Exploring viable vacua of the Z3Z_3-symmetric NMSSM

We explore the vacua of the $Z_3$-symmetric Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) and their stability by going beyond the simplistic paradigm that works with a tree-level neutral scalar potential and adheres to some specific flat directions in the field space. Key effects are demonstrated by first studying the profiles of this potential under various circumstances of physical interest via a semi-analytical approach. The results thereof are compared to the ones obtained from a dedicated package like \veva ~which further incorporates the thermal effects to the potential. Regions of the phenomenological NMSSM (pNMSSM) parameter space that render the desired symmetry breaking (DSB) vacuum absolutely stable, long- or short-lived (in relation to the age of the Universe) under quantum/thermal tunneling are delineated. Regions that result in color and charge breaking (CCB) minima are also presented. It is demonstrated that light singlet scalars along with a light LSP (lightest supersymmetric particle) having an appreciable singlino admixture are compatible with a viable DSB vacuum and are much relevant for the collider experiments.Comment: 52 pages, 19 figures, 4 tables; matches with published versio

Energy current magnification in coupled oscillator loops

Motivated by studies on current magnification in quantum mesoscopic systems we consider sound and heat transmission in classical models of oscillator chains. A loop of coupled oscillators is connected to two leads through which one can either transmit monochromatic waves or white noise signal from heat baths. We look for the possibility of current magnification in this system due to some asymmetry introduced between the two arms in the loop. We find that current magnification is indeed obtained for particular frequency ranges. However the integrated current shows the effect only in the presence of a pinning potential for the atoms in the leads. We also study the effect of anharmonicity on current magnification.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Embodied Question Answering

We present a new AI task -- Embodied Question Answering (EmbodiedQA) -- where an agent is spawned at a random location in a 3D environment and asked a question ("What color is the car?"). In order to answer, the agent must first intelligently navigate to explore the environment, gather information through first-person (egocentric) vision, and then answer the question ("orange"). This challenging task requires a range of AI skills -- active perception, language understanding, goal-driven navigation, commonsense reasoning, and grounding of language into actions. In this work, we develop the environments, end-to-end-trained reinforcement learning agents, and evaluation protocols for EmbodiedQA.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures, Webpage: https://embodiedqa.org

Inherent Weight Normalization in Stochastic Neural Networks

Multiplicative stochasticity such as Dropout improves the robustness and generalizability of deep neural networks. Here, we further demonstrate that always-on multiplicative stochasticity combined with simple threshold neurons are sufficient operations for deep neural networks. We call such models Neural Sampling Machines (NSM). We find that the probability of activation of the NSM exhibits a self-normalizing property that mirrors Weight Normalization, a previously studied mechanism that fulfills many of the features of Batch Normalization in an online fashion. The normalization of activities during training speeds up convergence by preventing internal covariate shift caused by changes in the input distribution. The always-on stochasticity of the NSM confers the following advantages: the network is identical in the inference and learning phases, making the NSM suitable for online learning, it can exploit stochasticity inherent to a physical substrate such as analog non-volatile memories for in-memory computing, and it is suitable for Monte Carlo sampling, while requiring almost exclusively addition and comparison operations. We demonstrate NSMs on standard classification benchmarks (MNIST and CIFAR) and event-based classification benchmarks (N-MNIST and DVS Gestures). Our results show that NSMs perform comparably or better than conventional artificial neural networks with the same architecture

Non-newtonian flow modelling based design of plate heat exchangers

Plate heat exchangers (PHEs) are widely used in food industries for processing liquid products, because of their high thermal effectiveness, ease of maintenance and cleaning, high heat exchange rate and demand of relatively small floor area.  As many food products are non-Newtonian fluids, particularly pseudoplastic in nature, it is important to study nature of their flow and heat transfer characteristic in PHEs.  Aqueous solutions of carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) at different weight concentrations (0.2%, 0.4% and 0.6%) and 25 ≤ NRe,gen ≤ 250 and at different inlet temperatures (50°C, 60°C and 70°C) were considered as operating conditions.  Using data obtained, relations between dimensionless numbers (NNu, NPr and NRe,gen) were established.  Pressure drop across inlet and outlet of PHE was measured for each run and correlations between friction factor and generalized Reynolds number were established for different concentrations.  To study flow pattern of CMC fluid through narrow gap between two plates, simulation was carried out using FLUENT 6.3 software by supplying actual experimental conditions.  Theoretical method is suggested for predicting temperatures of fluids after each pass of PHE

ASSESSMENT OF LEAN BODY TISSUE COMPOSITION IN YOUNG ELITE MALE PLAYERS OF DIFFERENT SPORTS

Purpose: The present study was aimed to investigate the characteristics of lean body tissue composition in a group of young (mean age 16.7 ± 2.31 yrs) male athletes of different sports and the effect of sports specific physical activity on body tissue composition. Methods: Three hundred forty two (n= 342) male players of different sports viz., football, hockey, table tennis and badminton along with seventy two (n=72) sedentary school boys were also evaluated for various anthropometric and body composition parameters. Body composition including, body fat % (BF %), fat free mass (FFM), body cell mass (BCM) and extra cellular mass (ECM) was determined by whole body bio impedance measurements using a multi-frequency analyzer (Maltron Bioscan 920-2, Maltron International, Rayleigh, Essex, UK). Relative BCM, BCM Index (BCMI) and the ECM /BCM ratio were also calculated. Results: One-way ANOVA reveals significant differences (p<0.01) in BF%, FFM, BCM and ECM when compared among the group. BCM% related to body weight was also differed significantly (p<0.01) and found highest value in hockey players and lowest value in control group followed by the table tennis players. However, only significant difference was observed in case of BCMI when table tennis players were compared to their badminton counterparts. Scatter plot of BMI and BCMI predicted that both soccer and hockey players had greater lean mass variations whereas table tennis players exhibited lower lean mass variations. Conclusions: Differences in BCM, relative BCM, ECM/BCM, BCM/FFM and BCMI could be the potential indicators for the evaluation of qualitative and quantitative alterations in imposed training load of the athletes from different sports. The findings of present study may be useful to the players and their trainers to formulate the systematic training programme to enhance the sports performance.  Article visualizations

PcrG protects the two long helical oligomerization domains of PcrV, by an interaction mediated by the intramolecular coiled-coil region of PcrG

PcrV is a hydrophilic translocator of type three secretion system (TTSS) and a structural component of the functional translocon. C-terminal helix of PcrV is essential for its oligomerization at the needle tip. Conformational changes within PcrV regulate the effector translocation. PcrG is a cytoplasmic regulator of TTSS and forms a high affinity complex with PcrV. C-terminal residues of PcrG control the effector secretion

A green open access optical distribution network with incremental deployment support

This paper proposes an optical distribution network (ODN) architecture for open access networks. The proposed scheme ensures co-existence of multiple business partners (BPs) e.g., service, network equipment, and infrastructure providers at different levels of the distribution network, along with physicallayer security. Further, physical-layer isolation is provided to each subscriber, preventing network disruption by malicious subscribers. The proposed open access ODN supports BPs with different granularities (sizes) and discourages monopoly; thus, allowing multiple BPs to co-exist. It also supports incremental deployability (ID) which allows the BPs to cope with an expanding user base. Thus, small BPs can take up a market share with reasonable initial investment and grow with differential expenditures. ID further allows us to incrementally scale up the power consumption as a function of the network load, making the architecture green. The proposed ODN is based on a passive optical network (PON) architecture resulting in low operational expenditures (OpEx) and high availability. Besides a new ODN architecture, a novel architecture for the optical line terminal (OLT), based on hybrid time and wavelength-division multiplexing (TWDM), is proposed. The BPs can adopt typical TWDM, wavelength division multiplexing, or the TWDM-based OLT architecture (introduced in this paper) over the proposed ODN

Evidence for Phytoremediation and Phytoexcretion of NTO from Industrial Wastewater by Vetiver Grass

The use of insensitive munitions such as 3-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (NTO) is rapidly increasing and is expected to replace conventional munitions in the near future. Various NTO treatment technologies are being developed for the treatment of wastewater from industrial munition facilities. This is the first study to explore the potential phytoremediation of industrial NTO-wastewater using vetiver grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides L.). Here, we present evidence that vetiver can effectively remove NTO from wastewater, and also translocated NTO from root to shoot. NTO was phytotoxic and resulted in a loss of plant biomass and chlorophyll. The metabolomic analysis showed significant differences between treated and control samples, with the upregulation of specific pathways such as glycerophosphate metabolism and amino acid metabolism, providing a glimpse into the stress alleviation strategy of vetiver. One of the mechanisms of NTO stress reduction was the excretion of solid crystals. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis confirmed the presence of NTO crystals in the plant exudates. Further characterization of the exudates is in progress to ascertain the purity of these crystals, and if vetiver could be used for phytomining NTO from industrial wastewater