Searches for Other Higgs Bosons at LEP

Recent LEP searches for Higgs bosons in models other than the Minimal Standard Model and the Minimal Supersymetric Standard Model are reviewed. Limits are presented for Higgs bosons decaying into diphotons or invisible particles, and for charged Higgs bosons.Comment: 3 pages, 5 figures, talk given at HEP/EPS Tampere 99071

ICT and (Personal) Development in Rural China

Information and communication technology (ICT) is increasingly widespread in rural China, and is finding unlikely users: elderly people, rural women, and people with little education or disposable income. Their ICT use is driven by the desire to find connections and entertainment, and it offers three insights for broadly utilitarian ICT for development (ICTD) projects: first, rural users who are thought to be beyond the reach of ICTs because of their age or educational level and who do not see themselves as ICT users may nonetheless begin to use ICTs after observing other people going online and identifying activities that relate to their own lives and interests. Second, they have time to figure out how to incorporate ICTs into environments that are extremely different in terms of economy, social structures, and habits from the urban environments where ICTs originate. Finally, ICT uses that emerge from family-based practices rather than from hetero-directed programs can provide insights into the priorities or social practices of seemingly marginalized populations who have otherwise been overlooked

Topological Modular Forms and Quantum Field Theory

Quantum field theories usually depend on a set of parameters that are related to physical observables, such as particle masses or coupling constants measured at some given energy. The parameters take value in a certain parameter space, and one can "deform" the theory by varying the parameters continuously within this space. A more complicated kind of "deformation" is the one induced by the renormalization group (RG) flow, which connects a quantum field theory describing a physical system at very high energies (UV) with the one describing it at very low energies (IR). In general, it can be very difficult to determine whether two QFTs are related via a deformation of parameters or an RG flow -- for example, the relevant degrees of freedom in the IR might be completely different from the ones in the UV. A general strategy to attack this problem would be to provide a complete set of invariants, i.e. quantities that can be computed in any QFT (possibly satisfying some conditions), and that do not change under (suitably defined) "continuous deformations". There has been recent progress in implementing this program in certain simple classes of QFTs. In particular, it has been proposed that one- and two-dimensional minimally supersymmetric quantum field theories can be classified, up to deformations, by generalized cohomology theories known as K-theory and topological modular forms, respectively. The goal of this thesis is to describe these proposals and apply them to some simple examples of QFTs

International Linear Collider Reference Design Report : Volume 2: Physics at the ICL

This article reviews the physics case for the ILC. Baseline running at 500 GeV as well as possible upgrades and options are discussed. The opportunities on Standard Model physics, Higgs physics, Supersymmetry and alternative theories beyond the Standard Model are described

The myth of market price information: mobile phones and the application of economic knowledge in ICTD

The notion that farmers use mobile phones to acquire market price information has become a kind of shorthand for the potential of this technology to empower rural, low-income populations in the Global South. We argue that the envisioned consequences of ‘market price information’ for market efficiency with benefits at all income levels is a kind of myth, one frequently promulgated in the publications of aid agencies like the World Bank, in the project reports of NGOs and by mass media outlets such as The Economist, but is also the subject of serious discussion among scholars. We show that ‘market price information’ has become a kind of boundary object recast across the expert cultures of economics, computer science, policy work and development expertise. We draw from our ethnographic work (among rural agriculturalists in China and Uganda) to offer four alternatives to this myth

ICT, Intermediaries, and the Transformation of Gendered Power Structures

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are believed to hold much potential to empower women, both socially and economically, in low-income and rural communities. In this paper, we focus on rural women who mediate ICT use as telecenter operators in India and as helpers and enablers for family members in rural China. We explore under what circumstances they may be able to renegotiate existing gendered power structures. We argue that acts of reconciling or confronting these different spaces they inhabit can allow intermediaries to remake their own identities and positions in their community. This process, rather than the potential associated with ICTs, is where spaces for empowerment often lie