Gravitational Geons on the Brane

In this paper, we examine the possibility of static, spherically symmetric gravitational geons on a 3 dimensional brane embedded in a 4+1 dimensional space-time. We choose a specific g_tt for the brane-world space-time metric. We then calculate g_rr analytically in the weak field limit and numerically for stronger fields. We show that the induced field equations on the brane do admit gravitational geon solutions.Comment: 14 pages with 9 figures. To appear in General Relativity and Gravitatio

Male frequent attenders of general practice and their help seeking preferences

Background: Low rates of health service usage by men are commonly linked to masculine values and traditional male gender roles. However, not all men conform to these stereotypical notions of masculinity, with some men choosing to attend health services on a frequent basis, for a variety of different reasons. This study draws upon the accounts of male frequent attenders of the General Practitioner's (GP) surgery, examining their help-seeking preferences and their reasons for choosing services within general practice over other sources of support. Methods: The study extends thematic analysis of interview data from the Self Care in Primary Care study (SCinPC), a large scale multi-method evaluation study of a self care programme delivered to frequent attenders of general practice. Data were collected from 34 semi-structured interviews conducted with men prior to their exposure to the intervention. Results: The ages of interviewed men ranged from 16 to 72 years, and 91% of the sample (n= 31) stated that they had a current health condition. The thematic analysis exposed diverse perspectives within male help-seeking preferences and the decision-making behind men's choice of services. The study also draws attention to the large variation in men's knowledge of available health services, particularly alternatives to general practice. Furthermore, the data revealed some men's lack of confidence in existing alternatives to general practice. Conclusions: The study highlights the complex nature of male help-seeking preferences, and provides evidence that there should be no 'one size fits all' approach to male service provision. It also provides impetus for conducting further studies into this under researched area of interest. © 2011 WPMH GmbH

Vanishing of cosmological constant in nonfactorizable geometry

We generalize the results of Randall and Sundrum to a wider class of four-dimensional space-times including the four-dimensional Schwarzschild background and de Sitter universe. We solve the equation for graviton propagation in a general four dimensional background and find an explicit solution for a zero mass bound state of the graviton. We find that this zero mass bound state is normalizable only if the cosmological constant is strictly zero, thereby providing a dynamical reason for the vanishing of cosmological constant within the context of this model. We also show that the results of Randall and Sundrum can be generalized without any modification to the Schwarzschild background.Comment: 8 Pages(expanded version), Accepted in Phys. Rev.

String Universality

If there is a single underlying "theory of everything" which in some limits of its "moduli space" reduces to the five weakly coupled string theories in 10D, and 11D SUGRA, then it is possible that all six of them have some common domain of validity and that they are in the same universality class, in the sense that the 4D low energy physics of the different theories is the same. We call this notion String Universality. This suggests that the true vacuum of string theory is in a region of moduli space equally far (in some sense) from all perturbative theories, most likely around the self-dual point with respect to duality symmetries connecting them. We estimate stringy non-perturbative effects from wrapped brane instantons in each perturbative theory, show how they are related by dualities, and argue that they are likely to lead to moduli stabilization only around the self-dual point. We argue that moduli stabilization should occur near the string scale, and SUSY breaking should occur at a much lower intermediate scale, and that it originates from different sources. We discuss the problems of moduli stabilization and SUSY breaking in currently popular scenarios, explain why these problems are generic, and discuss how our scenario can evade them. We show that String Universality is not inconsistent with phenomenology but that it is in conflict with some popular versions of brane world scenarios.Comment: 48 pages, 1 figure; one reference adde

Abelian D-terms and the superpartner spectrum of anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking

We address the tachyonic slepton problem of anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking using abelian D-terms. We demonstrate that the most general extra U(1) symmetry that does not disrupt gauge coupling unification has a large set of possible charges that solves the problem. It is shown that previous studies in this direction that added both an extra hypercharge D-term and another D-term induced by B-L symmetry (or similar) can be mapped into a single D-term of the general ancillary U(1)_a. The U(1)_a formalism enables identifying the sign of squark mass corrections which leads to an upper bound of the entire superpartner spectrum given knowledge of just one superpartner mass.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, [v2] reference added, [v3] Eq. (9) corrected, results unaffected, [v4] version to be published in Phys. Rev. D, expanded parameter space for figures to match tex

Fermions on an Interval: Quark and Lepton Masses without a Higgs

We consider fermions on an extra dimensional interval. We find the boundary conditions at the ends of the interval that are consistent with the variational principle, and explain which ones arise in various physical circumstances. We apply these results to higgsless models of electroweak symmetry breaking, where electroweak symmetry is not broken by a scalar vacuum expectation value, but rather by the boundary conditions of the gauge fields. We show that it is possible to find a set of boundary conditions for bulk fermions that would give a realistic fermion mass spectrum without the presence of a Higgs scalar, and present some sample fermion mass spectra for the standard model quarks and leptons as well as their resonances.Comment: LaTeX, 36 pages, 5 figure

Clustering of 27,525,663 death records from the United States based on health conditions associated with death: an example of big health data exploration

Background: Insight into health conditions associated with death can inform healthcare policy. We aimed to cluster 27,525,663 deceased people based on the health conditions associated with death to study the associations between the health condition clusters, demographics, the recorded underlying cause and place of death. Methods: Data from all deaths in the United States registered between 2006 and 2016 from the National Vital Statistics System of the National Center for Health Statistics were analyzed. A self-organizing map (SOM) was used to create an ordered representation of the mortality data. Results: 16 clusters based on the health conditions associated with death were found showing significant differences in socio-demographics, place, and cause of death. Most people died at old age (73.1 (18.0) years) and had multiple health conditions. Chronic ischemic heart disease was the main cause of death. Most people died in the hospital or at home. Conclusions: The prevalence of multiple health conditions at death requires a shift from disease-oriented towards person-centred palliative care at the end of life, including timely advance care planning. Understanding differences in population-based patterns and clusters of end-of-life experiences is an important step toward developing a strategy for implementing population-based palliative care

R-mediation of Dynamical Supersymmetry Breaking

We propose a simple scenario of the dynamical supersymmetry breaking in four dimensional supergravity theories. The supersymmetry breaking sector is assumed to be completely separated as a sequestered sector from the visible sector, except for the communication by the gravity and U(1)_R gauge interactions, and the supersymmetry breaking is mediated by the superconformal anomaly and U(1)_R gauge interaction. Supersymmetry is dynamically broken by the interplay between the non-perturbative effect of the gauge interaction and Fayet-Iliopoulos D-term of U(1)_R which necessarily exists in supergravity theories with gauged U(1)_R symmetry. We construct an explicit model which gives phenomenologically acceptable mass spectrum of superpartners with vanishing (or very small) cosmological constant.Comment: 12 pages, to be published in Phys. Rev.