Effects of radiation on the leach rates of vitrified radioactive waste

This report reviews the possible effects of both radiation damage to the glass and of radiolysis of the leachant on the leaching behaviour of vitrified radioactive waste. It has been stimulated particularly by recent papers, which have suggested that the leach rates of glasses will be enhanced by large factors after a ‘critical’ dose of radiation from alpha decays. These experiments have been conducted at highly accelerated rates using ion beams. The relationship between these experiments and the situation in vitrified waste has been assessed, taking into account the fact that experiments using alpha emitters incorporated in the glass have failed to find significantly enhanced leach rates after doses about five times larger than those equivalent to this ‘critical’ dose. It is concluded that these differences are observed partly because the ion beam experiments are carried out at such high dose rates that some recovery effects important at lower rates do not come into play. In the case of experiments with 2 keV argon ions, surface effects other than genuine radiation damage must be taken into account. In practice, if water has penetrated the canister, vitrified waste will be irradiated in the presence of the leaching solution. Enhancements of the leach rate due to the transient effects of radiation in the solid are shown to be completely negligible. The effects of radiolysis of the leaching solution and of any air in contact with the solution have also been considered in some detail and related to recent experiments by McVay and Pederson. It is shown that these radiolysis effects will not lead to any situations requiring special precautions in practice, although changes in surface leach rate by small factors can be expected under some circumstances. Any effect of irradiation on leach rates must be seen in the context of a waste repository. Along with other studies we hold the view that the rate of loss of material will be limited by the access of water to the repository, and will therefore depend on the effective saturation solubility of the glass in the leachant, not on the leach rate as usually determined in laboratory tests. Radiation damage is not expected to change the saturation solubility by more than a factor of two or three

Metastable Vacua in Superconformal SQCD-like Theories

We study dynamical supersymmetry breaking in vector-like superconformal N=1 gauge theories. We find appropriate deformations of the superpotential to overcome the problem of the instability of the non supersymmetric vacuum. The request for long lifetime translates into constraints on the physical couplings which in this regime can be controlled through efficient RG analysis.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, JHEP3.cl

Isolation and characterization of the full-length cDNA encoding a member of a novel cytochrome p450 family (CYP320A1) from the tropical freshwater snail, Biomphalaria glabrata, intermediate host for Schistosoma mansoni

Cytochrome p450s (cyp450s) are a family of structurally related proteins, with diverse functions, including steroid synthesis and breakdown of toxins. This paper reports the full-length sequence of a novel cyp450 gene, the first to be isolated from the tropical freshwater snail Biomphalaria glabrata, an important intermediate host of Schistosoma mansoni. The nucleotide sequence is 2291 bp with a predicted amino acid sequence of 584aa. The sequence demonstrates conserved cyp450 structural motifs, but is sufficiently different from previously reported cyp450 sequences to be given a new classification, CYP320A1. Initially identified as down-regulated in partially resistant snails in response to S. mansoni infection, amplification of this gene using RT-PCR in both totally resistant or susceptible snail lines when exposed to infection, and all tissues examined, suggests ubiquitous expression. Characterization of the first cyp450 from B. glabrata is significant in understanding the evolution of these metabolically important proteins

Flavor of quiver-like realizations of effective supersymmetry

We present a class of supersymmetric models which address the flavor puzzle and have an inverted hierarchy of sfermions. Their construction involves quiver-like models with link fields in generic representations. The magnitude of Standard-Model parameters is obtained naturally and a relatively heavy Higgs boson is allowed without fine tuning. Collider signatures of such models are possibly within the reach of LHC in the near future.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, 3 figures. V2: reference adde

Spectral Action for Robertson-Walker metrics

We use the Euler-Maclaurin formula and the Feynman-Kac formula to extend our previous method of computation of the spectral action based on the Poisson summation formula. We show how to compute directly the spectral action for the general case of Robertson-Walker metrics. We check the terms of the expansion up to a_6 against the known universal formulas of Gilkey and compute the expansion up to a_{10} using our direct method

Universal contributions to scalar masses from five dimensional supergravity

We compute the effective Kahler potential for matter fields in warped compactifications, starting from five dimensional gauged supergravity, as a function of the matter fields localization. We show that truncation to zero modes is inconsistent and the tree-level exchange of the massive gravitational multiplet is needed for consistency of the four-dimensional theory. In addition to the standard Kahler coming from dimensional reduction, we find the quartic correction coming from integrating out the gravity multiplet. We apply our result to the computation of scalar masses, by assuming that the SUSY breaking field is a bulk hypermultiplet. In the limit of extreme opposite localization of the matter and the spurion fields, we find zero scalar masses, consistent with sequestering arguments. Surprisingly enough, for all the other cases the scalar masses are tachyonic. This suggests the holographic interpretation that a CFT sector always generates operators contributing in a tachyonic way to scalar masses. Viability of warped su- persymmetric compactifications necessarily asks then for additional contributions. We discuss the case of additional bulk vector multiplets with mixed boundary conditions, which is a partic- ularly simple and attractive way to generate large positive scalar masses. We show that in this case successful fermion mass matrices implies highly degenerate scalar masses for the first two generations of squarks and sleptons.Comment: 23 pages. v2: References added, new section on effect of additional bulk vector multiplets and phenomenolog

Corticosteroid transdermal delivery significantly improves arthritis pain and functional disability

Arthritis is characterized by pain and functional limitation affecting the patients’ quality of life. We performed a clinical study to investigate the efficacy of a betamethasone valerate medicated plaster (Betesil) in improving pain and functional disability in patients with arthritis and osteoarthritis. We enrolled 104 patients affected by osteoarthritis (n = 40) or arthritis (n = 64) in different joints. Patients received diclofenac sodium cream (2 g, four times a day) or a 2.25-mg dose of Betesil applied to the painful joint every night before bedtime for 10 days. Pain and functional disability were assessed, by the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and Western Ontario McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) scores. Redness was assessed by clinical inspection, and edema by the Bfovea sign^ method. C-reactive protein (CRP) was also measured; CRP can be used to cost-effectively monitor the pharmacological treatment efficacy and is increased during the acute-phase response, returning to physiological values after tissue recovery and functional restoration. All measurements were at baseline and at 10-day follow-up. At 10-day follow-up, a greater improvement in VAS and WOMAC pain and WOMAC stiffness and functional limitation scores from baseline was observed in patients treated with Betesil compared with diclofenac (all p < 0.01). At 10-day follow-up, improvement in redness, edema, and CRP levels from baseline was also greater in patients treated with Betesil compared with diclofenac (all p < 0.01). This study demonstrates the safety and efficacy of transdermal delivery of betamethasone valerate in patients affected by arthritis and osteoarthritis

Decays of metastable vacua in SQCD

The decay rates of metastable SQCD vacua in ISS-type models, both towards supersymmetric vacua as well as towards other nonsupersymmetric configurations arising in theories with elementary spectators, are estimated numerically in the semiclassical approximation by computing the corresponding multifield bounce configurations. The scaling of the bounce action with respect to the most relevant dimensionless couplings and ratios of scales is analyzed. In the case of the decays towards the susy vacua generated by nonperturbative effects, the results confirm previous analytical estimations of this scaling, obtained by assuming a triangular potential barrier. The decay rates towards susy vacua generated by R-symmetry breaking interactions turn out to be more than sufficiently suppressed for the phenomenologically relevant parameter range, and their behavior in this regime differs from analytic estimations valid for parametrically small scale ratios. It is also shown that in models with spectator fields, even though the decays towards vacua involving nonzero spectator VEVs don't have a strong parametric dependence on the scale ratios, the ISS vacuum can still be made long-lived in the presence of R-symmetry breaking interactions.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

Stellar Property Statistics of Massive Halos from Cosmological Hydrodynamics Simulations: Common Kernel Shapes

We study stellar property statistics, including satellite galaxy occupation, of massive halo populations realized by three cosmological hydrodynamics simulations: BAHAMAS + MACSIS, TNG300 of the IllustrisTNG suite, and Magneticum Pathfinder. The simulations incorporate independent sub-grid methods for astrophysical processes with spatial resolutions ranging from $1.5$ to $6$ kpc, and each generates samples of $1000$ or more halos with $M_{\rm halo}> 10^{13.5} M_{\odot}$ at redshift $z=0$. Applying localized, linear regression (LLR), we extract halo mass-conditioned statistics (normalizations, slopes, and intrinsic covariance) for a three-element stellar property vector consisting of: i) $N_{sat}$, the number of satellite galaxies with stellar mass, $M_{\star, \rm sat} > 10^{10} M_{\odot}$ within radius $R_{200c}$ of the halo; ii) $M_{\star,\rm tot}$, the total stellar mass within that radius, and; iii) $M_{\star,\rm BCG}$, the gravitationally-bound stellar mass of the central galaxy within a $100 \, \rm kpc$ radius. Scaling parameters for the three properties with halo mass show mild differences among the simulations, in part due to numerical resolution, but there is qualitative agreement on property correlations, with halos having smaller than average central galaxies tending to also have smaller total stellar mass and a larger number of satellite galaxies. Marginalizing over total halo mass, we find the satellite galaxy kernel, $p(\ln N_{sat}\,|\,M_{\rm halo},z)$ to be consistently skewed left, with skewness parameter $\gamma = -0.91 \pm 0.02$, while that of $\ln M_{\star,\rm tot}$ is closer to log-normal, in all three simulations. The highest resolution simulations find $\gamma \simeq -0.8$ for the $z=0$ shape of $p(\ln M_{\star,\rm BCG}\,|\,M_{\rm halo},z)$ and also that the fractional scatter in total stellar mass is below $10\%$ in halos more massive than $10^{14.3} M_{\odot}$

Flavor in Minimal Conformal Technicolor

We construct a complete, realistic, and natural UV completion of minimal conformal technicolor that explains the origin of quark and lepton masses and mixing angles. As in "bosonic technicolor", we embed conformal technicolor in a supersymmetric theory, with supersymmetry broken at a high scale. The exchange of heavy scalar doublets generates higher-dimension interactions between technifermions and quarks and leptons that give rise to quark and lepton masses at the TeV scale. Obtaining a sufficiently large top quark mass requires strong dynamics at the supersymmetry breaking scale in both the top and technicolor sectors. This is natural if the theory above the supersymmetry breaking also has strong conformal dynamics. We present two models in which the strong top dynamics is realized in different ways. In both models, constraints from flavor-changing effects can be easily satisfied. The effective theory below the supersymmetry breaking scale is minimal conformal technicolor with an additional light technicolor gaugino. We argue that this light gaugino is a general consequence of conformal technicolor embedded into a supersymmetric theory. If the gaugino has mass below the TeV scale it will give rise to an additional pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson that is observable at the LHC.Comment: 37 pages; references adde