Different waves and directions of Neolithic migrations in the Armenian Highland

Background: The peopling of Europe and the nature of the Neolithic agricultural migration as a primary issue in the modern human colonization of the globe is still widely debated. At present, much uncertainty is associated with the reconstruction of the routes of migration for the first farmers from the Near East. In this context, hospitable climatic conditions and the key geographic position of the Armenian Highland suggest that it may have served as a conduit for several waves of expansion of the first agriculturalists from the Near East to Europe and the North Caucasus. Results: Here, we assess Y-chromosomal distribution in six geographically distinct populations of Armenians that roughly represent the extent of historical Armenia. Using the general haplogroup structure and the specific lineages representing putative genetic markers of the Neolithic Revolution, haplogroups R1b1a2, J2, and G, we identify distinct patterns of genetic affinity between the populations of the Armenian Highland and the neighboring ones north and west from this area. Conclusions: Based on the results obtained, we suggest a new insight on the different routes and waves of Neolithic expansion of the first farmers through the Armenian Highland. We detected at least two principle migratory directions: (1) westward alongside the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea and (2) northward to the North Caucasus. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13323-014-0015-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Charged Leptons With Nanosecond Lifetimes

Some extensions of the standard model contain additional leptons which are vectorlike under weak isospin. A class of models is considered in which these leptons do not appreciably mix with the known leptons. In such models, the heavy charged lepton and the heavy neutrino are degenerate in mass, and the degeneracy is broken by radiative corrections. The mass splitting is calculated and found to be very weakly dependent on the lepton mass, varying from 250 to 330 MeV as the mass varies from 100 to 800 GeV. This result is {\it not} affected significantly by inclusion in a supersymmetric model in spite of the additional loops involving the superpartners. As a result, this fairly general class of models has a charged lepton whose lifetime varies in the narrow range from 0.5 to 2.0 nanoseconds, and which decays into neutrals plus a very low energy electron or muon.Comment: 7 pages, revtex, 3 figures available upon reques

Genome-Wide and Paternal Diversity Reveal a Recent Origin of Human Populations in North Africa.

The geostrategic location of North Africa as a crossroad between three continents and as a stepping-stone outside Africa has evoked anthropological and genetic interest in this region. Numerous studies have described the genetic landscape of the human population in North Africa employing paternal, maternal, and biparental molecular markers. However, information from these markers which have different inheritance patterns has been mostly assessed independently, resulting in an incomplete description of the region. In this study, we analyze uniparental and genome-wide markers examining similarities or contrasts in the results and consequently provide a comprehensive description of the evolutionary history of North Africa populations. Our results show that both males and females in North Africa underwent a similar admixture history with slight differences in the proportions of admixture components. Consequently, genome-wide diversity show similar patterns with admixture tests suggesting North Africans are a mixture of ancestral populations related to current Africans and Eurasians with more affinity towards the out-of-Africa populations than to sub-Saharan Africans. We estimate from the paternal lineages that most North Africans emerged ~15,000 years ago during the last glacial warming and that population splits started after the desiccation of the Sahara. Although most North Africans share a common admixture history, the Tunisian Berbers show long periods of genetic isolation and appear to have diverged from surrounding populations without subsequent mixture. On the other hand, continuous gene flow from the Middle East made Egyptians genetically closer to Eurasians than to other North Africans. We show that genetic diversity of today's North Africans mostly captures patterns from migrations post Last Glacial Maximum and therefore may be insufficient to inform on the initial population of the region during the Middle Paleolithic period.This study was supported in parts by Spanish Government MCINN grant CGL2010-14944/BOS and Programa de Cooperación Interuniversitaria e Investigación Científica, Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation grants A75180/06, A/8394/07, B/018514/08, A1/040218/11.Peer Reviewe

Kinetic decoupling of neutralino dark matter

After neutralinos cease annihilating in the early Universe, they may still scatter elastically from other particles in the primordial plasma. At some point in time, however, they will eventually stop scattering. We calculate the cross sections for neutralino elastic scattering from standard-model particles to determine the time at which this kinetic decoupling occurs. We show that kinetic decoupling occurs above a temperature $T\sim$ MeV. Thereafter, neutralinos act as collisionless cold dark matter.Comment: Replaced with revised version, new references adde

Model-Independent Comparison of Direct vs. Indirect Detection of Supersymmetric Dark Matter

We compare the rate for elastic scattering of neutralinos from various nuclei with the flux of upward muons induced by energetic neutrinos from neutralino annihilation in the Sun and Earth. We consider both scalar and axial-vector interactions of neutralinos with nuclei. We find that the event rate in a kg of germanium is roughly equivalent to that in a $10^5$- to $10^7$-m$^2$ muon detector for a neutralino with primarily scalar coupling to nuclei. For an axially coupled neutralino, the event rate in a 50-gram hydrogen detector is roughly the same as that in a 10- to 500-m$^2$ muon detector. Expected experimental backgrounds favor forthcoming elastic-scattering detectors for scalar couplings while the neutrino detectors have the advantage for axial-vector couplings.Comment: 10 pages, self-unpacking uuencoded PostScript fil

Bounds for Lepton Flavor Violation and the Pseudoscalar Higgs in the General Two Higgs Doublet Model using g−2g-2 muon factor

Current experimental data from the $g-2$ muon factor, seems to show the necessity of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM), since the difference between SM and experimental predictions is 2.6$\sigma$. In the framework of the General Two Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM), we calculate the muon anomalous magnetic moment to get lower and upper bounds for the Flavour Changing (FC) Yukawa couplings in the leptonic sector. We also obtain lower bounds for the mass of the pseudoscalar Higgs ($m_{A^0}$) as a function of the parameters of the model.Comment: 12 pages, RevTex4, 5 figures. Improved presentation, updated experimental data, amplified analysis, new figures added. Subbmited to Phys. Rev.

T2DM GWAS in the Lebanese population confirms the role of TCF7L2 and CDKAL1 in disease susceptibility

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of multiple populations with distinctive genetic and lifestyle backgrounds are crucial to the understanding of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) pathophysiology. We report a GWAS on the genetic basis of T2DM in a 3,286 Lebanese participants. More than 5,000,000 SNPs were directly genotyped or imputed using the 1000 Genomes Project reference panels. We identify genome-wide significant variants in two loci CDKAL1 and TCF7L2, independent of sex, age and BMI, with leading variants rs7766070 (OR = 1.39, P = 4.77 × 10(−9)) and rs34872471 (OR = 1.35, P = 1.01 × 10(−8)) respectively. The current study is the first GWAS to find genomic regions implicated in T2DM in the Lebanese population. The results support a central role of CDKAL1 and TCF7L2 in T2DM susceptibility in Southwest Asian populations and provide a plausible component for understanding molecular mechanisms involved in the disease

New Bounds on R-parity Violating Couplings

We use information from rare nonleptonic decays of heavy-quark mesons to put new bounds on the magnitudes of certain product combinations of baryon nonconserving R-parity violating couplings in supersymmetric models. Product combinations of lepton and baryon nonconserving R-parity violating couplings are also considered in the light of existing bounds on nucleon decay. Contrary to popular impression, a few such combinations are shown to remain essentially unconstrained.Comment: Latex file, 16 pages including 6 uuencoded Postscript files appended. Figures also available via anonymous ftp at ftp://physics.wm.edu/pub/ (get rparity*.ps). Revised version corrects a few sentences in introduction and adds some reference

Multivariate epidemiologic analysis of type 2 diabetes mellitus risks in the Lebanese population

Background: The burden of diabetes in Lebanon requires well-targeted interventions for screening type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and prediabetes and prevention of risk factors. Newly recruited 998 Lebanese individuals, in addition to 7,292 already available, were studied to investigate the prevalence of diabetes, prediabetes and their associated risk factors. Methods: Participants had fasting blood sugar and glycohemoglobin tests in addition to a lipid profile. Clinical and demographic information were obtained from a detailed questionnaire. The relationship between T2DM, its risk factors, and its complications were tested. Comparisons of these risk factors among diabetics, healthy, and coronary artery disease (CAD) patients were performed. Results: The prevalence of T2DM significantly increased with increasing BMI (p < 0.0001). Exercise activity level negatively correlated with the disease (p = 0.002), whereas the prevalence of T2DM (p < 0.0001) and CAD family history (p = 0.006) positively correlated with the affection status. The mean levels of triglycerides and LDL-C were significantly higher in diabetics (1.87; 1.35) compared to individuals with prediabetes (1.63; 1.26) and unaffected controls (1.49; 1.19). People with T2DM showed a significant decrease in HDL-C levels. A strong correlation of overall hyperlipidemia with the diabetes affection status was shown (p < 0.0001). Other comorbid factors such as hypertension (p < 0.0001) and self-reported obesity (p < 0.0001) were highly associated with T2DM and prediabetes. Reproductive health of women showed a strong correlation between giving birth to a baby with a high weight and the occurrence of T2DM and prediabetes later in life (p < 0.0001). Retinopathy and peripheral neuropathy were significantly correlated with diabetes and prediabetes (p < 0.0001). Conclusions: The present study shows an alarming prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes in the studied subgroups representative of the Lebanese population. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1758-5996-6-89) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians

The predominantly African origin of all modern human populations is well established, but the route taken out of Africa is still unclear. Two alternative routes, via Egypt and Sinai or across the Bab el Mandeb strait into Arabia, have traditionally been proposed as feasible gateways in light of geographic, paleoclimatic, archaeological, and genetic evidence. Distinguishing among these alternatives has been difficult. We generated 225 whole-genome sequences (225 at 8× depth, of which 8 were increased to 30×; Illumina HiSeq 2000) from six modern Northeast African populations (100 Egyptians and five Ethiopian populations each represented by 25 individuals). West Eurasian components were masked out, and the remaining African haplotypes were compared with a panel of sub-Saharan African and non-African genomes. We showed that masked Northeast African haplotypes overall were more similar to non-African haplotypes and more frequently present outside Africa than were any sets of haplotypes derived from a West African population. Furthermore, the masked Egyptian haplotypes showed these properties more markedly than the masked Ethiopian haplotypes, pointing to Egypt as the more likely gateway in the exodus to the rest of the world. Using five Ethiopian and three Egyptian high-coverage masked genomes and the multiple sequentially Markovian coalescent (MSMC) approach, we estimated the genetic split times of Egyptians and Ethiopians from non-African populations at 55,000 and 65,000 years ago, respectively, whereas that of West Africans was estimated to be 75,000 years ago. Both the haplotype and MSMC analyses thus suggest a predominant northern route out of Africa via Egypt