The changing face of kuru: a personal perspective

The epidemic of kuru is now known to have been transmitted among the Fore by ritual consumption of infected organs from deceased relatives. As cannibalism was suppressed by government patrol officers during the 1950s, most transmission had ceased by 1957, when the kuru research programme first commenced. As predicted in the 1960s, the epidemic has waned, with progressive ageing of kuru-affected cohorts over the years to 2007. The few cases seen in the twenty-first century, with the longest incubation periods, were almost certainly exposed as children prior to 1960. Although the research programme had almost no role in bringing the kuru epidemic to an end, it did provide important knowledge that was to help the wider world in controlling the later epidemics of iatrogenic and variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Relativistic wave equations for interacting massive particles with arbitrary half-intreger spins

New formulation of relativistic wave equations (RWE) for massive particles with arbitrary half-integer spins s interacting with external electromagnetic fields are proposed. They are based on wave functions which are irreducible tensors of rank $n ($n=s-\frac12$) antisymmetric w.r.t. n pairs of indices, whose components are bispinors. The form of RWE is straightforward and free of inconsistencies associated with the other approaches to equations describing interacting higher spin particles

Generalized Brans-Dicke cosmology in the presence of matter and dark energy

We study the Generalized Brans-Dicke cosmology in the presence of matter and dark energy. Of particular interest for a constant Brans-Dicke parameter, the de Sitter space has also been investigated.Comment: 9 page

Testing Broken U(1) Symmetry in a Two-Component Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensate

We present a scheme for determining if the quantum state of a small trapped Bose-Einstein condensate is a state with well defined number of atoms, a Fock state, or a state with a broken U(1) gauge symmetry, a coherent state. The proposal is based on the observation of Ramsey fringes. The population difference observed in a Ramsey fringe experiment will exhibit collapse and revivals due to the mean-field interactions. The collapse and revival times depend on the relative strength of the mean-field interactions for the two components and the initial quantum state of the condensate.Comment: 20 Pages RevTex, 3 Figure

Disappearing Dark Matter in Brane World Cosmology: New Limits on Noncompact Extra Dimensions

We explore cosmological implications of dark matter as massive particles trapped on a brane embedded in a Randall-Sundrum noncompact higher dimension $AdS_5$ space. It is an unavoidable consequence of this cosmology that massive particles are metastable and can disappear into the bulk dimension. Here, we show that a massive dark matter particle (e.g. the lightest supersymmetric particle) is likely to have the shortest lifetime for disappearing into the bulk. We examine cosmological constraints on this new paradigm and show that disappearing dark matter is consistent (at the 95% confidence level) with all cosmological constraints, i.e. present observations of Type Ia supernovae at the highest redshift, trends in the mass-to-light ratios of galaxy clusters with redshift, the fraction of X-ray emitting gas in rich clusters, and the spectrum of power fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. A best $2 \sigma$ concordance region is identified corresponding to a mean lifetime for dark matter disappearance of $15 \le \Gamma^{-1} \le 80$ Gyr. The implication of these results for brane-world physics is discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, new cosmological constraints added, accepted for publication in PR

Multiloop String-Like Formulas for QED

Multiloop gauge-theory amplitudes written in the Feynman-parameter representation are poised to take advantage of two important developments of the last decade: the spinor-helicity technique and the superstring reorganization. The former has been considered in a previous article; the latter will be elaborated in this paper. We show here how to write multiloop string-like formulas in the Feynman-parameter representation for any process in QED, including those involving other non-electromagnetic interactions. The general connection between the Feynman-parameter approach and the superstring/first-quantized approach is discussed. In the special case of a one-loop multi-photon amplitude, these formulas reduce to the ones obtained by the superstring and the first quantized methods. The string-like formulas exhibits a simple gauge structure which makes the Ward-Takahashi identity apparent, and enables the integration-by-parts technique of Bern and Kosower to be applied, so that gauge-invariant parts can be extracted diagram-by-diagram with the seagull vertex neglected.Comment: 25 pages in Plain Tex, plus four figures in a postscript file; McGill/92-5

De Novo Sequence and Copy Number Variants Are Strongly Associated with Tourette Disorder and Implicate Cell Polarity in Pathogenesis.

We previously established the contribution of de novo damaging sequence variants to Tourette disorder (TD) through whole-exome sequencing of 511 trios. Here, we sequence an additional 291 TD trios and analyze the combined set of 802 trios. We observe an overrepresentation of de novo damaging variants in simplex, but not multiplex, families; we identify a high-confidence TD risk gene, CELSR3 (cadherin EGF LAG seven-pass G-type receptor 3); we find that the genes mutated in TD patients are enriched for those related to cell polarity, suggesting a common pathway underlying pathobiology; and we confirm a statistically significant excess of de novo copy number variants in TD. Finally, we identify significant overlap of de novo sequence variants between TD and obsessive-compulsive disorder and de novo copy number variants between TD and autism spectrum disorder, consistent with shared genetic risk

Prospects for Constraining Cosmology with the Extragalactic Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature

Observers have demonstrated that it is now feasible to measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature at high redshifts. We explore the possible constraints on cosmology which might ultimately be derived from such measurements. Besides providing a consistency check on standard and alternative cosmologies, possibilities include: constraints on the inhomogeneity and anisotropy of the universe at intermediate redshift $z ^<_\sim 10$; an independent probe of peculiar motions with respect to the Hubble flow; and constraining the epoch of reionization. We argue that the best possibility is as a probe of peculiar motions. We show, however, that the current measurement uncertainty ($\Delta T= \pm 0.002$K) in the local present absolute CMB temperature imposes intrinsic limits on the use of such CMB temperature measurements as a cosmological probe. At best, anisotropies at intermediate redshift could only be constrained at a level of $^>_\sim 0.1$ and peculiar motions could only be determined to an uncertainty of $^>_\sim 311$ km s$^{-1}$. If the high $z$ CMB temperature can only be measured with a precision comparable to the uncertainty of the local interstellar CMB temperature, then peculiar motions could be determined to an uncertainty of $1101 (1+z)^{-1} [\Delta T_{CMB}(z)/0.01 K] km s^{-1}$.Comment: 8 pages 2 Figures, PRD Submitte

Observational Constraints on Dark Radiation in Brane Cosmology

We analyze the observational constraints on brane-world cosmology whereby the universe is described as a three-brane embedded in a five-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. In this brane-universe cosmology, the Friedmann equation is modified by the appearance of extra terms which derive from existence of the extra dimensions. In the present work we concentrate on the ``dark radiation'' term which diminishes with cosmic scale factor as $a^{-4}$. We show that, although the observational constraints from primordial abundances allow only a small contribution when this term is positive, a much wider range of negative values is allowed. Furthermore, such a negative contribution can reconcile the tension between the observed primordial \he4 and D abundances. We also discuss the possible constraints on this term from the power spectrum of CMB anisotropies in the limit of negligible cosmological perturbation on the brane world. We show that BBN limits the possible contribution from dark radiation just before the nucleosynthesis epoch to lie between -65% and $+5$ of the background photon energy density. Combining this with the CMB constraint reduces this range to between -24% and $+3.5$ at the $2\sigma$ confidence level.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PRD; this version includes the referee's suggestions, updated references, and an improved treatment of BBN model uncertaintie