Isospin symmetry breaking and the neutron-proton mass difference

QCD sum rules using polynomial kernels are used to evaluate the strong part of the proton-neutron mass difference DeltaM_np in a model independent fashion. The result for the mass difference turns out to depend sensitively on the value of the four quark condensate and reproduces the experimental value of DeltaM_np for ~ 2^2.Comment: Arguments detailed. Two references added. Version to appear in Physical Review C. DOI:10.1103/PhysRevC.00.00520

The dynamics of alternative pathways to compensatory substitution

The role of epistatic interactions among loci is a central question in evolutionary biology and is increasingly relevant in the genomic age. While the population genetics of compensatory substitution have received considerable attention, most studies have focused on the case when natural selection is very strong against deleterious intermediates. In the biologically-plausible scenario of weak to moderate selection there exist two alternate pathways for compensatory substitution. In one pathway, a deleterious mutation becomes fixed prior to occurrence of the compensatory mutation. In the other, the two loci are simultaneously polymorphic. The rates of compensatory substitution along these two pathways and their relative probabilities are functions of the population size, selection strength, mutation rate, and recombination rate. In this paper these rates and path probabilities are derived analytically and verified using population genetic simulations. The expected time durations of these two paths are similar when selection is moderate, but not when selection is weak. The effect of recombination on the dynamics of the substitution process are explored using simulation. Using the derived rates, a phylogenetic substitution model of the compensatory evolution process is presented that could be used for inference of population genetic parameters from interspecific data.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. Accepted to RECOMB Comparative Genomics Meeting 2013, to be published in BMC Bioinformatic

Walking Technicolor and Electroweak Radiative Corrections

We examine the effect of walking technicolor dynamics on the electroweak $S$ parameter and contrast it with the effect of QCD-like technicolor dynamics. Our main tools are the operator product expansion for the high-momentum behavior of the electroweak gauge boson vacuum polarizations and the analyticity of these polarizations which relate their low and high momentum behaviors. We show that whereas in large QCD-like technicolor models $S$ is large and positive, in walking technicolor models a negative contribution is emphasized, related to the large anomalous dimension of the technifermion condensate. Thus in walking technicolor $S$ is determined by a large cancellation of two competing effects. This may result in much smaller values of $S$ than in QCD-like technicolor, although considerable uncertainties are involved. We conclude that it is impossible to rule out walking technicolor based on the present experimental limits on $S$ and the present theoretical technology.Comment: 22 pages (4 figures, available upon request