Magnetorotational Instability in a Couette Flow of Plasma

All experiments, which have been proposed so far to model the magnetorotational instability (MRI) in the laboratory, involve a Couette flow of liquid metals in a rotating annulus. All liquid metals have small magnetic Prandtl numbers, Pm, of about 10^{-6} (the ratio of kinematic viscosity to magnetic diffusivity). With plasmas both large and small Pm are achievable by varying the temperature and the density of plasma. Compressibility and fast rotation of the plasma result in radial stratification of the equilibrium plasma density. Evolution of perturbations in radially stratified viscous and resistive plasma permeated by an axial uniform magnetic field is considered. The differential rotation of the plasma is induced by the ExB drift in applied radial electric field. Global unstable eigenmodes are calculated by our newly developed matrix code. The plasma is shown to be MRI unstable for parameters easily achievable in experimental setup.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures; to be published in the Proceedings of the 3d Workshop on Non-Neutral Plasmas, July 2003, Santa Fe, US

Flavor Symmetry Breaking and Vacuum Alignment on Orbifolds

Flavor symmetry has been widely studied for figuring out the masses and mixing angles of standard-model fermions. In this paper we present a framework for handling flavor symmetry breaking where the symmetry breaking is triggered by boundary conditions of scalar fields in extra-dimensional space. The alignment of scalar expectation values is achieved without referring to any details of scalar potential and its minimization procedure. As applications to non-abelian discrete flavor symmetries, illustrative lepton mass models are constructed where the S3 and A4 flavor symmetries are broken down to the directions leading to the tri-bimaximal form of lepton mixing and realistic mass patterns.Comment: 21 page

Bottom-Up Approach to Moduli Dynamics in Heavy Gravitino Scenario : Superpotential, Soft Terms and Sparticle Mass Spectrum

The physics of moduli fields is examined in the scenario where the gravitino is relatively heavy with mass of order 10 TeV, which is favored in view of the severe gravitino problem. The form of the moduli superpotential is shown to be determined, if one imposes a phenomenological requirement that no physical CP phase arise in gaugino masses from conformal anomaly mediation. This bottom-up approach allows only two types of superpotential, each of which can have its origins in a fundamental underlying theory such as superstring. One superpotential is the sum of an exponential and a constant, which is identical to that obtained by Kachru et al (KKLT), and the other is the racetrack superpotential with two exponentials. The general form of soft supersymmetry breaking masses is derived, and the pattern of the superparticle mass spectrum in the minimal supersymmetric standard model is discussed with the KKLT-type superpotential. It is shown that the moduli mediation and the anomaly mediation make comparable contributions to the soft masses. At the weak scale, the gaugino masses are rather degenerate compared to the minimal supergravity, which bring characteristic features on the superparticle masses. In particular, the lightest neutralino, which often constitutes the lightest superparticle and thus a dark matter candidate, is a considerable admixture of gauginos and higgsinos. We also find a small mass hierarchy among the moduli, gravitino, and superpartners of the standard-model fields. Cosmological implications of the scenario are briefly described.Comment: 45 pages, 10 figures, typos correcte

Principles of the Kenzan Method for Robotic Cell Spheroid-Based Three-Dimensional Bioprinting

Bioprinting is a technology with the prospect to change the way many diseases are treated, by replacing the damaged tissues with live de novo created biosimilar constructs. However, after more than a decade of incubation and many proofs of concept, the field is still in its infancy. The current stagnation is the consequence of its early success: the first bioprinters, and most of those that followed, were modified versions of the three-dimensional printers used in additive manufacturing, redesigned for layer-by-layer dispersion of biomaterials. In all variants (inkjet, microextrusion, or laser assisted), this approach is material (“scaffold”) dependent and energy intensive, making it hardly compatible with some of the intended biological applications. Instead, the future of bioprinting may benefit from the use of gentler scaffold-free bioassembling methods. A substantial body of evidence has accumulated, indicating this is possible by use of preformed cell spheroids, which have been assembled in cartilage, bone, and cardiac muscle-like constructs. However, a commercial instrument capable to directly and precisely “print” spheroids has not been available until the invention of the microneedles-based (“Kenzan”) spheroid assembling and the launching in Japan of a bioprinter based on this method. This robotic platform laces spheroids into predesigned contiguous structures with micron-level precision, using stainless steel microneedles (“kenzans”) as temporary support. These constructs are further cultivated until the spheroids fuse into cellular aggregates and synthesize their own extracellular matrix, thus attaining the needed structural organization and robustness. This novel technology opens wide opportunities for bioengineering of tissues and organs

Neutrino Oscillations in a Supersymmetric SO(10) Model with Type-III See-Saw Mechanism

The neutrino oscillations are studied in the framework of the minimal supersymmetric SO(10) model with Type-III see-saw mechanism by additionally introducing a number of SO(10) singlet neutrinos. The light Majorana neutrino mass matrix is given by a combination of those of the singlet neutrinos and the $SU(2)_L$ active neutrinos. The minimal SO(10) model gives an unambiguous Dirac neutrino mass matrix, which enables us to predict the masses and the other parameters for the singlet neutrinos. These predicted masses take the values accessible and testable by near future collider experiments under the reasonable assumptions. More comprehensive calculations on these parameters are also given.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures; the version to appear in JHE

Gauged Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with extra dimensions

We investigate phase structure of the D (> 4)-dimensional gauged Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model with $\delta(=D-4)$ extra dimensions compactified on TeV scale, based on the improved ladder Schwinger-Dyson (SD) equation in the bulk. We assume that the bulk running gauge coupling in the SD equation for the SU(N_c) gauge theory with N_f massless flavors is given by the truncated Kaluza-Klein effective theory and hence has a nontrivial ultraviolet fixed point (UVFP). We find the critical line in the parameter space of two couplings, the gauge coupling and the four-fermion coupling, which is similar to that of the gauged NJL model with fixed (walking) gauge coupling in four dimensions. It is shown that in the presence of such walking gauge interactions the four-fermion interactions become ``nontrivial'' even in higher dimensions, similarly to the four-dimensional gauged NJL model. Such a nontriviality holds only in the restricted region of the critical line (``nontrivial window'') with the gauge coupling larger than a non-vanishing value (``marginal triviality (MT)'' point), in contrast to the four-dimensional case where such a nontriviality holds for all regions of the critical line except for the pure NJL point. In the nontrivial window the renormalized effective potential yields a nontrivial interaction which is conformal invariant. The exisitence of the nontrivial window implies ``cutoff insensitivity'' of the physics prediction in spite of the ultraviolet dominance of the dynamics. In the formal limit D -> 4, the nontrivial window coincides with the known condition of the nontriviality of the four-dimensional gauged NJL model, $9/(2N_c) < N_f - N_c < 9/2 N_c$.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, references added, to appear in Phys.Rev.D. The title is changed in PR

Effects of Fipronil on Non-target Ants and Other Invertebrates in a Program for Eradication of the Argentine Ant, Linepithema humile

Pesticides are frequently used to eradicate invasive ant species, but pose ecological harm. Previous studies assessed non-target effects only in terms of the increase or decrease of abundance or species richness after pesticide applications. Positive effects of the release from pressure caused by invasive ant species have not been considered so far. To more accurately assess pesticide effects in the field, the non-target effects of pesticides should be considered separately from the positive effects of such releases. Here, we used monitoring data of ants and other invertebrates collected in a program for the eradication of the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile (Mayr), using fipronil. First, we separately assessed the effects of L. humile abundance and fipronil exposure on non-target ants and other invertebrates using generalized linear models. The abundance of L. humile and the number of pesticide treatments were negatively associated with the total number of non-target individuals and taxonomic richness. We also noted negative relationships between the number of individuals of some ant species and other invertebrate taxonomic groups. The L. humile × pesticide interaction was significant, suggesting that the abundance of L. humile affected the level of impact of pesticide treatment on non-target fauna. Second, we evaluated the dynamics of non-target ant communities for 3 years using principal response curve analyses. Non-target ant communities treated with fipronil continuously for 3 years recovered little, whereas those treated for 1 year recovered to the level of the untreated and non-invaded environment