Invariant NKT cells and rheumatic disease: Focus on primary sjogren syndrome

Primary Sjogren syndrome (pSS) is a complex autoimmune disease mainly affecting salivary and lacrimal glands. Several factors contribute to pSS pathogenesis; in particular, innate immunity seems to play a key role in disease etiology. Invariant natural killer (NK) T cells (iNKT) are a T-cell subset able to recognize glycolipid antigens. Their function remains unclear, but studies have pointed out their ability to modulate the immune system through the promotion of specific cytokine milieu. In this review, we discussed the possible role of iNKT in pSS development, as well as their implications as future markers of disease activity

Lessons and Prospects from the pMSSM after LHC Run I: Neutralino LSP

We study SUSY signatures at the 7, 8 and 14 TeV LHC employing the 19-parameter, R-Parity conserving p(henomenological)MSSM, in the scenario with a neutralino LSP. Our results were obtained via a fast Monte Carlo simulation of the ATLAS SUSY analysis suite. The flexibility of this framework allows us to study a wide variety of SUSY phenomena simultaneously and to probe for weak spots in existing SUSY search analyses. We determine the ranges of the sparticle masses that are either disfavored or allowed after the searches with the 7 and 8 TeV data sets are combined. We find that natural SUSY models with light squarks and gluinos remain viable. We extrapolate to 14 TeV with both 300 fb$^{-1}$ and 3 ab$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity and determine the expected sensitivity of the jets + MET and stop searches to the pMSSM parameter space. We find that the high-luminosity LHC will be powerful in probing SUSY with neutralino LSPs and can provide a more definitive statement on the existence of natural Supersymmetry.Comment: 41 pages, 27 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1307.844

Observation of the Inverse Cotton-Mouton Effect

We report the observation of the Inverse Cotton-Mouton Effect (ICME) i.e. a magnetization induced in a medium by non resonant linearly polarized light propagating in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. We present a detailed study of the ICME in a TGG crystal showing the dependence of the measured effect on the light intensity, the optical polarization, and on the external magnetic field. We derive a relation between the Cotton-Mouton and Inverse Cotton-Mouton effects that is roughly in agreement with existing experimental data. Our results open the way to applications of the ICME in optical devices

Quenched Computation of the Complexity of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Model

The quenched computation of the complexity in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model is presented. A modified Full Replica Symmetry Breaking Ansatz is introduced in order to study the complexity dependence on the free energy. Such an Ansatz corresponds to require Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin supersymmetry. The complexity computed this way is the Legendre transform of the free energy averaged over the quenched disorder. The stability analysis shows that this complexity is inconsistent at any free energy level but the equilibirum one. The further problem of building a physically well defined solution not invariant under supersymmetry and predicting an extensive number of metastable states is also discussed.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures. Some formulas added corrected, changes in discussion and conclusion, one figure adde

Complexity in Mean-Field Spin-Glass Models: Ising pp-spin

The Complexity of the Thouless-Anderson-Palmer (TAP) solutions of the Ising $p$-spin is investigated in the temperature regime where the equilibrium phase is one step Replica Symmetry Breaking. Two solutions of the resulting saddle point equations are found. One is supersymmetric (SUSY) and includes the equilibrium value of the free energy while the other is non-SUSY. The two solutions cross exactly at a value of the free energy where the replicon eigenvalue is zero; at low free energy the complexity is described by the SUSY solution while at high free energy it is described by the non-SUSY solution. In particular the non-SUSY solution describes the total number of solutions, like in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model. The relevant TAP solutions corresponding to the non-SUSY solution share the same feature of the corresponding solutions in the SK model, in particular their Hessian has a vanishing isolated eigenvalue. The TAP solutions corresponding to the SUSY solution, instead, are well separated minima.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

Inverse Cotton-Mouton effect of the Vacuum and of atomic systems

In this letter we calculate the Inverse Cotton-Mouton Effect (ICME) for the vacuum following the predictions of Quantum ElectroDynamics. We compare the value of this effect for the vacuum with the one expected for atomic systems. We finally show that ICME could be measured for the first time for noble gases using state-of-the-art laser systems and for the quantum vacuum with near-future laser facilities like ELI and HiPER, providing in particular a test of the nonlinear behaviour of quantum vacuum at intensities below the Schwinger limit of 4.5x10^33 W/m^2.Comment: Submitted to EP

Zeroing in on Supersymmetric Radiation Amplitude Zeros

Radiation amplitude zeros have long been used to test the Standard Model. Here, we consider the supersymmetric radiation amplitude zero in chargino-neutralino associated production, which can be observed at the luminosity upgraded LHC. Such an amplitude zero only occurs if the neutralino has a large wino fraction and hence this observable can be used to determine the neutralino eigenstate content. We find that this observable can be measured by comparing the p_T spectrum of the softest lepton in the trilepton $\chi_1^\pm \chi_2^0$ decay channel to that of a control process such as $\chi_1^+ \chi_1^-$ or $\chi_2^0 \chi_2^0$. We test this technique on a previously generated model sample of the 19 dimensional parameter space of the phenomenological MSSM, and find that it is effective in determining the wino content of the neutralino.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

High contrast Mach-Zehnder lithium atom interferometer in the Bragg regime

We have constructed an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type, operating with a supersonic beam of lithium. Atom diffraction uses Bragg diffraction on laser standing waves. With first order diffraction, our apparatus has given a large signal and a very good fringe contrast (74%), which we believe to be the highest ever observed with atom interferometers. This apparatus will be applied to high sensitivity measurementsComment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted by Appl. Phys.

Decentralization and fuel subsidies

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordThis paper explores the role of decentralization in explaining variation in fuel subsidies across countries. Using panel data over the period 1998-2008 and for 108 countries, it emerges that the effect of ‘decentralization’ (taken to be an increase in the number of government levels) broadly decreases both diesel and gasoline subsidies, with this effect being more pronounced when the level of political accountability is low. For developing countries, for which political accountability is low, decentralization decreases gasoline and diesel subsidies by at least 6.98% and 12.99%, respectively. For developed countries, for which political accountability is high, decentralization does not have any impact on both gasoline and diesel. What this evidence points to is that in developing economies, where voters are poorly informed and accountability is low, decentralization appears to be associated with lower fuel subsidies.Leonzio Rizzo thankfully acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ECO2012-37873) and also from FIR 2016