Looking for B→Xsℓ+ℓ−B\rightarrow X_s \ell^+\ell^- in non-minimal Universal Extra Dimensional model

Non-vanishing boundary localised terms significantly modify the mass spectrum and various interactions among the Kaluza-Klein excited states of 5-Dimensional Universal Extra Dimensional scenario. In this scenario we compute the contributions of Kaluza-Klein excitations of gauge bosons and third generation quarks for the decay process $B\rightarrow X_s\ell^+\ell^-$ incorporating next-to-leading order QCD corrections. We estimate branching ratio as well as Forward Backward asymmetry associated with this decay process. Considering the constraints from some other $b \to s$ observables and electroweak precision data we show that significant amount of parameter space of this scenario has been able to explain the observed experimental data for this decay process. From our analysis we put lower limit on the size of the extra dimension by comparing our theoretical prediction for branching ratio with the corresponding experimental data. Depending on the values of free parameters of the present scenario, lower limit on the inverse of the radius of compactification ($R^{-1}$) can be as high as $\geq 760$ GeV. {Even this value could slightly be higher if we project the upcoming measurement by Belle II experiment.} Unfortunately, the Forward Backward asymmetry of this decay process would not provide any significant limit on $R^{-1}$ in the present model.Comment: 47 pages, 6 Figures, 3 Tables, typos corrected, references added, remarks added, version accepted in Physical Review

...And the Last Shall be First

Transposing word by dividing them into three parts in such a way that leaves the middle letter(s) unchanged while the outer letters get swapped over

Research report 22: liveability in NDC areas: findings from six case studies

New Deal for Communities (NDC) is a key programme in the Government's strategy to tackle multiple deprivation by giving some of the poorest communities in the UK the resources to tackle their problems in an intensive and co-ordinated way. The programme, which began in 1998, has encouraged the development of partnerships between local people, community and voluntary organisations, public agencies, local authorities and business. These partnerships are working to tackle the problems of social exclusion and make a lasting improvement to their neighbourhood, with the active involvement of the local community. While different areas face different problems, the five main issues to be tackled by NDC partnerships are: worklessness; improving health; tackling crime; raising educational achievement; and housing and the physical environment. Sustainable Cities Research Institute is part of a national consortium carrying out the evaluation of NDC. The evaluation is led by Sheffield Hallam University and involves 14 UK research centres, universities, and private consultancy firms. Sustainable Cities staff involved with this work are Keith Shaw, who is the North East Region Co-ordinator (with responsibility for Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Sunderland partnerships), and Gill Davidson, who is carrying out evaluation tasks in Middlesbrough. Also involved in this work at a regional level are staff members from the University's School of Politics, and from the University of Newcastle. The evaluation began with a scoping phase in October 2001. The evaluation is expected to continue in its current format until at least 2005, with annual evaluation reports being produced in 2003, 2004, and 2005. Sustainable Cities is also undertaking research for a series of case studies focusing on West Middlesbrough NDC; so far these have covered subjects including mainstreaming, involving hard-to-reach young people in regeneration, and liveability

WALL-E’s world: animating Badiou’s philosophy

This article illustrates the philosophy of Alain Badiou through Pixar’s 2008 animation ‘WALL-E’. The fictional story tells of a toxic planet Earth long abandoned following an ecological disaster. Humanity now exists in a floating brave new world; a spaceship whose passengers’ everyday existence is drowned by a consumptive slumber. That is, until a robot named WALL-E comes aboard and changes things forever. The purpose of making this connection between philosophy and film is not to trivialize Badiou’s work, but rather to open it up, pull it apart, and synchronize it with a movie that is saturated with Badiouian themes. Beneath the complexities of Being and Event’s set-theory and the Logics of Worlds’ algebra, lay a set of ideas that are fizzing with creativity and disruptive potential. WALL-E gives these political and philosophical ideas a lived expression to a wide audience. The central motif of the article is that the finitude of appearance in a world is constantly overrun by the infinitude of being, and this requires a new theorization of site-based geographies. From the miraculous discovery of a plant growing on a dead Earth, to the tumultuous arrival of WALL-E onboard a spaceship that he never belonged to, the stability of a world is always threatened by a ‘point of excess’, called the site. Three interrelated concepts of Badiou’s will be animated in this article: atonic and tensed worlds, sites, and subjects

Examining barriers to internationalisation created by diverse systems and structures in vocational education and training

In a global society, all educational sectors need to recognise internationalism as a core, foundational principle. Whilst most educational sectors are taking up that challenge, vocational education and training (VET) is still being pulled towards the national agenda in terms of its structures and systems, and the policies driving it, disadvantaging those who graduate from VET, those who teach in it, and the businesses and countries that connect with it. This paper poses questions about the future of internationalisation in the sector. It examines whether there is a way to create a VET system that meets its primary point of value, to produce skilled workers for the local labour market, while still benefitting those graduates by providing international skills and knowledge, gained from VET institutions that are international in their outlook. The paper examines some of the key barriers created by systems and structures in VET to internationalisation and suggests that the efforts which have been made to address the problem have had limited success. It suggests that only a model which gives freedom to those with a direct vested interest, students, teachers, trainers and employers, to pursue international co-operation and liaison will have the opportunity to succeed

Posthumanism: Anthropological Insights by Alan Smart and Josephine Smart

Review of Alan Smart and Josephine Smart’s Posthumanism: Anthropological Insights

What’s in a Convention? Process and substance in the project of European constitution-building. IHS Political Science Series: 2003, No. 89

The paper studies aspects of the process and substance of the deliberations of the Convention on the Future of the Union, against the backdrop of the longer term development of a Constitution for the European Union. It examines some of the issues which have arisen over the course of the longer term debate about European constitutionalism, including the normative basis of a putative Constitution for the EU. In the main part of the paper, the primary objective is to elaborate in more detail the ways in which the Convention’s work was structured by the complex procedural and substantive heritage of the Union’s constitutional acquis. It focuses on the Convention as an addition to an already complex and multi-facetted constitution-building process, and looks at some of the principles which it has proposed to bring into the constitutional architecture, such as the explicit articulation of the supremacy principle. It concludes that at times the fit between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ in the constitutional process and substance developed by the Convention is far from satisfactory

Ethics, professionalism and fitness to practise: three concepts, not one

The GDC's recent third interim edition of The first five years places renewed emphasis on the place of professionalism in the undergraduate dental curriculum. This paper provides a brief analysis of the concepts of ethics, professionalism and fitness to practise, and an examination of the GDC's First five years and Standards for dental professionals guidance, as well as providing an insight into the innovative ethics strand of the BDS course at the University of Glasgow. It emerges that GDC guidance is flawed inasmuch as it advocates a virtue-based approach to ethics and professionalism, and fails to distinguish clearly between these two concepts