Particle Panic

From novels and short stories to television and film, popular media has made a cottage industry of predicting the end of the world will be caused by particle accelerators. Rather than allay such fears, public pronouncements by particle scientists themselves often unwittingly fan the flames of hysteria. This book surveys media depictions of particle accelerator physics and the perceived dangers these experiments pose. In addition, it describes the role of scientists in propagating such fears and misconceptions, offering as a conclusion ways in which the scientific community could successfully allay such misplaced fears through more effective communication strategies. The book is aimed at the general reader interested in separating fact from fiction in the field of high-energy physics, at science educators and communicators, and, last but not least, at all scientists concerned about these issues. About the Author Kristine M Larsen holds a Ph.D. in Physics and is currently a professor at Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT, in the Geological Sciences Department. She has published a number of books, among them The Women Who Popularized Geology in the 19th Century (Springer, 2017), The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman (eds. Anthony Burdge, Jessica Burke, and Kristine Larsen. Kitsune Press, 2012. Recipient of the Gold Medal for Science Fiction/Fantasy in the 2012 Florida Publishing Association Awards), The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who (eds. Anthony Burdge, Jessica Burke, and Kristine Larsen. Kitsune Press, 2010), as well as Stephen Hawking: A Biography (Greenwood Press, 2005) and Cosmology 101 (Greenwood Press, (2007).

From novels and short stories to television and film, popular media has made a cottage industry of predicting the end of the world will be caused by particle accelerators. Rather than allay such fears, public pronouncements by particle scientists themselves often unwittingly fan the flames of hysteria. This book surveys media depictions of particle accelerator physics and the perceived dangers these experiments pose. In addition, it describes the role of scientists in propagating such fears and misconceptions, offering as a conclusion ways in which the scientific community could successfully allay such misplaced fears through more effective communication strategies. The book is aimed at the general reader interested in separating fact from fiction in the field of high-energy physics, at science educators and communicators, and, last but not least, at all scientists concerned about these issues. About the Author Kristine M Larsen holds a Ph. D. in Physics and is currently a professor at Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT, in the Geological Sciences Department. She has published a number of books, among them The Women Who Popularized Geology in the 19th Century (Springer, 2017), The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman (eds. Anthony Burdge, Jessica Burke, and Kristine Larsen. Kitsune Press, 2012. Recipient of the Gold Medal for Science Fiction/Fantasy in the 2012 Florida Publishing Association Awards), The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who (eds. Anthony Burdge, Jessica Burke, and Kristine Larsen. Kitsune Press, 2010), as well as Stephen Hawking: A Biography (Greenwood Press, 2005) and Cosmology 101 (Greenwood Press, (2007).

Predicting the future is a risky game, and can often leave egg on one’s face. However when the organizers of the Intelligent Virtual Environments workshop at the European Conference on AI predicted that the field of Intelligent Virtual Agents would grow and mature rapidly, they were not wrong. From this small workshop spawned the successful one on Intelligent Virtual Agents, held in Manchester in 1999. This volume comprises the proceedings of the much larger third workshop held in Madrid, September 10 11, 2001, which successfully achieved the aim of taking a more international focus, bringing together researchers from all over the world. We received 35 submissions from 18 different countries in America, Asia, and Africa. The 16 papers presented at the conference and published here show the high quality of the work that is currently being done in this field. In addition, five contributions were selected as short papers, which were presented as posters at the workshop. This proceedings volume also includes the two prestigious papers presented at the workshop by our keynote speakers: Daniel Thalmann, Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne and Director of the Computer Graphics Lab., who talked about The Foundations to Build a Virtual Human Society. Jeff Rickel, Project Leader at the Information Sciences Institute and a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, who debated about Intelligent Virtual Agents for Education and Training: Opportunities and Challenges.

"This book is devoted to phenomena that are of interest to both particle and nuclear physicists. The topics include nucleon structure (including spin structure), electron, neutrino, and hadron scattering from nucleons and nuclei, strange matter, the standard model, theory of nucleons and nuclei from both the QCD and nucleon-meson viewpoints, new experimental techniques, and new facilities."--Publisher's website.

Today the discovery of the so-called God particle, the Higgs boson particle is forcing us to rethink our idea of God and how he thinks. Applying the theory of the God particle as the basic building block of everything that exists, we can easily ascribe the creation of all existing forms as simply God's way of thinking or intelligent design. Our story is the ability to change forms, rearrange the God particles by human beings, which comes about as a side effect from an illegal stem cell drug given to paralyze people. The patients are able to do out of the body travel, upsetting our legal systems. The story leads us to crimes committed by the out-of-body travelers, the law enforcement, efforts frustrated by the lack of physical explanations. An analysis by law enforcement of these weird crimes now delves into shape shifting and vampire studies, which seems related to the out-of-the-body travel. The story presents the new power, which must be stopped as a danger to our whole political system. Morally, illegality of stem cell cures, conscience of might makes right, shift shifting, vampires, and the so-called Rapture or second coming are all woven together to bring the reader into a debate about religion, science, morality, and God.

"In the vein of Jodi Picoult's House Rules and Nick Hornby's About a Boy, a debut novel about an exceptionally gifted boy who discovers the truth about his past, his overprotective single mother who tries desperately to shield him from it, and the father he has never met who is trying to come back into his life"--

Contents:Theory: Electroweak Baryon Number Non-Conservation in Particle Physics and Cosmology (V A Rubakov)Constraints and Model Considerations for a 17 keV Neutrino (R D Peccei)Solar Neutrinos:Measurement of the Solar υe Flux with the Homestake 37Cl Detector (K Lande)SAGE: The Soviet-American Gallium Solar Neutrino Experiment (V N Gavrin)Calorimetric Measurements of an Artificial Netrino Source Activity for the Baksan Gallium-Germanium Neutrino Telescope (I N Belousov et al)The Status of Gallex (R Wink)The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (D Sinclair)Results from Underground Experiments: Recent Results from IBM (J LoSecco & J Learned)Analysis of Rare Signals at the Baksan Underground Scintillation Telescope (E N Alexeev)Dark Matter:Axion Searches (P Sikivie)Gamma and Neutrino Astronomy/Astrophics: Five Year Anniversary of Supernova 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud (D K Nadyozhin)Neutrino Physics and Core Collapse Supernovae (W Hillebrandt)Cosmic Rays Origin in Active Galactic Nuclei (V I Dokuchaev)Future Experiments: Super-Kamiokande (Y Totsuka)The Lake Baikal Neutino Project (L B Bezrukov)Towards the Third Generation of Resonant Gravitational Wave Detectors (F Ricci) Readership: Particle physicists and astrophysicists. keywords:

Since its inception in 1992, the Sci-Fi Channel (later rebranded as SYFY) has aired more than 500 network-produced or commissioned films. Campy and prolific, the network churned out one low-budget film after another, finally finding its zenith in the 2013 release of Sharknado. With unpretentious charm and a hearty helping of commodified nostalgia, the Sharknado franchise briefly ruled the cultural consciousness and temporarily transformed SYFY's original films from cult fringe to appointment television. Naturally, the network followed up with a steady stream of sequels and spin-offs, including Lavalantula and its sequel, 2 Lava 2 Lantula! This collection of essays is the first to devote critical attention to SYFY's original film canon, both pre- and post-Sharknado. In addition to unpacking the cultural, historical and critical underpinnings of the monsters at the heart of SYFY's classic creature features, the contributors offer a variety of approaches to understanding and interrogating these films within the broader contexts of ecocriticism, monster theory, post-9/11 criticism, and neocolonialism. Providing a further entry point for future scholarship, an appendix details a thorough filmography of SYFY's original films from 1992 to 2022.