Three form potential in (special) minimal supergravity superspace and supermembrane supercurrent

This contribution begins the study of the complete superfield Lagrangian description of the interacting system of D=4 N=1 supergravity (SUGRA) and supermembrane. Firstly, we review a 'three form supergravity' by Ovrut and Waldram, which we prefer to call 'special minimal supergravity'. This off-shell formulation of simple SUGRA is appropriate for our purposes as the supermembrane action contains the so-called Wess-Zumino term given by the integral over a three form potential in superspace, C3. We describe this formulation in the frame of Wess--Zumino superfield approach, showing how the basic variations of minimal SUGRA are restricted by the conditions of the existence of a three-form potential C3 in its superspace. In this language the effect of dynamical generation of cosmological constant, known to be characteristic for this formulation of SUGRA, appears in its superfield form, first described by Ogievetsky and Sokatchev in their formulation of SUGRA as a theory of axial vector superfield. Secondly, we vary the supermembrane action with respect to the special minimal SUGRA superfields (basic variations) and obtain the supercurrent superfields as well as the supergravity superfield equations with the supermembrane contributions.Comment: 18 pages, no figures. V2: Important references added. The abstract and presentation have been changed to reflect the overloop with that. Submitted to the QTS7 Proceedings. J. Phys. style use

Scattering from supramacromolecular structures

We study theoretically the scattering imprint of a number of branched supramacromolecular architectures, namely, polydisperse stars and dendrimeric, hyperbranched structures. We show that polydispersity and nature of branching highly influence the intermediate wavevector region of the scattering structure factor, thus providing insight into the morphology of different aggregates formed in polymer solutions.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures To appear in PR

Detecting new physics contributions to the D0-D0bar mixing through their effects on B decays

New physics effects may yield a detectable mass difference in the D0-D0bar system, Delta m_D. Here we show that this has an important impact on some B --> D decays. The effect involves a new source of CP violation, which arises from the interference between the phases in the B --> D decays and those in the D0-D0bar system. This interference is naturally large. New physics may well manifest itself through Delta m_D contributions to these B decays.Comment: 10 pages, Revtex, no figures. To appear in PR

Onset of dissipation in ballistic atomic wires

Electronic transport at finite voltages in free-standing gold atomic chains of up to 7 atoms in length is studied at low temperatures using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The conductance vs voltage curves show that transport in these single-mode ballistic atomic wires is non-dissipative up to a finite voltage threshold of the order of several mV. The onset of dissipation and resistance within the wire corresponds to the excitation of the atomic vibrations by the electrons traversing the wire and is very sensitive to strain.Comment: Revtex4, 4 pages, 3 fig

Compressible Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin-glass model

We introduce a Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin-glass model with the addition of elastic degrees of freedom. The problem is formulated in terms of an effective four-spin Hamiltonian in the pressure ensemble, which can be treated by the replica method. In the replica-symmetric approximation, we analyze the pressure-temperature phase diagram, and obtain expressions for the critical boundaries between the disordered and the ordered (spin-glass and ferromagnetic) phases. The second-order para-ferromagnetic border ends at a tricritical point, beyond which the transition becomes discontinuous. We use these results to make contact with the temperature-concentration phase diagrams of mixtures of hydrogen-bonded crystals.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures; added references, added conten

On the Papapetrou field in vacuum

In this paper we study the electromagnetic fields generated by a Killing vector field in vacuum space-times (Papapetrou fields). The motivation of this work is to provide new tools for the resolution of Maxwell's equations as well as for the search, characterization, and study of exact solutions of Einstein's equations. The first part of this paper is devoted to an algebraic study in which we give an explicit and covariant procedure to construct the principal null directions of a Papapetrou field. In the second part, we focus on the main differential properties of the principal directions, studying when they are geodesic, and in that case we compute their associated optical scalars. With this information we get the conditions that a principal direction of the Papapetrou field must satisfy in order to be aligned with a multiple principal direction of the Weyl tensor in the case of algebraically special vacuum space-times. Finally, we illustrate this study using the Kerr, Kasner and pp waves space-times.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX2e, IOP style. To appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Geologia e património geológico dos Parques Naturais de Montesinho e do Douro Internacional (Nordeste de Portugal) : resultados de um projecto de investigação

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

Ulocuplumab (BMS-936564 / MDX1338): a fully human anti-CXCR4 antibody induces cell death in chronic lymphocytic leukemia mediated through a reactive oxygen species-dependent pathway.

The CXCR4 receptor (Chemokine C-X-C motif receptor 4) is highly expressed in different hematological malignancies including chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). The CXCR4 ligand (CXCL12) stimulates CXCR4 promoting cell survival and proliferation, and may contribute to the tropism of leukemia cells towards lymphoid tissues. Therefore, strategies targeting CXCR4 may constitute an effective therapeutic approach for CLL. To address that question, we studied the effect of Ulocuplumab (BMS-936564), a fully human IgG4 anti-CXCR4 antibody, using a stroma--CLL cells co-culture model. We found that Ulocuplumab (BMS-936564) inhibited CXCL12 mediated CXCR4 activation-migration of CLL cells at nanomolar concentrations. This effect was comparable to AMD3100 (Plerixafor--Mozobil), a small molecule CXCR4 inhibitor. However, Ulocuplumab (BMS-936564) but not AMD3100 induced apoptosis in CLL at nanomolar concentrations in the presence or absence of stromal cell support. This pro-apoptotic effect was independent of CLL high-risk prognostic markers, was associated with production of reactive oxygen species and did not require caspase activation. Overall, these findings are evidence that Ulocuplumab (BMS-936564) has biological activity in CLL, highlight the relevance of the CXCR4-CXCL12 pathway as a therapeutic target in CLL, and provide biological rationale for ongoing clinical trials in CLL and other hematological malignancies

Exotic particles below the TeV from low scale flavour theories

A flavour gauge theory is observable only if the symmetry is broken at relatively low energies. The intrinsic parity-violation of the fermion representations in a flavour theory describing quark, lepton and higgsino masses and mixings generically requires anomaly cancellation by new fermions. Benchmark supersymmetric flavour models are built and studied to argue that: i) the flavour symmetry breaking should be about three orders of magnitude above the higgsino mass, enough also to efficiently suppress FCNC and CP violations coming from higher-dimensional operators; ii) new fermions with exotic decays into lighter particles are typically required at scales of the order of the higgsino mass.Comment: 19 pages, references added, one comment and one footnote added, results unchange

Constraints for the nuclear parton distributions from Z and W production at the LHC

The LHC is foreseen to finally bring also the nuclear collisions to the TeV scale thereby providing new possibilities for physics studies, in particular related to the electro-weak sector of the Standard Model. We study here the Z and W production in proton-lead and lead-lead collisions at the LHC, concentrating on the prospects of testing the factorization and constraining the nuclear modifications of the parton distribution functions (PDFs). Especially, we find that the rapidity asymmetries in proton-nucleus collisions, arising from the differences in the PDFs between the colliding objects, provide a decisive advantage in comparison to the rapidity-symmetric nucleus-nucleus case. We comment on how such studies will help to improve our knowledge of the nuclear PDFs.Comment: The version accepted for publication in JHEP. New figures has been added, and we also discuss the single charged lepton productio