Global Strategy for the Conservation and Use of Capsicum Genetic Resources

This document aims to provide a framework for the efficient and effective conservation of genetic resources of Capsicum crops. The development of this Global Crop Conservation Strategy was funded by the Government of Germany (BMEL) as part of the three-year project led by the Crop Trust: “Breathing new life into the Global Crop Conservation Strategies". The Crop Trust also cooperated with the Secretariat of The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) in the development of this document.Supplementary data: Supplementary data for Barchenger D.W. and Khoury C.K. 2022. A Global Strategy for the Conservation and Use of Capsicum Genetic Resources. Global Crop Diversity Trust. Bonn, Germany. DOI: 10.22001/wvc.74702 (https:// worldveg.tind.io/record/74702

New Ekpyrotic Cosmology

In this paper, we present a new scenario of the early Universe that contains a pre big bang Ekpyrotic phase. By combining this with a ghost condensate, the theory explicitly violates the null energy condition without developing any ghost-like instabilities. Thus the contracting universe goes through a non-singular bounce and evolves smoothly into the expanding post big bang phase. The curvature perturbation acquires a scale-invariant spectrum well before the bounce in this scenario. It is sourced by the scale-invariant entropy perturbation engendered by two ekpyrotic scalar fields, a mechanism recently proposed by Lehners et al. Since the background geometry is non-singular at all times, the curvature perturbation remains nearly constant on super horizon scales. It emerges from the bounce unscathed and imprints a scale-invariant spectrum of density fluctuations in the matter-radiation fluid at the onset of the hot big bang phase. The ekpyrotic potential can be chosen so that the spectrum has a ``red'' tilt, in accordance with the recent data from WMAP. As in the original Ekpyrotic scenario, the model predicts a negligible gravity wave signal on all observable scales. As such ``New Ekpyrotic Cosmology" provides a consistent and distinguishable alternative to inflation to account for the origin of the seeds of large scale structure.Comment: 41 pages, 4 figures. v2: minor corrections, references added. v3: small modifications in bounce section, references added. v4: version published in PR

Computationally driven discovery of SARS-CoV-2 M pro inhibitors: From design to experimental validation

We report a fast-track computationally driven discovery of new SARS-CoV-2 main protease (

Hydrogen-Poor Disks in Compact X-Ray Binaries

We show that accretion disks in several compact X-ray binaries with hydrogen-depleted donors are likely subject to a thermal ionization instability, unless they are strongly irradiated. These disks are particularly interesting in that their MHD-turbulent properties in the neutral phase may be quite different from those of standard, hydrogen-rich disks.Comment: 10 pages, accepted for publication in ApJ

Supersymmetric Galileons

Galileon theories are of considerable interest since they allow for stable violations of the null energy condition. Since such violations could have occurred during a high-energy regime in the history of our universe, we are motivated to study supersymmetric extensions of these theories. This is carried out in this paper, where we construct generic classes of N=1 supersymmetric Galileon Lagrangians. They are shown to admit non-equivalent stress-energy tensors and, hence, vacua manifesting differing conditions for violating the null energy condition. The temporal and spatial fluctuations of all component fields of the supermultiplet are analyzed and shown to be stable on a large number of such backgrounds. In the process, we uncover a surprising connection between conformal Galileon and ghost condensate theories, allowing for a deeper understanding of both types of theories.Comment: 41 pages, v2: added a referenc

Experimental observation of fractional topological phases with photonic qudits

Geometrical and topological phases play a fundamental role in quantum theory. Geometric phases have been proposed as a tool for implementing unitary gates for quantum computation. A fractional topological phase has been recently discovered for bipartite systems. The dimension of the Hilbert space determines the topological phase of entangled qudits under local unitary operations. Here we investigate fractional topological phases acquired by photonic entangled qudits. Photon pairs prepared as spatial qudits are operated inside a Sagnac interferometer and the two-photon interference pattern reveals the topological phase as fringes shifts when local operations are performed. Dimensions $d = 2, 3$ and $4$ were tested, showing the expected theoretical values.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure