1,144 research outputs found
Long Lived Fourth Generation and the Higgs
A chiral fourth generation is a simple and well motivated extension of the
standard model, and has important consequences for Higgs phenomenology. Here we
consider a scenario where the fourth generation neutrinos are long lived and
have both a Dirac and Majorana mass term. Such neutrinos can be as light as 40
GeV and can be the dominant decay mode of the Higgs boson for Higgs masses
below the W-boson threshold. We study the effect of the Majorana mass term on
the Higgs branching fractions and reevaluate the Tevatron constraints on the
Higgs mass. We discuss the prospects for the LHC to detect the semi-invisible
Higgs decays into fourth generation neutrino pairs. Under the assumption that
the lightest fourth generation neutrino is stable, it's thermal relic density
can be up to 20% of the observed dark matter density in the universe. This is
in agreement with current constraints on the spin dependent neutrino-neutron
cross section, but can be probed by the next generation of dark matter direct
detection experiments.Comment: v1: 19 pages, 5 figures; v2: References added; v3: version to appear
in JHE
Higgs production in CP-violating supersymmetric cascade decays: probing the `open hole' at the Large Hadron Collider
A benchmark CP-violating supersymmetric scenario (known as 'CPX-scenario' in
the literature) is studied in the context of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
It is shown that the LHC, with low to moderate accumulated luminosity, will be
able to probe the existing `hole' in the - plane, which
cannot be ruled out by the LEP data. We explore the parameter space with
cascade decay of third generation squarks and gluino with CP-violating decay
branching fractions. We propose a multi-channel analysis to probe this
parameter space some of which are background free at an integrated luminosity
of 5-10 fb. Specially, multi-lepton final states (3\l,\, 4\l and like
sign di-lepton) are almost background free and have reach for the
corresponding signals with very early data of LHC for both 14 TeV and 7 TeV
center of mass energy.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, references added as in the journal versio
Excess Higgs Production in Neutralino Decays
The ATLAS and CMS experiments have recently claimed discovery of a Higgs
boson-like particle at ~5 sigma confidence and are beginning to test the
Standard Model predictions for its production and decay. In a variety of
supersymmetric models, a neutralino NLSP can decay dominantly to the Higgs and
the LSP. In natural SUSY models, a light third generation squark decaying
through this chain can lead to large excess Higgs production while evading
existing BSM searches. Such models can be observed at the 8 TeV LHC in channels
exploiting the rare diphoton decays of the Higgs produced in the cascade decay.
Identifying a diphoton resonance in association with missing energy, a lepton,
or b-tagged jets is a promising search strategy for discovery of these models,
and would immediately signal new physics involving production of a Higgs boson.
We also discuss the possibility that excess Higgs production in these SUSY
decays can be responsible for enhancements of up to 50% over the SM prediction
for the observed rate in the existing inclusive diphoton searches, a scenario
which would likely by the end of the 8 TeV run be accompanied by excesses in
the diphoton + lepton/MET and SUSY multi-lepton/b searches and a potential
discovery in a diphoton + 2b search.Comment: 42 pages, 19 figure
NF-kappaB Mediated Transcriptional Repression of Acid Modifying Hormone Gastrin
Helicobacter pylori is a major pathogen associated with the development of gastroduodenal diseases. It has been
reported that H. pylori induced pro-inflammatory cytokine IL1B is one of the various modulators of acid secretion in
the gut. Earlier we reported that IL1B-activated NFkB down-regulates gastrin, the major hormonal regulator of acid
secretion. In this study, the probable pathway by which IL1B induces NFkB and affects gastrin expression has been
elucidated. IL1B-treated AGS cells showed nine-fold activation of MyD88 followed by phosphorylation of TAK1 within
15 min of IL1B treatment. Furthermore, it was observed that activated TAK1 significantly up-regulates the NFkB
subunits p50 and p65. Ectopic expression of NFkB p65 in AGS cells resulted in about nine-fold transcriptional
repression of gastrin both in the presence and absence of IL1B. The S536A mutant of NFkB p65 is significantly less
effective in repressing gastrin. These observations show that a functional NFkB p65 is important for IL1B-mediated
repression of gastrin. ChIP assays revealed the presence of HDAC1 and NFkB p65 along with NCoR on the gastrin
promoter. Thus, the study provides mechanistic insight into the IL1B-mediated gastrin repression via NFk
A fourth generation, anomalous like-sign dimuon charge asymmetry and the LHC
A fourth chiral generation, with in the range GeV and a moderate value of the CP-violating phase can explain the
anomalous like-sign dimuon charge asymmetry observed recently by the D0
collaboration. The required parameters are found to be consistent with
constraints from other and decays. The presence of such quarks, apart
from being detectable in the early stages of the LHC, would also have important
consequences in the electroweak symmetry breaking sector.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, Figure 1 is modified, more discussions are added
in section 2. new references adde
Bcl-2 protein family: Implications in vascular apoptosis and atherosclerosis
Apoptosis has been recognized as a central component in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, in addition to the other human pathologies such as cancer and diabetes. The pathophysiology of atherosclerosis is complex, involving both apoptosis and proliferation at different phases of its progression. Oxidative modification of lipids and inflammation differentially regulate the apoptotic and proliferative responses of vascular cells during progression of the atherosclerotic lesion. Bcl-2 proteins act as the major regulators of extrinsic and intrinsic apoptosis signalling pathways and more recently it has become evident that they mediate the apoptotic response of vascular cells in response to oxidation and inflammation either in a provocative or an inhibitory mode of action. Here we address Bcl-2 proteins as major therapeutic targets for the treatment of atherosclerosis and underscore the need for the novel preventive and therapeutic interventions against atherosclerosis, which should be designed in the light of molecular mechanisms regulating apoptosis of vascular cells in atherosclerotic lesions
Local Network Topology in Human Protein Interaction Data Predicts Functional Association
The use of high-throughput techniques to generate large volumes of protein-protein interaction (PPI) data has increased the need for methods that systematically and automatically suggest functional relationships among proteins. In a yeast PPI network, previous work has shown that the local connection topology, particularly for two proteins sharing an unusually large number of neighbors, can predict functional association. In this study we improved the prediction scheme by developing a new algorithm and applied it on a human PPI network to make a genome-wide functional inference. We used the new algorithm to measure and reduce the influence of hub proteins on detecting function-associated protein pairs. We used the annotations of the Gene Ontology (GO) and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) as benchmarks to compare and evaluate the function relevance. The application of our algorithms to human PPI data yielded 4,233 significant functional associations among 1,754 proteins. Further functional comparisons between them allowed us to assign 466 KEGG pathway annotations to 274 proteins and 123 GO annotations to 114 proteins with estimated false discovery rates of <21% for KEGG and <30% for GO. We clustered 1,729 proteins by their functional associations and made functional inferences from detailed analysis on one subcluster highly enriched in the TGF-Ī² signaling pathway (P<10ā50). Analysis of another four subclusters also suggested potential new players in six signaling pathways worthy of further experimental investigations. Our study gives clear insight into the common neighbor-based prediction scheme and provides a reliable method for large-scale functional annotation in this post-genomic era
Individual and neighborhood-level socioeconomic characteristics in relation to smoking prevalence among black and white adults in the Southeastern United States: a cross-sectional study
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Low individual-level socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with higher prevalence of cigarette smoking. Recent work has examined whether neighborhood-level SES may affect smoking behavior independently from individual-level measures. However, few comparisons of neighborhood-level effects on smoking by race and gender are available.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Cross-sectional data from adults age 40-79 enrolled in the Southern Community Cohort Study from 2002-2009 (19, 561 black males; 27, 412 black females; 6, 231 white males; 11, 756 white females) were used in Robust Poisson regression models to estimate prevalence ratios (PRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for current smoking in relation to individual-level SES characteristics obtained via interview and neighborhood-level SES characteristics represented by demographic measures from US Census block groups matched to participant home addresses.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Several neighborhood-level SES characteristics were modestly associated with increased smoking after adjustment for individual-level factors including lower percentage of adults with a college education and lower percentage of owner-occupied households among blacks but not whites; lower percentage of households with interest, dividends, or net rental income among white males; and lower percentage of employed adults among black females.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Lower neighborhood-level SES is associated with increased smoking suggesting that cessation programs may benefit from targeting higher-risk neighborhoods as well as individuals.</p
Spin-orbit qubit in a semiconductor nanowire
Motion of electrons can influence their spins through a fundamental effect
called spin-orbit interaction. This interaction provides a way to electrically
control spins and as such lies at the foundation of spintronics. Even at the
level of single electrons, spin-orbit interaction has proven promising for
coherent spin rotations. Here we report a spin-orbit quantum bit implemented in
an InAs nanowire, where spin-orbit interaction is so strong that spin and
motion can no longer be separated. In this regime we realize fast qubit
rotations and universal single qubit control using only electric fields. We
enhance coherence by dynamically decoupling the qubit from the environment. Our
qubits are individually addressable: they are hosted in single-electron quantum
dots, each of which has a different Land\'e g-factor. The demonstration of a
nanowire qubit opens ways to harness the advantages of nanowires for use in
quantum computing. Nanowires can serve as one-dimensional templates for
scalable qubit registers. Unique to nanowires is the possibility to easily vary
the material even during wire growth. Such flexibility can be used to design
wires with suppressed decoherence and push semiconductor qubit fidelities
towards error-correction levels. Furthermore, electrical dots can be integrated
with optical dots in p-n junction nanowires. The coherence times achieved here
are sufficient for the conversion of an electronic qubit into a photon, the
flying qubit, for long-distance quantum communication
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