Moduli-Space Approximation for BPS Brane-Worlds

We develop the moduli-space approximation for the low energy regime of BPS-branes with a bulk scalar field to obtain an effective four-dimensional action describing the system. An arbitrary BPS potential is used and account is taken of the presence of matter in the branes and small supersymmetry breaking terms. The resulting effective theory is a bi-scalar tensor theory of gravity. In this theory, the scalar degrees of freedom can be stabilized naturally without the introduction of additional mechanisms other than the appropriate BPS potential. We place observational constraints on the shape of the potential and the global configuration of branes.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Borehole water and hydrologic model around the Nojima fault, SW Japan

International audienceThe active fault drilling at Nojima Hirabayashi after the 1995 Hyogoken-nanbu (Kobe) earthquake (MJMA = 7.2) provides us with a unique opportunity to investigate subsurface fault structure and the in-situ properties of fault and fluid. The borehole intersected the fault gouge of the Nojima fault at a depth interval of 623m to 625m. The lithology is mostly Cretaceous granodiorite with some porphyry dikes. The fault core is highly permeable due to fracturing. The borehole water was sampled in 1996 and 2000 from the depth interval between 630 and 650 m, just below the fault core. The chemical and isotopic compositions were analyzed. Carbon and oxygen isotope ratios of carbonates from the fault core were analyzed to estimate the origin of fluid. The following conclusions were obtained. (1) The ionic and isotopic compositions of borehole water did not change from 1996 to 2000. They are mostly derived from local ground water as mentioned by Sato and Takahashi (2000). (2) Geochemical speciation revealed that the borehole water was derived from a relatively deep reservoir, which may be situated at a depth of 3 to 4 km where the temperature is about 80-90 ̊C. (3) The shallower part of the Nojima fault (shallower than the reservoir depth) has not been healed from the hydrological viewpoints 5 years after the event, in contrast to the rapid healing detected by S wave splitting (Tadokoro and Ando, 2002). (4) Precipitation of calcite from present borehole water since drilling supports the idea of precipitation of some calcite in coseismic hydraulic fractures in the fault core (Boullier et al., 2004). (5) Carbon and oxygen isotope ratios of calcite indicated that the meteoric water flux had been localized at the fault core. (6) A difference in the carbon isotope ratio between the footwall and the hangingwall suggests that the fault has been acted as a hydrologic barrier, although the permeability along the fault is still high

The “Hypertension Approaches in the Elderly: a Lifestyle study” multicenter, randomized trial (HAEL Study): rationale and methodological protocol

Background: Hypertension is a clinical condition highly prevalent in the elderly, imposing great risks to cardiovascular diseases and loss of quality of life. Current guidelines emphasize the importance of nonpharmacological strategies as a first-line approach to lower blood pressure. Exercise is an efficient lifestyle tool that can benefit a myriad of health-related outcomes, including blood pressure control, in older adults. We herein report the protocol of the HAEL Study, which aims to evaluate the efficacy of a pragmatic combined exercise training compared with a health education program on ambulatory blood pressure and other health-related outcomes in older individuals. Methods: Randomized, single-blinded, multicenter, two-arm, parallel, superiority trial. A total of 184 subjects (92/center), ≥60 years of age, with no recent history of cardiovascular events, will be randomized on a 1:1 ratio to 12-week interventions consisting either of a combined exercise (aerobic and strength) training, three times per week, or an active-control group receiving health education intervention, once a week. Ambulatory (primary outcome) and office blood pressures, cardiorespiratory fitness and endothelial function, together with quality of life, functional fitness and autonomic control will be measured in before and after intervention. Discussion: Our conceptual hypothesis is that combined training intervention will reduce ambulatory blood pressure in comparison with health education group. Using a superiority framework, analysis plan prespecifies an intention-to-treat approach, per protocol criteria, subgroups analysis, and handling of missing data. The trial is recruiting since September 2017. Finally, this study was designed to adhere to data sharing practices. Trial registration: NCT03264443. Registered on 29 August, 2017

An Ambystoma mexicanum EST sequencing project: analysis of 17,352 expressed sequence tags from embryonic and regenerating blastema cDNA libraries

BACKGROUND: The ambystomatid salamander, Ambystoma mexicanum (axolotl), is an important model organism in evolutionary and regeneration research but relatively little sequence information has so far been available. This is a major limitation for molecular studies on caudate development, regeneration and evolution. To address this lack of sequence information we have generated an expressed sequence tag (EST) database for A. mexicanum. RESULTS: Two cDNA libraries, one made from stage 18-22 embryos and the other from day-6 regenerating tail blastemas, generated 17,352 sequences. From the sequenced ESTs, 6,377 contigs were assembled that probably represent 25% of the expressed genes in this organism. Sequence comparison revealed significant homology to entries in the NCBI non-redundant database. Further examination of this gene set revealed the presence of genes involved in important cell and developmental processes, including cell proliferation, cell differentiation and cell-cell communication. On the basis of these data, we have performed phylogenetic analysis of key cell-cycle regulators. Interestingly, while cell-cycle proteins such as the cyclin B family display expected evolutionary relationships, the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1 gene family shows an unusual evolutionary behavior among the amphibians. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis reveals the importance of a comprehensive sequence set from a representative of the Caudata and illustrates that the EST sequence database is a rich source of molecular, developmental and regeneration studies. To aid in data mining, the ESTs have been organized into an easily searchable database that is freely available online

The Erotic and the Vulgar: Visual Culture and Organized Labor's Critique of U.S. Hegemony in Occupied Japan

This essay engages the colonial legacy of postwar Japan by arguing that the political cartoons produced as part of the postwar Japanese labor movement’s critique of U.S. cultural hegemony illustrate how gendered discourses underpinned, and sometimes undermined, the ideologies formally represented by visual artists and the organizations that funded them. A significant component of organized labor’s propaganda rested on a corpus of visual media that depicted women as icons of Japanese national culture. Japan’s most militant labor unions were propagating anti-imperialist discourses that invoked an engendered/endangered nation that accentuated the importance of union roles for men by subordinating, then eliminating, union roles for women

Cosmology from cosmic shear power spectra with Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam first-year data

We measure cosmic weak lensing shear power spectra with the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey first-year shear catalog covering 137deg$^2$ of the sky. Thanks to the high effective galaxy number density of $\sim$17 arcmin$^{-2}$ even after conservative cuts such as magnitude cut of $i<24.5$ and photometric redshift cut of $0.3\leq z \leq 1.5$, we obtain a high significance measurement of the cosmic shear power spectra in 4 tomographic redshift bins, achieving a total signal-to-noise ratio of 16 in the multipole range $300 \leq \ell \leq 1900$. We carefully account for various uncertainties in our analysis including the intrinsic alignment of galaxies, scatters and biases in photometric redshifts, residual uncertainties in the shear measurement, and modeling of the matter power spectrum. The accuracy of our power spectrum measurement method as well as our analytic model of the covariance matrix are tested against realistic mock shear catalogs. For a flat $\Lambda$ cold dark matter ($\Lambda$CDM) model, we find $S_8\equiv \sigma_8(\Omega_{\rm m}/0.3)^\alpha=0.800^{+0.029}_{-0.028}$ for $\alpha=0.45$ ($S_8=0.780^{+0.030}_{-0.033}$ for $\alpha=0.5$) from our HSC tomographic cosmic shear analysis alone. In comparison with Planck cosmic microwave background constraints, our results prefer slightly lower values of $S_8$, although metrics such as the Bayesian evidence ratio test do not show significant evidence for discordance between these results. We study the effect of possible additional systematic errors that are unaccounted in our fiducial cosmic shear analysis, and find that they can shift the best-fit values of $S_8$ by up to $\sim 0.6\sigma$ in both directions. The full HSC survey data will contain several times more area, and will lead to significantly improved cosmological constraints.Comment: 43 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

The Ctf18 RFC-like complex positions yeast telomeres but does not specify their replication time

Peer reviewedPreprin

X-ray Absorption Near-Edge Structure calculations with pseudopotentials. Application to K-edge in diamond and alpha-quartz

We present a reciprocal-space pseudopotential scheme for calculating X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectra. The scheme incorporates a recursive method to compute absorption cross section as a continued fraction. The continued fraction formulation of absorption is advantageous in that it permits the treatment of core-hole interaction through large supercells (hundreds of atoms). The method is compared with recently developed Bethe-Salpeter approach. The method is applied to the carbon K-edge in diamond and to the silicon and oxygen K-edges in alpha-quartz for which polarized XANES spectra were measured. Core-hole effects are investigated by varying the size of the supercell, thus leading to information similar to that obtained from cluster size analysis usually performed within multiple scattering calculations.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure