The perceived social impacts of the 2006 World Cup on Munich residents

All major sporting events result in a variety of impacts upon the host community. To date, the majority of existing studies have focused upon the wider economic impacts, with few empirical studies of the social impacts upon local residents. This paper explores the perceived impacts of the 2006 Football World Cup upon residents of one of the host cities–Munich. Using a multi-stage sampling technique, 180 Munich residents were randomly selected. Of these, 132 agreed to participate in face-to-face interviews. Findings from the study suggested that the impacts were largely perceived as positive by residents, especially in terms of urban regeneration, increased sense of security, positive fan behaviour and the general atmosphere surrounding the event. Negative impacts, such as increased crime, prostitution, and displacement of local residents were perceived by fewer respondents. Further analysis demonstrates that such perceptions are not dependent upon socio-demographic factors such as age, gender or length of residence in the city

General Issues in the Evolution of Fermion Masses and Mixings

General issues in the renormalization group evolution of fermion masses and mixings is discussed. An effective fixed point in the top quark Yukawa coupling can strongly constrain its value at the electroweak scale. Predictions following from Yukawa coupling unification are affected by threshold corrections at the grand unified scale. The Landau pole translates into an upper limit on the strong gauge coupling $\alpha _3(M_Z)$. Given the hierarchy in the fermion sector, the evolution of the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix can be expressed in terms of a single scaling parameter $S$. Using this scaling factor and analogous scaling factors for the quark and lepton masses, we outline a systematic strategy that readily yields electroweak predictions for any GUT scale texture.}Comment: (Talk given at the SUSY93 Conference MSB), 9 pages + 3 PS figures not included (available on request), MAD/PH/75

Efficient Clustering-based Plagiarism Detection using IPPDC

The volume of source code available on the Internet is astronomical. When seeking to detect cases of plagiarism, one must maintain a large database of known documents. This can lead to unacceptably slow runtimes for systems designed to detect cases of source code plagiarism. We seek to use partitional and density-based clustering as well as intelligent parallelism to improve VOCS, a plagiarism detection system. In addition, we will attempt to increase the system’s usability and usefulness by expanding its programming language support and building an intuitive web interface. Finally, we propose utilizing Program Dependence Graphs to construct a hybrid approach in order to more accurately and precisely detect well-disguised plagiarism

A synthetic lipid scramblase built from DNA

The programmable self-assembly facilitated by DNA nanotechnology provides unparalleled capabilities to construct functional devices at the nanoscale. Recently, DNA nanostructures have been developed to interact with biological membranes and serve as artificial counterparts of natural ion channels, or membrane bending, scaffolding, or fusion proteins. In this thesis, we design a synthetic DNA-built enzyme that facilitates rapid lipid mixing between the two leaflets of a lipid bilayer. It thereby mimics the function of yet another class of membrane proteins $--$ lipid scramblases. Characterising this DNA nanostructure with gel electrophoresis, dynamic light scattering, atomic force and transmission electron microscopy, we find that the cholesterol groups required for membrane insertion, also induce clustering. Hence, we establish an easy-to-implement strategy to control hydrophobically mediated aggregation thereby introducing a solution to a common problem of amphiphilic DNA constructs. With a combination of fluorescence microscopy experiments and molecular dynamics simulations, we identify the mechanism behind the scrambling activity. The spontaneous membrane insertion of our DNA scramblase induces a toroidal pore that is lined by the lipid headgroups. This DNA-stabilised pore connects the inner and outer bilayer leaflet thereby facilitating diffusive lipid transport that rapidly equilibrates the membrane’s lipid composition. In good agreement between experiments and simulations, we find the scrambling rate catalysed by our DNA-made enzyme to exceed 10$^7$ lipids per second, orders of magnitude faster than natural scramblase proteins. We thereby pioneer the use of self-assembled DNA nanostructures for controlling the lipid composition of biological membranes, opening new avenues for applications of membrane-interacting DNA systems in biophysical research and medicine.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Cambridge Trust Vice Chancellor's Awar

Supersymmetry with Grand Unification

Supersymmetry (SUSY) has many well known attractions, especially in the context of Grand Unified Theories (GUTs). SUSY stabilizes scalar mass corrections (the hierarchy problem), greatly reduces the number of free parameters, facilitates gauge coupling unification, and provides a plausible candidate for cosmological dark matter. In this conference report we survey some recent examples of progress in SUSY-GUT applications.Comment: Talk V. Barger at the Workshop on Physics at Current Accelerators and the Supercollider, Argonne, June 1993, 15 pages + 12 PS figures included (uuencoded), (correct author list in header) MAD/PH/78