Ionospheric electrons in Titan's tail: Plasma structure during the cassini T9 encounter

We present results from the CAPS electron spectrometer obtained during the downstream flyby of Titan on 26 December 2005, which occurred during a period of enhanced plasma pressure inside the magnetosphere. The electron data show an unusual split signature with two principal intervals of interest outside the nominal corotation wake. Interval 1 shows direct evidence for ionospheric plasma escape at several RT in Titan's tail. Interval 2 shows a complex plasma structure, a mix between plasma of ionospheric and magnetospheric origin. We suggest a mechanism for plasma escape based on ambipolar electric fields set up by suprathermal ionospheric photoelectrons

More than just ticking a box...how patient and public involvement improved the research design and funding application for a project to evaluate a cycling intervention for hip osteoarthritis

Background Involving patients and the public in research is an essential activity to ensure relevant, accessible, and appropriate research. There is increasing obligation from funding bodies on researchers to have well thought through plans for involving the public, and indeed it is often a condition for funding. Patient and public involvement activity in this project was conducted to inform a funding application to investigate the effectiveness of a cycling and education intervention in the treatment of hip osteoarthritis. Methods Six participants from a feasibility programme of the intervention attended a two-hour patient and public involvement consultation group to provide feedback on various aspects of the proposed research and intervention. During the consultation group, two independent facilitators followed a detailed plan formulated with the research team. Feedback was validated by the attendees via email following the consultation, and a report was issued to the research team. Further feedback on subsequent changes was sought via email and telephone with members of a Patient Advisory Group. Results The patient and public involvement consultation group provided invaluable feedback and suggestions which impacted on the design and quality of the research project and the intervention. Key changes to the intervention included extending the duration of the cycling programme from six to eight weeks, and inclusion of an exercise diary to promote adherence to the intervention. Key feedback regarding the design of the research and funding application included suggestions for methods of dissemination, and confirmation of the primary outcome measure. Conclusions Patient and public involvement was crucial to the design of the proposed research and intervention. It informed many aspects of the research design and made the funding application stronger as a result. Involving patients and the public in research is much more than an obligation, or ‘tick box’ exercise. It can change and improve research quality, which is crucial when answering questions that are meaningful and important to patients, and which leads to increased impact. Collaboration with patients and the public should be planned and reported from the conception of a research idea where the impact of such input can be considerable

Do topical repellents divert mosquitoes within a community? Health equity implications of topical repellents as a mosquito bite prevention tool.

OBJECTIVES: Repellents do not kill mosquitoes--they simply reduce human-vector contact. Thus it is possible that individuals who do not use repellents but dwell close to repellent users experience more bites than otherwise. The objective of this study was to measure if diversion occurs from households that use repellents to those that do not use repellents. METHODS: The study was performed in three Tanzanian villages using 15%-DEET and placebo lotions. All households were given LLINs. Three coverage scenarios were investigated: complete coverage (all households were given 15%-DEET), incomplete coverage (80% of households were given 15%-DEET and 20% placebo) and no coverage (all households were given placebo). A crossover study design was used and coverage scenarios were rotated weekly over a period of ten weeks. The placebo lotion was randomly allocated to households in the incomplete coverage scenario. The level of compliance was reported to be close to 100%. Mosquito densities were measured through aspiration of resting mosquitoes. Data were analysed using negative binomial regression models. FINDINGS: Repellent-users had consistently fewer mosquitoes in their dwellings. In villages where everybody had been given 15%-DEET, resting mosquito densities were fewer than half that of households in the no coverage scenario (Incidence Rate Ratio [IRR]=0.39 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.25-0.60); p<0.001). Placebo-users living in a village where 80% of the households used 15%-DEET were likely to have over four-times more mosquitoes (IRR=4.17; 95% CI: 3.08-5.65; p<0.001) resting in their dwellings in comparison to households in a village where nobody uses repellent. CONCLUSIONS: There is evidence that high coverage of repellent use could significantly reduce man-vector contact but with incomplete coverage evidence suggests that mosquitoes are diverted from households that use repellent to those that do not. Therefore, if repellents are to be considered for vector control, strategies to maximise coverage are required

Spontaneous Parity Violation in SUSY Strong Gauge Theory

We suggest simple models of spontaneous parity violation in supersymmetric strong gauge theory. We focus on left-right symmetric model and investigate vacuum with spontaneous parity violation. Non-perturbative effects are calculable in supersymmetric gauge theory, and we suggest two new models. The first model shows confinement, and the second model has a dual description of the theory. The left-right symmetry breaking and electroweak symmetry breaking are simultaneously occurred with the suitable energy scale hierarchy. The second model also induces spontaneous supersymmetry breaking.Comment: 14 page

Flavor in Minimal Conformal Technicolor

We construct a complete, realistic, and natural UV completion of minimal conformal technicolor that explains the origin of quark and lepton masses and mixing angles. As in "bosonic technicolor", we embed conformal technicolor in a supersymmetric theory, with supersymmetry broken at a high scale. The exchange of heavy scalar doublets generates higher-dimension interactions between technifermions and quarks and leptons that give rise to quark and lepton masses at the TeV scale. Obtaining a sufficiently large top quark mass requires strong dynamics at the supersymmetry breaking scale in both the top and technicolor sectors. This is natural if the theory above the supersymmetry breaking also has strong conformal dynamics. We present two models in which the strong top dynamics is realized in different ways. In both models, constraints from flavor-changing effects can be easily satisfied. The effective theory below the supersymmetry breaking scale is minimal conformal technicolor with an additional light technicolor gaugino. We argue that this light gaugino is a general consequence of conformal technicolor embedded into a supersymmetric theory. If the gaugino has mass below the TeV scale it will give rise to an additional pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson that is observable at the LHC.Comment: 37 pages; references adde

Minimal Conformal Technicolor and Precision Electroweak Tests

We study the minimal model of conformal technicolor, an SU(2) gauge theory near a strongly coupled conformal fixed point, with conformal symmetry softly broken by technifermion mass terms. Conformal symmetry breaking triggers chiral symmetry breaking in the pattern SU(4) -> Sp(4), which gives rise to a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson that can act as a composite Higgs boson. The top quark is elementary, and the top and electroweak gauge loop contributions to the Higgs mass are cut off entirely by Higgs compositeness. In particular, the model requires no top partners and no "little Higgs" mechanism. A nontrivial vacuum alignment results from the interplay of the top loop and technifermion mass terms. The composite Higgs mass is completely determined by the top loop, in the sense that m_h/m_t is independent of the vacuum alignment and is computable by a strong-coupling calculation. There is an additional composite pseudoscalar A with mass larger than m_h and suppressed direct production at LHC. We discuss the electroweak fit in this model in detail. Corrections to Z -> bb and the T parameter from the top sector are suppressed by the enhanced Sp(4) custodial symmetry. Even assuming that the strong contribution to the S parameter is positive and usuppressed, a good electroweak fit can be obtained for v/f ~ 0.25, where v and f are the electroweak and chiral symmetry breaking scales respectively. This requires fine tuning at the 10% level.Comment: 34 pages, 4 figures; v2: updated precision electroweak fi

Vectorlike Confinement at the LHC

We argue for the plausibility of a broad class of vectorlike confining gauge theories at the TeV scale which interact with the Standard Model predominantly via gauge interactions. These theories have a rich phenomenology at the LHC if confinement occurs at the TeV scale, while ensuring negligible impact on precision electroweak and flavor observables. Spin-1 bound states can be resonantly produced via their mixing with Standard Model gauge bosons. The resonances promptly decay to pseudo-Goldstone bosons, some of which promptly decay to a pair of Standard Model gauge bosons, while others are charged and stable on collider time scales. The diverse set of final states with little background include multiple photons and leptons, missing energy, massive stable charged particles and the possibility of highly displaced vertices in dilepton, leptoquark or diquark decays. Among others, a novel experimental signature of resonance reconstruction out of massive stable charged particles is highlighted. Some of the long-lived states also constitute Dark Matter candidates.Comment: 33 pages, 6 figures. v4: expanded discussion of Z_2 symmetry for stability, one reference adde

Universality, limits and predictability of gold-medal performances at the Olympic Games

Inspired by the Games held in ancient Greece, modern Olympics represent the world's largest pageant of athletic skill and competitive spirit. Performances of athletes at the Olympic Games mirror, since 1896, human potentialities in sports, and thus provide an optimal source of information for studying the evolution of sport achievements and predicting the limits that athletes can reach. Unfortunately, the models introduced so far for the description of athlete performances at the Olympics are either sophisticated or unrealistic, and more importantly, do not provide a unified theory for sport performances. Here, we address this issue by showing that relative performance improvements of medal winners at the Olympics are normally distributed, implying that the evolution of performance values can be described in good approximation as an exponential approach to an a priori unknown limiting performance value. This law holds for all specialties in athletics-including running, jumping, and throwing-and swimming. We present a self-consistent method, based on normality hypothesis testing, able to predict limiting performance values in all specialties. We further quantify the most likely years in which athletes will breach challenging performance walls in running, jumping, throwing, and swimming events, as well as the probability that new world records will be established at the next edition of the Olympic Games.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Supporting information files and data are available at filrad.homelinux.or

Disposition of Federally Owned Surpluses

PDZ domains are scaffolding modules in protein-protein interactions that mediate numerous physiological functions by interacting canonically with the C-terminus or non-canonically with an internal motif of protein ligands. A conserved carboxylate-binding site in the PDZ domain facilitates binding via backbone hydrogen bonds; however, little is known about the role of these hydrogen bonds due to experimental challenges with backbone mutations. Here we address this interaction by generating semisynthetic PDZ domains containing backbone amide-to-ester mutations and evaluating the importance of individual hydrogen bonds for ligand binding. We observe substantial and differential effects upon amide-to-ester mutation in PDZ2 of postsynaptic density protein 95 and other PDZ domains, suggesting that hydrogen bonding at the carboxylate-binding site contributes to both affinity and selectivity. In particular, the hydrogen-bonding pattern is surprisingly different between the non-canonical and canonical interaction. Our data provide a detailed understanding of the role of hydrogen bonds in protein-protein interactions

The Newcomb-Benford Law in Its Relation to Some Common Distributions

An often reported, but nevertheless persistently striking observation, formalized as the Newcomb-Benford law (NBL), is that the frequencies with which the leading digits of numbers occur in a large variety of data are far away from being uniform. Most spectacular seems to be the fact that in many data the leading digit 1 occurs in nearly one third of all cases. Explanations for this uneven distribution of the leading digits were, among others, scale- and base-invariance. Little attention, however, found the interrelation between the distribution of the significant digits and the distribution of the observed variable. It is shown here by simulation that long right-tailed distributions of a random variable are compatible with the NBL, and that for distributions of the ratio of two random variables the fit generally improves. Distributions not putting most mass on small values of the random variable (e.g. symmetric distributions) fail to fit. Hence, the validity of the NBL needs the predominance of small values and, when thinking of real-world data, a majority of small entities. Analyses of data on stock prices, the areas and numbers of inhabitants of countries, and the starting page numbers of papers from a bibliography sustain this conclusion. In all, these findings may help to understand the mechanisms behind the NBL and the conditions needed for its validity. That this law is not only of scientific interest per se, but that, in addition, it has also substantial implications can be seen from those fields where it was suggested to be put into practice. These fields reach from the detection of irregularities in data (e.g. economic fraud) to optimizing the architecture of computers regarding number representation, storage, and round-off errors