6,684 research outputs found
Sex assignment in conditions affecting sex development
The newborn infant with atypical genitalia presents a challenging clinical scenario and requires expert input. There have been appreciable advances in our knowledge of the underlying causes that may lead to a mere difference or a more serious disorder of sex development (DSD), the natural history of conditions, as well as the short and long-term complications of these conditions themselves, together with the clinical interventions that are associated with these conditions. With this information, the DSD expert can be more confident when discussing options with the parents of the newborn infant. By working within a multidisciplinary team, the expert should be able to support the family whilst individualising the management plan so that it is also cognizant of the shifts in societal attitudes and expectations around concepts of diversity and openness. It is, therefore, likely that the practice of assigning sex, especially in those cases where sex assignment is unclear on expert assessment, will continue to show temporal, social and geographical variations. It is imperative that clinical data for rare conditions such as these are collected in a standardized format and shared through a common registry so that any evidence that is used for future shifts in practice has a stronger foundation than that which is currently available
Generalized Attractor Points in Gauged Supergravity
The attractor mechanism governs the near-horizon geometry of extremal black
holes in ungauged 4D N=2 supergravity theories and in Calabi-Yau
compactifications of string theory. In this paper, we study a natural
generalization of this mechanism to solutions of arbitrary 4D N=2 gauged
supergravities. We define generalized attractor points as solutions of an
ansatz which reduces the Einstein, gauge field, and scalar equations of motion
to algebraic equations. The simplest generalized attractor geometries are
characterized by non-vanishing constant anholonomy coefficients in an
orthonormal frame. Basic examples include Lifshitz and Schrodinger solutions,
as well as AdS and dS vacua. There is a generalized attractor potential whose
critical points are the attractor points, and its extremization explains the
algebraic nature of the equations governing both supersymmetric and
non-supersymmetric attractors.Comment: 31 pages, LaTeX; v2, references fixed; v3, minor changes, version to
appear in Phys. Rev.
Stable fractal sums of pulses: the cylindrical case
A class of α-stable, 0\textlessα\textless2, processes is obtained as a sum of âup-and-downâ pulses determined by an appropriate Poisson random measure. Processes are H-self-affine (also frequently called âself-similarâ) with H\textless1/α and have stationary increments. Their two-dimensional dependence structure resembles that of the fractional Brownian motion (for H\textless1/2), but their sample paths are highly irregular (nowhere bounded with probability 1). Generalizations using different shapes of pulses are also discussed
Semi-leptonic (1968) decays as a scalar meson probe
The unusual multiplet structures associated with the light spin zero mesons
have recently attracted a good deal of theoretical attention. Here we discuss
some aspects associated with the possibility of getting new experimental
information on this topic from semi-leptonic decays of heavy charged mesons
into an isosinglet scalar or pseudoscalar plus leptons.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
Volume Stabilization and the Origin of the Inflaton Shift Symmetry in String Theory
The main problem of inflation in string theory is finding the models with a
flat potential, consistent with stabilization of the volume of the compactified
space. This can be achieved in the theories where the potential has (an
approximate) shift symmetry in the inflaton direction. We will identify a class
of models where the shift symmetry uniquely follows from the underlying
mathematical structure of the theory. It is related to the symmetry properties
of the corresponding coset space and the period matrix of special geometry,
which shows how the gauge coupling depends on the volume and the position of
the branes. In particular, for type IIB string theory on K3xT^2/Z with D3 or D7
moduli belonging to vector multiplets, the shift symmetry is a part of
SO(2,2+n) symmetry of the coset space [SU(1,1)/ U(1)]x[SO(2,2+n)/(SO(2)x
SO(2+n)]. The absence of a prepotential, specific for the stringy version of
supergravity, plays a prominent role in this construction, which may provide a
viable mechanism for the accelerated expansion and inflation in the early
universe.Comment: 12 page
An approach to permutation symmetry for the electroweak theory
The form of the leptonic mixing matrix emerging from experiment has, in the
last few years, generated a lot of interest in the so-called tribimaximal type.
This form may be naturally associated with the possibility of a discrete
permutation symmetry () among the three generations. However, trying to
implement this attractive symmetry has resulted in some problems and it seems
to have fallen out of favor. We suggest an approach in which the holds to
first approximation, somewhat in the manner of the old SU(3) flavor symmetry of
the three flavor quark model. It is shown that in the case of the neutrino
sector, a presently large experimentally allowed region can be fairly well
described in this first approximation.
We briefly discuss the nature of the perturbations which are the analogs of
the Gell-Mann Okubo perturbations but confine our attention for the most part
to the invariant model. We postulate that the invariant mass
spectrum consists of non zero masses for the and zero masses for
the other charged fermions but approximately degenerate masses for the three
neutrinos. The mixing matrices are assumed to be trivial for the charged
fermions but of tribimaximal type for the neutrinos in the first approximation.
It is shown that this can be implemented by allowing complex entries for the
mass matrix and spontaneous breakdown of the invariance of the
Lagrangian.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, minor corrections and acknowledgment added. To
appear in IJM
Mathematical modeling of genome replication
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
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