Cell Engineering with Functional Poly(oxanorbornene) Block Copolymers

Cell‐based therapies are gaining prominence in treating a wide variety of diseases and using synthetic polymers to manipulate these cells provides an opportunity to impart function that could not be achieved using solely genetic means. Herein, we describe the utility of functional block copolymers synthesized by ring‐opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) that can insert directly into the cell membrane via the incorporation of long alkyl chains into a short polymer block leading to non‐covalent, hydrophobic interactions with the lipid bilayer. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these polymers can be imbued with advanced functionalities. A photosensitizer was incorporated into these polymers to enable spatially controlled cell death by the localized generation of ¹O₂ at the cell surface in response to red‐light irradiation. In a broader context, we believe our polymer insertion strategy could be used as a general methodology to impart functionality onto cell‐surfaces.     

Probabilistic quark-model approach to proton fragmentation

A probabilistic approach is formulated to study the behaviour of the incident hadron quark flavours in the fragmentation process of high energy protons in lowp _T reactions. Analysis of available data onpp collisions, mainly on hyperon and antibaryon multiplicities, leads to estimates of the probabilities for the different ways in which the incident valence quarks recombine into final hadrons. We find that all three incident quarks emerge in one and the same outgoing nucleon (or nucleon resonance) with probabilityA ₃=0.35–0.4, that two of them emerge in one baryon and the third in another hadron (mostly a meson or meson resonance) with probabilityA ₂=0.6–0.5, and that they emerge in three distinct hadrons (mostly mesons or meson resonances) with probabilityA ₁=0.05–0.1. We find good support for a very simple probabilistic picture of the fragmentation process.     

Patterns of lepton-flavour violation motivated by decoupling and sneutrino inflation

We present predictions for flavour-violating charged-lepton decays induced by the seesaw mechanism implemented within the constrained minimal supersymmetric standard model (CMSSM) with universal input soft supersymmetry breaking terms. We assume that one heavy singlet neutrino almost decouples from the seesaw mechanism, as suggested by the pattern of light neutrino masses and mixing angles. This is suggested independently by sneutrino inflation with a low reheating temperature, T_RH10⁷ GeV, so as to avoid overproducing gravitinos. This requirement further fixes the mass of the weakly-coupled sneutrino, whose decays may lead to leptogenesis. We find that BR(μ→eγ)10⁻¹³ but BR(τ→μγ)10⁻⁹ in the bulk of the acceptable parameter space, apart from a few isolated points. The ratio BR(μ→eγ)/BR(τ→eγ) depends on only one complex parameter, and is particularly interesting to compare with experiment.     

Z′ and the Appelquist–Carrazzone decoupling

We consider the electroweak theory with an additional neutral vector boson Z^′ at one loop. We propose a renormalization scheme which makes the decoupling of heavy Z^′ effects manifest. The proposed scheme justifies the usual procedure of performing fits to the electroweak data by combining the full SM loop corrections to observables with the tree-level corrections due to the extended gauge structure. Using this scheme we discuss in the model with extra an U(1)^′ group factor one-loop results for the ρ parameters defined in several different ways.     

Cyclopentane-modified PNA improves the sensitivity of nanoparticle-based scanometric DNA detection

trans-Cyclopentane-modified PNA has been successfully utilized as a target capture strand to improve the detection limit of a known DNA detection assay, and provide high levels of mismatch discrimination.     

Double protection of the Higgs potential in a supersymmetric little Higgs model

A mechanism of double protection of the Higgs potential, by supersymmetry and by a global symmetry, is investigated in a class of supersymmetric models with the SU(3)cxSU(3)wxU(1)x gauge symmetry. The electroweak symmetry can be then broken with no fine-tuning at all.     

(S,S)-trans-cyclopentane-constrained peptide nucleic acids. a general backbone modification that improves binding affinity and sequence specificity

Replacing the ethylenediamine portion of aminoethylglycine peptide nucleic acids (aegPNAs) with one or more (S,S)-trans-cyclopentane diamine units significantly increases binding affinity and sequence specificity to complementary DNA, making these modified PNAs ideal for use as nucleic acid probes in genomic analysis. The synthesis and study of this new class of PNAs (tcypPNAs) is described in which trans-cyclopentane diamine has been incorporated into several positions, and in varying number, within PNA backbones of mixed-base sequences.     

(Non)decoupling of the Higgs triplet effects

We consider the electroweak theory with an additional Higgs triplet at one loop, using the hybrid renormalization scheme based on α_EM, G_F and M_Z as input observables. We show that in this scheme loop corrections can in a natural way be split into a standard model part and corrections due to “new physics”. The latter, however, do not decouple in the limit of an infinite triplet mass parameter, if the triplet trilinear coupling to the SM Higgs doublets grows with the triplet mass. For electroweak observables computed at one loop this effect can be attributed to the radiative generation in this limit of a nonvanishing vacuum expectation value of the triplet. We also point out that whenever tree level expressions for the electroweak observables depend on vacuum expectation values of scalar fields other than the standard model Higgs doublet, a tadpole contribution to the “oblique” parameter T should in principle be included. The origin of nondecoupling is discussed also on the basis of symmetry principles in a simple scalar field theory.