Reintroduction of native cotton (Gossypium Barbadian) on the North coast of Peru: analysis of economic feasibility for small producers

In Peru the agro-export boom has determined a major shift of large farmers from traditional agro-industrial crops (coffee and cotton) to new agribusinesses (asparagus, oranges, avocados, apples). These dynamics have left room for the small farmers to enter the traditional agro-industrial sector, or into new niche markets as in the case of native cotton. On the North coast of Peru the cultivation of the native and naturally coloured cotton (Gossypium Barbadense spp. locally called algod\uf3n El Pa\ueds) is part of the Moche indigenous culture (a local pre-Inca population). Since 1949 the Peruvian legal prohibition to produce native cotton, linked to the risk of genetic contamination of the industrial white cotton cultivations, made the keeping of these traditional varieties very difficult. Nevertheless the situation has totally changed since 2008 due to Regulation n\ub0 29224 declaring native cotton as a genetic, ethnic and cultural heritage of the country. This study analyses the economic feasibility of re-inserting the native cotton as part of the agricultural production of 50 farmers on the North coast of Peru, proposing a farm economic data analysis, scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis based on OFAT (One Factor at A Time) methodology: the results attest that in all the productive scenarios proposed (10%, 25% and 50% of the farm agricultural surface growing native cotton) the average farm incomes are going to increase. Moreover the sensitivity analysis attests that also in the worst conditions of a 10% decrease in the native cotton price, the average farm incomes with native cotton are higher compared to the business as usual scenario in all three productive scenarios proposed

Lepton Flavor Violation, Neutralino Dark Matter and the Reach of the LHC

We revisit the phenomenology of the Constrained MSSM with right-handed neutrinos (CMSSMRN). A supersymmetric seesaw mechanism, generating neutrino masses and sizable lepton flavour violating (LFV) entries is assumed to be operative. In this scheme, we study the complementarity between the `observable ranges' of various paths leading to the possible discovery of low energy SUSY: the reach of the Cern Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the quest for neutralino dark matter signals and indirect searches through LFV processes. Within the regions of the CMSSMRN parameter space compatible with all cosmo-phenomenological requirements, those which are expected to be probed at the LHC will be typically also accessible to upcoming LFV experiments. Moreover, parameter space portions featuring a heavy SUSY particle spectrum could be well beyond LHC reach while leaving LFV searches as the only key to get a glimpse on SUSY.Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures, LateX; v2: one reference and one comment added; matches with published versio

The Rafita asteroid family

The Rafita asteroid family is an S-type group located in the middle main belt, on the right side of the 3J:-1A mean-motion resonance. The proximity of this resonance to the family left side in semi-major axis caused many former family members to be lost. As a consequence, the family shape in the $(a,1/D)$ domain is quite asymmetrical, with a preponderance of objects on the right side of the distribution. The Rafita family is also characterized by a leptokurtic distribution in inclination, which allows the use of methods of family age estimation recently introduced for other leptokurtic families such as Astrid, Hansa, Gallia, and Barcelona. In this work we propose a new method based on the behavior of an asymmetry coefficient function of the distribution in the $(a,1/D)$ plane to date incomplete asteroid families such as Rafita. By monitoring the time behavior of this coefficient for asteroids simulating the initial conditions at the time of the family formation, we were able to estimate that the Rafita family should have an age of $490\pm200$ Myr, in good agreement with results from independent methods such as Monte Carlo simulations of Yarkovsky and Yorp dynamical induced evolution and the time behaviour of the kurtosis of the $\sin{(i)}$ distribution. Asteroids from the Rafita family can reach orbits similar to 8\% of the currently known near Earth objects. $\simeq$1\% of the simulated objects are present in NEO-space during the final 10 Myr of the simulation, and thus would be comparable to objects in the present-day NEO population.Comment: Accepted 2017 January 19. Received 2017 January 17; in original form 2016 September

Fermion Virtual Effects in e+e−−>W+W−e^+ e^- -> W^+ W^- Cross Section

We analyse the contribution of new heavy virtual fermions to the $e^+e^- \rightarrow W^+W^-$ cross section. We find that there exists a relevant interplay between trilinear and bilinear oblique corrections. The result strongly depends on the chiral or vector--like nature of the new fermions. As for the chiral case we consider sequential fermions: one obtains substantial deviation from the Standard model prediction, making the effect possibly detectable at $\sqrt{s}=500$ or $1000$ GeV linear colliders. As an example for the vector--like case we take a SUSY extension with heavy charginos and neutralinos: due to cancellation, the final effect turns out to be negligible.Comment: uuencoded, gz-compressed, tar-ed file. 8 pages, 4 EPS figures, uses EPSFIG.ST

Hamilton Jacobi Bellman equations in infinite dimensions with quadratic and superquadratic Hamiltonian

We consider Hamilton Jacobi Bellman equations in an inifinite dimensional Hilbert space, with quadratic (respectively superquadratic) hamiltonian and with continuous (respectively lipschitz continuous) final conditions. This allows to study stochastic optimal control problems for suitable controlled Ornstein Uhlenbeck process with unbounded control processes

Neutrino mixing and large CP violation in B physics

We show that in see-saw models of neutrino mass a la SUSY SO(10), the observed large mixing in atmospheric neutrinos naturally leads to large b-s transitions. If the associated new CP phase turns out to be large, this SUSY contributions can drastically affect the CP violation in some of the B decay channels yielding the beta and gamma angles of the unitarity triangle. They can even produce sizeable CP asymmetries in some decay modes which are not CP violating in the standard model context. Hence the observed large neutrino mixing makes observations of low energy SUSY effect in some CP violating decay channels potentially promising in spite of the agreement between the Standard Model and data in K and B physics so far.Comment: References adde

Supersymmetric origin of a low aJ/psia_{J/psi} CP asymmetry

We show that general Minimal Supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model (MSSM) allow for a CP asymmetry in B --> J/psi K(S) well bellow the SM expectations with dominant Supersymmetric contributions to epsilon_K and epsilon'/epsilon. Indeed, we provide an explicit example of an MSSM with non-universal soft breaking terms fully consistent with the low results of this asymmetry recently announced by Babar and Belle collaborations.Comment: 6 pages, no figures. Reference added, typos correcte

Main Belt Asteroids with WISE/NEOWISE: Near-Infrared Albedos

We present revised near-infrared albedo fits of 2835 Main Belt asteroids observed by WISE/NEOWISE over the course of its fully cryogenic survey in 2010. These fits are derived from reflected-light near-infrared images taken simultaneously with thermal emission measurements, allowing for more accurate measurements of the near-infrared albedos than is possible for visible albedo measurements. As our sample requires reflected light measurements, it undersamples small, low albedo asteroids, as well as those with blue spectral slopes across the wavelengths investigated. We find that the Main Belt separates into three distinct groups of 6%, 16%, and 40% reflectance at 3.4 um. Conversely, the 4.6 um albedo distribution spans the full range of possible values with no clear grouping. Asteroid families show a narrow distribution of 3.4 um albedos within each family that map to one of the three observed groupings, with the (221) Eos family being the sole family associated with the 16% reflectance 3.4 um albedo group. We show that near-infrared albedos derived from simultaneous thermal emission and reflected light measurements are an important indicator of asteroid taxonomy and can identify interesting targets for spectroscopic followup.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; full version of Table1 to be published electronically in the journa

Grand Unification of Quark and Lepton FCNCs

In the context of Supersymmetric Grand Unified theories with soft breaking terms arising at the Planck scale, it is generally possible to link flavor changing neutral current and CP violating processes occurring in the leptonic and hadronic sectors. We study the correlation between flavor changing squark and slepton mass insertions in models \`a la SU(5). We show that the constraints coming from lepton flavor violation exhibit a strong impact on CP-violating B decays.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

The Dark Sequential Z' Portal: Collider and Direct Detection Experiments

We revisit the status of a Majorana fermion as a dark matter candidate when a sequential Z' gauge boson dictates the dark matter phenomenology. Direct dark matter detection signatures rise from dark matter-nucleus scatterings at bubble chamber and liquid xenon detectors, and from the flux of neutrinos from the Sun measured by the IceCube experiment, which is governed by the spin-dependent dark matter-nucleus scattering. On the collider side, LHC searches for dilepton and mono-jet + missing energy signals play an important role. The relic density and perturbativity requirements are also addressed. By exploiting the dark matter complementarity we outline the region of parameter space where one can successfully have a Majorana dark matter particle in light of current and planned experimental sensitivities.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure