New Results on Non-Abelian Vortices - further insights into monopole, vortex and confinement

We discuss some of the latest results concerning the non-Abelian vortices. The first concerns the construction of non-Abelian BPS vortices based on general gauge groups of the form G= G' x U(1). In particular detailed results about the vortex moduli space have been obtained for G'=SO(N) or USp(2N). The second result is about the "fractional vortices", i.e., vortices of the minimum winding but having substructures in the tension (or flux) density in the transverse plane. Thirdly, we discuss briefly the monopole-vortex complex.Comment: Latex 20 page

Metamemory in a familiar place: the effects of environmental context on feeling of knowing

Feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments are judgments of future recognizability of currently inaccessible information. They are known to depend both on the access to partial information about a target of retrieval and on the familiarity of the cue that is used as a memory probe. In the present study we assessed whether FOK judgments could also be shaped by incidental environmental context in which these judgments are made. To this end, we investigated 2 phenomena previously documented in studies on recognition memory—a context familiarity effect and a context reinstatement effect—in the procedure used to investigate FOK judgments. In 2 experiments, we found that FOK judgments increase in the presence of a familiar environmental context. The results of both experiments further revealed still higher FOK judgments when made in the presence of environmental context matching the encoding context of both cue and its associated target. The effect of context familiarity on FOK judgment was paralleled by an effect on the latencies of an unsuccessful memory search, but the effect of context reinstatement was not. Importantly, the elevated feeling of knowing in reinstated and familiar contexts was not accompanied by an increase in the accuracy of those judgments. Together, these results demonstrate that metacognitive processes are shaped by the overall volume of memory information accessed at retrieval, independently of whether this memory information is related to a cue, a target, or a context in which remembering takes place

Racemic crystal structures of A-DNA duplexes

The ease with which racemic mixtures crystallize compared with the equivalent chiral systems is routinely taken advantage of to produce crystals of small molecules. However, biological macromolecules such as DNA and proteins are naturally chiral, and thus the limited range of chiral space groups available hampers the crystallization of such molecules. Inspiring work over the past 15 years has shown that racemic mixtures of proteins, which were made possible by impressive advances in protein chemical synthesis, can indeed improve the success rate of protein crystallization experiments. More recently, the racemic crystallization approach was extended to include nucleic acids as a possible aid in the determination of enantiopure DNA crystal structures. Here, findings are reported that suggest that the benefits may extend beyond this. Two racemic crystal structures of the DNA sequence d(CCCGGG) are described which were found to fold into A-form DNA. This form differs from the Z-form DNA conformation adopted by the chiral equivalent in the solid state, suggesting that the use of racemates may also favour the emergence of new conformations. Importantly, the racemic mixture forms interactions in the solid state that differ from the chiral equivalent (including the formation of racemic pseudo-helices), suggesting that the use of racemic DNA mixtures could provide new possibilities for the design of precise self-assembled nanomaterials and nanostructures

A 5d/3d duality from relativistic integrable system

We propose and prove a new exact duality between the F-terms of supersymmetric gauge theories in five and three dimensions with adjoint matter fields. The theories are compactified on a circle and are subject to the Omega deformation. In the limit proposed by Nekrasov and Shatashvili, the supersymmetric vacua become isolated and are identified with the eigenstates of a quantum integrable system. The effective twisted superpotentials are the Yang-Yang functional of the relativistic elliptic Calogero-Moser model. We show that they match on-shell by deriving the Bethe ansatz equation from the saddle point of the five-dimensional partition function. We also show that the Chern-Simons terms match and extend our proposal to the elliptic quiver generalizations.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures. v2: typo corrected, references adde

Bailouts in a common market: a strategic approach

Governments in the EU grant Rescue and Restructure Subsidies to bail out ailing firms. In an international asymmetric Cournot duopoly we study effects of such subsidies on market structure and welfare. We adopt a common market setting, where consumers from the two countries form one market. We show that the subsidy is positive also when it fails to prevent the exit. The reason is a strategic effect, which forces the more efficient firm to make additional cost-reducing effort. When the exit is prevented, allocative and productive efficiencies are lower and the only gaining player is the rescued firm

Zero-modes of Non-Abelian Solitons in Three Dimensional Gauge Theories

We study non-Abelian solitons of the Bogomol'nyi type in N=2 (d=2+1) supersymmetric Chern-Simons (CS) and Yang-Mills (YM) theory with a generic gauge group. In CS theory, we find topological, non-topological and semi-local (non-)topological vortices of non-Abelian kinds in unbroken, broken and partially broken vacua. We calculate the number of zero-modes using an index theorem and then we apply the moduli matrix formalism to realize the moduli parameters. For the topological solitons we exhaust all the moduli while we study several examples of the non-topological and semi-local solitons. We find that the zero-modes of the topological solitons are governed by the moduli matrix H_0 only and those of the non-topological solitons are governed by both H_0 and the gauge invariant field \Omega. We prove local uniqueness of the master equation in the YM case and finally, compare all results between the CS and YM theories.Comment: 54 pages, 1 figur

Qualitative exploration of the renal stone patients' experience and development of the renal stone-specific patient-reported outcome measure

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the experience of patients living with renal calculi via a qualitative methodology, aiming to develop and validate a disease-specific patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) for renal stones, the Cambridge Renal Stone PROM (CReSP). PATIENTS, SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Patients with radiologically confirmed renal calculi who had undergone a range of management options were invited to focus groups or semi-structured interviews to elicit patient input and generate the PROM content. The developed renal stone PROM underwent validity studies included Cronbach's α for internal consistency, Spearman's and Pearson's correlation coefficients for test-retest reliability. Discriminant validity was assessed by Pearson's correlation coefficients vs the EuroQol five-dimensional five-level questionnaire (EQ-5D-5L). Our project has Health and Social Care Research Ethics Committee approval. RESULTS: A total of 106 subjects participated in creating the newly developed PROM. In all, 36 patients were invited to 22 semi-structured interviews and four focus groups, until reaching saturation. Major issues reported, and themes selected for the renal stone PROM included pain, anxiety, limitations to social life and tiredness, urinary symptoms, dietary changes' impacts, and gastrointestinal tract symptoms. Reliability analysis for 30 patients to determine internal consistency using Cronbach's α with a mean (range) of 0.91 (0.90-0.93) within domains and Cronbach's α between domains was 0.92. Average inter-item Pearson's and Spearman's correlation within domains was performed, with a Pearson's correlation mean (range) of 0.77 (0.73-0.85) and Spearman's correlation mean (range) of 0.72 (0.63-0.77). The test-retest Pearson's correlation mean (range) was 0.85 (0.57-0.95). Validity assessment was performed for 20 patients vs 20 controls. Pearson's correlation with EQ-5D-5L was -0.74, showing the newly developed PROM successfully discriminated patients with kidney stones. Our final renal stone PROM consists of 14 questions that are rated on a Likert scale; the higher the score, the worse the effect on a patient's quality of life. CONCLUSIONS: Although pain was the most frequent symptom, other health-related and social well-being issues significantly impacted patients' lives. Our validated patient-derived CReSP is a new instrument, specifically tailored to measure renal stone disease health outcomes from the patient's point of view

A Matrix Model for Baryons and Nuclear Forces

We propose a new matrix model describing multi-baryon systems. We derive the action from open string theory on the wrapped baryon vertex D-branes embedded in the D4-D8 model of large N holographic QCD. The positions of k baryons are unified into k x k matrices, with spin/isospin of the baryons encoded in a set of k-vectors. Holographic baryons are known to be very small in the large 't Hooft coupling limit, and our model offers a better systematic approach to dynamics of such baryons at short distances. We compute energetics and spectra (k=1), and also short-distance nuclear force (k=2). In particular, we obtain a new size of the holographic baryon and find a precise form of the repulsive core of nucleons. This matrix model complements the instanton soliton picture of holographic baryons, whose small size turned out to be well below the natural length scale of the approximation involved there. Our results show that, nevertheless, the basic properties of holographic baryons obtained there are robust under stringy corrections within a few percents.Comment: 30 pages. v3: more comments added, published versio

Dyonic Non-Abelian Vortices

We study three-dimensional Yang-Mills-Higgs theories with and without a Chern-Simons interaction. We find that these theories admit a rich spectrum of vortex solitons carrying both a topological charge and a global flavour charge. We further derive a low-energy description of the vortex dynamics from a gauged linear sigma model on the vortex worldline.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures; references added in section