2,024 research outputs found
Sperm death and dumping in Drosophila
Mating with more than one male is the norm for females of many species. In addition to generating competition between the ejaculates of different males, multiple mating may allow females to bias sperm use. In Drosophila melanogaster, the last male to inseminate a female sires approximately 80% of subsequent progeny. Both sperm displacement, where resident sperm are removed from storage by the incoming ejaculate of the copulating male, and sperm incapacitation, where incoming seminal fluids supposedly interfere with resident sperm, have been implicated in this pattern of sperm use. But the idea of incapacitation is problematic because there are no known mechanisms by which an individual could damage rival sperm and not their own. Females also influence the process of sperm use, but exactly how is unclear. Here we show that seminal fluids do not kill rival sperm and that any 'incapacitation' is probably due to sperm ageing during sperm storage. We also show that females release stored sperm from the reproductive tract (sperm dumping) after copulation with a second male and that this requires neither incoming sperm nor seminal fluids. Instead, males may cause stored sperm to be dumped or females may differentially eject sperm from the previous mating
Very special relativity as relativity of dark matter: the Elko connection
In the very special relativity (VSR) proposal by Cohen and Glashow, it was
pointed out that invariance under HOM(2) is both necessary and sufficient to
explain the null result of the Michelson-Morely experiment. It is the quantum
field theoretic demand of locality, or the requirement of P, T, CP, or CT
invariance, that makes invariance under the Lorentz group a necessity.
Originally it was conjectured that VSR operates at the Planck scale; we propose
that the natural arena for VSR is at energies similar to the standard model,
but in the dark sector. To this end we provide an ab initio spinor
representation invariant under the SIM(2) avatar of VSR and construct a mass
dimension one fermionic quantum field of spin one half. This field turns out to
be a very close sibling of Elko and it exhibits the same striking property of
intrinsic darkness with respect to the standard model fields. In the new
construct, the tension between Elko and Lorentz symmetries is fully resolved.
We thus entertain the possibility that the symmetries underlying the standard
model matter and gauge fields are those of Lorentz, while the event space
underlying the dark matter and the dark gauge fields supports the algebraic
structure underlying VSR.Comment: 19 pages. Section 5 is new. Published version (modulo a footnote, and
a corrected typo
Partially Supersymmetric Composite Higgs Models
We study the idea of the Higgs as a pseudo-Goldstone boson within the
framework of partial supersymmetry in Randall-Sundrum scenarios and their CFT
duals. The Higgs and third generation of the MSSM are composites arising from a
strongly coupled supersymmetric CFT with global symmetry SO(5) spontaneously
broken to SO(4), whilst the light generations and gauge fields are elementary
degrees of freedom whose couplings to the strong sector explicitly break the
global symmetry as well as supersymmetry. The presence of supersymmetry in the
strong sector may allow the compositeness scale to be raised to ~10 TeV without
fine tuning, consistent with the bounds from precision electro-weak
measurements and flavour physics. The supersymmetric flavour problem is also
solved. At low energies, this scenario reduces to the "More Minimal
Supersymmetric Standard Model" where only stops, Higgsinos and gauginos are
light and within reach of the LHC.Comment: 28 pages. v2 minor changes and Refs. adde
Probing CP Violation with and without Momentum Reconstruction at the LHC
We study the potential to observe CP-violating effects in SUSY cascade decay
chains at the LHC. We consider squark and gluino production followed by
subsequent decays into neutralinos with a three-body leptonic decay in the
final step. Asymmetries composed by triple products of momenta of the final
state particles are sensitive to CP-violating effects. Due to large boosts
these asymmetries can be difficult to observe at a hadron collider. We show
that using all available kinematic information one can reconstruct the decay
chains on an event-by-event basis even in the case of 3-body decays, neutrinos
and LSPs in the final state. We also discuss the most important experimental
effects like major backgrounds and momentum smearing due to finite detector
resolution. We show that with 300 fb of collected data, CP violation may
be discovered at the LHC for a wide range of the phase of the bino mass
parameter .Comment: Version accepted for publication in JHEP. Clarifications added on the
assumptions used for plots. New references adde
Top quark forward-backward asymmetry in R-parity violating supersymmetry
The interaction of bottom squark-mediated top quark pair production,
occurring in the R-parity violating minimal supersymmetric standard model
(MSSM), is proposed as an explanation of the anomalously large
forward-backward asymmetry (FBA) observed at the Tevatron. We find that this
model can give a good fit to top quark data, both the inclusive and invariant
mass-dependent asymmetries, while remaining consistent (at the 2-
level) with the total and differential production cross-sections. The scenario
is challenged by strong constraints from atomic parity violation (APV), but we
point out an extra diagram for the effective down quark-Z vertex, involving the
same coupling constant as required for the FBA, which tends to weaken the APV
constraint, and which can nullify it for reasonable values of the top squark
masses and mixing angle. Large contributions to flavor-changing neutral
currents can be avoided if only the third generation of sparticles is light.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures. v3: included LHC top production cross section
data; model still consistent at 2 sigma leve
High expression of antiviral proteins in mucosa from individuals exhibiting resistance to human immunodeficiency virus
ABSTARCT: Several soluble factors have been reported to have the capacity of inhibiting HIV replication at different steps of the virus life cycle, without eliminating infected cells and through enhancement of specific cellular mechanisms. Yet, it is unclear if these antiviral factors play a role in the protection from HIV infection or in the control of viral replication. Here we evaluated two cohorts: i) one of 58 HIV-exposed seronegative individuals (HESNs) who were compared with 59 healthy controls (HCs), and ii) another of 13 HIV-controllers who were compared with 20 HIV-progressors. Peripheral blood, oral and genital mucosa and gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) samples were obtained to analyze the mRNA expression of ELAFIN, APOBEC3G, SAMHD1, TRIM5α, RNase 7 and SerpinA1 using real-time PCR.
RESULTS:
HESNs exhibited higher expression of all antiviral factors in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), oral or genital mucosa when compared with HCs. Furthermore, HIV-controllers exhibited higher levels of SerpinA1 in GALT.
CONCLUSIONS:
These findings suggest that the activity of these factors is compartmentalized and that these proteins have a predominant role depending on the tissue to avoid the infection, reduce the viral load and modulate the susceptibility to HIV infection
Ecological implications of a flower size/number trade-off in tropical forest trees
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Excess Higgs Production in Neutralino Decays
The ATLAS and CMS experiments have recently claimed discovery of a Higgs
boson-like particle at ~5 sigma confidence and are beginning to test the
Standard Model predictions for its production and decay. In a variety of
supersymmetric models, a neutralino NLSP can decay dominantly to the Higgs and
the LSP. In natural SUSY models, a light third generation squark decaying
through this chain can lead to large excess Higgs production while evading
existing BSM searches. Such models can be observed at the 8 TeV LHC in channels
exploiting the rare diphoton decays of the Higgs produced in the cascade decay.
Identifying a diphoton resonance in association with missing energy, a lepton,
or b-tagged jets is a promising search strategy for discovery of these models,
and would immediately signal new physics involving production of a Higgs boson.
We also discuss the possibility that excess Higgs production in these SUSY
decays can be responsible for enhancements of up to 50% over the SM prediction
for the observed rate in the existing inclusive diphoton searches, a scenario
which would likely by the end of the 8 TeV run be accompanied by excesses in
the diphoton + lepton/MET and SUSY multi-lepton/b searches and a potential
discovery in a diphoton + 2b search.Comment: 42 pages, 19 figure
Lepton Number Violation from Colored States at the LHC
The possibility to search for lepton number violating signals at the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC) in the colored seesaw scenario is investigated. In this
context the fields that generate neutrino masses at the one-loop level are
scalar and Majorana fermionic color-octets of SU(3). Due to the QCD strong
interaction these states may be produced at the LHC with a favorable rate. We
study the production mechanisms and decays relevant to search for lepton number
violation signals in the channels with same-sign dileptons. In the simplest
case when the two fermionic color-octets are degenerate in mass, one could use
their decays to distinguish between the neutrino spectra. We find that for
fermionic octets with mass up to about 1 TeV the number of same-sign dilepton
events is larger than the standard model background indicating a promising
signal for new physics.Comment: minor corrections, added reference
Effects of preoperative feeding with a whey protein plus carbohydrate drink on the acute phase response and insulin resistance. A randomized trial
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Prolonged preoperative fasting increases insulin resistance and current evidence recommends carbohydrate (CHO) drinks 2 hours before surgery. Our hypothesis is that the addition of whey protein to a CHO-based drink not only reduces the inflammatory response but also diminish insulin resistance.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Seventeen patients scheduled to cholecystectomy or inguinal herniorraphy were randomized and given 474 ml and 237 ml of water (CO group) or a drink containing CHO and milk whey protein (CHO-P group) respectively, 6 and 3 hours before operation. Blood samples were collected before surgery and 24 hours afterwards for biochemical assays. The endpoints of the study were the insulin resistance (IR), the prognostic inflammatory and nutritional index (PINI) and the C-reactive protein (CRP)/albumin ratio. A 5% level for significance was established.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were no anesthetic or postoperative complications. The post-operative IR was lower in the CHO-P group when compared with the CO group (2.75 ± 0.72 vs 5.74 ± 1.16; p = 0.03). There was no difference between the two groups in relation to the PINI. The CHO-P group showed a decrease in the both CRP elevation and CRP/albumin ratio (p < 0.05). The proportion of patients who showed CRP/albumin ratio considered normal was significantly greater (p < 0.05) in the CHO-P group (87.5%) than in the CO group (33.3%).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Shortening the pre-operative fasting using CHO and whey protein is safe and reduces insulin resistance and postoperative acute phase response in elective moderate operations.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrail.gov <a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01354249">NCT01354249</a></p
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