Lepton Flavour Violating Leptonic/Semileptonic Decays of Charged Leptons in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model

We consider the leptonic and semileptonic (SL) lepton flavour violating (LFV) decays of the charged leptons in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). The formalism for evaluation of branching fractions for the SL LFV charged-lepton decays with one or two pseudoscalar mesons, or one vector meson in the final state, is given. Previous amplitudes for the SL LFV charged-lepton decays in MSSM are improved, for instance the $\gamma$-penguin amplitude is corrected to assure the gauge invariance. The decays are studied not only in the model-independent formulation of the theory in the frame of MSSM, but also within the frame of the minimal supersymmetric SO(10) model within which the parameters of the MSSM are determined. The latter model gives predictions for the neutrino-Dirac Yukawa coupling matrix, once free parameters in the model are appropriately fixed to accommodate the recent neutrino oscillation data. Using this unambiguous neutrino-Dirac Yukawa couplings, we calculate the LFV leptonic and SL decay processes assuming the minimal supergravity scenario. A very detailed numerical analysis is done to constrain the MSSM parameters. Numerical results for SL LFV processes are given, for instance for tau -> e (mu) pi0, tau -> e (mu) eta, tau -> e (mu) eta', tau -> e (mu) rho0, tau -> e (mu) phi, tau -> e (mu) omega, etc.Comment: 36 pages, 3 tables, 5 .eps figure

Softening the Supersymmetric Flavor Problem in Orbifold GUTs

The infra-red attractive force of the bulk gauge interactions is applied to soften the supersymmetric flavor problem in the orbifold SU(5) GUT of Kawamura. Then this force aligns in the infra-red regime the soft supersymmetry breaking terms out of their anarchical disorder at a fundamental scale, in such a way that flavor-changing neutral currents as well as dangerous CP-violating phases are suppressed at low energies. It is found that this dynamical alignment is sufficiently good compared with the current experimental bounds, as long as the diagonalization matrices of the Yukawa couplings are CKM-like.Comment: 15 pages,4 figure

Factors Affecting the Nasal Carriage of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in Human Immunodeficiency Virus-infected Patients

Human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients attending skin outpatient department were studied for nasal carriage of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)and associated factors affecting nasal colonization. Nasal swabs were used for isolation of S. aureus. MRSA were detected by agar screen and agar dilution methods. Careful examination for dermatoses was carried out. Forty-six of the 60 (76.67%) outpatients with HIV infection were colonized with S. aureus in the anterior nares. Significant number of S. aureus carriers were in the 31-40 year age group. Methicillin resistance was found in eight (17.39%) isolates. Of the 46 S. aureus strains, 29 (63%) were resistant to erythromycin, 69.5% to co-trimoxazole and 41.3% to ciprofloxacin. Co-trimoxazole use was found to be a risk factor for S. aureus carriage ( P = 0.0214) but not for methicillin resistance. Hospital stay for more than 10 days was a risk factor for methicillin resistance whereas stay for more than 25 days was found to be a highly significant risk factor. Dermatophytosis and herpes simplex virus infection were other risk factors for nasal carriage of S. aureus