BRST Anomaly and Superspace Constraints of the Pure Spinor Heterotic String in a Curved Background

The pure spinor heterotic string in a generic super Yang-Mills and supergravity background is considered. We determine the one-loop BRST anomaly at the cohomological level. We prove that it can be absorbed by consistent corrections of the classical constraints due to Berkovits and Howe, in agreement with the Green-Schwarz cancelation mechanism.Comment: harvmac-big, 18 pages; references added; minor correction

Effect of genotype on individual response to the pharmacological treatment of glaucoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The social impact of glaucoma is worth of note: primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) is one of the leading causes of irreversible blindness worldwide, affecting some 68.56 million people with overall prevalence of 2.4%. Since one of the main risk factors for the development of POAG is the increase of intraocular pressure (IOP) causing retinal ganglion cells death, the medical treatment of POAG consists in the use of drugs endowed with neuroprotective effect and able to reduce IOP. these drugs include beta-blockers, prostaglandin analogues, carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, alpha or cholinergic agonists and rho kinase inhibitors. however, not all the patients respond to the same extent to the therapy in terms of efficacy and safety. genetics and genome wide association studies have highlighted the occurrence of mutations and polymorphisms influencing the predisposition to develop POAG and its phenotype, as well as affecting the response to pharmacological treatment. the present systematic review and meta-analysis aims at identifying genetic variants and at verifying whether these can influence the responsiveness of patients to therapy for efficacy and safety. It follows the most updated preferred reporting Items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses 2020 recommendations. the literature search was conducted consulting the most relevant scientific databases, i.e. pubmed/MEDLINE, scopus, web of science and public health genomics and precision health Knowledge base up to June 14th, 2023. the search retrieved 1026 total records, among which eight met the eligibility criteria for inclusion in the analysis. the results demonstrated that the most investigated pharmacogenetic associations concern latanoprost and timolol, and that efficacy was studied more in depth than safety. moreover, the heterogeneity of design and paucity of studies prompt further investigation in randomized clinical trials. In fact, adequately powered and designed pharmacogenetic association studies are needed to provide body of evidence with good certainty for a more appropriate use of medical therapy in POAG. PROSPERO registration: CRD42023434867

Taxonomic resolution refinement does not improve understanding of invertebrate's role on leaf litter breakdown

Abstract The invertebrate biodiversity of subtropical streams depends on the seasonal input of organic matter, as much as the leaf decomposition process on stream system. However, one of the challenges in determining the importance of invertebrates for leaf breakdown in subtropical streams is the low taxonomic resolution applied in most studies. To overcome this limitation, here we used litter bags with senescent leaves to evaluate the impact of different taxonomic resolutions of trophic group classification to assess the seasonal importance of invertebrate community for leaf litter breakdown in a subtropical stream (Atlantic Forest in western of Paraná state, Brazil). Litterfall was quarterly measured over a year. The leaf litter accumulated in an interval of 30 days was retrieved, weighed, and used for the leaf breakdown experiments (by litter bags). We found a lower importance of invertebrate community richness and density (shredders and scrapers) in leaf breakdown process irrespective of the taxonomic resolution (family or genus level used). Hyphomycetes biomass and fungi sporulation also did not present changes among sample times, and consecutively, importance for leaf breakdown. However, the richness and density of Chironomidae taxa respond differently depending on the taxonomic resolution used. Low litter breakdown may be explained by the increase of consumption of microorganisms, due to high density of Chironomidae scrapers evaluated at the genus level. Moreover, temperature is the main factor responsible for breakdown over the year, in a positive way. Therefore, our results indicated the family level as the taxonomic resolution sufficient to assess the role of shredders and scrapers in the leaf litter breakdown process of this subtropical stream system

A New First Class Algebra, Homological Perturbation and Extension of Pure Spinor Formalism for Superstring

Based on a novel first class algebra, we develop an extension of the pure spinor (PS) formalism of Berkovits, in which the PS constraints are removed. By using the homological perturbation theory in an essential way, the BRST-like charge $Q$ of the conventional PS formalism is promoted to a bona fide nilpotent charge $\hat{Q}$, the cohomology of which is equivalent to the constrained cohomology of $Q$. This construction requires only a minimum number (five) of additional fermionic ghost-antighost pairs and the vertex operators for the massless modes of open string are obtained in a systematic way. Furthermore, we present a simple composite "$b$-ghost" field $B(z)$ which realizes the important relation $T(z) = \{\hat{Q}, B(z)\}$, with $T(z)$ the Virasoro operator, and apply it to facilitate the construction of the integrated vertex. The present formalism utilizes U(5) parametrization and the manifest Lorentz covariance is yet to be achieved.Comment: 38 pages, no figure. Proof of triviality of delta-homology improved and a reference adde

Relating Green-Schwarz and Extended Pure Spinor Formalisms by Similarity Transformation

In order to gain deeper understanding of pure-spinor-based formalisms of superstring, an explicit similarity transformation is constructed which provides operator mapping between the light-cone Green-Schwarz (LCGS) formalism and the extended pure spinor (EPS) formalism, a recently proposed generalization of the Berkovits' formalism in an enlarged space. By applying a systematic procedure developed in our previous work, we first construct an analogous mapping in the bosonic string relating the BRST and the light-cone formulations. This provides sufficient insights and allows us to construct the desired mapping in the more intricate case of superstring as well. The success of the construction owes much to the enlarged field space where pure spinor constraints are removed and to the existence of the ``B-ghost'' in the EPS formalism.Comment: 37pages, no figur

Superbrane Actions and Geometrical Approach

We review a generic structure of conventional (Nambu-Goto and Dirac-Born-Infeld-like) worldvolume actions for the superbranes and show how it is connected through a generalized action construction with a doubly supersymmetric geometrical approach to the description of super-p-brane dynamics as embedding world supersurfaces into target superspaces.Comment: Based on talks given by the authors at the Volkov Memorial Seminar "Supersymmetry and Quantum field Theory" (Kharkov, January 5-7, 1997), LaTeX file, 11 pages Misprints corrected, references adde

Evidence for the classical integrability of the complete AdS(4) x CP(3) superstring

We construct a zero-curvature Lax connection in a sub-sector of the superstring theory on AdS(4) x CP(3) which is not described by the OSp(6|4)/U(3) x SO(1,3) supercoset sigma-model. In this sub-sector worldsheet fermions associated to eight broken supersymmetries of the type IIA background are physical fields. As such, the prescription for the construction of the Lax connection based on the Z_4-automorphism of the isometry superalgebra OSp(6|4) does not do the job. So, to construct the Lax connection we have used an alternative method which nevertheless relies on the isometry of the target superspace and kappa-symmetry of the Green-Schwarz superstring.Comment: 1+26 pages; v2: minor typos corrected, acknowledgements adde

A low-background γγ-coincidence spectrometer for radioisotope studies

The performance of a new, low-background NaI(Tl) spectrometer, based on γγ-coincidence counting, is discussed. We present experimental coincidence efficiencies, timing resolutions, background count rates, and minimum detectable activities. The spectrometer has been simulated using Geant4, and the results are used for estimating coincidence efficiencies for volume sources. To test the device, we measured the cosmogenic 26Al activity in a small (17.7 g) meteorite fragment. We find a value of 52.9±7.8dpm∕kg, in agreement with the activity measured previously in a much larger fragment of the same meteorite using a HPGe detector