Supersymmetry Breaking, Extra Dimensions and Neutralino Dark Matter

We show some phenomenological implications for the dark matter problem of a class of models with deflected anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking in the context of the MSSM. This scenario can be naturally embedded in a brane world model with one compactified extra dimension. It turns out that in these models the neutralino is still the LSP and so a good candidate as cold dark matter. We found that the neutralino is quite a pure bino in almost all the parameter space. Moreover we computed the thermal relic density and we found wide cosmologically allowed regions for the neutralino.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures; typos removed and some minor correction. Talk given at the Third Workshop on Science with the New Generation of High Energy Gamma-ray Experiments Cividale del Friuli, Italy - May 30-31 and June 1, 200

Nurses\u27 Perceptions of Structural Empowerment: A Practice Review Process Pilot

Nurses are professionally and morally obliged to monitor and evaluate nursing practice via active participation in review mechanisms that are designed to promote patient safety and care delivery, thereby improving patient care quality (American Nurses Association [ANA], 1988, 2001, 2004; O\u27Rourke, 2006). The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project was to develop, pilot, and evaluate a nurse practice review process with frontline nurses within Fresno Heart & Surgical Hospital (FHSH), a small specialty hospital, affiliated with Community Medical Centers (CMC) in Fresno, California. A nurse practice algorithm was subsequently developed and structural empowerment was assessed with the Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire-II (CWEQ-II) (Laschinger, Finegan, Shamian, & Wilk, 2001). While there was a small sample size, the DNP project evaluation demonstrated that frontline nurses want to participate in improvement activities within the facility and believed the nurse practice review algorithm would effectively monitor and evaluate nursing practice

Teaching, organization, and personal problems: Evidence from reforming tertiary education in Germany

Germany has recently made extensive reforms in its tertiary education system. Traditional degrees are being replaced by Bachelor and Master programs. This study examines the question of how the choice of a new Bachelor program as opposed to a traditional degree program has affected first-year students' satisfaction. Three dimensions of student satisfaction are focused upon: Student satisfaction with teaching, student satisfaction with the organization of the study programs, as well as an indicator for students' personal problems within the academic context. The selection into the type of program is taken into account as I control for individual performance at secondary school, motivation and family background and try different robustness checks. The main specification includes fixed effects on the level of institutions and subjects. Results robustly point to minor differences between the programs. The outcomes are slightly more favorable for students in the new programs compared to the traditional programs in recent years. --Bologna,reforms,evaluation,fixed effects,student satisfaction

Prediction for the neutrino mass in the KATRIN experiment from lensing by the galaxy cluster A1689

The KATRIN experiment in Karlsruhe Germany will monitor the decay of tritium, which produces an electron-antineutrino. While the present upper bound for its mass is 2 eV/$c^2$, KATRIN will search down to 0.2 eV$/c^2$. If the dark matter of the galaxy cluster Abell 1689 is modeled as degenerate isothermal fermions, the strong and weak lensing data may be explained by degenerate neutrinos with mass of 1.5 eV$/c^2$. Strong lensing data beyond 275 kpc put tension on the standard cold dark matter interpretation. In the most natural scenario, the electron antineutrino will have a mass of 1.5 eV/$c^2$, a value that will be tested in KATRIN.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure