Prospects for Probing Triple Gauge-boson Couplings at the LHC

In these proceedings I explore one aspect of gauge-boson physics at the LHC - Triple Gauge-boson Couplings (TGCs) in $WZ$ and Wgamma production. Methods for extracting confidence limits on anomalous TGCs are assessed, while accounting for the effects of higher order QCD corrections and contributions from other theoretical and detector related systematics. Detector response has been parametrised according to the ATLAS detector's specifications. A strategy for reporting the anomalous coupling limits is introduced which removes the ambiguities of form factors by reporting the limits as a function of a cutoff operating on the diboson system invariant mass. Techniques for measuring the energy dependence of anomalous couplings are demonstrated.Comment: 12 pages, invited talk at Hadron Collider Physics 2004, East Lansing, Michiga

Line, spiral, dense

Exponential of exponential of almost every line in the complex plane is dense in the plane. On the other hand, for lines through any point, for a set of angles of Hausdorff dimension one, exponential of exponential of a line with angle from that set is not dense in the plane.Comment: 14 p, 4 figure

Wedded to the car : women, employment and the importance of private transport.

This article draws on primary research undertaken with over 3,000 women in the North East of England to explore the links between women, transport and the labour market. The research was funded by ESF and develops a new conceptual framework to analyse the importance of private transport in allowing women to access employment. The article subsequently informed the development of local transport strategies in the North East and has been utilised by the DoT to support the development of links between transport and social inclusion at a national level

Experimental Overview of Light Mesons

The light quark $uds$ mesons have been a foundation of our understanding of the strong interaction for decades. New experiments with modern detectors and large data sets are furthering our understanding of the spectrum and dynamics of these states. In this paper, I review several recent results on the spectroscopy of light mesons and discuss the future of this field.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, plenary talk presented at XVII International Conference on Hadron Spectroscopy and Structure, Salamanca, Spain, 25-29 September, 201

The Rise of Political Fact-checking How Reagan Inspired a Journalistic Movement: A Reporter's Eye View

This report uses the Washington Post as a case study to trace the rise of modern political fact-checking. It considers fact-checking as a symptom of the larger, centuries-old struggle between the political establishment and the Fourth Estate to shape the narrative that will be presented to the voters. Through devices such as "Pinocchios" and "Pants-on-Fire" verdicts, journalists have formally asserted their right to adjudicate the truth or falsehood of the carefully-constructed campaign narratives of political candidates. This represents a shift of power back to the media following a low point during the run-up to the war in Iraq when The Post and other leading newspapers failed to seriously challenge the White House line on "weapons of mass destruction."The modern-day fact checking movement can be dated back to the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who attracted widespread ridicule for his claim that trees cause four times more pollution than automobiles. The ascent of political bloggers during the 2004 campaign put additional pressure on The Post and other mainstream news outlets to upgrade their fact checking operations. The Internet has democratized the fact-checking process by making information that was previously available only through expensive news databases such as Lexis-Nexis easily accessible to bloggers without any research budget

Giant Molecular clouds: what are they made from, and how do they get there?

We analyse the results of four simulations of isolated galaxies: two with a rigid spiral potential of fixed pattern speed, but with different degrees of star-formation induced feedback, one with an axisymmetric galactic potential and one with a `live' self-gravitating stellar component. Since we use a Lagrangian method we are able to select gas that lies within giant molecular clouds (GMCs) at a particular timeframe, and to then study the properties of this gas at earlier and later times. We find that gas which forms GMCs is not typical of the interstellar medium at least 50 Myr before the clouds form and reaches mean densities within an order of magnitude of mean cloud densities by around 10 Myr before. The gas in GMCs takes at least 50 Myr to return to typical ISM gas after dispersal by stellar feedback, and in some cases the gas is never fully recycled. We also present a study of the two-dimensional, vertically-averaged velocity fields within the ISM. We show that the velocity fields corresponding to the shortest timescales (that is, those timescales closest to the immediate formation and dissipation of the clouds) can be readily understood in terms of the various cloud formation and dissipation mechanisms. Properties of the flow patterns can be used to distinguish the processes which drive converging flows (e.g.\ spiral shocks, supernovae) and thus molecular cloud formation, and we note that such properties may be detectable with future observations of nearby galaxies.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA