Worldsheet instantons and coupling selection rules in heterotic orbifolds

We review recent results on string coupling selection rules for heterotic orbifolds, derived using conformal field theory. Such rules are the first step towards understanding the viability of the recently obtained compactifications with potentially realistic particle spectra. They arise from the properties of the worldsheet instantons that mediate the couplings, and include stringy effects that would seem 'miraculous' to an effective field theory observer.Comment: 4 pages, talk presented at SQS'13, JINR, Dubna, Russia, 29 July - 03 August, 201

Wilson lines and Chern-Simons flux in explicit heterotic Calabi-Yau compactifications

We study to what extent Wilson lines in heterotic Calabi-Yau compactifications lead to non-trivial H-flux via Chern-Simons terms. Wilson lines are basic ingredients for Standard Model constructions but their induced H-flux may affect the consistency of the leading order background geometry and of the two-dimensional worldsheet theory. Moreover H-flux in heterotic compactifications would play an important role for moduli stabilization and could strongly constrain the supersymmetry breaking scale. We show how to compute H-flux and the corresponding superpotential, given an explicit complete intersection Calabi-Yau compactification and choice of Wilson lines. We do so by classifying special Lagrangian submanifolds in the Calabi-Yau, understanding how the Wilson lines project onto these submanifolds, and computing their Chern-Simons invariants. We illustrate our procedure with the quintic hypersurface as well as the split-bicubic, which can provide a potentially realistic three generation model.Comment: 41 pages, 7 figures. v2: Minor corrections, published versio

Attributed Graph Classification via Deep Graph Convolutional Neural Networks

From social networks to biological networks, graphs are a natural way to represent a diverse set of real-world data. This research presents attributed graph convolutional neural network with a pooling layer (AGCP for short), a novel end-to-end deep neural network model which captures the higher-order latent attributes of weighted, labeled, undirected, attributed graphs of arbitrary size. The architecture of AGCP is an efficient variant of convolutional neural network (CNN) and has a linear filter function that convolves over the fixed topological structure of a graph to learn local and global attributes of the graph. Convolution is followed by a pooling layer that coarsens the graph while preserving the global structure of the original input graph using information gain. On the other hand, advances in high throughput technologies for next-generation sequencing have enabled machine learning research to acquire and extract knowledge from biological networks. We apply AGCP on three bioinformatics networks, ENZYMES, D&D, and GINA a graph dataset of gene interaction networks with genomic mutation attributes as the attributes of the vertices. In several experiments on these datasets, we demonstrate that AGCP yields better results in terms of classification accuracy relative to the previously proposed models by a considerable margin

Assessment of quality of life among antenatal women with gestational diabetes mellitus

Background:  Pregnancy is challenging for every woman and if it is complicated with conditions like gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), it may reduce her quality of life (QoL) significantly which increases the potential risks related to the physical and psychological health aspects related to the mother as well as for the baby thus causing a negative impact on her overall health and wellbeing. Hence, it should be given more importance by healthcare professionals. Methods: The study design adopted to assess the QoL of antenatal women with GDM was a cross-sectional research design.110 antenatal women with GDM attending antenatal OPD at selected hospitals in Bengaluru were chosen using a Non-probability convenient sampling technique. A standardized GDM questionnaire (GDMQ-36) was used to assess QoL and the data analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics techniques. The study was conducted from July 2022 to August 2023. Results: The study results were as follows, 74.5% of antenatal women with GDM had a moderate level of QoL, 25.5% had a high level of QoL and no antenatal women was found to have low level of QoL. 60% of antenatal women had high level of QoL in support domain and 25.5% of the antenatal women had low level of QoL in complications of GDM domains. A significant association was found between QoL and selected socio-demographic variables. Conclusions: The present Study concluded that the majority of the antenatal women (74.5%), had moderate levels of QoL and a significant association was found between QoL and socio-demographic variables.

Knowledge and Attitude regarding menstrual cups among young women

Background: Menstruation is cyclic vaginal bleeding that occurs physiologically as a result of the shedding of the endometrium. The maintenance of adequate perineal hygiene during menstruation is very important. One product which is gaining quite a popularity over few years is a flexible, reusable cup that is inserted inside the vagina to collect blood during menstruation known as a menstrual cup. The benefits of a menstrual cup are numerous which include comfort, hygiene, cost-effectiveness and eco-friendliness. The acceptance of menstrual cups among women in India is varied due to personal and sociocultural factors. The objective of this study was to assess the knowledge and attitude regarding menstrual cups among young women. Methods: A descriptive study design was adopted for the study. 200 young women were selected using non-probability convenient sampling technique. The study tool was administered to assess the knowledge and attitude regarding menstrual cups. Results: Among 200 young women, 49% of young women had adequate knowledge, 43.5% had moderately adequate knowledge and 7.5% had inadequate knowledge regarding menstrual cups. 64.5% of young women had neutral attitude, 31% had positive attitude and 4.5% had negative attitude regarding menstrual cups. Conclusions: Though young women are aware of menstrual cups but majority of them are skeptical towards its use. The findings suggests that mass in-depth awareness programmes for nurses and other health professionals should be organised and support groups need to be created to provide adequate information and counselling to the public regarding the use of menstrual cups.

Data Collaboratives as a New Frontier of Cross-Sector Partnerships in the Age of Open Data: Taxonomy Development

Data collaboratives present a new form of cross-sector and public-private partnership to leverage (often corporate) data for addressing a societal challenge. They can be seen as the latest attempt to make data accessible to solve public problems. Although an increasing number of initiatives can be found, there is hardly any analysis of these emerging practices. This paper seeks to develop a taxonomy of forms of data collaboratives. The taxonomy consists of six dimensions related to data sharing and eight dimensions related to data use. Our analysis shows that data collaboratives exist in a variety of models. The taxonomy can help organizations to find a suitable form when shaping their efforts to create public value from corporate and other data. The use of data is not only dependent on the organizational arrangement, but also on aspects like the type of policy problem, incentives for use, and the expected outcome of data collaborative

A Collaborative Governance Approach to Partnerships Addressing Public Problems with Private Data

The recent explosion of data, which is generated, collected, and exchanged, opens up new opportunities and poses new challenges. Actors in different sectors have recently began to explore how they can work together and leverage these data to help address ‘wicked’ problems. A novel form of cross sector partnership emerges, labelled “data collaborative”, which is normally focused on accessing private sector data and using it to address public problems. While there is emerging knowledge about how data can be shared in such partnerships, less is known about the collaboration dynamics of these partnerships. Are there any distinct collaboration mechanisms and challenges that come into play? In this paper, we examine this problem from the perspective of collaborative governance and propose a framework for understanding collaboration around data sharing for public good

Dark Energy with a Little Help from its Friends

We analyse theories that do not have a de Sitter vacuum and cannot lead to slow-roll quintessence, but which nevertheless support a transient era of accelerated cosmological expansion due to interactions between a scalar $\phi$ and either a hidden sector thermal bath, which evolves as Dark Radiation, or an extremely-light component of Dark Matter. We show that simple models can explain the present-day Dark Energy of the Universe consistently with current observations. This is possible both when $\phi$'s potential has a hilltop form and when it has a steep exponential run-away, as might naturally arise from string theory. We also discuss a related theory of multi-field quintessence, in which $\phi$ is coupled to a sector that sources a subdominant component of Dark Energy, which overcomes many of the challenges of slow-roll quintessence.Comment: 30 pages + appendices (two columns), 9 figure

Gravity at the Tip of the Throat

We study the gravitational signatures that arise from compactifying Type IIB supergravity on a compact space containing a Klebanov-Strassler warped throat. After reviewing the dimensional reduction of the 10d graviton and explicitly obtaining the equations of motion for the 4d tensor $h_{\mu\nu}$, vector $h_{\mu n}$ and scalar $h_{mn}$ modes, we find the masses and wavefunctions of the Kaluza-Klein tower of spin-2 states. We explore how the masses and wavefunctions depend on the balance between the strength of the warping and the size of the bulk, and how these relate to the range and strength of the interactions which correct the Newtonian gravitational potential. By computing the modified Newtonian potential for sources on a brane somewhere along the throat, and applying consistency constraints on the Klebanov-Strassler parameters, we obtain predictions for the phenomenological parameter space. In the case of a fully warped throat, and depending on where the brane is along the throat, these predictions are narrow in range and consistent with current observational and experimental constraints. We also begin an exploration of gravitational wave signatures of KK gravitons in warped throats, finding that strong warping can bring the corresponding frequencies down to the windows of current and proposed experiments.Comment: 49 pages, 13 figures, 5 table

De Sitter vacua -- when are `subleading corrections' really subleading?

We consider various string-loop, warping and curvature corrections that are expected to appear in type IIB moduli stabilisation scenarios. It has recently been argued, in the context of strongly-warped LVS de Sitter vacua, that it is impossible to achieve parametric suppression in all of these corrections simultaneously \cite{Junghans:2022exo}. We investigate corrections in the context of the recently discovered weakly-warped LVS de Sitter vacua, which represent a distinct branch of solutions in type IIB flux compactifications, supported by small conifold flux numbers $MK \lesssim 32$. Warping corrections become less problematic in this regime, and some corrections even help to reach the weakly-warped regime of parameter space. Other corrections continue to be dangerous and would require numerical coefficients to be computed -- and found to be small -- in order not to destroy the consistency of the weakly-warped LVS de Sitter solution.Comment: 35 pages, 5 figures and 3 table