Dark energy: the absolute electric potential of the universe

Is there an absolute cosmic electric potential?. The recent discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe could be indicating that this is certainly the case. In this essay we show that the consistency of the covariant and gauge invariant theory of electromagnetism is truly questionable when considered on cosmological scales. Out of the four components of the electromagnetic field, Maxwell's theory only contains two physical degrees of freedom. However, in the presence of gravity, one of the "unphysical" states cannot be consistently eliminated, thus becoming real. This third polarization state is completely decoupled from charged matter, but can be excited gravitationally thus breaking gauge invariance. On large scales the new state can be seen as a homogeneous cosmic electric potential, whose energy density behaves as a cosmological constant.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. Essay selected for "Honorable Mention" in the 2009 Awards for Essays on Gravitation (Gravity Research Foundation

Electromagnetic nature of dark energy

Out of the four components of the electromagnetic field, Maxwell's theory only contains two physical degrees of freedom. However, in an expanding universe, consistently eliminating one of the "unphysical" states in the covariant (Gupta-Bleuler) formalism turns out to be difficult to realize. In this work we explore the possibility of quantization without subsidiary conditions. This implies that the theory would contain a third physical state. The presence of such a new (temporal) electromagnetic mode on cosmological scales is shown to generate an effective cosmological constant which can account for the accelerated expansion of the universe. This new polarization state is completely decoupled from charged matter, but can be excited gravitationally. In fact, primordial electromagnetic quantum fluctuations produced during electroweak scale inflation could naturally explain the presence of this mode and also the measured value of the cosmological constant. The theory is compatible with all the local gravity tests, it is free from classical or quantum instabilities and reduces to standard QED in the flat space-time limit. Thus we see that, not only the true nature of dark energy can be established without resorting to new physics, but also the value of the cosmological constant finds a natural explanation in the context of standard inflationary cosmology. Possible signals, discriminating this model from LCDM, are also discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. Contribution to the Proceedings of Invisible Universe International Conference, UNESCO, Paris, June 29-July 3, 200

Cosmological magnetic fields from inflation in extended electromagnetism

In this work we consider an extended electromagnetic theory in which the scalar state which is usually eliminated by means of the Lorenz condition is allowed to propagate. This state has been shown to generate a small cosmological constant in the context of standard inflationary cosmology. Here we show that the usual Lorenz gauge-breaking term now plays the role of an effective electromagnetic current. Such a current is generated during inflation from quantum fluctuations and gives rise to a stochastic effective charge density distribution. Due to the high electric conductivity of the cosmic plasma after inflation, the electric charge density generates currents which give rise to both vorticity and magnetic fields on sub-Hubble scales. Present upper limits on vorticity coming from temperature anisotropies of the CMB are translated into lower limits on the present value of cosmic magnetic fields. We find that, for a nearly scale invariant vorticity spectrum, magnetic fields $B_{\lambda}> 10^{-12}$ G are typically generated with coherence lengths ranging from sub-galactic scales up to the present Hubble radius. Those fields could act as seeds for a galactic dynamo or even account for observations just by collapse and differential rotation of the protogalactic cloud.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Innovative adaptive designs in oncology clinical trials with drug combinations

The use of drug combinations in clinical trials has emerged during the last years as an alternative to single agent trials since a more favorable therapeutic response may be obtained by combining drugs that, for instance, target multiple pathways or inhibit resistance mechanisms. This practice is common in both early phase and late phase clinical trials. However, depending on the phase of the trial, we may find different challenges that will require novel methodology. In early phase, where we model the probability of toxicity and efficacy, the main challenge is to find a suitable multivariate model that works well with a relatively low sample size. In late phase trials, the main challenge is to propose a design that allows to perfectly control the the type-I error and the power while allowing for the trial to stop in case of a lack of efficacy or in case the interim analyses show an efficacy that is big enough so it would be unethical to continue the trial. Other challenges may involve certain characteristics of the drug, such us delayed effects. This issue is quite present in nowadays clinical research because of the use of immuno-therapy against cancer. In early phase trials, we studied the state of the art methodology and we observed that a large number of published methods are not appropriate for drug combination settings since were originally designed for single agents and then adapted to drug combinations. This statement is not based only on performance, because in fact many of these methods perform quite well even though they were not designed to be used in a drug combination setting, but because most of them do not take into account the interaction between drugs. In late phase trials we focused our attention on the design of clinical trials in the presence of delayed effects in a drug combination setting. We performed a state of the art methodology review, and we observed that there is enough published methodology to design efficient confirmatory trials under this conditions. However, we also observed that most of this methodology primarily focuses on power recovery rather than type-I error rate control, which makes it difficult to apply in practice given the nature of confirmatory trials. Our intention during this thesis was not only to develop novel methodology but to do it in areas that could be of interest for clinicians. In this thesis we make three contributions to the field of clinical trials with drug combinations. In early phase trials, we propose a Bayesian adaptive phase I trial design that allows the investigator to attribute a DLT to one or both agents in a unknown fraction of patients, even when the drugs are given concurrently. We also propose a Bayesian adaptive phase I/II design with drug combinations, a binary endpoint in stage 1, and a TTP endpoint in stage 2, where we aim to identify the dose combination region associated with the highest median TTP among doses along the MTD curve. In late phase trials, we did an assessment of the impact of delayed effects in group sequential and adaptive group sequential designs, with an empirical evaluation in terms of power and type-I error rate of the weighted log-rank in a simulated scenario. Our last contribution includes several practical recommendations regarding which methodology should be used in the presence of delayed effects depending on certain characteristics of the trial

Nitrogen Incorporation in CH_4-N_2 Photochemical Aerosol Produced by Far Ultraviolet Irradiation

Nitrile incorporation into Titan aerosol accompanying hydrocarbon chemistry is thought to be driven by extreme UV wavelengths (λ120 nm is presently unaccounted for in atmospheric photochemical models. We suggest that reaction with CH radicals produced from CH_4 photolysis may provide a mechanism for incorporating N into the molecular structure of the aerosol. Further work is needed to understand the chemistry involved, as these processes may have significant implications for how we view prebiotic chemistry on early Earth and similar planets. Key Words: Titan—Photochemical aerosol—CH_4-N_2 photolysis—Far UV—Nitrogen activation

On the electromagnetic nature of dark energy and the origin of cosmic magnetic fields

In this work we consider quantum electromagnetic fields in an expanding universe. We start by reviewing the difficulties found when trying to impose the Lorenz condition in a time-dependent geometry. Motivated by this fact, we explore the possibility of extending the electromagnetic theory by allowing the scalar state which is usually eliminated by means of the Lorenz condition to propagate, preserving at the same time the dynamics of ordinary transverse photons. We show that the new state cannot be generated by charged currents, but it breaks conformal invariance and can be excited gravitationally. In fact, primordial quantum fluctuations produced during inflation can give rise to super-Hubble temporal electromagnetic modes whose energy density behaves as a cosmological constant. The value of the effective cosmological constant is shown to agree with observations provided inflation took place at the electroweak scale. The theory is compatible with all the local gravity tests and is free from classical or quantum instabilities. Thus we see that, not only the true nature of dark energy can be established without resorting to new physics, but also the value of the cosmological constant finds a natural explanation in the context of standard inflationary cosmology. On sub-Hubble scales, the new state generates an effective charge density which, due to the high electric conductivity of the cosmic plasma after inflation, gives rise to both vorticity and magnetic fields. Present upper limits on vorticity coming from CMB anisotropies are translated into lower limits on the present value of cosmic magnetic fields. We find that magnetic fields $B_{\lambda}> 10^{-12}$ G can be typically generated with coherence lengths ranging from sub-galactic scales up to the present Hubble radius.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. Talk given at the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics Symposium YKIS2010, "Cosmology-the Next Generation", Kyoto, 28 June-2 July, 2010. To appear in Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplemen

Heterologous expression of AtNPR1 gene in olive for increasing fungal tolerance

The NPR1 gene encodes a key component of SAR signaling mediated by salicylic acid (SA). After a pathogen infection, the accumulation of SA releases NPR1 monomers in the cytosol that are translocated to the nucleus, activating the expression of pathogenesis-related (PR) genes. Overexpression of NPR1 has conferred resistance to fungal, viral and bacterial pathogens in several plant species. The aim of this research was to generate transgenic olive plants expressing the gene AtNPR1 from Arabidopsis thaliana to obtain material resistant to fungal pathogens. Three transgenic lines expressing AtNPR1 gene under the control of the constitutive promoter CaMV35S were obtained following the protocol of Torreblanca et al. (2010), using an embryogenic line derived from a seed of cv. Picual. Level of AtNPR1 expression in transgenic calli varied greatly among the different lines, being higher in the line NPR1-780. The elicitation of embryogenic calli in liquid medium with AS did not increase endochitinase activity, a PR protein. However, jasmonic acid induced a transient increase in chitinase activity after 24 h of treatment in all the lines, being the increment higher in transgenic NPR1 than in control. After maturation and germination of transgenic somatic embryos, plants were micropropagated and acclimated to ex vitro conditions. The expression of AtNPR1 did not alter the growth of transgenic plants neither in vitro nor in the greenhouse. Experiments are in progress to determine the resistance of transgenic AtNPR1 plants to V. dalihae and R. necatrix.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Research projects: Plan Nacional AGL2014-52518-C2-1-R; AGL2017-83368-C2-1-R and Junta de Andalucía P11-AGR799

Cosmic vector for dark energy: constraints from SN, CMB and BAO

It has been recently shown that the presence of a vector field over cosmological scales could explain the observed accelerated expansion of the universe without introducing neither new scales nor unnatural initial conditions in the early universe, thus avoiding the coincidence problem. Here, we present a detailed analysis of the constraints imposed by SNIa, CMB and BAO data on the vector dark energy model with general spatial curvature. We find that contrary to standard cosmology, CMB data excludes a flat universe for this model and, in fact, predicts a closed geometry for the spatial sections. We see that CMB and SNIa Gold data are perfectly compatible at the 1-sigma level, however SNIa Union dataset exhibits a 3-sigma tension with CMB. The same level of tension is also found between SNIa and BAO measurements.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. New figure and references included. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Visual control system for grip of glasses oriented to assistance robotics

Assistance robotics is presented as a means of improving the quality of life of people with disabilities, an application case is presented in assisted feeding. This paper presents the development of a system based on artificial intelligence techniques, for the grip of a glass, so that it does not slip during its manipulation by means of a robotic arm, as the liquid level varies. A faster R-CNN is used for the detection of the glass and the arm's gripper, and from the data obtained by the network, the mass of the beverage is estimated, and a delta of distance between the gripper and the liquid. These estimated values are used as inputs for a fuzzy system which has as output the torque that the motor that drives the gripper must exert. It was possible to obtain a 97.3% accuracy in the detection of the elements of interest in the environment with the faster R-CNN, and a 76% performance in the grips of the glass through the fuzzy algorithm