Previously Identified Genetic Variants in ADGRL3 Are not Associated with Risk for Equine Degenerative Myeloencephalopathy across Breeds.

Equine neuroaxonal dystrophy/equine degenerative myeloencephalopathy (eNAD/EDM) is a neurologic disease that has been reported in young horses from a wide range of breeds. The disease is inherited and associated with vitamin E deficiency during the first two years of life, resulting in bilateral symmetric ataxia. A missense mutation (chr3:71,917,591 C > T) within adhesion G protein-coupled receptor L3 (ADGRL3) was recently associated with risk for EDM in the Caspian breed. In order to confirm these findings, genotyping of this missense mutation, along with the three other associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the genomic region, was carried out on 31 postmortem-confirmed eNAD/EDM cases and 43 clinically phenotyped controls from various breeds. No significant association was found between eNAD/EDM confirmed cases and genotype at any of the four identified SNPs (P > 0.05), including the nonsynonymous variant (EquCab2.0 chr3:71,917,591; allelic P = 0.85). These findings suggest that the four SNPs, including the missense variant in the ADGRL3 region, are not associated with risk for eNAD/EDM across multiple breeds of horses

CP Violation Beyond the Standard Model

I review CP-violating signals of physics beyond the standard model in the B system. I examine the prospects for finding these effects at future colliders, with an emphasis on hadron machines.Comment: 11 pages, plain latex, no figures. Talk given at the 9th International Conference on B-Physics at Hadron Machines -- BEAUTY 2003, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, October 200

Charmed partner of the exotic X(5568)X(5568) state and its properties

The mass, decay constant and width of a hypothetical charmed partner $X_c$ of the newly observed exotic $X_b(5568)$ state are calculated using a technique of QCD sum rule method. The $X_c=[su][\overline{c}\overline{d}]$ state with $J^{P}=0^{+}$ is described employing two types of the diquark-antidiquark interpolating currents. The evaluation of the mass $m_{X_c}$ and decay constant $f_{X_c}$ is carried out utilizing the two-point sum rule method by including vacuum condensates up to eight dimensions. The widths of the decay channels $X_c \to D_s^{-} \pi^{+}$ and $X_c \to D^{0} K^{0}$ are also found. To this end, the strong couplings $g_{X_{c}D_{s}\pi}$ and $g_{X_{c}D K}$ are computed by means of QCD sum rules on the light-cone and soft-meson approximation.Comment: 7 Pages, 2 Figures and 3 Table

Measurement of the Branching Fraction for B- --> D0 K*-

We present a measurement of the branching fraction for the decay B- --> D0 K*- using a sample of approximately 86 million BBbar pairs collected by the BaBar detector from e+e- collisions near the Y(4S) resonance. The D0 is detected through its decays to K- pi+, K- pi+ pi0 and K- pi+ pi- pi+, and the K*- through its decay to K0S pi-. We measure the branching fraction to be B.F.(B- --> D0 K*-)= (6.3 +/- 0.7(stat.) +/- 0.5(syst.)) x 10^{-4}.Comment: 7 pages, 1 postscript figure, submitted to Phys. Rev. D (Rapid Communications