Maximally Supersymmetric AdS4 Vacua in N=4 Supergravity

We study AdS backgrounds of N=4 supergravity in four space-time dimensions which preserve all sixteen supercharges. We show that the graviphotons have to form a subgroup of the gauge group that consists of an electric and a magnetic SO(3)_+ x SO(3)_-. Moreover, these N=4 AdS backgrounds are necessarily isolated points in field space which have no moduli.Comment: 11 page

N=4 Supersymmetric AdS5 Vacua and their Moduli Spaces

We classify the N=4 supersymmetric AdS5 backgrounds that arise as solutions of five-dimensional N=4 gauged supergravity. We express our results in terms of the allowed embedding tensor components and identify the structure of the associated gauge groups. We show that the moduli space of these AdS vacua is of the form SU(1,m)/(U(1)x SU(m)) and discuss our results regarding holographically dual N=2 SCFTs and their conformal manifolds.Comment: 29 pages; v2: published versio

The N=4 effective action of type IIA supergravity compactified on SU(2)-structure manifolds

We study compactifications of type IIA supergravity on six-dimensional manifolds with SU(2) structure and compute the low-energy effective action in terms of the non-trivial intrinsic torsion. The consistency with gauged N=4 supergravity is established and the gauge group is determined. Depending on the structure of the intrinsic torsion, antisymmetric tensor fields can become massive.Comment: 29 pages, latex, v2: minor corrections, added references, published versio

Financial Supervision and Policy Coordination in The EMU

Contents: 1. Jürgen von Hagen, Jean Pisani-Ferry - Forum Economique Franco-Allemand /Deutsch-Französisches Wirtschaftspolitisches Forum .... 1 -- 2. Jürgen von Hagen - The First Year of EMU ... 3 -- 3. Dominique Guellec - Economic Growth in Europe: Entering a New Era? ... 17 -- 4. Jean-Louis Guérin - Sixth French-German Economic Forum: Summary of the Proceedings ... 4

Ebola Virus Localization in the Macaque Reproductive Tract during Acute Ebola Virus Disease.

Sexual transmission of Ebola virus (EBOV) has been demonstrated more than a year after recovery from the acute phase of Ebola virus disease (EVD). The mechanisms underlying EBOV persistence and sexual transmission are not currently understood. Using the acute macaque model of EVD, we hypothesized EBOV would infect the reproductive tissues and sought to localize the infection in these tissues using immunohistochemistry and transmission electron microscopy. In four female and eight male macaques that succumbed to EVD between 6 and 9 days after EBOV challenge, we demonstrate widespread EBOV infection of the interstitial tissues and endothelium in the ovary, uterus, testis, seminal vesicle, epididymis, and prostate gland, with minimal associated tissue immune response or organ pathology. Given the widespread involvement of EBOV in the reproductive tracts of both male and female macaques, it is reasonable to surmise that our understanding of the mechanisms underlying sexual transmission of EVD and persistence of EBOV in immune-privileged sites would be facilitated by the development of a nonhuman primate model in which the macaques survived past the acute stage into convalescence

Flatland: a Lightweight First-Person 2-D Environment for Reinforcement Learning

Flatland is a simple, lightweight environment for fast prototyping and testing of reinforcement learning agents. It is of lower complexity compared to similar 3D platforms (e.g. DeepMind Lab or VizDoom), but emulates physical properties of the real world, such as continuity, multi-modal partially-observable states with first-person view and coherent physics. We propose to use it as an intermediary benchmark for problems related to Lifelong Learning. Flatland is highly customizable and offers a wide range of task difficulty to extensively evaluate the properties of artificial agents. We experiment with three reinforcement learning baseline agents and show that they can rapidly solve a navigation task in Flatland. A video of an agent acting in Flatland is available here: https://youtu.be/I5y6Y2ZypdA.Comment: Accepted to the Workshop on Continual Unsupervised Sensorimotor Learning (ICDL-EpiRob 2018

Prion protein in the cerebrospinal fluid of healthy and naturally scrapie-affected sheep

The aim of this study was to characterize the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) prion protein (PrP) of healthy and naturally scrapie-affected sheep. The soluble form of CSF PrPC immunoblotted with an anti-octarepeat and an anti-C terminus mAb showed two isoforms of approximately 33 and 26 kDa, corresponding to the biglycosylated and unglycosylated isoforms of brain PrPC. Neither the mean concentration nor the electrophoretic profile of CSF PrP differed between healthy and scrapieaffected sheep, whereas a slightly increased resistance of CSF PrP to mild proteolysis by proteinase K was evident in the CSF of scrapie-affected sheep. No difference in susceptibility to proteolysis was observed between the two ARR and VRQ genetic variants of the purified prokaryote recombinant PrP. It was concluded that the physicochemical properties of PrPC in the CSF could be altered during scrapie and that these changes might reflect the physiopathological process of prion disease

A Microscopic Model for D-Wave Pairing in the Cuprates: What Happens when Electrons Somersault?

We present a microscopic model for a strongly repulsive electron gas on a 2D square lattice. We suggest that nearest neighbor Coulomb repulsion stabilizes a state in which electrons undergo a "somersault" in their internal spin-space (spin-flux). When this spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic (AFM) insulator is doped, the charge carriers nucleate mobile, charged, bosonic vortex solitons accompanied by unoccupied states deep inside the Mott-Hubbard charge-transfer gap. This model provides a unified microscopic basis for (i) non-Fermi-liquid transport properties, (ii) mid-infrared optical absorption, (iii) destruction of AFM long range order with doping, (iv) angled resolved spectroscopy (ARPES), and (v) d-wave preformed charged carrier pairs. We use the Configuration Interaction (CI) method to study the quantum translational and rotational properties of such pairs. The CI method systematically describes fluctuation and quantum tunneling corrections to the Hartree-Fock approximation and recaptures essential features of the (Bethe ansatz) exact solution of the Hubbard model in 1D. For a single hole in the 2D AFM plane, we find a precursor to spin-charge separation. The CI ground state consists of a bound vortex-antivortex pair, one vortex carrying the charge and the other one carrying the spin of the doping hole.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Maternal and Fetal Exposure to Bisphenol A Is Associated with Alterations of Thyroid Function in Pregnant Ewes and Their Newborn Lambs

The putative thyroid-disrupting properties of bisphenol A (BPA) highlight the need for an evaluation of fetal exposure and its consequence on the mother/newborn thyroid functions in models relevant to human. The goals of this study were to characterize in sheep a relevant model for human pregnancy and thyroid physiology, the internal exposures of the fetuses and their mothers to BPA and its main metabolite BPA-glucuronide (Gluc), and to determine to what extent it might be associated with thyroid disruption. Ewes were treated with BPA [5 mg/(kg . d) sc] or vehicle from d 28 until the end of pregnancy. Unconjugated BPA did not appear to accumulate in pregnant ewes, and its concentration was similar in the newborns and their mothers (0.13 +/- 0.02 and 0.18 +/- 0.03 nmol/ml in cord and maternal blood, respectively). In amniotic fluid and cord blood, BPA-Gluc concentrations were about 1300-fold higher than those of BPA. Total T-4 concentrations were decreased in BPA-treated pregnant ewes and in the cord and the jugular blood of their newborns (30% decrease). A similar difference was observed for free T-4 plasma concentrations in the jugular blood of the newborns. Our results show in a long-gestation species with a similar regulatory scheme of thyroid function as humans that BPA in utero exposure can be associated with hypothyroidism in the newborns. If such an effect were to be confirmed for a more relevant exposure scheme to BPA, this would constitute a major issue for BPA risk assessment