted mass hierarchy in the squark sector, as in so-called "natural supersymmetry", requires non-universal boundary conditions at the mediation scale of supersymmetry breaking. We propose a formalism to define such boundary conditions in a basis-independent manner and apply it to generic scenarios where the third-generation squarks are light, while the first two generation squarks are heavy and near-degenerate. We show that not only is our formalism particularly well-suited to study such hierarchical squark mass patterns, but in addition the resulting soft terms at the TeV scale are manifestly compatible with the principle of minimal flavour violation, and thus automatically obey constraints from flavour physics.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures; v2: matches journal versio

Sprachkurse für Mitarbeitende der Bundesverwaltung. Evaluation und Analyse des Angebotes und dessen Nutzung: Executive Summary

Das Ziel dieses Forschungsprojekts ist eine Bestandesaufnahme des gesetzlich verankerten Angebots an Sprachkursen für das Bundespersonal sowie die Analyse des diesbezüglichen institutionellen Bedarfs und der individuellen Bedürfnisse der Bundesangestellten. Im Zentrum stehen folgende Forschungsfragen: 1. Welches Sprachkursangebot ist für das Bundespersonal vorhanden? 2. Wie wird dieses Angebot genutzt und bewertet? 3. Welche Rahmenbedingungen und Faktoren begünstigen oder beeinträchtigen den Besuch von Kursen zur sprachlichen Aus- und Weiterbildung? 4. Wie sehen der institutionelle Bedarf und die individuellen Bedürfnisse bzgl. der sprachlichen Aus- und Weiterbildung aus

Conception and promotion of R & D projects in horticulture

Um den deutschen Gartenbau langfristig wettbewerbsfähig zu gestalten, sind Innovationen für die Lösungvon Problemen in der gärtnerischen Erzeugung von zentraler Bedeutung. Der partizipative Ansatz des Projekts wurde von Beginn an konsequent umgesetzt. HortInnova startete mit einem Themenworkshop, in dem interessierte Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler der Gartenbauwissenschaften, Expertinnen und Experten der Gartenbaupraxis und Stakeholder der vor- und nachgelagerten Industrie gemeinsam fünf strategische Forschungsfelder definierten. Die einzelnen Forschungsfelder werden in weiteren, themenorientierten HortInnova- Expertenworkshops inhaltlich geschärft und präzisiert. Darüber hinaus wirken Akteure aus Gartenbauwissenschaft und gärtnerischen Verbänden als Mitglieder im HortInnova-Begleitausschuss mit. Er begleitet das Projekt kritisch, indem er die Ergebnisse der Expertenworkshops hinterfragt und kurze Stellungnahmen dazu verfasst. Die Workshopergebnisse werden durch Gespräche mit in- und ausländischen Expertinnen und Experten aus Forschung und Praxis ergänzt, um den  Informationsstand zu erweitern und die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse zu reflektieren. Die  Ergebnisdokumentationen finden Sie auf der WeGa-homepage: http://wega-ev.net/wega-news.htmlLong-term competitiveness of German horticulture can only be ensured with innovations that address current problems and increase efficiency in horticultural production. A participatory approach was implemented consistently from the very beginning of the project. HortInnova started with a workshop for setting the main themes with broad participation of the sector stakeholders. Scientists, experts of horticultural enterprises and stakeholders of upstream and downstream industries jointly defined five strategic research fields. Subsequently, each of these are elaborated and specified in focused thematic expert workshops. In addition, the HortInnova monitoring committee with stakeholders from horticultural sciences and professional horticultural organizations accompanies the project by critically questioning and discussing the workshop results and commenting on them. Complementary interviews with national and international experts from research, production and industry are conducted to enhance the level of information and to critically reflect the workshop results. The results can be found on the WeGa homepage: http://wega-ev.net/wega-news.html

making sense of concepts, research frameworks and results

Transnational public-private partnerships have become a popular theme in International Relations (IR) research. Such partnerships constitute a hybrid type of governance, in which non-state actors co-govern along with state actors for the provision of public goods, and thereby adopt governance functions that have formerly been the sole authority of sovereign states. Their recent proliferation is an expression of the contemporary reconfiguration of authority in world politics that poses essential questions on the effectiveness and the legitimacy of global governance. Significant issues are at stake concerning whether transnational public-private partnerships can in fact deliver public goods in an effective and legitimate way. This article surveys the literature with regard to three central issues: It addresses the questions why transnational public-private partnerships emerge, under which conditions they are effective, and under which conditions they are legitimate governance instruments. The article demonstrates that, at present, research on transnational public-private partnerships is theoretically under-informed and suffers from poor research designs. As is pointed out in the course of the article, future research on transnational public-private partnerships could benefit from well-known IR theories on international institutions, from compliance theories in particular. Applying these IR theories to partnerships opens up the possibility for the systematic comparative research that is necessary to obtain conclusive knowledge about transnational public-private partnerships

The oceanic sink for anthropogenic CO2

5 páginas, 5 figuras, 2 tablas.-- Christopher L. Sabine ... et al.Using inorganic carbon measurements from an international survey effort in the 1990s and a tracer-based separation technique, we estimate a global oceanic anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) sink for the period from 1800 to 1994 of 118 ± 19 petagrams of carbon. The oceanic sink accounts for ∼48% of the total fossil-fuel and cement-manufacturing emissions, implying that the terrestrial biosphere was a net source of CO2 to the atmosphere of about 39 ± 28 petagrams of carbon for this period. The current fraction of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions stored in the ocean appears to be about one-third of the long-term potentialPeer reviewe

Examining the Role of Transparent Organizational Communication for Employees’ Job Engagement and Disengagement During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Austria

This study provides an understanding of how employees’ perception of organizational transparency during the long-lasting situation of the COVID-19 pandemic engendered their job engagement as well as job disengagement. Data were collected by means of an online survey among 410 employees in Austria during March 2021. Results show that employees’ perception of their organization’s approach to transparency directly influenced their job engagement and disengagement. Importantly, the relationship between transparency and job engagement was also mediated through organizational trust, and job-specific state anxiety mediated the relationship between transparency and job disengagement. The results imply the importance of transparency during times of great uncertainty and emphasize the necessity to closely consider employees’ emotional states and worries during a crisis

Mass spectrometry hybridized with gas-phase InfraRed spectroscopy for glycan sequencing

International audiencePrecise structural differentiation of often isomeric glycans is important given their roles in numerous biological processes. Mass spectrometry (MS) (and tandem MS) is one of the analytical techniques at the forefront of glycan analysis given its speed, sensitivity in producing structural information as well as the fact it can be coupled to other orthogonal analytical techniques such as liquid chromatography (LC) and ion mobility spectrometry (IMS). This review describes another family of techniques that are more commonly being hybridized to MS(/MS) namely gas-phase infrared (IR) spectroscopy, whose rise is in part due to the development and improved accessibility of tunable IR lasers. Gas-phase IR can often differentiate fine isomeric differences ubiquitous within carbohydrates that MS may be 'blind' to. There are also examples of cryogenic gas-phase IR spectroscopy with much greater spectral resolution as well as hybridizing with separative methods (LC, IMS). Furthermore, collision-induced dissociation (CID) product ions can also be probed by IR, which may be beneficial to deconvolute spectra, aid analysis and build spectral libraries, thus generating novel opportunities for fragment-based approaches to analyze glycans