TeV Neutrinos in a dense medium

The dispersion relation of energetic (few TeV) neutrinos traversing a medium is studied. We use the real time formalism of thermal field theory and we include the effects from the propagator of the W gauge boson. We consider then the MSW oscillations for cosmic neutrinos traversing the Earth, adopting for the neutrino parameters values suggested by the LSND results. It is found that the $\nu_\mu$ flux, for neutrinos passing through the center of the Earth, will appear reduced by 15% for energies around 10 TeV.Comment: 12 pages, latex, 2 figure

Anomalous Weak Boson Couplings: Suggestions from Unitarity and Dynamics

Taking into account the constraints from LEP1 and lower energy experiments, we identify the seven $SU(2)\times U(1)$ gauge invariant purely bosonic $dim=6$ operators which provide a quite general description of how New Physics could reflect in the bosonic world, if it happens that all new degrees of freedom are too heavy to be directly produced in the future colliders. Five of these operators are CP conserving and the remaining ones are CP violating. We derive the unitarity constraints for the CP violating operators and compare them with the already known constraints for the CP conserving ones. Dynamical renormalizable models are also presented, which partly elucidate what the appearance of each of these operators can teach us on the mechanism of spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking.Comment: LaTex, 11 pages, no figure

Application of error-prone PCR to functionally probe the morbillivirus Haemagglutinin protein.

The enveloped morbilliviruses utilise conserved proteinaceous receptors to enter host cells: SLAMF1 or Nectin-4. Receptor binding is initiated by the viral attachment protein Haemagglutinin (H), with the viral Fusion protein (F) driving membrane fusion. Crystal structures of the prototypic morbillivirus measles virus H with either SLAMF1 or Nectin-4 are available and have served as the basis for improved understanding of this interaction. However, whether these interactions remain conserved throughout the morbillivirus genus requires further characterisation. Using a random mutagenesis approach, based on error-prone PCR, we targeted the putative receptor binding site for SLAMF1 interaction on peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) H, identifying mutations that inhibited virus-induced cell-cell fusion. These data, combined with structural modelling of the PPRV H and ovine SLAMF1 interaction, indicate this region is functionally conserved across all morbilliviruses. Error-prone PCR provides a powerful tool for functionally characterising functional domains within viral proteins

Cytoskeleton organisation during the infection of three brown algal species, Ectocarpus siliculosus, Ectocarpus crouaniorum and Pylaiella littoralis, by the intracellular marine oomycete Eurychasma dicksonii

Funded by •University of Athens •TOTAL Foundation •European Commission •ASSEMBLE. Grant Number: 227788 •MASTS •Scottish Funding Council. Grant Number: HR09011 •UK NERC. Grant Number: NE/J00460X/1Peer reviewedPostprintPostprin

New record and phylogenetic affinities of the oomycete Olpidiopsis feldmanni infecting Asparagopsis sp. (Rhodophyta)

Date of Acceptance: 14/09/2015 Acknowledgements. We are grateful to the Total Foundation (Paris) for its funding support to this study, to the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for a doctoral fellowship to K.F. and to the MASTS pooling initiative (Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland, funded by the Scottish Funding Council and contributing institutions; grant reference HR09011).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Infection of the brown alga Ectocarpus siliculosus by the oomycete Eurychasma dicksonii induces oxidative stress and halogen metabolism

Acknowledgments We would like to thank the Aberdeen Proteome Facility, especially Phil Cash, David Stead and Evelyn Argo for assistance with 2D electrophoresis and mass spectrometry. M.S. gratefully acknowledges a Marie Curie PhD fellowship from the European Commission (ECOSUMMER, MEST-CT-2005-20501), a joint FEMS/ESCMID Research Fellowship and the Genomia Fund. C.M.M.G. is supported by a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship (MEIF-CT-2006-022837), a Marie Curie Re-Integration Grant (PERG03-GA-2008-230865) and a New Investigator grant from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC, grant NE/J00460X/1). F.C.K. would like to thank NERC for funding (grants NE/D521522/1, NE/F012705/1 and Oceans 2025 / WP 4.5). L.J.G.-B., C.M.M.G., F.C.K. and P.W. would like to acknowledge funding from NERC for a Strategic Ocean Funding Initiative award (NE/F012578/1). Funding from the MASTS pooling initiative (Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland, funded by the Scottish Funding Council and contributing institutions; grant reference HR09011) and from the TOTAL Foundation (Paris) to F.C.K. is gratefully acknowledged. Finally, we would like to thank the two anonymous referees for constructive suggestions to improve our manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

New Physics Potential with a Neutrino Telescope

Active Galactic Nuclei are considered as sources of neutrinos, with neutrino energies extending up to 10^{18} eV. It is expected that these highly energetic cosmic neutrinos will be detected by the neutrino telescopes, presently under construction. The detection process is very sensitive to the total muon neutrino cross-section. We examine how the total cross section changes at high energies, by the single production of excited fermions (excited muon and muon-neutrino). For parameters (masses, couplings) of the excited fermions allowed by the experimental constraints, we find that for energies of the incoming muon-neutrino above 100 TeV the cross-section for single production of (excited muon and muon-neutrino) supersedes the standard total cross-section.Comment: 12 pages and 2 figures; typset using revtex; postscript files for the figures provide