Convergence science in the Anthropocene: Navigating the known and unknown

Rapidly changing ecological and social systems currently pose significant societal challenges. Navigating the complexity of social-ecological change requires ap- proaches able to cope with, and potentially solve, both foreseen and unforeseen societal challenges. The emergent field of convergence addresses the intricacies of such challenges, and is thus relevant to a broad range of interdisciplinary issues. This paper suggests a way to conceptualize convergence research. It discusses how it relates to two major societal challenges (adaptation, transformation), and to the generation of policy-relevant science. It also points out limitations to the further development of convergence research

Anomalies, Unparticles, and Seiberg Duality

We calculate triangle anomalies for fermions with non-canonical scaling dimensions. The most well known example of such fermions (aka unfermions) occurs in Seiberg duality where the matching of anomalies (including mesinos with scaling dimensions between 3/2 and 5/2) is a crucial test of duality. By weakly gauging the non-local action for an unfermion, we calculate the one-loop three-current amplitude. Despite the fact that there are more graphs with more complicated propagators and vertices, we find that the calculation can be completed in a way that nearly parallels the usual case. We show that the anomaly factor for fermionic unparticles is independent of the scaling dimension and identical to that for ordinary fermions. This can be viewed as a confirmation that unparticle actions correctly capture the physics of conformal fixed point theories like Banks-Zaks or SUSY QCD.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur

Gaugephobic Higgs Signals at the LHC

The Gaugephobic Higgs model provides an interpolation between three different models of electroweak symmetry breaking: Higgsless models, Randall-Sundrum models, and the Standard Model. At parameter points between the extremes, Standard Model Higgs signals are present at reduced rates, and Higgsless Kaluza-Klein excitations are present with shifted masses and couplings, as well as signals from exotic quarks necessary to protect the Zbb coupling. Using a new implementation of the model in SHERPA, we show the LHC signals which differentiate the generic Gaugephobic Higgs model from its limiting cases. These are all signals involving a Higgs coupling to a Kaluza-Klein gauge boson or quark. We identify the clean signal $p p \to W^(i) \to W H$ mediated by a Kaluza-Klein W, which can be present at large rates and is enhanced for even Kaluza-Klein numbers. Due to the very hard lepton coming from the W decay, this signature has little background, and provides a better discovery channel for the Higgs than any of the Standard Model modes, over its entire mass range. A Higgs radiated from new heavy quarks also has large rates, but is much less promising due to very high multiplicity final states.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Fitness benefits of prolonged post-reproductive lifespan in women

Most animals reproduce until they die, but in humans, females can survive long after ceasing reproduction. In theory, a prolonged post-reproductive lifespan will evolve when females can gain greater fitness by increasing the success of their offspring than by continuing to breed themselves. Although reproductive success is known to decline in old age, it is unknown whether women gain fitness by prolonging lifespan post-reproduction. Using complete multi-generational demographic records, we show that women with a prolonged post-reproductive lifespan have more grandchildren, and hence greater fitness, in pre-modern populations of both Finns and Canadians. This fitness benefit arises because post-reproductive mothers enhance the lifetime reproductive success of their offspring by allowing them to breed earlier, more frequently and more successfully. Finally, the fitness benefits of prolonged lifespan diminish as the reproductive output of offspring declines. This suggests that in female humans, selection for deferred ageing should wane when one's own offspring become post-reproductive and, correspondingly, we show that rates of female mortality accelerate as their offspring terminate reproduction

Model-Independent Bounds on a Light Higgs

We present up-to-date constraints on a generic Higgs parameter space. An accurate assessment of these exclusions must take into account statistical, and potentially signal, fluctuations in the data currently taken at the LHC. For this, we have constructed a straightforward statistical method for making full use of the data that is publicly available. We show that, using the expected and observed exclusions which are quoted for each search channel, we can fully reconstruct likelihood profiles under very reasonable and simple assumptions. Even working with this somewhat limited information, we show that our method is sufficiently accurate to warrant its study and advocate its use over more naive prescriptions. Using this method, we can begin to narrow in on the remaining viable parameter space for a Higgs-like scalar state, and to ascertain the nature of any hints of new physics---Higgs or otherwise---appearing in the data.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures; v3: correction made to basis of four-derivative operators in the effective Lagrangian, references adde

Neighborhoods of trees in circular orderings

In phylogenetics, a common strategy used to construct an evolutionary tree for a set of species X is to search in the space of all such trees for one that optimizes some given score function (such as the minimum evolution, parsimony or likelihood score). As this can be computationally intensive, it was recently proposed to restrict such searches to the set of all those trees that are compatible with some circular ordering of the set X. To inform the design of efficient algorithms to perform such searches, it is therefore of interest to find bounds for the number of trees compatible with a fixed ordering in the neighborhood of a tree that is determined by certain tree operations commonly used to search for trees: the nearest neighbor interchange (nni), the subtree prune and regraft (spr) and the tree bisection and reconnection (tbr) operations. We show that the size of such a neighborhood of a binary tree associated with the nni operation is independent of the tree’s topology, but that this is not the case for the spr and tbr operations. We also give tight upper and lower bounds for the size of the neighborhood of a binary tree for the spr and tbr operations and characterize those trees for which these bounds are attained

PainDroid: An android-based virtual reality application for pain assessment

Earlier studies in the field of pain research suggest that little efficient intervention currently exists in response to the exponential increase in the prevalence of pain. In this paper, we present an Android application (PainDroid) with multimodal functionality that could be enhanced with Virtual Reality (VR) technology, which has been designed for the purpose of improving the assessment of this notoriously difficult medical concern. Pain- Droid has been evaluated for its usability and acceptability with a pilot group of potential users and clinicians, with initial results suggesting that it can be an effective and usable tool for improving the assessment of pain. Participant experiences indicated that the application was easy to use and the potential of the application was similarly appreciated by the clinicians involved in the evaluation. Our findings may be of considerable interest to healthcare providers, policy makers, and other parties that might be actively involved in the area of pain and VR research

Minimal Conformal Technicolor and Precision Electroweak Tests

We study the minimal model of conformal technicolor, an SU(2) gauge theory near a strongly coupled conformal fixed point, with conformal symmetry softly broken by technifermion mass terms. Conformal symmetry breaking triggers chiral symmetry breaking in the pattern SU(4) -> Sp(4), which gives rise to a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson that can act as a composite Higgs boson. The top quark is elementary, and the top and electroweak gauge loop contributions to the Higgs mass are cut off entirely by Higgs compositeness. In particular, the model requires no top partners and no "little Higgs" mechanism. A nontrivial vacuum alignment results from the interplay of the top loop and technifermion mass terms. The composite Higgs mass is completely determined by the top loop, in the sense that m_h/m_t is independent of the vacuum alignment and is computable by a strong-coupling calculation. There is an additional composite pseudoscalar A with mass larger than m_h and suppressed direct production at LHC. We discuss the electroweak fit in this model in detail. Corrections to Z -> bb and the T parameter from the top sector are suppressed by the enhanced Sp(4) custodial symmetry. Even assuming that the strong contribution to the S parameter is positive and usuppressed, a good electroweak fit can be obtained for v/f ~ 0.25, where v and f are the electroweak and chiral symmetry breaking scales respectively. This requires fine tuning at the 10% level.Comment: 34 pages, 4 figures; v2: updated precision electroweak fi

The Global Health System: Actors, Norms, and Expectations in Transition

In the first in a series of four articles highlighting the changing nature of global health institutions, Nicole Szlezák and colleagues outline the origin and aim of the series