Resolving Boosted Jets with XCone

We show how the recently proposed XCone jet algorithm smoothly interpolates between resolved and boosted kinematics. When using standard jet algorithms to reconstruct the decays of hadronic resonances like top quarks and Higgs bosons, one typically needs separate analysis strategies to handle the resolved regime of well-separated jets and the boosted regime of fat jets with substructure. XCone, by contrast, is an exclusive cone jet algorithm that always returns a fixed number of jets, so jet regions remain resolved even when (sub)jets are overlapping in the boosted regime. In this paper, we perform three LHC case studies---dijet resonances, Higgs decays to bottom quarks, and all-hadronic top pairs---that demonstrate the physics applications of XCone over a wide kinematic range.Comment: 36 pages, 25 figures, 1 table; v2: references added; v3: discussion added and new appendix B to match JHEP versio

TASI 2012: Super-Tricks for Superspace

These lectures from the TASI 2012 summer school outline the basics of supersymmetry (SUSY) in 3+1 dimensions. Starting from a ground-up development of superspace, we develop all of the tools necessary to construct SUSY lagrangians. While aimed at an introductory level, these lectures incorporate a number of "super-tricks" for SUSY aficionados, including SUSY-covariant derivatives, equations of motion in superspace, background field methods, and non-linear realizations of goldstinos.Comment: 75 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. v2: formatting improved, hyperlinks added, references update

Social Justice in the Green City

The Covid-19 pandemic and energy, climate, and demographic crises have shown how cities are vulnerable to these impacts and how the access to green and blue spaces has become highly relevant to people. One strategy that we can observe is the strong focus on the resilience discourse, meaning implementing more green and blue spaces in urban areas, such as at previous brownfield quarters. However, social justice implications of urban greening have been overlooked for a long time. The implementation of strategies to improve the quality and availability of the green and blue infrastructures may indeed have negative outcomes as far as housing accessibility is concerned by trigging gentrification processes. Issues related to environmental justice and socio-spatial justice are increasing in contemporary cities and call for a better understanding of the global and local mechanisms of production and reproduction of environmental and spatial inequalities. This thematic issue includes eleven articles with different methodologies, with examples from Europe and North America as well as different lenses of green gentrification. Some articles focus more on the question of costs, benefits, and distributional consequences of various infrastructural options for urban greening. Others, instead, discuss how the strategic urban planning tools and policy processes take into account distributional consequences, with specific attention on participatory processes

Partnership Funding in flood risk management: multi-level stakeholder engagement - a question of roles and power

The paper examines the new flood risk policy discussion in England and Wales. The summer floods in England in 2007 caused large damages to the environment, economy and humanity. Following this key flood event, the Government has started to redefine the national flood and coastal risk management policy in England and Wales. The key issue in the new policy agenda is to encourage the responsibilities of local authorities and reduce the central role of flood risk management. This decentralisation in flood risk management has a series of consequences in the development of new governance structures. The main reason for this shift from central to local level is the belief that local authorities deal with public administration tasks in a more efficient way. Nevertheless, the main problem is the gap between the delegated tasks and the lack of transfer of resources, especially the issue concerning funding is still unclear and unresolved. This constraint will go with fiscal and administration cuts. The consequences will be (1) ‘hollowing out’ of the Government with the downscaling of the responsibility towards local actors and (2) without proportional transfer of resources to local authorities they will not be able to deal with new tasks. Therefore, in practice there are many limitations, barriers and concerns with the new policy direction

Multi-level stakeholder engagement in flood risk management - A question of roles and power: Lessons from England

In the past years, stakeholder engagement has become more important in flood risk management. On the one hand stakeholder engagement is often declared as a better way of management, a more successful way to reach consensus in policy discussions. On the other hand is the implementation of increasing stakeholder engagement far away from being as positive, where stakeholder engagement often ends in diverse difficulties and conflicts between political leaders and stakeholder groups. This paper aims to highlight participatory governance in flood risk management to provide an overview of the potential contributions and challenges of a participatory and collaborative governance approach. In this paper, we discuss the role of national authorities and local stakeholders in English flood risk management in three different examples (Bridgwater, Cockermouth and Morpeth). The results show that the Cockermouth and Morpeth flood risk management scheme is characterised by a high level of local self-responsibility in the planning and decision-making process. The study sites with high local capacity (Cockermouth and Morpeth) show a strong leadership at local level and bottom-up concepts and ideas. The local involvement in the discussion and decision-process depends on the local capacity (capacity to act), such as resources (knowledge, financial, time), interest, social and cultural capital. It strongly depends on these aspects, if localities are able to ensure their interests and needs at national level.Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW)French National Research Agency (ANR)Ireland Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)Middlesex University, Londo

Flood-Resilient Communities: How We Can Encourage Adaptive Behaviour Through Smart Tools in Public-Private Interaction

To achieve a more flood-resilient society, it is essential to involve citizens. Therefore, new instruments, such as tailor-made advice for homeowners, are being developed to inform homeowners about adaptive strategies in building to motivate them to implement these measures. This article evaluates if public–private interactions, such as tailored advice, change risk behaviour and therefore increase flood resilience among homeowners. The article conducted semi-structured interviews with homeowners who had received advice as well as involved experts in two case study regions in Europe: Flanders in Belgium and Vorarlberg in Austria. The results show how the tailored advice helps homeowners who are already aware of flood risks and provides them with answers on how to adapt a house. However, the tool seems to lack the ability to inform and "recruit" new groups of homeowners who are not as familiar with flood risks. As such, this article concludes that this initiative has a relatively low impact in raising flood risk awareness among homeowners but may be more successful in serving as a tool that suggests tailored property-level flood risk adaptation measures for those who are already aware. Alternatively, more automated tailored information systems might be more efficient for unaware homeowners

Preface: Damage of natural hazards: assessment and mitigation

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