Meta-Research: Large-scale language analysis of peer review reports

Peer review is often criticized for being flawed, subjective and biased, but research into peer review has been hindered by a lack of access to peer review reports. Here we report the results of a study in which text-analysis software was used to determine the linguistic characteristics of 472,449 peer review reports. A range of characteristics (including analytical tone, authenticity, clout, three measures of sentiment, and morality) were studied as a function of reviewer recommendation, area of research, type of peer review and reviewer gender. We found that reviewer recommendation had the biggest impact on the linguistic characteristics of reports, and that area of research, type of peer review and reviewer gender had little or no impact. The lack of influence of research area, type of review or reviewer gender on the linguistic characteristics is a sign of the robustness of peer review

Molten Salt Thermal Energy Storage Systems

The feasibility of storing thermal energy at temperatures of 450 C to 535 C in the form of latent heat of fusion was examined for over 30 inorganic salts and salt mixtures. Alkali carbonate mixtures were chosen as phase-change storage materials in this temperature range because of their relatively high storage capacity and thermal conductivity, moderate cost, low volumetric expansion upon melting, low corrosivity, and good chemical stability. Means of improving heat conduction through the solid salt were explored

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

Realistic construction of split fermion models

The Standard Model flavor structure can be explained in theories where the fermions are localized on different points in a compact extra dimension. We show that models with two bulk scalars compactified on an orbifold can produce such separations in a natural way. We study the shapes and overlaps of the fermion wave functions. We show that, generically, realistic models of Gaussian overlaps are unnatural since they require very large Yukawa couplings between the fermions and the bulk scalars. We give an example of a five dimensional two scalar model that accounts naturally for the observed quark masses, mixing angles and CP violation.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, typos corrected, discussion on the implications of SM rare decay processes added, to appear in PR

Biohydrogen Production from Glycerol using Thermotoga spp

Given the highly reduced state of carbon in glycerol and its availability as a substantial byproduct of biodiesel production, glycerol is of special interest for sustainable biofuel production. Glycerol was used as a substrate for biohydrogen production using the hyperthermophilic bacterium, Thermotoga maritima and Thermotoga neapolitana. Both species metabolized glycerol to mainly acetate and hydrogen. At glycerol concentrations of 2.5 g/L, hydrogen was produced with a yield of 2.75 and 2.65 mol H2/mol glycerol consumed by T. maritima and T. neapolitana respectively. Additionally, the effect of initial pH (ranging between pH 5.0-8.5) and yeast extract concentrations (0.5, 1, 2, 4 g/L) on glycerol fermentation by T. neapolitana was investigated in batch systems. An initial pH value of around 7 was optimal for hydrogen production by T. neapolitana. Lower concentration of yeast extract resulted in a lower H2 production, however increasing the concentration from 2 to 4 g/L did not affect H2 productio

Superfield description of 5D supergravity on general warped geometry

We provide a systematic and practical method of deriving 5D supergravity action described by 4D superfields on a general warped geometry, including a non-BPS background. Our method is based on the superconformal formulation of 5D supergravity, but is easy to handle thanks to the superfield formalism. We identify the radion superfield in the language of 5D superconformal gravity, and clarify its appearance in the action. We also discuss SUSY breaking effects induced by a deformed geometry due to the backreaction of the radius stabilizer.Comment: 25 pages, no figures, LaTeX, final version to appear in JHE

Nonanomalous Discrete R-Symmetry and Light Gravitino

We discuss nonanomalous R-symmetry in the supersymmetric grand unified theories. In particular, we explore anomaly-free solutions predicting the gravitino mass in the range of 10^{-3} eV \lsim m_{3/2} \lsim 1 TeV when the $\mu$-parameter is fixed to be $\mu \simeq 1 TeV$. In the minimal SU(5) GUT, we have shown that $\mu \simeq 1 TeV$ is obtained only if the gravitino is ultralight with mass $m_{3/2} \sim 10^{-3} eV$. If extra fields ${\bf 5}\oplus{\bf 5^*}$ or ${\bf 10}\oplus{\bf 10^*}$ are introduced, many solutions predicting m_{3/2} \gsim 10^{-3} eV are found. The R-parity is violated due to the vacuum expectation value of the superpotential, but it is controlled by the discrete R-symmetry. We find that the R-parity violating couplings are naturally suppressed much below the experimental bounds for some charge assignments. These charge assignments predict light gravitino with masses of order ${\cal O}(10^{-3} eV)$--${\cal O}(1 MeV)$. These discrete R-symmetries can be considered as solutions to the $\mu$-problem in low energy supersymmetry breaking models such as the gauge mediation.Comment: 20 pages, no figure. v2: minor corrections, references added, "Note Added" in Summary adde

An anisotropic hybrid non-perturbative formulation for 4D N = 2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories

We provide a simple non-perturbative formulation for non-commutative four-dimensional N = 2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories. The formulation is constructed by a combination of deconstruction (orbifold projection), momentum cut-off and matrix model techniques. We also propose a moduli fixing term that preserves lattice supersymmetry on the deconstruction formulation. Although the analogous formulation for four-dimensional N = 2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories is proposed also in Nucl.Phys.B857(2012), our action is simpler and better suited for computer simulations. Moreover, not only for the non-commutative theories, our formulation has a potential to be a non-perturbative tool also for the commutative four-dimensional N = 2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories.Comment: 32 pages, final version accepted in JHE

The Throat as a Randall-Sundrum Model with Goldberger-Wise Stabilization

An interesting feature of type IIB flux compactifications is the natural presence of strongly warped regions or `throats'. These regions allow for a 5d Randall-Sundrum model interpretation with a large hierarchy between the UV and IR brane. We show that, in the 5d description, the flux stabilization of this hierarchy (or, equivalently, of the brane-to-brane distance) can be understood as an implementation of the Goldberger-Wise mechanism. This mechanism relies on the non-trivial bulk profile of the so-called Goldberger-Wise scalar, which in addition has fixed expectation values at the boundaries and thereby stabilizes the size of the 5d interval. The Goldberger-Wise scalar is realized microscopically by the continuously varying flux of the Neveu-Schwarz 2-form potential B_2 on the S^2 cycle in the throat. Its back-reaction on the 5d geometry leads to a significant departure from a pure AdS_5 background. We also find that, for a wide range of parameters, the universal Kaehler modulus of the 10d compactification plays the role of a UV-brane field in the equivalent 5d model. It governs the size of a large 4d curvature term localized at the UV brane. We hope that our simple 5d description of the stabilized throat will be useful in various phenomenological and cosmological applications and that refined versions of this construction will be able to account for all relevant details of the 10d model.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures; references adde