Search

The present upper bound on κe, the ratio between the electron Yukawa coupling and its Standard Model value, is of O600. We ask what would be the implications in case that κe is close to this upper bound. The simplest extension that allows for such enhancement is that of two Higgs doublet models (2HDM) without natural flavor conservation. In this framework, we find the following consequences: (i) Under certain conditions, measuring κe and κV would be enough to predict values of Yukawa couplings for other fermions and for the H and A scalars. (ii) In the case that the scalar potential has a softly broken Z2 symmetry, the second Higgs doublet must be light, but if there is hard breaking of the symmetry, the second Higgs doublet can be much heavier than the electroweak scale and still allow the electron Yukawa coupling to be very different from its SM value. (iii) CP must not be violated at a level higher than O0.01/κe in both the scalar potential and the Yukawa sector. (iv) LHC searches for e+e− resonances constrain this scenario in a significant way. Finally, we study the implications for models where one of the scalar doublets couples only to the first generation, or only to the third generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the implications of the Standard Model effective field theory (SMEFT) with dimension-six terms involving the Higgs boson and third-generation fermion fields on the rate of Higgs boson production and decay into fermions, on the electric dipole moments (EDMs) of the electron, and on the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. We study the consequences of allowing these additional terms for each flavor separately and for combinations of two flavors. We find that a complex τ Yukawa coupling can account for the observed baryon asymmetry Y B obs within current LHC and EDM bounds. A complex b (t) Yukawa coupling can account for 4% (2%) of Y B obs , whereas a combination of the two can reach 12%. Combining τ with either t or b enlarges the viable parameter space owing to cancellations in the EDM and in either Higgs production times decay or the total Higgs width, respectively. Interestingly, in such a scenario there exists a region in parameter space where the SMEFT contributions to the electron EDM cancel and collider signal strengths are precisely SM-like, while producing sufficient baryon asymmetry. Measuring C P violation in Higgs decays to τ leptons is the smoking gun for this scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a research study which examines the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the decays of mesonic particles through the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHSb) particle physics detector experiments. It mentions that the study shows how the weak force distinguishes between matter and antimatter using the standard-model of particle physics based on LHCb measurement. It informs that matter particles and their antiparticles posses opposite charge (C) and parity (P).

Motivation: Identifying protein orthologs is an important task that is receiving growing attention in the bioinformatics literature. Orthology detection provides a fundamental tool towards understanding protein evolution, predicting protein functions and interactions, aligning protein–protein interaction (PPI) networks of different species and detecting conserved modules within these networks. Results: Here, we present a novel diffusion-based framework that builds on the Rankprop algorithm for protein orthology detection and enhances it in several important ways. Specifically, we enhance the Rankprop algorithm to account for the presence of multiple paralogs, utilize PPI, and consider multiple (>2) species in parallel. We comprehensively benchmarked our framework using a variety of training datasets and experimental settings. The results, based on the yeast, fly and human proteomes, show that the novel enhancements of Rankprop provide substantial improvements over its original formulation as well as over a number of state of the art methods for network-based orthology detection. Availability: datasets and source code are available upon request. Contact: niryosef@post.tau.ac.il [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its high prevalence, the cellular and molecular mechanisms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are far from being understood. Here, we determine disease-related changes in cellular and molecular compositions within the alveolar space and peripheral blood of a cohort of COPD patients and controls. Myeloid cells were the largest cellular compartment in the alveolar space with invading monocytes and proliferating macrophages elevated in COPD. Modeling cell-to-cell communication, signaling pathway usage, and transcription factor binding predicts TGF-β1 to be a major upstream regulator of transcriptional changes in alveolar macrophages of COPD patients. Functionally, macrophages in COPD showed reduced antigen presentation capacity, accumulation of cholesteryl ester, reduced cellular chemotaxis, and mitochondrial dysfunction, reminiscent of impaired immune activation.

Abstract Generative models provide a well‐established statistical framework for evaluating uncertainty and deriving conclusions from large data sets especially in the presence of noise, sparsity, and bias. Initially developed for computer vision and natural language processing, these models have been shown to effectively summarize the complexity that underlies many types of data and enable a range of applications including supervised learning tasks, such as assigning labels to images; unsupervised learning tasks, such as dimensionality reduction; and out‐of‐sample generation, such as de novo image synthesis. With this early success, the power of generative models is now being increasingly leveraged in molecular biology, with applications ranging from designing new molecules with properties of interest to identifying deleterious mutations in our genomes and to dissecting transcriptional variability between single cells. In this review, we provide a brief overview of the technical notions behind generative models and their implementation with deep learning techniques. We then describe several different ways in which these models can be utilized in practice, using several recent applications in molecular biology as examples.

The upper bounds from the ATLAS and CMS experiments on the decay rate of the Higgs boson to two muons provide the strongest constraint on an imaginary part of the muon Yukawa coupling. This bound is more than an order of magnitude stronger than bounds from CP-violating observables, specifically the electric dipole moment of the electron. It excludes a scenario--which had been viable prior to these measurements--that a complex muon Yukawa coupling is the dominant source of the baryon asymmetry. Even with this bound, the muon source can still contribute O(16%) of the asymmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accumulation of IL-17-producing Th17 cells is associated with the development of multiple autoimmune diseases; however, the contribution of microRNA (miRNA) pathways to the intrinsic control of Th17 development remains unclear. Here, we demonstrated that miR-21 expression is elevated in Th17 cells and that mice lacking miR-21 have a defect in Th17 differentiation and are resistant to experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). Furthermore, we determined that miR-21 promotes Th17 differentiation by targeting and depleting SMAD-7, a negative regulator of TGF-β signaling. Moreover, the decreases in Th17 differentiation in miR-21-deficient T cells were associated with defects in SMAD-2/3 activation and IL-2 suppression. Finally, we found that treatment of WT mice with an anti-miR-21 oligonucleotide reduced the clinical severity of EAE, which was associated with a decrease in Th17 cells. Thus, we have characterized a T cell-intrinsic miRNA pathway that enhances TGF-β signaling, limits the autocrine inhibitory effects of IL-2, and thereby promotes Th17 differentiation and autoimmunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The upper bounds from the ATLAS and CMS experiments on the decay rate of the Higgs boson to two muons provide the strongest constraint on an imaginary part of the muon Yukawa coupling. This bound is more than an order of magnitude stronger than bounds from CP-violating observables, specifically the electric dipole moment of the electron. It excludes a scenario-which had been viable prior to these measurements-that a complex muon Yukawa coupling is the dominant source of the baryon asymmetry. Even with this bound, the muon source can still contribute O(16%) of the asymmetry.

If new CP violating physics contributes to neutral meson mixing, but its contribution to CP violation in decay amplitudes is negligible, then there is a model independent relation between four (generally independent) observables related to the mixing: the mass splitting (x), the width splitting (y), the CP violation in mixing (1-|q/p|), and the CP violation in the interference of decays with and without mixing (phi). For the four neutral meson systems, this relation can be written in a simple approximate form: y tan phi approximately x(1-|q/p|). In the K system, all four observables have been measured and obey the relation to excellent accuracy. For the B(s) and D systems, new predictions are provided. The success or failure of these relations will probe the physics that is responsible for the CP violation.

New physics at high energy scale often contributes to K0-K0 and D0-D0 mixings in an approximately SU(2)L invariant way. In such a case, the combination of measurements in these two systems is particularly powerful. The resulting constraints can be expressed in terms of misalignments and flavor splittings.