Electroweak Precision Observables and the Unhiggs

We compute one-loop corrections to the S and T parameters in the Unhiggs scenario. In that scenario, the Standard Model Higgs is replaced by a non-local object, called the Unhiggs, whose spectral function displays a continuum above the mass gap. The Unhiggs propagator has effectively the same UV properties as the Standard Model Higgs propagator, which implies that loop corrections to the electroweak precision observables are finite and calculable. We show that the Unhiggs is consistent with electroweak precision tests when its mass gap is at the weak scale; in fact, it then mimics a light SM Higgs boson. We also argue that the Unhiggs, while being perfectly visible to electroweak precision observables, is invisible to detection at LEP.Comment: 13 pages; v2: references added, discussion of production cross-section expande

¿Es una onda? ¿Es una partícula? ¡Es el bosón de Higgs!

En esta conferencia se explica de manera divulgativa las propiedades del Higgs. También se da una visión de conjunto de lo que se conoce como modelo estándar de la física de partículas. La distinción entre bosones y fermiones, el papel de las simetrías en la determinación del Lagrangiano de la teoría, el cual determina las propiedades de las partículas. También se expone el importante papel que juega el concepto de ruptura espontanea de simetría en la construcción teórica. Finalmente se comentan los experimentos realizados en el CERN, que llevaron al descubrimiento del bosón de Higgs predicho años antes teóricamente.El bosón de Higgs proporciona un mecanismo para explicar el origen de las masas dentro del modelo estándar de partículas. En dicho modelo las partículas elementales no son propiamente ni corpúsculos ni ondas, son excitaciones de campos. El campo de Higgs se ubica en todo el espacio y hace que las partículas que interaccionan con el adquieran masa, mientras que las que no interaccionan con el no tienen masa, cono es el caso del fotón. En esta conferencia se explica de manera divulgativa las propiedades del Higgs. También se da una visión de conjunto de lo que se conoce como modelo estándar de la física de partículas. La distinción entre bosones y fermiones, el papel de las simetrías en la determinación del Lagrangiano de la teoría, el cual determina las propiedades de las partículas. También se expone el importante papel que juega el concepto de ruptura espontanea de simetría en la construcción teórica. Finalmente se comentan los experimentos realizados en el CERN, que llevaron al descubrimiento del bosón de Higgs predicho años antes teóricamente.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Wilsonian renormalisation of CFT correlation functions: Field theory

We examine the precise connection between the exact renormalisation group with local couplings and the renormalisation of correlation functions of composite operators in scale-invariant theories. A geometric description of theory space allows us to select convenient non-linear parametrisations that serve different purposes. First, we identify normal parameters in which the renormalisation group flows take their simplest form; normal correlators are defined by functional differentiation with respect to these parameters. The renormalised correlation functions are given by the continuum limit of correlators associated to a cutoff-dependent parametrisation, which can be related to the renormalisation group flows. The necessary linear and non-linear counterterms in any arbitrary parametrisation arise in a natural way from a change of coordinates. We show that, in a class of minimal subtraction schemes, the renormalised correlators are exactly equal to normal correlators evaluated at a finite cutoff. To illustrate the formalism and the main results, we compare standard diagrammatic calculations in a scalar free-field theory with the structure of the perturbative solutions to the Polchinski equation close to the Gaussian fixed point.This work has been supported by the Spanish MICINN project FPA 2013-47836-C3-2-P, the MINECO project FPA2016-78220-C3-1-P and by the European Commission through the contract PITN-GA-2012-316704 (HIGGSTOOLS)

An analysis of different resources and programmes supporting at-risk families in Spain

The purpose of this research was to present an overview of the existing family support resources in Spain for at-risk families. We analysed 64 family support services from 16 agencies belong to 11 regions of Spain. In a second phase, 20 positive parenting programmes were analysed in depth to ascertain the extent to which they met evidence-based programme quality criteria. Our results suggest that services for at-risk families are delivered by public, local and social agencies. Most interventions were psycho-educational and aimed at parental training. The analysis of the positive parenting programmes ’ quality showed both strengths and weaknesses. Most programmes relied on a previous needs analysis and interventions were, to some extent, outlined in a manual. Nevertheless, few programmes have been evaluated according to evidence-based programme criteria. In light of these results, we discuss several practical implications for services and family support policies aimed at at-risk families.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España EDU2013-41441-

Handbook of vectorlike quarks: mixing and single production

We obtain constraints on the mixing of vector-like quarks coupling predominantly to the third generation. We consider all (seven) relevant types of vector-like quarks, individually. The constraints are derived from oblique corrections and Z -> b bbar measurements at LEP and SLC. We investigate the implications of these constraints on LHC phenomenology, concerning the decays of the heavy quarks and their single production. We also explore indirect effects of heavy quark mixing in top and bottom couplings. A remarkable effect is the possibility of explaining the anomalous forward-backward asymmetry in Z -> b bbar at LEP, with a hypercharge -5/6 doublet. We also study the impact of the new quarks on single Higgs production at the LHC and Higgs decay.This work has been supported by MICINN by projects FPA2006-05294, FPA2010-17915, FPA2010-22163-C02-01 and by the Consolider- Ingenio 2010 Program under grant MultiDark CSD2009-00064; by Junta de Andalucía (FQM 101, FQM 03048 and FQM 6552) and by Fundaçao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) project CERN/ FP/123619/2011. The work of R.B. was supported by the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)

Sustainable one-pot immobilization of enzymes in/on metal-organic framework materials

peer-reviewedThe industrial use of enzymes generally necessitates their immobilization onto solid supports. The well-known high affinity of enzymes for metal-organic framework (MOF) materials, together with the great versatility of MOFs in terms of structure, composition, functionalization and synthetic approaches, has led the scientific community to develop very different strategies for the immobilization of enzymes in/on MOFs. This review focuses on one of these strategies, namely, the one-pot enzyme immobilization within sustainable MOFs, which is particularly enticing as the resultant biocomposite Enzyme@MOFs have the potential to be: (i) prepared in situ, that is, in just one step; (ii) may be synthesized under sustainable conditions: with water as the sole solvent at room temperature with moderate pHs, etc.; (iii) are able to retain high enzyme loading; (iv) have negligible protein leaching; and (v) give enzymatic activities approaching that given by the corresponding free enzymes. Moreover, this methodology seems to be near-universal, as success has been achieved with different MOFs, with different enzymes and for different applications. So far, the metal ions forming the MOF materials have been chosen according to their low price, low toxicity and, of course, their possibility for generating MOFs at room temperature in water, in order to close the cycle of economic, environmental and energy sustainability in the synthesis, application and disposal life cycle

Riboflavin-UVA gelatin crosslinking: Design of a biocompatible and thermo-responsive biomaterial with enhanced mechanical properties for tissue engineering

The main objective of this study is to develop an economic, environmentally friendly and malleable biomaterial for tissue engineering applications. Water and glycerol have been used as solvents for the gelatin hydrogel synthesis. This solvent mixture led to a biomaterial with improved thermal properties. Indeed, a 16 °C increase in thermal transition temperature was achieved. Furthermore, to enhance mechanical properties, riboflavin was used as a crosslinking agent. Chemical crosslinking step was initiated with UV radiation to obtain riboflavin radical polymerization of gelatin chains, hence, rheological properties of gelatin hydrogel were improved. Thus, Gelatin-UV-Riboflavin hydrogel showed good swelling and increased mechanical properties, obtaining a novel material for drug delivery and medical purposes.Fil: Galdopórpora, Juan Manuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco; ArgentinaFil: Pérez, Claudio Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencia y Tecnología de Materiales. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencia y Tecnología de Materiales; ArgentinaFil: Tuttolomondo, María Victoria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco; ArgentinaFil: Desimone, Martín Federico. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco; Argentin

Relative age effect in handball players of Spain

This study analyzes the effect of relative age in the selection process of handball players for licensed club teams in the Murcia region and the Murcia Regional Handball teams. To this end we studied gender, date of birth and player category in a total of 846 handball players (762 of them in licensed clubs from the Murcia Regional Handball Federation, henceforth FBRM and 84 players in Murcia regional teams respectively) in the children’s, junior and youth categories. Comparisons were made and differences were analyzed with χ2 and Z tests and the Bonferroni correction. The analysis of results according to quarter and semester of birth revealed statistically significant differences both for licensed clubs and for Murcia Regional handball team players. The gender and player category analysis showed statistically significant results only in the case of category in regional teams. Thus RAE is confirmed in the samples analyzed, this effect being stronger amongst regional team players

Assessing the potential of decentralised scheduling: An experimental study for the job shop case

-Part of special issue: 10th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management and Control MIM 2022: Nantes, France, 22-24 June 2022. -Copyright © 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.In this paper we investigate how decentralised scheduling approaches can be used to improve manufacturing scheduling. In view of the potential shown by some of these novel decentralised approaches, we conduct a series of experiments on a set of job shop instances subject to different degrees of variability in their processing times, and compare the performance of different scoring methods under the Contract Net Protocol proposed by Guizzi et al. (2019) with the objective of minimizing the expected makespan. We also compare the performance of the optimal (centralised and deterministic) solution in the stochastic setting, as well as a hybrid centralised-decentralised approach. Despite some limitations in the experiments, the results show the excellent performance of the decentralised approach if its operating parameters are optimized, and that the hybrid approach serves to overcome some of the problems of both centralised and decentralised approaches

Dimensional regularization vs methods in fi xed dimension with and without y5

We study the Lorentz and Dirac algebra, including the antisymmetric e tensor and the y 5 matrix, in implicit gauge-invariant regularization/renormalization methods de ned in xed integer dimensions. They include constrained differential, implicit and four-dimensional renormalization. We nd that these xed-dimension methods face the same di culties as the different versions of dimensional regularization. We propose a consistent procedure in these methods, similar to the consistent version of regularization by dimensional reduction.The work of A.M.B. and M.P.V. has been supported by the Spanish MINECO project FPA2016-78220-C3-1-P (Fondos FEDER) and the Junta de Andalucía grant FQM101. The work of M.P.V. has also been supported by the European Commission, through the contract PITN-GA-2012-316704 (HIGGSTOOLS). A.L.C. acknowledges nancial support from CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior), Brazil, as well as networking support by the COST Action CA16201