Ethical issues in the use of in-depth interviews: literature review and discussion

This paper reports a literature review on the topic of ethical issues in in-depth interviews. The review returned three types of article: general discussion, issues in particular studies, and studies of interview-based research ethics. Whilst many of the issues discussed in these articles are generic to research ethics, such as confidentiality, they often had particular manifestations in this type of research. For example, privacy was a significant problem as interviews sometimes probe unexpected areas. For similar reasons, it is difficult to give full information of the nature of a particular interview at the outset, hence informed consent is problematic. Where a pair is interviewed (such as carer and cared-for) there are major difficulties in maintaining confidentiality and protecting privacy. The potential for interviews to harm participants emotionally is noted in some papers, although this is often set against potential therapeutic benefit. As well as these generic issues, there are some ethical issues fairly specific to in-depth interviews. The problem of dual role is noted in many papers. It can take many forms: an interviewer might be nurse and researcher, scientist and counsellor, or reporter and evangelist. There are other specific issues such as taking sides in an interview, and protecting vulnerable groups. Little specific study of the ethics of in-depth interviews has taken place. However, that which has shows some important findings. For example, one study shows participants are not averse to discussing painful issues provided they feel the study is worthwhile. Some papers make recommendations for researchers. One such is that they should consider using a model of continuous (or process) consent rather than viewing consent as occurring once, at signature, prior to the interview. However, there is a need for further study of this area, both philosophical and empirical

Searching for R-Parity Violation at Run-II of the Tevatron

We present an outlook for possible discovery of supersymmetry with broken R-parity at Run II of the Tevatron. We first present a review of the literature and an update of the experimental bounds. In turn we then discuss the following processes: 1. Resonant slepton production followed by R-parity violating decay, (a) via $LQD^c$ and (b) via $LLE^c$. 2. How to distinguish resonant slepton production from $Z'$ or $W'$ production. 3. Resonant slepton production followed by the decay to neutralino LSP, which decays via $LQD^c$. 4. Resonant stop production followed by the decay to a chargino, which cascades to the neutralino LSP. 5. Gluino pair production followed by the cascade decay to charm squarks which decay directly via $L_1Q_2D^c_1$. 6. Squark pair production followed by the cascade decay to the neutralino LSP which decays via $L_1Q_2D^c_1$. 7. MSSM pair production followed by the cascade decay to the LSP which decays (a) via $LLE^c$, (b) via $LQD^c$, and (c) via $U^cD^cD^c$, respectively. 8. Top quark and top squark decays in spontaneous R-parity violation.Comment: 39 pages, 51 figures, LaTex, reqires aipproc2.sty and axodraw.sty. To be published in the Physics at Run II Workshop: Supersymmetry/Higgs. Text has been edited by H. Dreiner. Author list on front page has been correcte

Factorization and soft-gluon divergences in isolated-photon cross sections

We study the production of isolated photons in $e^+e^-$ annihilation and give the proof of the all-order factorization of the collinear singularities. These singularities are absorbed in the standard fragmentation functions of partons into a photon, while the effects of the isolation are consistently included in the short-distance cross section. We compute this cross section at order \as and show that it contains large double logarithms of the isolation parameters. We explain the physical origin of these logarithms and discuss the possibility to resum them to all orders in \as.Comment: 18 pages, LaTex, 2 eps figures, few modifications in the text, results unchange

Report of the QCD Working Group

The activities of the QCD working group concentrated on improving the understanding and Monte Carlo simulation of multi-jet final states due to hard QCD processes at LEP, i.e. quark-antiquark plus multi-gluon and/or secondary quark production, with particular emphasis on four-jet final states and b-quark mass effects. Specific topics covered are: relevant developments in the main event generators PYTHIA, HERWIG and ARIADNE; the new multi-jet generator APACIC++; description and tuning of inclusive (all-flavour) jet rates; quark mass effects in the three- and four-jet rates; mass, higher-order and hadronization effects in four-jet angular and shape distributions; b-quark fragmentation and gluon splitting into b-quarks.Comment: 95 pages, 48 figures, contribution to Proceedings of the LEP2 Monte Carlo Workshop. References for NLO 4-jet matrix elements adde

A Multi-telescope Campaign on FRB 121102: Implications for the FRB Population

We present results of the coordinated observing campaign that made the first subarcsecond localization of a Fast Radio Burst, FRB 121102. During this campaign, we made the first simultaneous detection of an FRB burst by multiple telescopes: the VLA at 3 GHz and the Arecibo Observatory at 1.4 GHz. Of the nine bursts detected by the Very Large Array at 3 GHz, four had simultaneous observing coverage at other observatories. We use multi-observatory constraints and modeling of bursts seen only at 3 GHz to confirm earlier results showing that burst spectra are not well modeled by a power law. We find that burst spectra are characterized by a ~500 MHz envelope and apparent radio energy as high as $10^{40}$ erg. We measure significant changes in the apparent dispersion between bursts that can be attributed to frequency-dependent profiles or some other intrinsic burst structure that adds a systematic error to the estimate of DM by up to 1%. We use FRB 121102 as a prototype of the FRB class to estimate a volumetric birth rate of FRB sources $R_{FRB} \approx 5x10^{-5}/N_r$ Mpc$^{-3}$ yr$^{-1}$, where $N_r$ is the number of bursts per source over its lifetime. This rate is broadly consistent with models of FRBs from young pulsars or magnetars born in superluminous supernovae or long gamma-ray bursts, if the typical FRB repeats on the order of thousands of times during its lifetime.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to AAS Journal

The Spectral Energy Distribution of Powerful Starburst Galaxies I: Modelling the Radio Continuum

We have acquired radio continuum data between 70\,MHz and 48\,GHz for a sample of 19 southern starburst galaxies at moderate redshifts ($0.067 < z < 0.227$) with the aim of separating synchrotron and free-free emission components. Using a Bayesian framework we find the radio continuum is rarely characterised well by a single power law, instead often exhibiting low frequency turnovers below 500\,MHz, steepening at mid-to-high frequencies, and a flattening at high frequencies where free-free emission begins to dominate over the synchrotron emission. These higher order curvature components may be attributed to free-free absorption across multiple regions of star formation with varying optical depths. The decomposed synchrotron and free-free emission components in our sample of galaxies form strong correlations with the total-infrared bolometric luminosities. Finally, we find that without accounting for free-free absorption with turnovers between 90 to 500\,MHz the radio-continuum at low frequency ($\nu < 200$\,MHz) could be overestimated by upwards of a factor of twelve if a simple power law extrapolation is used from higher frequencies. The mean synchrotron spectral index of our sample is constrained to be $\alpha=-1.06$, which is steeper then the canonical value of $-0.8$ for normal galaxies. We suggest this may be caused by an intrinsically steeper cosmic ray distribution

Effects of Extra Dimensions on Unitarity and Higgs Boson Mass

We study the unitarity constraint on the two body Higgs boson elastic scattering in the presence of extra dimensions. The contributions from exchange of spin-2 and spin-0 Kaluza-Klein states can have large effect on the partial wave amplitude. Unitarity condition restrict the maximal allowed value for the ratio $r$ of the center of mass energy to the gravity scale to be less than one. Although the constraint on the standard Higgs boson mass for $r$ of order one is considerably relaxed, for small $r$ the constraint is similar to that in the Standard Model. The resulting bound on the Higgs boson mass is not dramatically altered if perturbative calculations are required to be valid up to the maximal allowed value for $r$.Comment: References added, RevTex, 9 pages with two figure

Summary of the SUSY Working Group of the 1999 Les Houches Workshop

The results obtained by the Working Group on Supersymmetry at the 1999 Les Houches Workshop on Collider Physics are summarized. Separate chapters treat "general" supersymmetry, R-parity violation, gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking, and anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking.Comment: LaTeX, 110 pages with numerous .ps and .eps files. proc.tex is main tex fil

Why honey is effective as a medicine. 1. Its use in modern medicine

Honey has been used as a medicine for thousands of years and its curative properties are well documented. However, modern medicine turned its back on honey and it is only now, with the advent of multi-resistant bacteria, that the antibiotic properties of honey are being rediscovered