Inflation and topological phase transition driven by exotic smoothness

In this paper we will discuss a model which describes the cause of inflation by a topological transition. The guiding principle is the choice of an exotic smoothness structure for the space-time. Here we consider a space-time with topology $S^{3}\times\mathbb{R}$. In case of an exotic $S^{3}\times\mathbb{R}$, there is a change in the spatial topology from a 3-sphere to a homology 3-sphere which can carry a hyperbolic structure. From the physical point of view, we will discuss the path integral for the Einstein-Hilbert action with respect to a decomposition of the space-time. The inclusion of the boundary terms produces fermionic contributions to the partition function. The expectation value of an area (with respect to some surface) shows an exponential increase, i.e. we obtain inflationary behavior. We will calculate the amount of this increase to be a topological invariant. Then we will describe this transition by an effective model, the Starobinski or $R^{2}$ model which is consistent with the current measurement of the Planck satellite. The spectral index and other observables are also calculated. Finally we obtain a realistic cosmological constant.Comment: 21 pages, no figures, iopart styla, accepted in Advances in High Energy Physics, special issue "Experimental Tests of Quantum Gravity and Exotic Quantum Field Theory Effects (QGEQ)

Scheduling and Allocation of Non-Manifest Loops on Hardware Graph-Models

We address the problem of scheduling non-manifest data dependant periodic loops for high throughput DSP-applications based on a streaming data model. In contrast to manifest loops, non-manifest data dependant loops are loops where the number of iterations needed in order to perform a calculation is data dependant and hence not known at compile time. For the case of manifest loops, static scheduling techniques have been devised which produce near optimal schedules. Due to the lack of exact run-time execution knowledge of non-manifest loops, these static scheduling techniques are not suitable for tackling scheduling problems of DSP-algorithms with non-manifest loops embedded in them. We consider the case where (a) a-priori knowledge of the data distribution, and (b) worst case execution time of the non-manifest loop are known and a constraint on the total execution time has been given. Under these conditions dynamic schedules of the non-manifest data dependant loops within the DSP-algorithm are possible. We show how to construct hardware which dynamically schedules these non-manifest loops. The sliding window execution, which is the execution of a non-manifest loop when the data streams through it, of the constructed hardware will guarantee real time performance for the worst case situation. This is the situation when each non-manifest loop requires its maximum number of iterations

Epigenetic modification of the oxytocin receptor gene is associated with emotion processing in the infant brain

The neural capacity to discriminate between emotions emerges early in development, though little is known about specific factors that contribute to variability in this vital skill during infancy. In adults, DNA methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTRm) is an epigenetic modification that is variable, predictive of gene expression, and has been linked to autism spectrum disorder and the neural response to social cues. It is unknown whether OXTRm is variable in infants, and whether it is predictive of early social function. Implementing a developmental neuroimaging epigenetics approach in a large sample of infants (N = 98), we examined whether OXTRm is associated with neural responses to emotional expressions. OXTRm was assessed at 5 months of age. At 7 months of age, infants viewed happy, angry, and fearful faces while functional near-infrared spectroscopy was recorded. We observed that OXTRm shows considerable variability among infants. Critically, infants with higher OXTRm show enhanced responses to anger and fear and attenuated responses to happiness in right inferior frontal cortex, a region implicated in emotion processing through action-perception coupling. Findings support models emphasizing oxytocin's role in modulating neural response to emotion and identify OXTRm as an epigenetic mark contributing to early brain function