Hunting for heavy composite Majorana neutrinos at the LHC

We investigate the search for heavy Majorana neutrinos stemming from a composite model scenario at the upcoming LHC Run II at a center of mass energy of 13 TeV. While previous studies of the composite Majorana neutrino were focussed on gauge interactions via magnetic type transition coupling between ordinary and heavy fermions (with mass $m^*$) here we complement the composite model with contact interactions at the energy scale $\Lambda$ and we find that the production cross sections are dominated by such contact interactions by roughly two/three orders of magnitude. This mechanism provides therefore very interesting rates at the prospected luminosities. We study the same sign di-lepton and di-jet signature ($pp \to \ell\ell jj$) and perform a fast detector simulation based on Delphes. We compute 3$\sigma$ and 5$\sigma$ contour plots of the statistical significance in the parameter space ($\Lambda,m^*$). We find that the potentially excluded regions at $\sqrt{s} =13$ TeV are quite larger than those excluded so far at Run I considering searches with other signatures.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, Minor comments and few references added. Version accepted by the European Physical Journal C (EPJC

Intellectual property is key to solving crisis such as the Covid-19 emergency

We need a powerful technology transfer ecosystem to support university research, inventors, and small businesses, writes Andrea Alunn

Imaging inflammatory breast cancer

AbstractCarcinomatous mastitis is a severe form of breast cancer and its diagnosis is essentially clinical and histological. The first examination to perform is still mammography, not only to provide evidence supporting this diagnosis but also to search for a primary intramammary lesion and assess local/regional spread. It is essential to study the contralateral breast for bilaterality. Ultrasound also provides evidence supporting inflammation, but appears to be better for detecting masses and analysing lymph node areas. The role of MRI is debatable, both from a diagnostic point of view and for monitoring during treatment, and should be reserved for selected cases. An optimal, initial radiological assessment will enable the patient to be monitored during neoadjuvant chemotherapy

The Fluid Bible: The Blurry Line Between Biblical and Nonbiblical Texts

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, no canonical Bible existed. That is, in the two or three centuries before the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., there was no one list of sacred books that was considered authoritative. At the same time, there was no clear border between biblical books and nonbiblical books. Rather, different groups of Jews considered different books authoritative, even though all Jews accepted the Torah, or Pentateuch—that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah was, after all, the source of the Law, which provided the underpinning of Jewish ritual and daily life. But the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal a surprising fact: Even in the case of the Torah, there was no fixed text either of the Torah as a whole, or of any of the individual books. Among the scrolls is a whole group of texts that are related to, but differ from, the present-day books of the canonical Torah. Some of the texts are simply copies of biblical books with variants, the result of centuries of hand copying (scribal error or manipulation) and textual growth. These documents provide critical new material to the text critic who attempts to recover the best text of a biblical book, using all copies available. Some of these texts, however, differ markedly— at times startlingly—from the standard authoritative Jewish version of the Bible, known as the Masoretic text, or MT for short. Nor do they resemble the two other major biblical textual traditions, the Septuagint (or LXX for short) and the Samaritan Pentateuch. The Septuagint is a Greek translation made for the Jews of Alexandria, Egypt, the first five books of which were translated in the third century B.C. from a Hebrew text that differs somewhat from MT. According to legend, the name Septuagint, which comes from the Latin term for “seventy,” refers to the 72 Jewish translators brought to Egypt by Ptolemy Philadelphus [285–246 B.C.] to translate the Torah.) More about the Samaritan Pentateuch later. Suffice it to say that MT is the authoritative text for Jews and Protestants; LXX, for the Orthodox churches; and the Samaritan Pentateuch, for the small group of Samaritans who still live in Nablus and a few places in Israel. Each of these traditions is represented in various fragmentary manuscripts of the Pentateuch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. But some of the seemingly biblical manuscripts from Qumran differ considerably from all of these traditions. The question I would raise is, In ancient times, how far could these texts deviate and still he considered biblical? Or authoritative? Scholars themselves are somewhat unsure, calling them “parabiblical” or “quasibiblical.” Those terms, however, describe the texts only from our viewpoint. To us, they are not canonical and therefore cannot be biblical. But to the people who copied and read them two thousand years ago, they may have been just as authoritative as the texts we consider biblical today

COVID-19 makes IP protection of traditional knowledge even more urgent

A protected database of traditional knowledge would transform the technology transfer system as we know it, write Andrea Alunni and Lilian Volca

On Laminar to Turbulent Transition of Arc-Jet Flow in the NASA Ames Panel Test Facility

This paper provides experimental evidence and supporting computational analysis to characterize the laminar to turbulent flow transition in a high enthalpy arc-jet facility at NASA Ames Research Center. The arc-jet test data obtained in the 20 MW Panel Test Facility include measurements of surface pressure and heat flux on a water-cooled calibration plate, and measurements of surface temperature on a reaction-cured glass coated tile plate. Computational fluid dynamics simulations are performed to characterize the arc-jet test environment and estimate its parameters consistent with the facility and calibration measurements. The present analysis comprises simulations of the nonequilibrium flowfield in the facility nozzle, test box, and flowfield over test articles. Both laminar and turbulent simulations are performed, and the computed results are compared with the experimental measurements, including Stanton number dependence on Reynolds number. Comparisons of computed and measured surface heat fluxes (and temperatures), along with the accompanying analysis, confirm that that the boundary layer in the Panel Test Facility flow is transitional at certain archeater conditions