Themelia: the irreducible microstructure of black holes

We argue that the fundamental "atomic objects" in string theory are themelia: extended objects that have 16 supersymmetries locally. We show that all existing smooth horizonless microstate geometries can be seen as bound states of themelia, and we conjecture that all such bound states with suitable KKM charges will give rise to microstate geometries. We also construct the most general themelion with a three-torus isometry and show that it interpolates between superstrata and the super-maze.Comment: 6 page

Communicating the Neuroscience of Psychopathy and Its Influence on Moral Behavior : Protocol of Two Experimental Studies

Neuroscience has identified brain structures and functions that correlate with psychopathic tendencies. Since psychopathic traits can be traced back to physical neural attributes, it has been argued that psychopaths are not truly responsible for their actions and therefore should not be blamed for their psychopathic behaviors. This experimental research aims to evaluate what effect communicating this theory of psychopathy has on the moral behavior of lay people. If psychopathy is blamed on the brain, people may feel less morally responsible for their own psychopathic tendencies and therefore may be more likely to display those tendencies. An online study will provide participants with false feedback about their psychopathic traits supposedly based on their digital footprint (i.e., Facebook likes), thus classifying them as having either above-average or below-average psychopathic traits and describing psychopathy in cognitive or neurobiological terms. This particular study will assess the extent to which lay people are influenced by feedback regarding their psychopathic traits, and how this might affect their moral behavior in online tasks. Public recognition of these potential negative consequences of neuroscience communication will also be assessed. A field study using the lost letter technique will be conducted to examine lay people's endorsement of neurobiological, as compared to cognitive, explanations of criminal behavior. This field and online experimental research could inform the future communication of neuroscience to the public in a way that is sensitive to the potential negative consequences of communicating such science. In particular, this research may have implications for the future means by which neurobiological predictors of offending can be safely communicated to offenders.Peer reviewe

Validity and reliability of the Daily Activity Behaviours Questionnaire (DABQ) for assessment of time spent in sleep, sedentary behaviour, and physical activity

Sleep, sedentary behaviour (SB), and physical activity are among key behavioural determi-nants of health. There is a need to evaluate questionnaires that capture movement behaviours across the full 24-h day. The aim of this study was to examine the measurement properties of the Daily Activity Behaviours Questionnaire (DABQ), a novel questionnaire (with a past seven-day recall period) for estimating the time spent in sleep, SB, light physical activity (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) among adults. A sample of 126 adults was recruited. DABQ was adminis-tered to the participants on two occasions seven days apart to examine its test-retest reliability. The convergent validity of DABQ estimates was explored against activPAL4 accelerometer/inclinometer estimates. Intraclass correlation coefficients for absolute agreement and consistency between the times spent in sleep, SB, LPA, and MVPA estimated by DABQ in the test and re-test ranged from 0.59 to 0.69. Spearman’s correlations between the times spent in sleep, SB, LPA, and MVPA estimated by DABQ and activPAL4 ranged from 0.38 to 0.66. In terms of reliability and validity, DABQ is comparable with existing questionnaires; however, it has an important advantage of enabling a comprehensive assessment of all four 24-h movement behaviours. The measurement properties of DABQ make it suitable for large-scale epidemiological studies on 24-h movement behaviours

Limits on scalar leptoquark interactions and consequences for GUTs

A colored weak singlet scalar state with hypercharge 4/3 is one of the possible candidates for the explanation of the unexpectedly large forward-backward asymmetry in t tbar production as measured by the CDF and D0 experiments. We investigate the role of this state in a plethora of flavor changing neutral current processes and precision observables of down-quarks and charged leptons. Our analysis includes tree- and loop-level mediated observables in the K and B systems, the charged lepton sector, as well as the Z to b bbar decay width. We perform a global fit of the relevant scalar couplings. This approach can explain the (g-2)_mu anomaly while tensions among the CP violating observables in the quark sector, most notably the nonstandard CP phase (and width difference) in the Bs system cannot be fully relaxed. The results are interpreted in a class of grand unified models which allow for a light colored scalar with a mass below 1TeV. We find that the renormalizable SU(5) scenario is not compatible with our global fit, while in the SO(10) case the viability requires the presence of both the 126- and 120-dimensional representations.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures; version as publishe