Shape of Deconstruction

We construct a six-dimensional Maxwell theory using a latticized extra space, the continuum limit of which is a shifted torus recently discussed by Dienes. This toy model exhibits the correspondence between continuum theory and discrete theory, and give a geometrical insight to theory-space model building.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, RevTeX4. a citation adde

A monolithic MQW InP-InGaAsP-Based optical comb generator

We report the first demonstration of a monolithic optical-frequency comb generator. The device is based on multi-section quaternary/quaternary eight-quantum-well InP-InGaAsP material in a frequency-modulated (FM) laser design. The modulation is generated using quantum-confined Stark-effect phase-induced refractive index modulation to achieve fast modulation up to 24.4 GHz. The laser was fabricated using a single epitaxial growth step and quantum-well intermixing to realize low-loss phase adjustment and modulation sections. The output was quasicontinuous wave with intensity modulation at less than 20% for a total output power of 2 mW. The linewidth of each line was limited by the linewidth of the free running laser at an optimum of 25 MHz full-width at half-maximum. The comb generator produces a number of lines with a spacing exactly equal to the modulation frequency (or a multiple of it), differential phase noise between adjacent lines of -82 dBc/Hz at 1-kHz offset (modulation source-limited), and a potential comb spectrum width of up to 2 THz (15 nm), though the comb spectrum was not continuous across the full span

Study of the physicochemical quality of water in the Sebi-Ponty basin at Diamniadio (Senegal)

The Sebi-Ponty dam has a basin that is widely used by the population for agro-pastoral activities (animal watering, agriculture, etc.). This basin covers an average area of 106,000 m2 and an average depth of 7 m or about a volume of 435,000 m3. The origin of the water is rainfall (runoff and direct descent). The availability of water is estimated to eight months taking into account the water being drawn, infiltration and evaporation. A qualitative knowledge of the contents of this pool will be a great benefit to those activities of the population. Itrsquos in this context that this study was carried out by this group of researchers, following physic-chemical compositions were targeted: turbidity, color, temperature, conductivity, pH, hardness alkalinity, nitrite, iron, phosphate, boron, and chlorine concentrations. The physico-chemical results obtained on samples taken in the basin between October and December showed that the concentrations of boron, iron and nitrite exceeded the levels recommended by the standard for agro pastoral needs. While turbidity, color, temperature, conductivity, pH, hardness, alkalinity, phosphate and chlorine are at acceptable levels

What Precision Electroweak Physics Says About the SU(6)/Sp(6) Little Higgs

We study precision electroweak constraints on the close cousin of the Littlest Higgs, the SU(6)/Sp(6) model. We identify a near-oblique limit in which the heavy W' and B' decouple from the light fermions, and then calculate oblique corrections, including one-loop contributions from the extended top sector and the two Higgs doublets. We find regions of parameter space that give acceptably small precision electroweak corrections and only mild fine tuning in the Higgs potential, and also find that the mass of the lightest Higgs boson is relatively unconstrained by precision electroweak data. The fermions from the extended top sector can be as light as 1 TeV, and the W' can be as light as 1.8 TeV. We include an independent breaking scale for the B', which can still have a mass as low as a few hundred GeV.Comment: 52 pages, 16 figure

Little Hierarchy, Little Higgses, and a Little Symmetry

Little Higgs theories are an attempt to address the little hierarchy problem, i.e., the tension between the naturalness of the electroweak scale and the precision measurements showing no evidence for new physics up to 5-10 TeV. In little Higgs theories, the Higgs mass-squareds are protected to the one-loop order from the quadratic divergence. This allows the cutoff to be raised up to \~10 TeV, beyond the scales probed by the precision data. However, strong constraints can still arise from the contributions of the new TeV scale particles and hence re-introduces the fine-tuning problem. In this paper we show that a new symmetry, denoted as T-parity, under which all heavy gauge bosons and scalar triplets are odd, can remove all the tree-level contributions to the electroweak observables and therefore makes the little Higgs theories completely natural. The T-parity can be manifestly implemented in a majority of little Higgs models by following the most general construction of the low energy effective theory a la Callan, Coleman, Wess and Zumino. In particular, we discuss in detail how to implement the T-parity in the littlest Higgs model based on SU(5)/SO(5). The symmetry breaking scale f can be even lower than 500 GeV if the contributions from the unknown UV physics at the cutoff are somewhat small. The existence of $T$-parity has drastic impacts on the phenomenology of the little Higgs theories. The T-odd particles need to be pair-produced and will cascade down to the lightest T-odd particle (LTP) which is stable. A neutral LTP gives rise to missing energy signals at the colliders which can mimic supersymmetry. It can also serve as a good dark matter candidate.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures, RevTeX; v2: Yukawa sector in the SU(5)/SO(5) model slightly modified. Also added comments on the Dirac mass term for the fermionic doublet partner; v3: clarifying comments on the modified Yukawa sector. version to appear on JHE

Influences of naturally occurring agents in combination with fluoride on gene expression and structural organization of Streptococcus mutans in biofilms

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The association of specific bioactive flavonoids and terpenoids with fluoride can modulate the development of cariogenic biofilms by simultaneously affecting the synthesis of exopolysaccharides (EPS) and acid production by <it>Streptococcus mutans</it>, which enhanced the cariostatic effectiveness of fluoride <it>in vivo</it>. In the present study, we further investigated whether the biological actions of combinations of myricetin (flavonoid), <it>tt</it>-farnesol (terpenoid) and fluoride can influence the expression of specific genes of <it>S. mutans </it>within biofilms and their structural organization using real-time PCR and confocal fluorescence microscopy.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Twice-daily treatment (one-minute exposure) during biofilm formation affected the gene expression by <it>S. mutans </it>both at early (49-h) and later (97-h) stages of biofilm development. Biofilms treated with combination of agents displayed lower mRNA levels for <it>gtfB </it>and <it>gtfD </it>(associated with exopolysaccharides synthesis) and <it>aguD </it>(associated with <it>S. mutans </it>acid tolerance) than those treated with vehicle-control (<it>p </it>< 0.05). Furthermore, treatment with combination of agents markedly affected the structure-architecture of <it>S. mutans </it>biofilms by reducing the biovolume (biomass) and proportions of both EPS and bacterial cells across the biofilm depth, especially in the middle and outer layers (vs. vehicle-control, <it>p </it>< 0.05). The biofilms treated with combination of agents were also less acidogenic, and had reduced amounts of extracellular insoluble glucans and intracellular polysaccharides than vehicle-treated biofilms (<it>p </it>< 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The data show that the combination of naturally-occurring agents with fluoride effectively disrupted the expression of specific virulence genes, structural organization and accumulation of <it>S. mutans </it>biofilms, which may explain the enhanced cariostatic effect of our chemotherapeutic approach.</p

New massive supergravity multiplets

We present new off-shell formulations for the massive superspin-3/2 multiplet. In the massless limit, they reduce respectively to the old minimal (n=-1/3) and non-minimal ($n\neq -1/3, 0$) linearized formulations for 4D N=1 supergravity. Duality transformations, which relate the models constructed, are derived.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX; v2: minor changes, references adde

Development of solar fuels photoanodes through combinatorial integration of Ni–La–Co–Ce oxide catalysts on BiVO_4

The development of an efficient photoanode remains the primary materials challenge in the establishment of a scalable technology for solar water splitting. The typical photoanode architecture consists of a semiconductor light absorber coated with a metal oxide that serves a combination of functions, including corrosion protection, electrocatalysis, light trapping, hole transport, and elimination of deleterious recombination sites. To date, such coatings have been mostly limited to simple materials such as TiO_2 and Co-Pi, with extensive experimental and theoretical effort required to provide an understanding of the physics and chemistry of the semiconductor-coating interface. To provide a more efficient exploration of metal oxide coatings for a given light absorber, we introduce a high throughput methodology wherein a uniform BiVO_4 thin film is coated with 858 unique metal oxides covering a range of metal oxide loadings and the full Ni–La–Co–Ce oxide quaternary composition space. Photoelectrochemical characterization of each photoanode reveals that approximately one third of the coatings lower the photoanode performance while select combinations of metal oxide composition and loading provide up to a 14-fold increase in the maximum photoelectrochemical power generation for oxygen evolution in pH 13 electrolyte. Particular Ce-rich coatings also exhibit an anti-reflection effect that further amplifies the performance, yielding a 20-fold enhancement in power conversion efficiency compared to bare BiVO4. By use of in situ optical spectroscopy and comparisons between the metal oxide coatings and their extrinsic optical and electrocatalytic properties, we present a suite of data-driven discoveries, including composition regions which form optimal interfaces with BiVO4 and photoanodes that are suitable for integration with a photocathode due to their excellent power conversion and solar transmission efficiencies. The high throughput experimentation and informatics provides a powerful platform for both identifying the pertinent interfaces for further study and discovering high performance photoanodes for incorporation into efficient water splitting devices

The Littlest Higgs in Anti-de Sitter Space

We implement the SU(5)/SO(5) littlest Higgs theory in a slice of 5D Anti-de Sitter space bounded by a UV brane and an IR brane. In this model, there is a bulk SU(5) gauge symmetry that is broken to SO(5) on the IR brane, and the Higgs boson is contained in the Goldstones from this breaking. All of the interactions on the IR brane preserve the global symmetries that protect the Higgs mass, but a radiative potential is generated through loops that stretch to the UV brane where there are explicit SU(5) violating boundary conditions. Like the original littlest Higgs, this model exhibits collective breaking in that two interactions must be turned on in order to generate a Higgs potential. In AdS space, however, collective breaking does not appear in coupling constants directly but rather in the choice of UV brane boundary conditions. We match this AdS construction to the known low energy structure of the littlest Higgs and comment on some of the tensions inherent in the AdS construction. We calculate the 5D Coleman-Weinberg effective potential for the Higgs and find that collective breaking is manifest. In a simplified model with only the SU(2) gauge structure and the top quark, the physical Higgs mass can be of order 200 GeV with no considerable fine tuning (25%). We sketch a more realistic model involving the entire gauge and fermion structure that also implements T-parity, and we comment on the tension between T-parity and flavor structure.Comment: 42 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables; v2: minor rewording, JHEP format; v3: to match JHEP versio