Quasi-infra-red fixed points and renormalisation group invariant trajectories for non-holomorphic soft supersymmetry breaking

In the MSSM the quasi-infra-red fixed point for the top-quark Yukawa coupling gives rise to specific predictions for the soft-breaking parameters. We discuss the extent to which these predictions are modified by the introduction of additional ``non-holomorphic'' soft-breaking terms. We also show that in a specific class of theories there exists an RG-invariant trajectory for the ``non-holomorphic'' terms, which can be understood using a holomorphic spurion term.Comment: 24 pages, TeX, two figures. Uses Harvmac (big) and epsf. Minor errors corrected, and the RG trajectory explained in terms of a holomorphic spurion ter

Urban source term estimation for mercury using a boundary-layer budget method

Mercury is a heavy metal of particular concern due to its adverse effects on human health and the environment. Recognizing this problem, the UN Minamata Convention on Mercury was recently adopted, where signatory countries agreed to reduce anthropogenic mercury emissions. To evaluate the effectiveness of the convention, quantitative knowledge on mercury emissions is crucial. So far, bottom-up approaches have successfully been applied to quantify mercury emission – especially for point sources. Distributed sources make up a large share of the emission; however, they are still poorly characterized. Here, we present a top-down approach to estimate mercury emissions based on atmospheric measurements in the city of Zurich, Switzerland. While monitoring the atmospheric mercury concentrations during inversion periods in Zurich, we were able to relate the concentration increase to the mercury emission strength of the city using a box model. By means of this boundary-layer budget approach, we succeeded in narrowing down the emissions of Zurich to range between 41±8&thinsp;kg&thinsp;a−1 (upper bound) and 24±8&thinsp;kg&thinsp;a−1 (lower bound). Thereby, we could quantify emissions from mixed, diffuse and point-like sources and derive an annual mercury per capita emission of 0.06 to 0.10&thinsp;g&thinsp;a−1. The approach presented here has the potential to support authorities in setting up inventories and to validate emission estimations derived from the commonly applied bottom-up approaches. Furthermore, our method is applicable to other compounds and to a wide range of cities or other areas, where sources or sinks for mercury and other atmospheric pollutants are presumed.</p

Acetylcholine and noradrenaline enhance foraging optimality in humans

Foraging theory prescribes when optimal foragers should leave the current option for more rewarding alternatives. Actual foragers often exploit options longer than prescribed by the theory, but it is unclear how this foraging suboptimality arises. We investigated whether the upregulation of cholinergic, noradrenergic, and dopaminergic systems increases foraging optimality. In a double-blind, between-subject design, participants (N = 160) received placebo, the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonist nicotine, a noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor reboxetine, or a preferential dopamine reuptake inhibitor methylphenidate, and played the role of a farmer who collected milk from patches with different yield. Across all groups, participants on average overharvested. While methylphenidate had no effects on this bias, nicotine, and to some extent also reboxetine, significantly reduced deviation from foraging optimality, which resulted in better performance compared to placebo. Concurring with amplified goal-directedness and excluding heuristic explanations, nicotine independently also improved trial initiation and time perception. Our findings elucidate the neurochemical basis of behavioral flexibility and decision optimality and open unique perspectives on psychiatric disorders affecting these functions

Genozip - a universal extensible genomic data compressor

We present Genozip, a universal and fully featured compression software for genomic data. Genozip is designed to be a general-purpose software and a development framework for genomic compression by providing five core capabilities - universality (support for all common genomic file formats), high compression ratios, speed, feature-richness, and extensibility. Genozip delivers high-performance compression for widely-used genomic data formats in genomics research, namely FASTQ, SAM/BAM/CRAM, VCF, GVF, FASTA, PHYLIP, and 23andMe formats. Our test results show that Genozip is fast and achieves greatly improved compression ratios, even when the files are already compressed. Further, Genozip is architected with a separation of the Genozip Framework from file-format-specific Segmenters and data-type-specific Codecs. With this, we intend for Genozip to be a general-purpose compression platform where researchers can implement compression for additional file formats, as well as new codecs for data types or fields within files, in the future. We anticipate that this will ultimately increase the visibility and adoption of these algorithms by the user community, thereby accelerating further innovation in this space. Availability: Genozip is written in C. The code is open-source and available on GitHub (https://github.com/divonlan/genozip). The package is free for non-commercial use. It is distributed as a Docker container on DockerHub and through the conda package manager. Genozip is tested on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.Divon Lan, Ray Tobler, Yassine Souilmi, Bastien Llama

The Affective Impact of Financial Skewness on Neural Activity and Choice

Few finance theories consider the influence of “skewness” (or large and asymmetric but unlikely outcomes) on financial choice. We investigated the impact of skewed gambles on subjects' neural activity, self-reported affective responses, and subsequent preferences using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). Neurally, skewed gambles elicited more anterior insula activation than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance, and positively skewed gambles also specifically elicited more nucleus accumbens (NAcc) activation than negatively skewed gambles. Affectively, positively skewed gambles elicited more positive arousal and negatively skewed gambles elicited more negative arousal than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance. Subjects also preferred positively skewed gambles more, but negatively skewed gambles less than symmetric gambles of equal expected value. Individual differences in both NAcc activity and positive arousal predicted preferences for positively skewed gambles. These findings support an anticipatory affect account in which statistical properties of gambles—including skewness—can influence neural activity, affective responses, and ultimately, choice

Mitogenomes reveal two major influxes of Papuan ancestry across Wallacea following the last glacial maximum and Austronesian contact

The tropical archipelago of Wallacea contains thousands of individual islands interspersed between mainland Asia and Near Oceania, and marks the location of a series of ancient oceanic voyages leading to the peopling of Sahul—i.e., the former continent that joined Australia and New Guinea at a time of lowered sea level—by 50,000 years ago. Despite the apparent deep antiquity of human presence in Wallacea, prior population history research in this region has been hampered by patchy archaeological and genetic records and is largely concentrated upon more recent history that follows the arrival of Austronesian seafarers ~3000–4000 years ago (3–4 ka). To shed light on the deeper history of Wallacea and its connections with New Guinea and Australia, we performed phylogeographic analyses on 656 whole mitogenomes from these three regions, including 186 new samples from eight Wallacean islands and three West Papuan populations. Our results point to a surprisingly dynamic population history in Wallacea, marked by two periods of extensive demographic change concentrated around the Last Glacial Maximum ~15 ka and post-Austronesian contact ~3 ka. These changes appear to have greatly diminished genetic signals informative about the original peopling of Sahul, and have important implications for our current understanding of the population history of the region.1. Introduction 2. Materials and Methods 2.1. Sample Collection and Ethics 2.2. Mitochondrial Sequence Generation 2.3. Combined Wallacea–Sahul Dataset 2.4. Phylogenetic Parameter Estimation 2.5. Using Ancestral Node Dates from Geographically Exclusive Clades to Infer Demographic History 2.6. Migration Model Inference and Testing 2.7. Simulating and Estimating the Timing of Migration Events 3. Results 3.1. Summary of New Mitochondrial Haplogroups from Wallacea and West Papua 3.2. Phylogeographic Analyses 4. Discussion 4.1. Post-LGM Population Expansions and Movements 4.2. Redistribution of Papuan mtDNA Lineages Following Austronesian Contact 4.3. Comparison with Wallacean Archaeological and Linguistic Records 5. Conclusion

Ground-based and airborne in-situ measurements of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic aerosol plume in Switzerland in spring 2010

The volcanic aerosol plume resulting from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland in April and May 2010 was detected in clear layers above Switzerland during two periods (17–19 April 2010 and 16–19 May 2010). In-situ measurements of the airborne volcanic plume were performed both within ground-based monitoring networks and with a research aircraft up to an altitude of 6000 m a.s.l. The wide range of aerosol and gas phase parameters studied at the high altitude research station Jungfraujoch (3580 m a.s.l.) allowed for an in-depth characterization of the detected volcanic aerosol. Both the data from the Jungfraujoch and the aircraft vertical profiles showed a consistent volcanic ash mode in the aerosol volume size distribution with a mean optical diameter around 3 ± 0.3 &amp;mu;m. These particles were found to have an average chemical composition very similar to the trachyandesite-like composition of rock samples collected near the volcano. Furthermore, chemical processing of volcanic sulfur dioxide into sulfate clearly contributed to the accumulation mode of the aerosol at the Jungfraujoch. The combination of these in-situ data and plume dispersion modeling results showed that a significant portion of the first volcanic aerosol plume reaching Switzerland on 17 April 2010 did not reach the Jungfraujoch directly, but was first dispersed and diluted in the planetary boundary layer. The maximum PM&lt;sub&gt;10&lt;/sub&gt; mass concentrations at the Jungfraujoch reached 30 &amp;mu;gm&lt;sup&gt;&amp;minus;3&lt;/sup&gt; and 70 &amp;mu;gm&lt;sup&gt;&amp;minus;3&lt;/sup&gt; (for 10-min mean values) duri ng the April and May episode, respectively. Even low-altitude monitoring stations registered up to 45 &amp;mu;gm&lt;sup&gt;&amp;minus;3&lt;/sup&gt; of volcanic ash related PM&lt;sub&gt;10&lt;/sub&gt; (Basel, Northwestern Switzerland, 18/19 April 2010). The flights with the research aircraft on 17 April 2010 showed one order of magnitude higher number concentrations over the northern Swiss plateau compared to the Jungfraujoch, and a mass concentration of 320 (200–520) &amp;mu;gm&lt;sup&gt;&amp;minus;3&lt;/sup&gt; on 18 May 2010 over the northwestern Swiss plateau. The presented data significantly contributed to the time-critical assessment of the local ash layer properties during the initial eruption phase. Furthermore, dispersion models benefited from the detailed information on the volcanic aerosol size distribution and its chemical composition