Thermal phase structure of dimensionally reduced super-Yang-Mills

We present our current results from ongoing lattice investigations of the Berenstein-Maldacena-Nastase deformation of maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills quantum mechanics. We focus on the thermal phase structure of this theory, which depends on both the temperature T and the deformation parameter μ, through the dimensionless ratios T/μ and g = λ/μ3 with λ the't Hooft coupling. We determine the critical T/μ of the confinement transition for couplings g that span three orders of magnitude, to connect weak-coupling perturbative calculations and large-N dual supergravity predictions in the strong-coupling limit. Analyzing multiple lattice sizes up to Nτ = 24 and numbers of colors up to N = 16 allows initial checks of the large-N continuum limit

Linear Sigma EFT for Nearly Conformal Gauge Theories

We construct a generalized linear sigma model as an effective field theory (EFT) to describe nearly conformal gauge theories at low energies. The work is motivated by recent lattice studies of gauge theories near the conformal window, which have shown that the lightest flavor-singlet scalar state in the spectrum ($\sigma$) can be much lighter than the vector state ($\rho$) and nearly degenerate with the PNGBs ($\pi$) over a large range of quark masses. The EFT incorporates this feature. We highlight the crucial role played by the terms in the potential that explicitly break chiral symmetry. The explicit breaking can be large enough so that a limited set of additional terms in the potential can no longer be neglected, with the EFT still weakly coupled in this new range. The additional terms contribute importantly to the scalar and pion masses. In particular, they relax the inequality $M_{\sigma}^2 \ge 3 M_{\pi}^2$, allowing for consistency with current lattice data.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure, published versio

Large-N limit of two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory with four supercharges

We study the two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory with four supercharges in the large-N limit. By using thermal boundary conditions, we analyze the internal energy and the distribution of scalars. We compare their behavior to the maximally supersymmetric case with sixteen supercharges, which is known to admit a holographic interpretation. Our lattice results for the scalar distribution show no visible dependence on N and the energy at strong coupling appears independent of temperature

The societal cost of treatment-seeking patients with borderline personality disorder in Germany

According to previous research, borderline personality disorder (BPD) is associated with high cost-of-illness. However, there is still a shortage of cost-of-illness-studies assessing costs from a broad societal perspective, including direct and indirect costs. Further, there are considerable differences in the results among the existing studies. In the present study, 167 German men and women seeking specialized outpatient treatment for BPD were included. We assessed societal cost-of-illness bottom-up through structured face-to-face interviews and encompassed a wide range of cost components. All costs were calculated for the 2015 price level. Cost-of-illness amounted to € 31,130 per patient and year preceding disorder-specific outpatient treatment. € 17,044 (54.8%) were direct costs that were mostly related to hospital treatment. Indirect costs amounted to € 14,086 (45.2%). Within indirect costs, costs related to work disability were the most crucial cost driver. The present study underlines the tremendous economic burden of BPD. According to the present study, both the direct and indirect costs are of significant importance for the societal costs associated with BPD. Besides the need for more disorder-specific treatment facilities for men and women with BPD, we assume that education and employment are topics that should be specifically targeted and individually supported at an early stage of treatment. Trial Registration: German Clinical Trial Registration, DRKS00011534, Date of Registration: 11/01/2017, retrospectively registered

Specific mutations in the D1–D2 linker region of VCP/p97 enhance ATPase activity and confer resistance to VCP inhibitors

A grant from the One-University Open Access Fund at the University of Kansas was used to defray the author's publication fees in this Open Access journal. The Open Access Fund, administered by librarians from the KU, KU Law, and KUMC libraries, is made possible by contributions from the offices of KU Provost, KU Vice Chancellor for Research & Graduate Studies, and KUMC Vice Chancellor for Research. For more information about the Open Access Fund, please see http://library.kumc.edu/authors-fund.xml.Valosin-containing protein (VCP), together with several partner proteins, extracts ubiquitinated client proteins from E3 ligase complex and facilitates their degradation through ubiquitin–proteasome system. Therefore, it plays an important role in regulating protein quality control and various cellular pathways. Recent studies also identified VCP as a lineage-specific essential gene in ovarian cancer. An orally bioavailable VCP inhibitor, CB-5083, is currently in Phase I clinical trials because it shows therapeutic effects in multiple tumor xenograft models. However, the mechanism of resistance to CB-5083 is unknown. Here, we characterized molecular mechanism of resistance to CB-5083. Using incremental exposure to CB-5083, we established CB-5083-resistant ovarian cancer cells that showed five- to six-fold resistance in vitro compared with parental cells. Genomic and complementary DNA sequencing of the VCP coding region revealed a pattern of co-selected mutations: (1) missense mutations at codon 470 in one copy resulting in increased ATPase activity and (2) nonsense or frameshift mutations at codon 606 or codon 616 in another copy causing the loss of allele-specific expression. Unbiased molecular docking studies showed codon 470 as a putative binding site for CB-5083. Furthermore, the analysis of somatic mutations in cancer genomes from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) indicated that codon 616 contains hotspot mutations in VCP. Thus, identification of these mutations associated with in vitro resistance to VCP inhibitors may be useful as potential theranostic markers while screening for patients to enroll in clinical trials. VCP has emerged as a viable therapeutic target for several cancer types, and therefore targeting such hyperactive VCP mutants should aid in improving the therapeutic outcome in cancer patients

Lattice study of ChPT beyond QCD

We describe initial results by the Lattice Strong Dynamics (LSD) collaboration of a study into the variation of chiral properties of chiral properties of SU(3) Yang-Mills gauge theory as the number of massless flavors changes from $N_f = 2$ to $N_f = 6$, with a focus on the use of chiral perturbation theory.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures. Presented at the 6th International Workshop on Chiral Dynamics, University of Bern, Switzerland, July 6-10 200

Toward TeV Conformality

We study the chiral condensate $$ for an SU(3) gauge theory with $N_f$ massless Dirac fermions in the fundamental representation when $N_f$ is increased from 2 to 6. For $N_f=2$, our lattice simulations of $<\bar{\psi} \psi >/F^3$, where $F$ is the Nambu-Goldstone-boson decay constant, agree with the measured QCD value. For $N_f = 6$, this ratio shows significant enhancement, presaging an even larger enhancement anticipated as $N_f$ increases further, toward the critical value for transition from confinement to infrared conformality.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. v2: revised version for PR

Photoemission Beyond the Sudden Approximation

The many-body theory of photoemission in solids is reviewed with emphasis on methods based on response theory. The classification of diagrams into loss and no-loss diagrams is discussed and related to Keldysh path-ordering book-keeping. Some new results on energy losses in valence-electron photoemission from free-electron-like metal surfaces are presented. A way to group diagrams is presented in which spectral intensities acquire a Golden-Rule-like form which guarantees positiveness. This way of regrouping should be useful also in other problems involving spectral intensities, such as the problem of improving the one-electron spectral function away from the quasiparticle peak.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figure

WW Scattering Parameters via Pseudoscalar Phase Shifts

Using domain-wall lattice simulations, we study pseudoscalar-pseudoscalar scattering in the maximal isospin channel for an SU(3) gauge theory with two and six fermion flavors in the fundamental representation. This calculation of the S-wave scattering length is related to the next-to-leading order corrections to WW scattering through the low-energy coefficients of the chiral Lagrangian. While two and six flavor scattering lengths are similar for a fixed ratio of the pseudoscalar mass to its decay constant, six-flavor scattering shows a somewhat less repulsive next-to-leading order interaction than its two-flavor counterpart. Estimates are made for the WW scattering parameters and the plausibility of detection is discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Thomas-Fermi-Dirac-von Weizsacker hydrodynamics in laterally modulated electronic systems

We have studied the collective plasma excitations of a two-dimensional electron gas with an arbitrary lateral charge-density modulation. The dynamics is formulated using a previously developed hydrodynamic theory based on the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac-von Weizsacker approximation. In this approach, both the equilibrium and dynamical properties of the periodically modulated electron gas are treated in a consistent fashion. We pay particular attention to the evolution of the collective excitations as the system undergoes the transition from the ideal two-dimensional limit to the highly-localized one-dimensional limit. We also calculate the power absorption in the long-wavelength limit to illustrate the effect of the modulation on the modes probed by far-infrared (FIR) transmission spectroscopy.Comment: 27 page Revtex file, 15 Postscript figure