Finite Gluon Fusion Amplitude in the Gauge-Higgs Unification

We show that the gluon fusion amplitude in the gauge-Higgs unification scenario is finite in any dimension regardless of its nonrenormalizability. This result is supported by the fact that the local operator describing the gluon fusion process is forbidden by the higher dimensional gauge invariance. We explicitly calculate the gluon fusion amplitude in an arbitrary dimensional gauge-Higgs unification model and indeed obtain the finite result.Comment: 15 pages, final version to appear in MPL

Ethical issues in assistive ambient living technologies for ageing well

Assistive Ambient Living (AAL) in ageing refers to any device used to support ageing related psychological and physical changes aimed at improving seniors’ quality of life and reducing caregivers’ burdens. The diffusion of these devices opens the ethical issues related to their use in the human personal space. This is particularly relevant when AAL technologies are devoted to the ageing population that exhibits special bio-psycho-social aspects and needs. In spite of this, relatively little research has focused on ethical issues that emerge from AAL technologies. The present article addresses ethical issues emerging when AAL technologies are implemented for assisting the elderly population and is aimed at raising awareness of these aspects among healthcare providers. The overall conclusion encourages a person-oriented approach when designing healthcare facilities. This process must be fulfilled in compliance with the general principles of ethics and individual nature of the person devoted to. This perspective will develop new research paradigms, paving the way for fulfilling essential ethical principles in the development of future generations of personalized AAL devices to support ageing people living independently at their home

Simple and Realistic Composite Higgs Models in Flat Extra Dimensions

We construct new composite Higgs/gauge-Higgs unification (GHU) models in flat space that overcome all the difficulties found in the past in attempting to construct models of this sort. The key ingredient is the introduction of large boundary kinetic terms for gauge (and fermion) fields. We focus our analysis on the electroweak symmetry breaking pattern and the electroweak precision tests and show how both are compatible with each other. Our models can be seen as effective TeV descriptions of analogue warped models. We point out that, as far as electroweak TeV scale physics is concerned, one can rely on simple and more flexible flat space models rather than considering their unavoidably more complicated warped space counterparts. The generic collider signatures of our models are essentially undistinguishable from those expected from composite Higgs/warped GHU models, namely a light Higgs, colored fermion resonances below the TeV scale and sizable deviations to the Higgs and top coupling.Comment: 30 figures, 9 figures; v2: minor improvements, one reference added, version to appear in JHE

Plant cover and management practices as drivers of soil quality

Human activities intensively modify soil properties and quality according to land-use and management practices. In Mediterranean areas, pollution and fires may directly alter some soil abiotic properties as well as the steady-state condition of soil microbiota. The aim of this study was to evaluate if the chemical and biological characteristics of two kinds of soil, Arenosols and Andosols, of a natural reserve and an urban park respectively, were affected by the same or different plant covers (trees and grasses). At each site, five sub-samples of surface soils (0–10 cm) were collected under maquis (trees) and gap of grasses. The soils were analyzed for physico-chemical parameters (organic matter and water contents, pH, C, N, Cr, Cu, Ni and Pb concentrations) and biological parameters (microbial and fungal biomass, respiration, metabolic quotient and coefficient of endogenous mineralization). The soil quality was evaluated through an integrated index, calculated taken into account all the investigated parameters. The results highlighted that soils under trees inside the urban park, with the highest amount of organic matter, showed higher microbial biomass and activity as compared to soils under grasses. The high concentration of Cu and Pb in these latter soils inhibited the microbial biomass and activity that were not exclusively affected by litter quality. Soil quality would seem to be strongly affected by the pedogenetic derivation and the management practices more than plant covers

Variation of the chemical and biological properties of a Technosol during seven years after a single application of compost

Technosols are composed of natural soils mixed with artificial materials and can be an inhospitable environment for the soil microbial community. The main goal of the current research was to evaluate temporal variations of Technosol quality through an integrated approach, considering all of the evaluated chemical, physical and biological characteristics for a period of seven years after a single application of compost. The soil samples were evaluated using the following parameters: pH; water content; water holding capacity; bulk density; porosity; organic matter and N contents; C/N ratio; fungal biomass; microbial biomass; respiration; metabolic quotient (qCO 2 ); and endogenous mineralisation coefficient (CEM). The overall evaluation showed that a single application of compost improved the soil quality in the short term. A decrease in Technosol quality over the long term appears to be due to deterioration of the physical and chemical properties, rather than a change in biological properties

Weak Mixing Angle and Higgs Mass in Gauge-Higgs Unification Models with Brane Kinetic Terms

We show that the idea of Gauge-Higgs unification(GHU) can be rescued from the constraint of weak mixing angle by introducing localized brane kinetic terms in higher dimensional GHU models with bulk and simple gauge groups. We find that those terms lead to a ratio between Higgs and W boson masses, which is a little bit deviated from the one derived in the standard model. From numerical analysis, we find that the current lower bound on the Higgs mass tends to prefer to exceptional groups E(6), E(7), E(8) rather than other groups like SU(3l), SO(2n+1), G(2), and F(4) in 6-dimensional(D) GHU models irrespective of the compactification scales. For the compactification scale below 1 TeV, the Higgs masses in 6D GHU models with SU(3l), SO(2n+1), G(2), and F(4) groups are predicted to be less than the current lower bound unless a model parameter responsible for re-scaling SU(2) gauge coupling is taken to be unnaturally large enough. To see how the situation is changed in more higher dimensional GHU model, we take 7D S^{3}/ Z_{2} and 8D T^{4}/ Z_{2} models. It turns out from our numerical analysis that these higher dimensional GHU models with gauge groups except for E(6) can lead to the Higgs boson whose masses are predicted to be above the current lower bound only for the compatification scale above 1 TeV without taking unnaturally large value of the model parameter, whereas the Higgs masses in the GHU models with E(6) are compatible with the current lower bound even for the compatification scale below 1 TeV.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure

The Higgs mechanism as a cut-off effect

We compute the Coleman-Weinberg potential with a finite cut-off for pure SU(2) and SU(3) five-dimensional gauge theories compactified on an interval. We show that besides the expected Coulomb phase located at and in the vicinity of the free infrared stable or "trivial" fixed point, the theory possesses also a Higgs phase. We compare the results from the potential computation with lattice data from simulations.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures; introduction improved, conclusions added, published in JHE