Meeting Report: Pharmaceuticals in Water—An Interdisciplinary Approach to a Public Health Challenge

BackgroundThe presence of pharmaceuticals in aquatic environments and in drinking water has prompted significant public interest regarding potential adverse ecological effects and risks to human health.ObjectivesThe Environmental Health Summit held in North Carolina, 10–11 November 2008, explored the issues associated with the presence and relative risk of trace levels of pharmaceuticals in water. More than 150 participants from government organizations and institutions, academia, industry, water utilities, and public interest groups participated in discussions aimed at evaluating the current knowledge on this issue and at identifying research gaps and innovative solution-oriented recommendations.DiscussionWe present different aspects related to the subject that were discussed at the summit, including the source, fate, and transport of pharmaceuticals, their exposure effects and potential risks to human and ecosystems, and the best management practices to address these issues. Recommendations placed emphasis on research needs as well as education, communication, prevention, and intervention programs, and other public health solutions and actions.ConclusionsDespite rising concerns about the presence of trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, little evidence is currently available that associates these chemicals with adverse human health risks. In order to prioritize which pharmaceutical chemicals could potentially pose the highest risk to consumers and the environment, the summit participants concluded that more studies are needed to generate meaningful and accurate data

Palatini Variational Principle for NN-Dimensional Dilaton Gravity

We consider a Palatini variation on a general $N$-Dimensional second order, torsion-free dilaton gravity action and determine the resulting equations of motion. Consistency is checked by considering the restraint imposed due to invariance of the matter action under simple coordinate transformations, and the special case of N=2 is examined. We also examine a sub-class of theories whereby a Palatini variation dynamically coincides with that of the "ordinary" Hilbert variational principle; in particular we examine a generalized Brans-Dicke theory and the associated role of conformal transformations.Comment: 16 pages, LaTe

Extension of the Chiral Perturbation Theory Meson Lagrangian to Order P6P^6

We have derived the most general chirally invariant Lagrangian ${\cal L}_6$ for the meson sector at order $p^6$. The result provides an extension of the standard Gasser-Leutwyler Lagrangian ${\cal L}_4$ to one higher order, including as well all the odd intrinsic parity terms in the Lagrangian. The most difficult part of the derivation was developing a systematic strategy so as to get all of the independent terms and eliminate the redundant ones in an efficient way. The 'equation of motion' terms, which are redundant in the sense that they can be transformed away via field transformations, are separated out explicitly. The resulting Lagrangian has been separated into groupings of terms contributing to increasingly more complicated processes, so that one does not have to deal with the full result when calculating $p^6$ contributions to simple processes.Comment: 59 pages in LaTex, using RevTex macro, TRIUMF preprint TRI-PP-94-6

The structure of electroweak corrections due to extended gauge symmetries

This paper studies models with extended electroweak gauge sectors of the form SU(2) x SU(2) x U(1) x [SU(2) or U(1)]. We establish the general behavior of corrections to precision electroweak observables in this class of theories and connect our results to previous work on specific models whose electroweak sectors are special cases of our extended group.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures; added a referenc

Gauge Field Back-reaction on a Black Hole

The order $\hbar$ fluctuations of gauge fields in the vicinity of a blackhole can create a repulsive antigravity region extending out beyond the renormalized Schwarzschild horizon. If the strength of this repulsive force increases as higher orders in the back-reaction are included, the formation of a wormhole-like object could occur.Comment: 17 pages, three figures available on request, in RevTe

Rejection of disinfection by-products by RO and NF membranes: influence of solute properties and operational parameters

The objective of this study was to determine the influence of solute properties and operational parameters on disinfection by-product (DBP) rejection by reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes. This was achieved by assessing the removal efficiency for 29 DBPs likely to be formed during disinfection of secondary effluents. The DBPs investigated were trihalomethanes, iodinated-trihalomethanes, haloacetonitriles, chloral hydrate, haloketones, halonitromethanes and haloacetamides.The performance of a NF and a low pressure RO membrane was investigated within a range of different pHs, temperatures, transmembrane fluxes, crossflow velocities and ionic strengths. Rejection decreased significantly with increasing temperature and decreasing transmembrane flux, while the influence of the other operational parameters was minimal with a few exceptions detailed in the manuscript.Multiple linear regression was used to determine the physico-chemical solute properties contributing significantly to DBP rejection. For NF, geometric parameters were revealed to be the dominant molecular descriptors influencing rejection, whereas for RO, besides size exclusion, solute-membrane interaction played an important role. A predictive model based on multiple linear regression was established that could forecast rejection of DBPs as a function of membrane operation parameters and DBP properties

Present status and future prospects for a Higgs boson discovery at the Tevatron and LHC

Discovering the Higgs boson is one of the primary goals of both the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The present status of the Higgs search is reviewed and future prospects for discovery at the Tevatron and LHC are considered. This talk focuses primarily on the Higgs boson of the Standard Model and its minimal supersymmetric extension. Theoretical expectations for the Higgs boson and its phenomenological consequences are reviewed.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, jpconf documentclass file, invited talk at PASCOS 2010, the 16th International Symposium on Particles, Strings and Cosmology, Valencia, Spain, 19--23 July 201

Gravitational vacuum polarization IV: Energy conditions in the Unruh vacuum

Building on a series of earlier papers [gr-qc/9604007, gr-qc/9604008, gr-qc/9604009], I investigate the various point-wise and averaged energy conditions in the Unruh vacuum. I consider the quantum stress-energy tensor corresponding to a conformally coupled massless scalar field, work in the test-field limit, restrict attention to the Schwarzschild geometry, and invoke a mixture of analytical and numerical techniques. I construct a semi-analytic model for the stress-energy tensor that globally reproduces all known numerical results to within 0.8%, and satisfies all known analytic features of the stress-energy tensor. I show that in the Unruh vacuum (1) all standard point-wise energy conditions are violated throughout the exterior region--all the way from spatial infinity down to the event horizon, and (2) the averaged null energy condition is violated on all outgoing radial null geodesics. In a pair of appendices I indicate general strategy for constructing semi-analytic models for the stress-energy tensor in the Hartle-Hawking and Boulware states, and show that the Page approximation is in a certain sense the minimal ansatz compatible with general properties of the stress-energy in the Hartle-Hawking state.Comment: 40 pages; plain LaTeX; uses epsf.sty (ten encapsulated postscript figures); two tables (table and tabular environments). Should successfully compile under both LaTeX 209 and the 209 compatibility mode of LaTeX2

Information-theoretic postulates for quantum theory

Why are the laws of physics formulated in terms of complex Hilbert spaces? Are there natural and consistent modifications of quantum theory that could be tested experimentally? This book chapter gives a self-contained and accessible summary of our paper [New J. Phys. 13, 063001, 2011] addressing these questions, presenting the main ideas, but dropping many technical details. We show that the formalism of quantum theory can be reconstructed from four natural postulates, which do not refer to the mathematical formalism, but only to the information-theoretic content of the physical theory. Our starting point is to assume that there exist physical events (such as measurement outcomes) that happen probabilistically, yielding the mathematical framework of "convex state spaces". Then, quantum theory can be reconstructed by assuming that (i) global states are determined by correlations between local measurements, (ii) systems that carry the same amount of information have equivalent state spaces, (iii) reversible time evolution can map every pure state to every other, and (iv) positivity of probabilities is the only restriction on the possible measurements.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. v3: some typos corrected and references updated. Summarizes the argumentation and results of arXiv:1004.1483. Contribution to the book "Quantum Theory: Informational Foundations and Foils", Springer Verlag (http://www.springer.com/us/book/9789401773027), 201

A Topcolor Jungle Gym

We discuss an alternative to the topcolor seesaw mechanism. In our scheme, all the light quarks carry topcolor, and there are many composite SU(2) doublets. This makes it possible to get the observed top quark mass and observed $SU(2) \times U(1)$ breaking in a way that is quite different from the classic seesaw mechanism. We discuss a model of this kind that arises naturally in the context of dynamically broken topcolor. There are many composite scalars in a theory of this kind. This has important effects on the Pagels-Stokar relation and the Higgs mass. We find $m_{\rm Higgs} < 330$ GeV, lighter than in typical topcolor models. We also show that the electroweak singlet quarks in such a model can be lighter than the corresponding quarks in a seesaw model.Comment: 23 pages, LaTeX, uses epsf and psfi