Friday Facts, May 31, 2013, Vol. 176

Bureau of Nutrition and Health Promotion part of the Iowa Department of Public Health produces of weekly newsletter about the Iowa WIC Program for the State of Iowa citizen

Friday Facts, August 9, 2013, Vol. 181

Bureau of Nutrition and Health Promotion part of the Iowa Department of Public Health produces of weekly newsletter about the Iowa WIC Program for the State of Iowa citizen

Spatiotemporal studies of black spruce forest soils and implications for the fate of C

Post-fire storage of carbon (C) in organic-soil horizons was measured in one Canadian and three Alaskan chronosequences in black spruce forests, together spanning stand ages of nearly 200 yrs. We used a simple mass balance model to derive estimates of inputs, losses, and accumulation rates of C on timescales of years to centuries. The model performed well for the surface and total organic soil layers and presented questions for resolving the dynamics of deeper organic soils. C accumulation in all study areas is on the order of 20–40 gC/m2/yr for stand ages up to ∼200 yrs. Much larger fluxes, both positive and negative, are detected using incremental changes in soil C stocks and by other studies using eddy covariance methods for CO2. This difference suggests that over the course of stand replacement, about 80% of all net primary production (NPP) is returned to the atmosphere within a fire cycle, while about 20% of NPP enters the organic soil layers and becomes available for stabilization or loss via decomposition, leaching, or combustion. Shifts toward more frequent and more severe burning and degradation of deep organic horizons would likely result in an acceleration of the carbon cycle, with greater CO2 emissions from these systems overall

Friday Facts, August 2, 2013, Vol. 180

Bureau of Nutrition and Health Promotion part of the Iowa Department of Public Health produces of weekly newsletter about the Iowa WIC Program for the State of Iowa citizen

Generational Structure of Models with Dynamical Symmetry Breaking

In models with dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking, this breaking is normally communicated to quarks and leptons by a set of vector bosons with masses generated via sequential breaking of a larger gauge symmetry. In reasonably ultraviolet-complete theories of this type, the number of stages of breaking of the larger gauge symmetry is usually equal to the observed number of quark and lepton generations, $N_{gen.}=3$. Here we investigate the general question of how the construction and properties of these models depend on $N_{gen.}$, regarded as a variable. We build and analyze models with illustrative values of $N_{gen.}$ different from 3 (namely, $N_{gen.}=1,2,4$) that exhibit the necessary sequential symmetry breaking down to a strongly coupled sector that dynamically breaks electroweak symmetry. Our results for variable $N_{gen.}$ show that one can robustly obtain, for this latter sector, a theory with a gauge coupling that is large but slowly running, controlled by an approximate infrared fixed point of the renormalization group. Owing to this, we find that for all of the values of $N_{gen.}$ considered, standard-model fermions of the highest generation have masses that can be comparable to the electroweak-symmetry breaking scale. We also study the interplay of multiple strongly coupled gauge symmetries in these models.Comment: 21 pages, latex, 3 figure

Technicolor Models with Color-Singlet Technifermions and their Ultraviolet Extensions

We study technicolor models in which all of the technifermions are color-singlets, focusing on the case in these fermions transform according to the fundamental representation of the technicolor gauge group. Our analysis includes a derivation of restrictions on the weak hypercharge assignments for the technifermions and additional color-singlet, technisinglet fermions arising from the necessity of avoiding stable bound states with exotic electric charges. Precision electroweak constraints on these models are also discussed. We determine some general properties of extended technicolor theories containing these technicolor sectors.Comment: 17 pages, latex, 2 figure

Study of an Alternate Mechanism for the Origin of Fermion Generations

In usual extended technicolor (ETC) theories based on the group ${\rm{SU}(N_{ETC}})_{ETC}$, the quarks of charge 2/3 and -1/3 and the charged leptons of all generations arise from ETC fermion multiplets transforming according to the fundamental representation. Here we investigate a different idea for the origin of SM fermion generations, in which quarks and charged leptons of different generations arise from ETC fermions transforming according to different representations of ${\rm{SU}(N_{ETC}})_{ETC}$. Although this mechanism would have the potential, {\it a priori}, to allow a reduction in the value of $N_{ETC}$ relative to conventional ETC models, we show that, at least in simple models, it is excluded by the fact that the technicolor sector is not asymptotically free or by the appearance of fermions with exotic quantum numbers which are not observed.Comment: 6 pages, late