Split SUSY Radiates Flavor

Radiative flavor models where the hierarchies of Standard Model (SM) fermion masses and mixings are explained via loop corrections are elegant ways to solve the SM flavor puzzle. Here we build such a model in the context of Mini-Split Supersymmetry (SUSY) where both flavor and SUSY breaking occur at a scale of 1000 TeV. This model is consistent with the observed Higgs mass, unification, and WIMP dark matter. The high scale allows large flavor mixing among the sfermions, which provides part of the mechanism for radiative flavor generation. In the deep UV, all flavors are treated democratically, but at the SUSY breaking scale, the third, second, and first generation Yukawa couplings are generated at tree level, one loop, and two loops, respectively. Save for one, all the dimensionless parameters in the theory are O(1), with the exception being a modest and technically natural tuning that explains both the smallness of the bottom Yukawa coupling and the largeness of the Cabibbo angle.Comment: 55 pages, 14 figures. v2: Typos fixed and references added. v3: More typos fixed and figure correcte

Sensory Experiences and Expectations of Organic Food. Results of Focus Group Discussions

This executive summary describes the main objectives and findings from a qualitative survey on consumers’ sensory experiences, expectations and preferences with respect to organic food. The survey was conducted in the frame of the European Commission funded project ECROPOLIS in 2009 in Germany (DE), France (FR), Italy (IT), Netherlands (NL), Poland (PL) and Switzerland (CH). The objectives of this research were to explore: - the range of experiences, expectations and preferences for specific sensory properties of organic food. - words that are used by consumers to differentiate the taste of organic products amongst themselves and compared to conventional ones. - symbolic’ meanings and images which participants relate to sensory characteristics of organic food. - consumers’ sensory expectations and preferences related to the variability and standardisation of organic food. - consumers’ experiences to marketing of sensory characteristics of organic food. - possible differences in consumers’ sensory expectations and preferences between the participating countries

Providing guidance on Backstage, a novel digital backchannel for large class teaching

Many articles in the last couple of years argued that it is necessary to promote the active participation of students in lectures with large audiences. One approach to make students actively participate in a lecture is to use a digital backchannel, i.e. a computer-mediated communication platform that allows students to exchange ideas and opinions, without disrupting the lecturer’s discourse. Though, a digital backchannel, in order to be most helpful for learning, have to address the need for guidance of the users interacting. The article presents Backstage, a digital backchannel for large class lectures, and shows how it provides guidance for its users, i.e. the students but also the lecturer. Structural guidance is provided by aligning the usually incoherent backchannel discourse with the presentation slides that are integrated in the backchannel’s user interface. The alignment is thereby asserted by carefully designed backchannel workflows. The article also discusses the guidance of a student’s substantial involvement in both the frontchannel and the backchannel by means of scripts. Through the interactions of guided individuals a social guidance may emerge, leading to a collectively regulated backchannel