234 research outputs found
Transcriptome changes in newborn goats' skeletal muscle as a result of maternal feed restriction at different stages of gestation
We investigated how feed restriction at 50% of maintenance requirements during different stages of gestation affects the transcriptome of newborn goats' skeletal muscle. Fourteen pregnant dams were randomly assigned into one of the following dietary treatments: animals fed at 50% of maintenance requirement from 8-84 d of gestation and then fed at 100% of maintenance requirement from day 85 of gestation to parturition (RM, n = 6), and animals fed at 100% of maintenance requirement from 8-84 d of gestation and then fed at 50% of maintenance requirement from day 85 of gestation to parturition (MR, n = 8). At birth, samples of offspring's Longissimus muscle were collected for total RNA extraction and sequencing. Our data showed 66 differentially expressed (DE) genes (FDR < 0.05). A total of 6 genes were upregulated and 60 downregulated (FDR < 0.05) in the skeletal muscle of the newborns resulting from treatment RM compared with MR. Our results suggest that the DE genes upregulated in newborn goats' skeletal muscle from the RM group compared to MR, included genes related to satellite cells, and genes that indicates impaired insulin sensitivity and changes in the composition of intramuscular fat. The DE genes upregulated in newborn goats' skeletal muscle from the MR group compared to RM, are also related to impaired insulin sensitivity, as well as a predominantly oxidative metabolism and cellular oxidative stress. However, protective mechanisms against insulin sensitivity and oxidative stress may have been augmented in the skeletal muscle of offspring from MR treatment compared to RM, in order to maintain cellular homeostasis
A Comprehensive Analysis of Electric Dipole Moment Constraints on CP-violating Phases in the MSSM
We analyze the constraints placed on individual, flavor diagonal CP-violating
phases in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) by
current experimental bounds on the electric dipole moments (EDMs) of the
neutron, Thallium, and Mercury atoms. We identify the four CP-violating phases
that are individually highly constrained by current EDM bounds, and we explore
how these phases and correlations among them are constrained by current EDM
limits. We also analyze the prospective implications of the next generation of
EDM experiments. We point out that all other CP-violating phases in the MSSM
are not nearly as tightly constrained by limits on the size of EDMs. We
emphasize that a rich set of phenomenological consequences is potentially
associated with these generically large EDM-allowed phases, ranging from B
physics, electroweak baryogenesis, and signals of CP-violation at the CERN
Large Hadron Collider and at future linear colliders. Our numerical study takes
into account the complete set of contributions from one- and two-loop EDMs of
the electron and quarks, one- and two-loop Chromo-EDMs of quarks, the Weinberg
3-gluon operator, and dominant 4-fermion CP-odd operator contributions,
including contributions which are both included and not included yet in the
CPsuperH2.0 package. We also introduce an open-source numerical package, 2LEDM,
which provides the complete set of two-loop electroweak diagrams contributing
to the electric dipole moments of leptons and quarks.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures; v2: references added, minor change
Lepton flavour violation in the MSSM
We derive new constraints on the quantities delta_{XY}^{ij}, X,Y=L,R, which
parametrise the flavour-off-diagonal terms of the charged slepton mass matrix
in the MSSM. Considering mass and anomalous magnetic moment of the electron we
obtain the bound |delta^{13}_{LL} delta^{13}_{RR}|<0.1 for tan beta=50, which
involves the poorly constrained element delta^{13}_{RR}. We improve the
predictions for the decays tau -> mu gamma, tau -> e gamma and mu -> e gamma by
including two-loop corrections which are enhanced if tan beta is large. The
finite renormalisation of the PMNS matrix from soft SUSY-breaking terms is
derived and applied to the charged-Higgs-lepton vertex. We find that the
experimental bound on BR(tau -> e gamma) severely limits the size of the MSSM
loop correction to the PMNS element U_{e3}, which is important for the proper
interpretation of a future U_{e3} measurement. Subsequently we confront our new
values for delta^{ij}_{LL} with a GUT analysis. Further, we include the effects
of dimension-5 Yukawa terms, which are needed to fix the Yukawa unification of
the first two generations. If universal supersymmetry breaking occurs above the
GUT scale, we find the flavour structure of the dimension-5 Yukawa couplings
tightly constrained by mu -> e gamma.Comment: 37 pages, 15 figures; typo in Equation (35) and (49) correcte
Neutrino masses from new generations
We reconsider the possibility that Majorana masses for the three known
neutrinos are generated radiatively by the presence of a fourth generation and
one right-handed neutrino with Yukawa couplings and a Majorana mass term. We
find that the observed light neutrino mass hierarchy is not compatible with low
energy universality bounds in this minimal scenario, but all present data can
be accommodated with five generations and two right-handed neutrinos. Within
this framework, we explore the parameter space regions which are currently
allowed and could lead to observable effects in neutrinoless double beta decay,
conversion in nuclei and experiments. We
also discuss the detection prospects at LHC.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures. Version to be published. Some typos corrected.
Improved figures 3 and
Back-reaction of Non-supersymmetric Probes: Phase Transition and Stability
We consider back-reaction by non-supersymmetric D7/anti-D7 probe branes in
the Kuperstein-Sonnenschein model at finite temperature. Using the smearing
technique, we obtain an analytical solution for the back-reacted background to
leading order in N_f/N_c. This back-reaction explicitly breaks the conformal
invariance and introduces a dimension 6 operator in the dual field theory which
is an irrelevant deformation of the original conformal field theory. We further
probe this back-reacted background by introducing an additional set of probe
brane/anti-brane. This additional probe sector undergoes a chiral phase
transition at finite temperature, which is absent when the back-reaction
vanishes. We investigate the corresponding phase diagram and the thermodynamics
associated with this phase transition. We also argue that additional probes do
not suffer from any instability caused by the back-reaction, which suggests
that this system is stable beyond the probe limit.Comment: 56 pages, 8 figures. References updated, improved discussion on
dimension eight operato
Strings in AdS_4 x CP^3: finite size spectrum vs. Bethe Ansatz
We compute the first curvature corrections to the spectrum of light-cone
gauge type IIA string theory that arise in the expansion of about a plane-wave limit. The resulting spectrum is shown to
match precisely, both in magnitude and degeneration that of the corresponding
solutions of the all-loop Gromov--Vieira Bethe Ansatz. The one-loop dispersion
relation correction is calculated for all the single oscillator states of the
theory, with the level matching condition lifted. It is shown to have all
logarithmic divergences cancelled and to leave only a finite exponentially
suppressed contribution, as shown earlier for light bosons. We argue that there
is no ambiguity in the choice of the regularization for the self-energy sum,
since the regularization applied is the only one preserving unitarity.
Interaction matrices in the full degenerate two-oscillator sector are
calculated and the spectrum of all two light magnon oscillators is completely
determined. The same finite-size corrections, at the order 1/J, where is
the length of the chain, in the two-magnon sector are calculated from the all
loop Bethe Ansatz. The corrections obtained by the two completely different
methods coincide up to the fourth order in . We
conjecture that the equivalence extends to all orders in and to
higher orders in 1/J.Comment: 32 pages. Published version; journal reference adde
Supersymmetric contributions to and decays in SCET
We study the decay modes and using Soft Collinear Effective Theory. Within Standard Model and
including the error due to the SU(3) breaking effect in the SCET parameters we
find that BR and BR
corresponding to
solution 1 and solution 2 of the SCET parameters respectively.For the decay
mode , we find that BR and BR corresponding to solution 1 and
solution 2 of the SCET parameters respectively. We extend our study to include
supersymmetric models with non-universal A-terms where the dominant
contributions arise from diagrams mediated by gluino and chargino exchanges. We
show that gluino contributions can not lead to an enhancement of the branching
ratios of and . In
addition, we show that SUSY contributions mediated by chargino exchange can
enhance the branching ratio of by about 14% with
respect to the SM prediction. For the branching ratio of , we find that SUSY contributions can enhance its value by about 1% with
respect to the SM prediction.Comment: 25 pages,5 figures, version accepted for publicatio
Yukawa-unified natural supersymmetry
Previous work on t-b-\tau Yukawa-unified supersymmetry, as expected from SUSY
GUT theories based on the gauge group SO(10), tended to have exceedingly large
electroweak fine-tuning (EWFT). Here, we examine supersymmetric models where we
simultaneously require low EWFT ("natural SUSY") and a high degree of Yukawa
coupling unification, along with a light Higgs scalar with m_h\sim125 GeV. As
Yukawa unification requires large tan\beta\sim50, while EWFT requires rather
light third generation squarks and low \mu\sim100-250 GeV, B-physics
constraints from BR(B\to X_s\gamma) and BR(B_s\to \mu+\mu-) can be severe. We
are able to find models with EWFT \Delta\lesssim 50-100 (better than 1-2% EWFT)
and with Yukawa unification as low as R_yuk\sim1.3 (30% unification) if
B-physics constraints are imposed. This may be improved to R_yuk\sim1.2 if
additional small flavor violating terms conspire to improve accord with
B-constraints. We present several Yukawa-unified natural SUSY (YUNS) benchmark
points. LHC searches will be able to access gluinos in the lower 1-2 TeV
portion of their predicted mass range although much of YUNS parameter space may
lie beyond LHC14 reach. If heavy Higgs bosons can be accessed at a high rate,
then the rare H, A\to \mu+\mu- decay might allow a determination of
tan\beta\sim50 as predicted by YUNS models. Finally, the predicted light
higgsinos should be accessible to a linear e+e- collider with \sqrt{s}\sim0.5
TeV.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, pdflatex; 3 references adde
Flavor Physics in an SO(10) Grand Unified Model
In supersymmetric grand-unified models, the lepton mixing matrix can possibly
affect flavor-changing transitions in the quark sector. We present a detailed
analysis of a model proposed by Chang, Masiero and Murayama, in which the
near-maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing angle governs large new b -> s
transitions. Relating the supersymmetric low-energy parameters to seven new
parameters of this SO(10) GUT model, we perform a correlated study of several
flavor-changing neutral current (FCNC) processes. We find the current bound on
B(tau -> mu gamma) more constraining than B(B -> X_s gamma). The LEP limit on
the lightest Higgs boson mass implies an important lower bound on tan beta,
which in turn limits the size of the new FCNC transitions. Remarkably, the
combined analysis does not rule out large effects in B_s-B_s-bar mixing and we
can easily accomodate the large CP phase in the B_s-B_s-bar system which has
recently been inferred from a global analysis of CDF and DO data. The model
predicts a particle spectrum which is different from the popular Constrained
Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (CMSSM). B(tau -> mu gamma) enforces
heavy masses, typically above 1 TeV, for the sfermions of the degenerate first
two generations. However, the ratio of the third-generation and
first-generation sfermion masses is smaller than in the CMSSM and a (dominantly
right-handed) stop with mass below 500 GeV is possible.Comment: 44 pages, 5 figures. Footnote and references added, minor changes,
Fig. 2 corrected; journal versio
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