Conformal Technicolor

We point out that the flavor problem in theories with dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking can be effectively decoupled if the physics above the TeV scale is strongly conformal, and the electroweak order parameter has a scaling dimension d = 1 + epsilon with epsilon \simeq 1/few. There are many restrictions on small values of epsilon: for epsilon << 1, electroweak symmetry breaking requires a fine-tuning similar to that of the standard model; large-N conformal field theories (including those obtained from the AdS/CFT correspondence) require fine-tuning for d < 2; `walking technicolor' theories cannot have d < 2, according to gap equation analyses. However, strong small-N conformal field theories with epsilon \simeq 1/few avoid all these constraints, and can give rise to natural dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking with a top quark flavor scale of order 10^{1/epsilon} TeV, large enough to decouple flavor. Small-N theories also have an acceptably small Peskin-Takeuchi S parameter. This class of theories provides a new direction for dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking without problems from flavor or electroweak precision tests. A possible signal for these theories is a prominent scalar resonance below the TeV scale with couplings similar to a heavy standard model Higgs.Comment: 26 pages + References. Slight wording changes. Version appearing in JHE

ODTN: Open Disaggregated Transport Network. Discovery and Control of a Disaggregated Optical Network through Open Source Software and Open APIs

ONOS discovers and manages a topology made of Transponders and a dedicated OLS, using standard protocols (NETCONF/RESTCONF) and models (OpenConfig/TAPI). The demo is a joint collaboration, towards production deployment, between 3 operators and 2 equipment vendors

Composite Dirac Neutrinos

We present a mechanism that naturally produces light Dirac neutrinos. The basic idea is that the right-handed neutrinos are composite. Any realistic composite model must involve `hidden flavor' chiral symmetries. In general some of these symmetries may survive confinement, and in particular, one of them manifests itself at low energy as an exact $B-L$ symmetry. Dirac neutrinos are therefore produced. The neutrinos are naturally light due to compositeness. In general, sterile states are present in the model, some of them can naturally be warm dark matter candidates.Comment: 12 pages; Sec. IIC updated; minor corrections; published versio

Neutrino Mass and μ→e+γ\mu \rightarrow e + \gamma from a Mini-Seesaw

The recently proposed "mini-seesaw mechanism" combines naturally suppressed Dirac and Majorana masses to achieve light Standard Model neutrinos via a low-scale seesaw. A key feature of this approach is the presence of multiple light (order GeV) sterile-neutrinos that mix with the Standard Model. In this work we study the bounds on these light sterile-neutrinos from processes like \mu ---> e + \gamma, invisible Z-decays, and neutrinoless double beta-decay. We show that viable parameter space exists and that, interestingly, key observables can lie just below current experimental sensitivities. In particular, a motivated region of parameter space predicts a value of BR(\mu ---> e + \gamma) within the range to be probed by MEG.Comment: 1+26 pages, 7 figures. v2 JHEP version (typo's fixed, minor change to presentation, results unchanged

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead