Neutron Electric Dipole Moment in Two Higgs Doublet Model

We study the effect of the "chromo-electric" dipole moment on the electric dipole moment(EDM) of the neutron in the two Higgs doublet model. We systematically investigate the Weinberg's operator O_{3g}=GG\t G and the operator O_{qg}=\bar q\sigma\t Gq, in the cases of \tan\b\gg 1, \tan\b\ll 1 and \tan\b\simeq 1. It is shown that $O_{sg}$ gives the main contribution to the neutron EDM compared to the other operators, and also that the contributions of $O_{ug}$ and $O_{3g}$ cancel out each other. It is pointed out that the inclusion of second lightest neutral Higgs scalar adding to the lightest one is of essential importance to estimate the neutron EDM. The neutron EDM is considerably reduced due to the destructive contribution with each other if the mass difference of the two Higgs scalars is of the order O(50\G).Comment: 20 pages with 12 figures. Figures will be sent by postal mail if requested. Late

Computing Three-dimensional Constrained Delaunay Refinement Using the GPU

We propose the first GPU algorithm for the 3D triangulation refinement problem. For an input of a piecewise linear complex $\mathcal{G}$ and a constant $B$, it produces, by adding Steiner points, a constrained Delaunay triangulation conforming to $\mathcal{G}$ and containing tetrahedra mostly of radius-edge ratios smaller than $B$. Our implementation of the algorithm shows that it can be an order of magnitude faster than the best CPU algorithm while using a similar amount of Steiner points to produce triangulations of comparable quality

Interleukine-6 promoter polymorphism -174G/C is not associated with acute rejection episodes after kidney transplantation: a meta-analysis

Proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines play key roles in immunologic phenomena leading to Acute Rejection Episodes (ARE) after kidney transplantation which are responsible for kidney graft loss. In particular, interleukin-6 (IL-6), regulates the immune response by acting on various cells including differentiation and maturation of B and T cells or macrophages. This investigation seek to summarize current knowledge on the clinical impact on ARE of IL-6 -174G/C polymorphisms. Relevant published data was retrieved through Medline pertaining to kidney transplant outcome and IL-6 polymorphisms. Odds ratios (OR) with 95 % confidence intervals (CI) were used to assess the strength of the association. Z test was used to determine the significance of the pooled OR. Statistical heterogeneity was measured using the Q statistic. The effect of heterogeneity was quantified using the I2-statistic. A total of 16 studies, including 672 ARE transplanted cases and 1290 transplanted controls without rejection episodes, were collected in this meta-analysis. For high vs. low IL-6 genotypes, no heterogeneity (Q =12.07, p=0.67, I2 =0.0%) was observed among individual estimates, and original data was combined using the fixed-effects model. For the total population, we found no association between G/G and G/C IL-6 genotypes with ARE, we obtained an effect summary OR=1.14, with a 95 % CI=0.84-1.55, and p=0.4. In conclusion, in recipients with a high producer (G/G and G/C) genotype of IL-6, the -174G/C polymorphism is not associated with acute rejection of renal allograft

TFBSTools: an R/bioconductor package for transcription factor binding site analysis.

Summary: The ability to efficiently investigate transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) genome-wide is central to computational studies of gene regulation. TFBSTools is an R/Bioconductor package for the analysis and manipulation of TFBSs and their associated transcription factor profile matrices. TFBStools provides a toolkit for handling TFBS profile matrices, scanning sequences and alignments including whole genomes, and querying the JASPAR database. The functionality of the package can be easily extended to include advanced statistical analysis, data visualization and data integration. Availability and implementation: The package is implemented in R and available under GPL-2 license from the Bioconductor website (http://bioconductor.org/packages/TFBSTools/). Contact: [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Comment on "Transverse Force on a Quantized Vortex in a Superfluid"

The result of Thouless, Ao and Niu (TAN), that the mutual friction parameter $d_\perp =0$, contradicts to the experiments made in rotating 3He-B by Manchester group. The Manchester group observed that $d_\perp <0$ at low temperature and approaches 1 at high temperature. The reason of the contradiction is that TAN did not take into account the Iordanskii force on the vortex and the spectral flow force, which comes from the anomaly related to the low-energy bound states of fermions in cores of quantized vortices. The Iordanskii force is responsible for the negative $d_\perp <0$ at low temperature, while due to the spectral flow $d_\perp$ approaches 1 at high temperature. Relation of the spectral flow anomaly with the paradoxes of the linear and angular momenta in gapless superfluids is discussed.Comment: revtex, 2 pages, submitted to Physical Review Letters as "Comment" to the paper D.J. Thouless, P. Ao and Q. Niu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3758 (1996

Deacidification of naphthenic acids from petroleum crude oil using 2-methylimidazole with the aid of ni/ce and cu/ce catalysts / Nor Shafira Hassan

The presence of the carboxylic acid derivative compound in crude oil can contributes to the major corrosion in oil pipelines and distillation units in crude oil refineries. The acidity level in crude oil is measured by the Total Acid Number (TAN). Methods that commonly used to remove naphthenic acid (NA) from crude oil such as dilution and caustic washing have its own weakness such as emulsion formation, high temperature and huge solvent usage. In order to overcome this problem, catalytic deacidification method had been developed and used to reduce the TAN value in acidic crude oil utilizing the basic chemical with the aid of an alkaline earth metal catalyst. In this study, crude oil from Petronas Penapisan Melaka was investigated. The parameters studied were reagent concentration, reaction temperature, catalyst loading, calcination temperature and reusability of the potential catalyst. Basic chemical used were 2-methylimidazole in polyethylene glycol (PEG 400) with concentration of 100, 500, 1000 and 1500 ppm. Alkaline earth metal used as a base for the catalyst was Cerium (Ce) where Ni and Cu act as dopant. The catalyst with the lowest TAN value was undergo characterization methods such as Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy and Thermogravimetry Analysis for its physicochemical properties. The result showed that the Cu/Ce catalyst meet Petronas requirement as the TAN value reduced to 0.93 mg KOH/g from original TAN value, 3.93mg KOH/g. As for Ni/Ce catalyst, the TAN reduction was from 3.93 to 1.03 mg KOH/g. For TGA, the total weight loss of Cu/Ce=23.40% and Ni/Ce=25.22% due to the complete removal of the impurities in catalyst. Reaction temperature used was 27°C with catalyst calcination temperature of 1000°C and 7 beads of catalyst loading. It can be concluded that catalytic deacidification method with the aid of Cu/Ce was efficient in removing NA from the acidic crude oil thus lowering the TAN value less than 1 mg KOH/g