Potential and mass-matrix in gauged N=4 supergravity

We discuss the potential and mass-matrix of gauged N=4 matter coupled supergravity for the case of six matter multiplets, extending previous work by considering the dependence on all scalars. We consider all semi-simple gauge groups and analyse the potential and its first and second derivatives in the origin of the scalar manifold. Although we find in a number of cases an extremum with a positive cosmological constant, these are not stable under fluctuations of all scalar fields.Comment: 28 pages, LaTe

Identification of Patient-Reported Outcome Phenotypes Among Oncology Patients With Palliative Care Needs

PURPOSE: Despite evidence-based guidelines recommending early palliative care, it remains unclear how to identify and refer oncology patients, particularly in settings with constrained access to palliative care. We hypothesize that patient-reported outcome (PRO) data can be used to characterize patients with palliative care needs. To determine if PRO data can identify latent phenotypes that characterize indications for specialty palliative care referral. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective study of self-reported symptoms on the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System collected from solid tumor oncology patients (n = 745) referred to outpatient palliative care. Data were collected as part of routine clinical care from October 2012 to March 2018 at eight community and academic sites. We applied latent profile analysis to identify PRO phenotypes and examined the association of phenotypes with clinical and demographic characteristics using multinomial logistic regression. RESULTS: We identified four PRO phenotypes: (1) Low Symptoms (n = 295, 39.6%), (2) Moderate Pain/Fatigue + Mood (n = 180, 24.2%), (3) Moderate Pain/Fatigue + Appetite + Dyspnea (n = 201, 27.0%), and (4) High Symptoms (n = 69, 9.3%). In a secondary analysis of 421 patients, we found that two brief items assessing social and existential needs aligned with higher severity symptom and psychological distress phenotypes. CONCLUSION: Oncology patients referred to outpatient palliative care in a real-world setting can be differentiated into clinically meaningful phenotypes using brief, routinely collected PRO measures. Latent modeling provides a mechanism to use patient-reported data on a population level to identify distinct subgroups of patients with unmet palliative needs

Specialized mechanoreceptor systems in rodent glabrous skin

Rodents use their forepaws to actively interact with their tactile environment. Studies on the physiology and anatomy of glabrous skin that makes up the majority of the forepaw are almost non-existent in the mouse. Here we developed a preparation to record from single sensory fibers of the forepaw and compared anatomical and physiological receptor properties to those of the hind paw glabrous and hairy skin. We found that the mouse forepaw skin is equipped with a very high density of mechanoreceptors; > 3 fold more than hind paw glabrous skin. In addition, rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors that innervate Meissner's corpuscles of the forepaw were several-fold more sensitive to slowly moving mechanical stimuli compared to their counterparts in the hind paw glabrous skin. All other mechanoreceptors types as well as myelinated nociceptors had physiological properties that were invariant regardless of which skin area they occupied. We discovered a novel D-hair receptor innervating a small group of hairs in the middle of the hind paw glabrous skin in mice. These glabrous skin D-hair receptors were direction sensitive albeit with an orientation sensitivity opposite to that described for hairy skin D-hair receptors. Glabrous skin hairs do not occur in all rodents, but are present in North American and African rodent species that diverged more than 65 million years ago. The function of these specialized hairs is unknown, but they are nevertheless evolutionarily very ancient. Our study reveals novel physiological specializations of mechanoreceptors in the glabrous skin that likely evolved to facilitate tactile exploration. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Separability in Asymmetric Phase-Covariant Cloning

Here, asymmetric phase-covariant quantum cloning machines are defined and trade-off between qualities of their outputs and its impact on entanglement properties of the outputs are studies. In addition, optimal families among these cloners are introduced and also their entanglement properties are investigated. An explicit proof of optimality is presented for the case of qubits, which is based on the no-signaling condition. Our optimality proof can also be used to derive an upper bound on trade-off relations for a more general class of optimal cloners which clone states on a specific orbit of the Bloch sphere. It is shown that the optimal cloners of the equatorial states, as in the case of symmetric phase-covariant cloning, give rise to two separable clones, and in this sense these states are unique. For these cloners it is shown that total output is of GHZ-type

String Imprints from a Pre-inflationary Era

We derive the equations governing the dynamics of cosmic strings in a flat anisotropic universe of Bianchi type I and study the evolution of simple cosmic string loop solutions. We show that the anisotropy of the background can have a characteristic effect in the loop motion. We discuss some cosmological consequences of these findings and, by extrapolating our results to cosmic string networks, we comment on their ability to survive an inflationary epoch, and hence be a possible fossil remnant (still visible today) of an anisotropic phase in the very early universe.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Probing mSUGRA via the Extreme Universe Space Observatory

An analysis is carried out within mSUGRA of the estimated number of events originating from upward moving ultra-high energy neutralinos that could be detected by the Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO). The analysis exploits a recently proposed technique that differentiates ultra-high energy neutralinos from ultra-high energy neutrinos using their different absorption lengths in the Earth's crust. It is shown that for a significant part of the parameter space, where the neutralino is mostly a Bino and with squark mass $\sim 1$ TeV, EUSO could see ultra-high energy neutralino events with essentially no background. In the energy range 10^9 GeV < E < 10^11 GeV, the unprecedented aperture of EUSO makes the telescope sensitive to neutralino fluxes as low as 1.1 \times 10^{-6} (E/GeV)^{-1.3} GeV^{-1} cm^{-2} yr^{-1} sr^{-1}, at the 95% CL. Such a hard spectrum is characteristic of supermassive particles' $N$-body hadronic decay. The case in which the flux of ultra-high energy neutralinos is produced via decay of metastable heavy particles with uniform distribution throughout the universe is analyzed in detail. The normalization of the ratio of the relics' density to their lifetime has been fixed so that the baryon flux produced in the supermassive particle decays contributes to about 1/3 of the events reported by the AGASA Collaboration below 10^{11} GeV, and hence the associated GeV gamma-ray flux is in complete agreement with EGRET data. For this particular case, EUSO will collect between 4 and 5 neutralino events (with 0.3 of background) in ~ 3 yr of running. NASA's planned mission, the Orbiting Wide-angle Light-collectors (OWL), is also briefly discussed in this context.Comment: Some discussion added, final version to be published in Physical Review

Lepton Flavor Violating Processes and Muon g-2 in Minimal Supersymmetric SO(10) Model

In the recently proposed minimal supersymmetric SO(10) model, the neutrino Dirac Yukawa coupling matrix, together with all the other fermion mass matrices, is completely determined once free parameters in the model are appropriately fixed so as to accommodate the recent neutrino oscillation data. Using this unambiguous neutrino Dirac Yukawa couplings, we calculate the lepton flavor violating (LFV) processes and the muon g-2 assuming the minimal supergravity scenario. The resultant rates of the LFV processes are found to be large enough to well exceed the proposed future experimental bound, while the magnitude of the muon g-2 can be within the recent result by Brookhaven E821 experiment. Furthermore, we find that there exists a parameter region which can simultaneously realize the neutralino cold dark matter abundance consistent with the recent WMAP data.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures. The version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Radiative Corrections to One-Photon Decays of Hydrogenic Ions

Radiative corrections to the decay rate of n=2 states of hydrogenic ions are calculated. The transitions considered are the M1 decay of the 2s state to the ground state and the E1(M2) decays of the $2p_{1/2}$ and $2p_{3/2}$ states to the ground state. The radiative corrections start in order $\alpha (Z \alpha)^2$, but the method used sums all orders of $Z\alpha$. The leading $\alpha (Z\alpha)^2$ correction for the E1 decays is calculated and compared with the exact result. The extension of the calculational method to parity nonconserving transitions in neutral atoms is discussed.Comment: 22 pages, 2 figure