Facilitators and barriers to contact between asylum seekers and their Dutch neighbors

Currently, Europe is dealing with a large number of asylum seekers. A recent report show that attitudes toward asylum seekers are not that negative in the Netherlands, and yet Dutch citizens living close to asylum seeker centers barely have contact with them. Because contact is vital for a multicultural society, we investigated the facilitators and barriers for Dutch citizens to establish and maintain contact with asylum seekers where they live close together. We conducted semistructured interviews with Dutch people and analyzed them using thematic analysis. We found four themes: Physical possibilities for Contact, Goals for Contact, Social Identities, and Positivity and Openness, and proposed a grounded theory model based on how the themes are related. The findings are discussed in relation to debates on multiculturalism and intergroup tolerance, and can be used to improve the integration policies by local governments, because they present clear conditions and practical information as to how contact can be established and maintained

Is there a monopole problem?

We investigate the high temperature behavior of SU(5) in its minimal version. We show that there exists a range of parameters of the Higgs potential for which the symmetry remains broken at high temperature, thus avoiding the phase transition that gives rise to the overproduction of monopoles . We also show that in such scenario the thermal production of monopoles can be suppressed in a wide range of parameters, keeping their number density below the cosmological limits.Comment: Latex, 12 pages, revised version as appeared in Physical Review Letters. Minor corrections, comments and two references adde

Authority fairness for all? Intergroup status and expectations of procedural justice and resource distribution

Authorities such as the police and the government play a vital function in maintaining order in the social systems in which groups exist. Relational models of procedural justice (PJ) state that fair treatment from authority affirms the social standing of those identifying with the authority, communicating inclusion and respect. Previous research suggests that social identity may also inform expectations of authority fairness. Focusing on an intergroup context of authority decision-making, the present research tests a novel hypothesis regarding whether intergroup social status may also inform expectations of authority fairness in terms of fair treatment and favourable outcomes. Operationalising PJ as the extent to which people are provided voice by authorities, three experimental studies showed no effect of intergroup status on expected PJ from authority. A sample weighed internal meta-analysis (N = 704) also provided no support for the hypothesis that relative outgroup status shapes expectations of voice from authority (d = -.02). Intergroup status did, however, influence the extent to which people expected authorities to distribute resources favourably towards the outgroups. Lower status outgroups were expected to receive less favourable outcomes from authorities than equal status outgroups (d = -.23). Thus, outgroup status affects people’s judgements of the resources that outgroups deserve from authority. The present research is among the first to consider how intergroup relations may drive expectations of how authorities will act towards other social groups. Implications for wielding authority and the role of perceived intergroup threat in intergroup settings are discussed

The New Generation of Computer Literacy

A tremendous mismatch is developing between two of the most critical components of any computer literacy course: the textbooks and the students. We are encountering a new generation of students (literally as well as figuratively!) who are much better acquainted with computer usage than their earlier counterparts. Yet many textbooks with increasing emphasis in those same computer tools continue to appear. There are signs of a coming change in that a few authors and publishers apparently are becoming aware of the need for innovations in texts for non-scientists. These textbooks open the door for a new orientation to principles in the teaching of computer literacy

Vegetation's Red Edge: A Possible Spectroscopic Biosignature of Extraterrestrial Plants

Earth's deciduous plants have a sharp order-of-magnitude increase in leaf reflectance between approximately 700 and 750 nm wavelength. This strong reflectance of Earth's vegetation suggests that surface biosignatures with sharp spectral features might be detectable in the spectrum of scattered light from a spatially unresolved extrasolar terrestrial planet. We assess the potential of Earth's step-function-like spectroscopic feature, referred to as the "red edge", as a tool for astrobiology. We review the basic characteristics and physical origin of the red edge and summarize its use in astronomy: early spectroscopic efforts to search for vegetation on Mars and recent reports of detection of the red edge in the spectrum of Earthshine (i.e., the spatially integrated scattered light spectrum of Earth). We present Earthshine observations from Apache Point Observatory to emphasize that time variability is key to detecting weak surface biosignatures such as the vegetation red edge. We briefly discuss the evolutionary advantages of vegetation's red edge reflectance, and speculate that while extraterrestrial "light harvesting organisms" have no compelling reason to display the exact same red edge feature as terrestrial vegetation, they might have similar spectroscopic features at different wavelengths than terrestrial vegetation. This implies that future terrestrial-planet-characterizing space missions should obtain data that allow time-varying, sharp spectral features at unknown wavelengths to be identified. We caution that some mineral reflectance edges are similar in slope and strength to vegetation's red edge (albeit at different wavelengths); if an extrasolar planet reflectance edge is detected care must be taken with its interpretation.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Astrobiolog

Theta angle versus CP violation in the leptonic sector

Assuming that the axion mechanism of solving the strong CP problem does not exist and the vanishing of theta at tree level is achieved by some model-building means, we study the naturalness of having large CP-violating sources in the leptonic sector. We consider the radiative mechanisms which transfer a possibly large CP-violating phase in the leptonic sector to the theta parameter. It is found that large theta cannot be induced in the models with one Higgs doublet as at least three loops are required in this case. In the models with two or more Higgs doublets the dominant source of theta is the phases in the scalar potential, induced by CP violation in leptonic sector. Thus, in the MSSM framework the imaginary part of the trilinear soft-breaking parameter A_l generates the corrections to the theta angle already at one loop. These corrections are large, excluding the possibility of large phases, unless the universality in the slepton sector is strongly violated.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Cosmological Effects of Radion Oscillations

We show that the redshift of pressureless matter density due to the expansion of the universe generically induces small oscillations in the stabilized radius of extra dimensions (the radion field). The frequency of these oscillations is proportional to the mass of the radion and can have interesting cosmological consequences. For very low radion masses $m_b$ ($m_b\sim10-100 H_0\simeq10^{-32} eV$) these low frequency oscillations lead to oscillations in the expansion rate of the universe. The occurrence of acceleration periods could naturally lead to a resolution of the coincidence problem, without need of dark energy. Even though this scenario for low radion mass is consistent with several observational tests it has difficulty to meet fifth force constraints. If viewed as an effective Brans-Dicke theory it predicts $\omega=-1+\frac{1}{D}$ ($D$ is the number of extra dimensions), while experiments on scales larger than $1mm$ imply $\omega>2500$. By deriving the generalized Newtonian potential corresponding to a massive toroidally compact radion we demonstrate that Newtonian gravity is modified only on scales smaller than $m_b^{-1}$. Thus, these constraints do not apply for $m_b>10^{-3} eV$ (high frequency oscillations) corresponding to scales less than the current experiments ($0.3mm$). Even though these high frequency oscillations can not resolve the coincidence problem they provide a natural mechanism for dark matter generation. This type of dark matter has many similarities with the axion.Comment: Accepted in Phys. Rev. D. Clarifying comments added in the text and some additional references include

Fermionic partner of Quintessence field as candidate for dark matter

Quintessence is a possible candidate for dark energy. In this paper we study the phenomenologies of the fermionic partner of Quintessence, the Quintessino. Our results show that, for suitable choices of the model parameters, the Quintessino is a good candidate for cold or warm dark matter. In our scenario, dark energy and dark matter of the Universe are connected in one chiral superfield.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, version to appear in PR

Spatial gradients in the cosmological constant

It is possible that there may be differences in the fundamental physical parameters from one side of the observed universe to the other. I show that the cosmological constant is likely to be the most sensitive of the physical parameters to possible spatial variation, because a small variation in any of the other parameters produces a huge variation of the cosmological constant. It therefore provides a very powerful {\em indirect} evidence against spatial gradients or temporal variation in the other fundamental physical parameters, at least 40 orders of magnitude more powerful than direct experimental constraints. Moreover, a gradient may potentially appear in theories where the variability of the cosmological constant is connected to an anthropic selection mechanism, invoked to explain the smallness of this parameter. In the Hubble damping mechanism for anthropic selection, I calculate the possible gradient. While this mechanism demonstrates the existence of this effect, it is too small to be seen experimentally, except possibly if inflation happens around the Planck scale.Comment: 12 page