Top-quark mass measurements at the LHC: alternative methods

Alternative top quark mass determinations can provide inputs to the world average with orthogonal systematic uncertainties and may help to refine the interpretation of the standard method. Among a number of recent results I focus on the extractions by ATLAS and CMS of the top quark pole mass from the top quark pair and tt + 1 jet production cross-section, which have now reached a precision of 1%

An active learning organisation: teaching projects in electrical engineering education

The introduction of active learning in engineering education is often started by enthusiastic teachers or change agents. They usually encounter resistance from stakeholders such as colleagues, department boards or students. For a successful introduction these stakeholders all have to learn what active learning involves for them. This means that active learning has to take place on three levels: the students, the staff, and the organisation. These three actors have each to learn from experience, and their learning processes have to be related. Learning on the lowest level is based on the cycle of Kolb for experiential learning. If learning is seen as a form of change, similar cycles can be distinguished for learning on the levels of the staff and the organisation. On the staff level a model of Van Delden's for influencing staff members is used. For organisational change some ideas about the learning organisation from Senge are adapted to educational organisations like departments. A comprehensive view on student learning, staff development, and organisational learning is presented. The model includes four aspects of learning on three levels of educational actors and the relations among them. This model can be an illuminating guide for the introduction and/or general acceptance of active learning at your institution as a lasting change

Vacuum block thermalization in semi-classical 2d CFT

The universal nature of black hole collapse in asymptotically $AdS_3$ gravitational theories suggests that its holographic dual process, thermalization, should similarly be fixed by the universal features of 2d CFT with large central charge $c$. It is known that non-equilibrium states with scaling dimensions of order $c$ can be sorted into states that eventually thermalize and those that fail to do so. By proving an equivalence between bounded Virasoro coadjoint orbits and certain (in)stability intervals of Hill's equation it is shown that a state that fails to thermalize can be promoted to a thermalizing state by preparing the system beforehand with an energy greater than an appropriate threshold energy. It is generally a difficult problem to ascertain whether a state will thermalize or not. As partial progress to this problem a set of lower bounds are presented for the treshold energy, which can alternatively be interpreted as criteria for thermalization.Comment: 1 figure, 31 pages, v2: fixed typos, added reference

Coffee, cash, and consumption: rethinking commodity production in the global south

This essay reflects on the study of coffee production in Angola, following research in business and missionary archives in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. After observing that African coffee farmers were consumers of foreign goods as much as they were producers for the global market, the essay makes a case for tying histories of consumption into histories of labor and production. It suggests there were long-term continuities as well as changes in African consumption patterns. Finally, it underlines the importance of studying the history of labor and consumption in Africa outside the traditional framework of colonial history, focusing instead on the global dimensions of commodity production

Metacognition and transfer within a course or instructional design rules and metacognition

A metacognitive strategy for doing research, included transfer, was taught in a course of nine afternoons. The success of this course raised some questions. How do the students learn? How does metacognition play a role? The course was designed in accordance with several instructional principles. The course was divided into three domains in which the strategy was introduced, practised, and applied respectively. Literature research revealed four possible metacognitive variants that correlate so it was supposed that implementing them all helped to reach the objectives of the course. The relation of the metacognitive variants with the instructional principles is described. To study learning the students were divided into three groups (weak, moderate, good) by their marks for other courses. The performance of the groups in each domain was monitored by their marks, scoring of metacognitive skills, questionnaires, observations, and time keeping. The moderate students scored as high as the good ones for the strategy in the last domain, a unique result. The metacognitive development of the other metacognitive skills was not linear. The conclusions are that the success of this course can be explained by a system of double sequencing and an interaction of all metacognitive variants, and that instructional design rules for metacognitive and cognitive objectives are differen

SiLC simulation status report

The SiLC - Silicon for the Linear Collider - collaboration aims to develop silicon detector technology for tracking in the international linear collider experiments. The R & D programme involves a substantial effort in simulation of the response of detector designs. In this contribution, an overview of ongoing efforts in this area is given.Comment: proceedings of LCWS0

Structure of, access to, and uncertainty in reasoning and their dependence on content

It is known that content has an effect on reasoning. In this paper the influence of the content on the structure of reasoning, the access to it, and the ability to handle uncertainty was studied. The participants were presented with reasoning tasks about the weather and about the oscilloscope in which uncertain premises were introduced. Correct reasoning procedures were identified including correct reasoning with wrong answers. In correct reasoning procedures about the weather, three different structures of reasoning were identified. The participants were mostly able to reason with uncertain components. In reasoning about the oscilloscope, less correct reasoning procedures were found. No empirical and theoretical structures were used. The hidden structure differed here from the one in the weather case because the participants were not able to handle all uncertain components in otherwise correct reasoning. The implications of this unique finding for the acquisition of reasoning skills are discusse

IAC level "O" program development

The current status of the IAC development activity is summarized. The listed prototype software and documentation was delivered, and details were planned for development of the level 1 operational system. The planned end product IAC is required to support LSST design analysis and performance evaluation, with emphasis on the coupling of required technical disciplines. The long term IAC effectively provides two distinct features: a specific set of analysis modules (thermal, structural, controls, antenna radiation performance and instrument optical performance) that will function together with the IAC supporting software in an integrated and user friendly manner; and a general framework whereby new analysis modules can readily be incorporated into IAC or be allowed to communicate with it

The influence of land use and mobility policy on travel behavior : a comparative case study of Flanders and the Netherlands

Numerous transportation studies have indicated that the local built environment can have an important effect on travel behavior; people living in suburban neighborhoods travel more by car than people living in urban neighborhoods. In this paper, however, we will analyze whether the regional land use has an important influence on travel behavior by comparing two regions with a varying land-use pattern: Flanders (Belgium) and the Netherlands. The different land-use pattern seems to have influenced travel behavior in both regions. An active spatial planning policy in the Netherlands, clustering activities in urban surroundings, appears to have realized a sustainable travel behavior, as a substantial share of residents frequently walk, cycle or use public transportation. The rather passive spatial planning in Flanders, resulting in urban sprawl, seems to stimulate car use. The applied mobility policy also has an impact on the travel behavior and land use of the Flemings and the Dutch. Infrastructure is concentrated in Dutch urban environments, whereas Flanders has a more widespread network of infrastructure and cheap public transportation, resulting in a further increase of suburbanization

Beyond psychologisation: the non-psychology of the Flemish novelist Louis Paul Boon

Is not the most intriguing aspect of psychologisation seems to be that every critique threatens to bounce back in some kind of meta-psychologisation. Although in this day and age and age it seems highly unlikely to repeat the popular anti-psychiatry movement of some decades ago and to get an anti-psychology movement on the tracks, it would leave us immediately stranded in some kind of essentialization of the human being and its life-world. Are we thus lost in psychologisation? Is there no outside of psychology and psychologisation? In the following I will focus on the novel De Paradijsvogel (The Bird of Paradise) of the leftist Flemish novelist Louis Paul Boon. I will briefly juxtapose it with Christopher Lasch‘s seminal critique in his book The Culture of Narcissism and search for the germs of a non-psychology: which is, a critique on psychologisation which transcends the pitfalls of metapsychologisation and reopens the path of an ideology critique, the latter seemingly having become impossible too