On type II superstrings in bosonic backgrounds: the role of fermions and T-duality

We derive the actions for type II Green-Schwarz strings up to second order in the fermions, for general bosonic backgrounds. We base our work on the so-called normal coordinate expansion. The resulting actions are $\kappa$-symmetric and, for the case of surviving background supersymmetries, supersymmetric. We first obtain the type IIa superstring action from the 11D supermembrane by double dimensional reduction. Then, by means of a generalization of T-duality we derive the type IIb superstring action. The resulting actions are surprisingly simple and elegant.Comment: 10 pages, latex. more typos correcte

Actions and Fermionic symmetries for D-branes in bosonic backgrounds

In this article we derive the full interacting effective actions for supersymmetric D-branes in arbitrary bosonic type II supergravity backgrounds. The actions are presented in terms of component fields up to second order in fermions. As one expects, the actions are built from the supercovariant derivative operator and the $\kappa$-symmetry projector. The results take a compact and elegant form exhibiting $\kappa$-symmetry, as well as supersymmetry in a background with Killing spinors. We give the explicit transformation rules for these symmetries in all cases, including the M2-brane. As an example, we analyze the N=2 super-worldvolume field theory defined by a test D4-brane in the supergravity background produced by a large number of D0-branes. This example displays rigid supersymmetry in a curved spacetime.Comment: 33 pages, typos correcte

The explicit form of the effective action for F1 and D-branes

In this work we consider the full interacting effective actions for fundamental strings and D-branes in arbitrary bosonic type II supergravity backgrounds. The explicit form of these actions is given in terms of component fields, up to second order in the fermions. The results take a compact form exhibiting $\kappa$-symmetry, as well as supersymmetry in a background with Killing spinors. Also we give the explicit transformation rules for these symmetries in all cases.Comment: 9 pages, based on the talk given at the RTN workshop of 2003 Copenhagen: 15/9-20/9/03. Published in the proceedings of the conferenc

Anti-Powers in Infinite Words

In combinatorics of words, a concatenation of $k$ consecutive equal blocks is called a power of order $k$. In this paper we take a different point of view and define an anti-power of order $k$ as a concatenation of $k$ consecutive pairwise distinct blocks of the same length. As a main result, we show that every infinite word contains powers of any order or anti-powers of any order. That is, the existence of powers or anti-powers is an unavoidable regularity. Indeed, we prove a stronger result, which relates the density of anti-powers to the existence of a factor that occurs with arbitrary exponent. As a consequence, we show that in every aperiodic uniformly recurrent word, anti-powers of every order begin at every position. We further show that every infinite word avoiding anti-powers of order $3$ is ultimately periodic, while there exist aperiodic words avoiding anti-powers of order $4$. We also show that there exist aperiodic recurrent words avoiding anti-powers of order $6$.Comment: Revision submitted to Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series

Flag-Dipole Spinor Fields in ESK Gravities

We consider the Riemann-Cartan geometry as a basis for the Einstein-Sciama-Kibble theory coupled to spinor fields: we focus on $f(R)$ and conformal gravities, regarding the flag-dipole spinor fields, type-(4) spinor fields under the Lounesto classification. We study such theories in specific cases given for instance by cosmological scenarios: we find that in such background the Dirac equation admits solutions that are not Dirac spinor fields, but in fact the aforementioned flag-dipoles ones. These solutions are important from a theoretical perspective, as they evince that spinor fields are not necessarily determined by their dynamics, but also a discussion on their structural (algebraic) properties must be carried off. Furthermore, the phenomenological point of view is shown to be also relevant, since for isotropic Universes they circumvent the question whether spinor fields do undergo the Cosmological Principle.Comment: 18 pages, improved versio

Differential expression and biochemical activity of the immune receptor Tim-3 in healthy and malignant human myeloid cells

The T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain 3 (Tim-3) is a plasma membrane-associated receptor which is involved in a variety of biological responses in human immune cells. It is highly expressed in most acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) cells and therefore may serve as a possible target for AML therapy. However, its biochemical activities in primary human AML cells remain unclear. We therefore analysed the total expression and surface presence of the Tim-3 receptor in primary human AML blasts and healthy primary human leukocytes isolated from human blood. We found that Tim-3 expression was significantly higher in primary AML cells compared to primary healthy leukocytes. Tim-3 receptor molecules were distributed largely on the surface of primary AML cells, whereas in healthy leukocytes Tim-3 protein was mainly expressed intracellularly. In primary human AML blasts, both Tim-3 agonistic antibody and galectin-9 (a Tim-3 natural ligand) significantly upregulated mTOR pathway activity. This was in line with increased accumulation of hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha (HIF-1α) and secretion of VEGF and TNF-α. Similar results were obtained in primary human healthy leukocytes. Importantly, in both types of primary cells, Tim-3-mediated effects were compared with those induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and stem cell factor (SCF). Tim-3 induced comparatively moderate responses in both AML cells and healthy leukocytes. However, Tim-3, like LPS, mediated the release of both TNF-α and VEGF, while SCF induced mostly VEGF secretion and did not upregulate TNF-α release

Robust leave-one-out cross-validation for high-dimensional Bayesian models

Leave-one-out cross-validation (LOO-CV) is a popular method for estimating out-of-sample predictive accuracy. However, computing LOO-CV criteria can be computationally expensive due to the need to fit the model multiple times. In the Bayesian context, importance sampling provides a possible solution but classical approaches can easily produce estimators whose variance is infinite, making them potentially unreliable. Here we propose and analyze a novel mixture estimator to compute Bayesian LOO-CV criteria. Our method retains the simplicity and computational convenience of classical approaches, while guaranteeing finite variance of the resulting estimators. Both theoretical and numerical results are provided to illustrate the improved robustness and efficiency. The computational benefits are particularly significant in high-dimensional problems, allowing to perform Bayesian LOO-CV for a broader range of models. The proposed methodology is easily implementable in standard probabilistic programming software and has a computational cost roughly equivalent to fitting the original model once.Comment: 37 pages, 8 figure