The second US Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC2)

The second USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog, UCAC2 was released in July 2003. Positions and proper motions for 48,330,571 sources (mostly stars) are available on 3 CDs, supplemented with 2MASS photometry for 99.5% of the sources. The catalog covers the sky area from -90 to +40 degrees declination, going up to +52 in some areas; this completely supersedes the UCAC1 released in 2001. Current epoch positions are obtained from observations with the USNO 8-inch Twin Astrograph equipped with a 4k CCD camera. The precision of the positions are 15 to 70 mas, depending on magnitude, with estimated systematic errors of 10 mas or below. Proper motions are derived by utilizing over 140 ground-and space-based catalogs, including Hipparcos/Tycho, the AC2000.2, as well as yet unpublished re-measures of the AGK2 plates and scans from the NPM and SPM plates. Proper motion errors are about 1 to 3 mas/yr for stars to 12th magnitude, and about 4 to 7 mas/yr for fainter stars to 16th magnitude. The observational data, astrometric reductions, results, and important information for the users of this catalog are presented.Comment: accepted by AJ, AAS LaTeX, 14 figures, 10 table

Large extra dimensions, the galaxy power spectrum and the end of inflation

We consider the production of gravitational KK modes via cosmological photon-photon and electron-positron annihilation in models with large factorisable extra dimensions. We place constraints on this production using recent results from a joint analysis of the power spectra of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGS) and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. We obtain a more accurate upper limit for the temperature corresponding to matter-radiation equality and show that, even for the case of 6 extra dimensions and a fundamental scale of 1 TeV, a period of inflation is required that ends at a temperature much lower than that of the QCD phase transition.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, hadronic branching+typos corrected,accepted in JHE

Rearranging Edgeworth-Cornish-Fisher Expansions

This paper applies a regularization procedure called increasing rearrangement to monotonize Edgeworth and Cornish-Fisher expansions and any other related approximations of distribution and quantile functions of sample statistics. Besides satisfying the logical monotonicity, required of distribution and quantile functions, the procedure often delivers strikingly better approximations to the distribution and quantile functions of the sample mean than the original Edgeworth-Cornish-Fisher expansions.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure

Radiotherapy trial set-up in the UK: identifying inefficiencies and potential solutions

Aims: Radiotherapy clinical trials are integral to the development of new treatments to improve the outcomes of patients with cancer. A collaborative study by the National Cancer Research Institute Clinical and Translational Radiotherapy Research Working Group and the National Institute for Health Research was carried out to understand better if and why inefficiencies occur in the set-up of radiotherapy trials in the UK. Materials and methods: Two online surveys collected information on the time taken for UK radiotherapy trials to reach key milestones during set-up and the research support currently being provided to radiotherapy centres to enable efficient clinical trial set-up. Semi-structured interviews with project managers and chief investigators identified better ways of working to improve trial set-up in the future. Results: The timelines for the set-up of 39 UK radiotherapy trials were captured in an online survey showing that the median time from grant approval to trial opening was 600 days (range 169–1172). There were 38 responses from radiotherapy centres to a survey asking about the current support provided for radiotherapy research. Most of these centres have more than one type of staff member dedicated to supporting radiotherapy research. The most frequent barrier to radiotherapy trial set-up identified was lack of physicists' time and lack of time for clinical oncologists to carry out research activities. Four main themes around trial set-up were identified from semi-structured interviews: the importance of communication and building relationships, the previous experience of the chief investigator and clinical trials units, a lack of resources and having the time and personnel required to produce trial documentation and to process trial approval requests. Conclusions: This unique, collaborative project has provided up to date information about the current landscape of trial set-up and research support in the UK and identified several avenues on which to focus future efforts in order to support the excellent radiotherapy trial work carried out across the UK

Gravitational Smearing of Minimal Supersymmetric Unification Predictions

A short and mean paper.Comment: 10 pages total + 1 postscript figure (included), revised: all lines are TRULY < 70 characters long (try it!); LBL-32905, UCB-PTH-92/3

Like Sign Dilepton Signature for R-Parity Violating SUSY Search at the Tevatron Collider

The like sign dileptons provide the most promising signature for superparticle search in a large category of $R$-parity violating SUSY models. We estimate the like sign dilepton signals at the Tevatron collider, predicted by these models, over a wide region of the MSSM parameter space. One expects an unambiguous signal upto a gluino mass of $200 - 300$ GeV ($\geq 500$ GeV) with the present (proposed) accumulated luminosity of $\sim 0.1~(1)~{\rm fb}^{-1}$.Comment: 12 page LaTeX file; 5 figures available upon request from the autho

Supergravity Inflation Free from Harmful Relics

We present a realistic supergravity inflation model which is free from the overproduction of potentially dangerous relics in cosmology, namely moduli and gravitinos which can lead to the inconsistencies with the predictions of baryon asymmetry and nucleosynthesis. The radiative correction turns out to play a crucial role in our analysis which raises the mass of supersymmetry breaking field to intermediate scale. We pay a particular attention to the non-thermal production of gravitinos using the non-minimal Kahler potential we obtained from loop correction. This non-thermal gravitino production however is diminished because of the relatively small scale of inflaton mass and small amplitudes of hidden sector fields.Comment: 10 pages, revtex, 1 eps figure, references added, conclusion section expande

Bottom-Tau Unification in SUSY SU(5) GUT and Constraints from b to s gamma and Muon g-2

An analysis is made on bottom-tau Yukawa unification in supersymmetric (SUSY) SU(5) grand unified theory (GUT) in the framework of minimal supergravity, in which the parameter space is restricted by some experimental constraints including Br(b to s gamma) and muon g-2. The bottom-tau unification can be accommodated to the measured branching ratio Br(b to s gamma) if superparticle masses are relatively heavy and higgsino mass parameter \mu is negative. On the other hand, if we take the latest muon g-2 data to require positive SUSY contributions, then wrong-sign threshold corrections at SUSY scale upset the Yukawa unification with more than 20 percent discrepancy. It has to be compensated by superheavy threshold corrections around the GUT scale, which constrains models of flavor in SUSY GUT. A pattern of the superparticle masses preferred by the three requirements is also commented.Comment: 21pages, 6figure

On the massless "just-so" solution to the solar neutrino problem

We study the effect of the non-resonant, vacuum oscillation-like neutrino flavor conversion induced by non-standard flavor changing and non-universal flavor diagonal neutrino interactions with electrons in the sun. We have found an acceptable fit for the combined analysis for the solar experiments total rates, the Super-Kamiokande (SK) energy spectrum and zenith angle dependence. Phenomenological constraints on non-standard flavor changing and non-universal flavor diagonal neutrino interactions are considered.Comment: 4 pages, Latex, uses eps

Search for solar Kaluza-Klein axions in theories of low-scale quantum gravity

We explore the physics potential of a terrestrial detector for observing axionic Kaluza-Klein excitations coming from the Sun within the context of higher-dimensional theories of low-scale quantum gravity. In these theories, the heavier Kaluza-Klein axions are relatively short-lived and may be detected by a coincidental triggering of their two-photon decay mode. Because of the expected high multiplicity of the solar axionic excitations, we find experimental sensitivity to a fundamental Peccei-Quinn axion mass up to $10^{-2}$ eV (corresponding to an effective axion-photon coupling $g_{a\gamma \gamma} \approx 2.\times 10^{-12}$ GeV$^{-1}$) in theories with 2 extra dimensions and a fundamental quantum-gravity scale $M_{\rm F}$ of order 100 TeV, and up to $3.\times 10^{-3}$ eV (corresponding to $g_{a\gamma \gamma} \approx 6.\times 10^{-13}$ GeV$^{-1}$) in theories with 3 extra dimensions and $M_{\rm F}=1$ TeV. For comparison, based on recent data obtained from lowest level underground experiments, we derive the experimental limits: $g_{a \gamma \gamma} \stackrel{<}{{}_\sim} 2.5\times 10^{-11}$ GeV$^{-1}$ and $g_{a \gamma \gamma} \stackrel{<}{{}_\sim} 1.2\times 10^{-11}$ GeV$^{-1}$ in the aforementioned theories with 2 and 3 large compact dimensions, respectively.Comment: 19 pages, extended version, as to appear in Physical Review