“Where are our dead?”:Changing views of death and the afterlife in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Scottish Presbyterianism

Various ideas have been borrowed from 1D inter symbol interference (ISI) detectors towards approximation of near maximum likelihood (ML) detection over 2D ISI channels. Generalized belief propagation (GBP) algorithm is a graph based algorithm different from these algorithms and is observed to give the best bit error rate (BER) performance by minimizing KL-distance metric. GBP algorithm passes messages between regions instead of messages between nodes in an iterative fashion. However, GBP algorithm has a very high computational complexity and is not suitable for practical deployment. In this paper, we propose a GBP based signal detection algorithm using a quadratic approximation of the KL-distance metric. This allows us to minimize the cost function by solving a set of linear equations i.e., obtain a one shot solution instead of the iterative message passing in the GBP algorithm. We also provide an intuition into the nature of the hard decisions given by the algorithm. The idea opens up various approximations of the GBP algorithm using different convex approximations of the cost function with the desired nature of obtaining the solution. We show the efficacy of the proposed algorithm by detecting 5�5 pages of binary data over a chosen channel with 3�3 ISI span. The quadratic approximation is observed to give 1.5 dB inferior performance in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as compared to the GBP algorithm. © 2018 IEEE

Flavored Co-annihilations

Neutralino dark matter in supersymmetric models is revisited in the presence of flavor violation in the soft supersymmetry breaking sector. We focus on flavor violation in the sleptonic sector and study the implications for the co-annihilation regions. Flavor violation is introduced by a single $\tilde{\mu}_R-\tilde{\tau}_R$ insertion in the slepton mass matrix. Limits on this insertion from BR($\tau \to \mu + \gamma$) are weak in some regions of the parameter space where cancellations happen within the amplitudes. We look for overlaps in parameter space where both the co-annihilation condition as well as the cancellations within the amplitudes occur. In mSUGRA, such overlap regions are not existent, whereas they are present in models with non-universal Higgs boundary conditions (NUHM). The effect of flavor violation is two fold: (a) it shifts the co-annihilation regions towards lighter neutralino masses (b) the co-annihilation cross sections would be modified with the inclusion of flavor violating diagrams which can contribute significantly. Even if flavor violation is within the presently allowed limits, this is sufficient to modify the thermally averaged cross-sections by about (10-15)% in mSUGRA and (20-30)% in NUHM, depending on the parameter space. In the overlap regions, the flavor violating cross sections become comparable and in some cases even dominant to the flavor conserving ones. A comparative study of the channels is presented for mSUGRA and NUHM cases.Comment: 38 pages, 28 figures. Significantly expanded and improved version with a new section on channels and new appendices on mSUGRA and cross-sections, version accepted for publication in JHE

SuSeFLAV: A program for calculating supersymmetric spectra and lepton flavor violation

We introduce the program SuSeFLAV for computing supersymmetric mass spectra with flavor violation in various supersymmetric breaking scenarios with/without seesaw mechanism. A short user guide summarizing the compilation, executables and the input files is provided.Comment: 3 pages, latex, pramana style, proceedings for Lepton Photon 201

Tourism, transportation and accomodation: Case study of two cities in Southern India

The problem investigated here is the characterization of tourism in the southern Indian cities of Bangalore and Mysore. To generate the characterization, inputs were obtained from three types of sources. These are tourists, hotel operators and tour operators in both cities. Separate questionnaires were prepared and administered to the three input sources. Twenty two questions were asked in the tourist questionnaire. The tour operator and hotel operator questionnaires contained twelve and nine questions respectively. Questions to tourists pertained to factors such as point of origin of tourists, purpose of visit, length of stay, etc. Questions to tour and hotel operators were designed not only to obtain information regarding their operation but also their perception of tourist activity. A descriptive analysis of the survey responses has been conducted. The responses have been charted in a manner to make comparisons between Bangalore and Mysore straightforward. Quantitative measures such as mean and standard deviation have been computed wherever it was found appropriate. The analysis has lead to the generation of the profile of the typical tourist to Bangalore and Mysore and to the identification of some general tourism patterns. Recommendations have been made for action by the central and state governments as well as businesses for enhancing tourism in the two cities

Phenomenology of Dark Matter Annihilations in the Sun

The annihilation of dark matter (DM) particles accumulated in the Sun could produce a flux of neutrinos, which is potentially detectable with neutrino detectors/telescopes and the DM elastic scattering cross section can be constrained. Although the process of DM capture in astrophysical objects like the Sun is commonly assumed to be due to interactions only with nucleons, there are scenarios in which tree-level DM couplings to quarks are absent, and even if loop-induced interactions with nucleons are allowed, scatterings off electrons could be the dominant capture mechanism. We consider this possibility and study in detail all the ingredients necessary to compute the neutrino production rates from DM annihilations in the Sun (capture, annihilation and evaporation rates) for velocity-independent and isotropic, velocity-dependent and isotropic and momentum-dependent scattering cross sections for DM interactions with electrons and compare them with the results obtained for the case of interactions with nucleons. Moreover, we improve the usual calculations in a number of ways and provide analytical expressions. Interestingly, we find that the evaporation mass in the case of interactions with electrons could be below the GeV range, depending on the high-velocity tail of the DM distribution in the Sun, which would open a new mass window for searching for this type of scenarios.Die Annihilation von Dunkler Materie (DM), die sich in der Sonne angesammelt hat, könnte einen Fluss von Neutrinos erzeugen, der potentiell mit Neutrino-Detektoren / Teleskopen detektierbar ist und der DM-Streuquerschnitt eingeschränkt werden kann. Obwohl angenommen wird, dass der Prozess der DM-Erfassung in astrophysikalischen Objekten wie der Sonne nur auf Wechselwirkungen mit Nukleonen zurückzuführen ist, gibt es Szenarien, in denen DM-Kopplungen zwischen Bäumen auf Quarks fehlen und auch wenn Schleifen-induzierte Wechselwirkungen mit Nukleonen zulässig sind Streuungen von Elektronen könnten der dominierende Erfassungsmechanismus sein. Wir betrachten diese Möglichkeit und untersuchen detailliert alle notwendigen Bestandteile, um die Neutrino-Produktionsraten aus den DM-Annihilationen in der Sonne (Einfang-, Annihilations- und Verdampfungsraten) für geschwindigkeitsunabhängiges und isotropes, geschwindigkeitsabhängiges und isotropes sowie impulsabhängiges Streukreuz zu berechnen Abschnitte für DM-Wechselwirkungen mit Elektronen und vergleichen sie mit den Ergebnissen für den Fall der Wechselwirkungen mit Nukleonen. Darüber hinaus verbessern wir die üblichen Berechnungen auf verschiedene Arten und liefern analytische Ausdrücke. Interessanterweise finden wir, dass die Verdampfungsmasse im Falle von Wechselwirkungen mit Elektronen unterhalb des GeV-Bereichs liegen könnte, abhängig von dem Hochgeschwindigkeits-Schwanz der DM-Verteilung in der Sonne, was ein neues Massenfenster für die Suche nach dieser Art von Atomen eröffnen würde Szenarien

Constraints on Dark Matter from the Moon

New and complimentary constraints are placed on the spin-independent interactions of dark matter with baryonic matter. Similar to the Earth and other planets, the Moon does not have any major internal heat source. We derive constraints by comparing the rate of energy deposit by dark matter annihilations in the Moon to 12 mW/m$^2$ as measured by the Apollo mission. For light dark matter of mass $\mathcal{O}(10)$ GeV, we also examine the possibility of dark matter annihilations in the Moon limb. In this case, we place constraints by comparing the photon flux from such annihilations to that of the Fermi-LAT measurement of $10^{-4}$ MeV/cm$^2$s. This analysis excludes spin independent cross section $\gtrsim 10^{-37}$ $\rm{cm}^2$ for dark matter mass between 30 and 50 GeV.Comment: 9 pages; v2: Improved moon models, updated references. Matches published versio

Dark matter interactions with muons in neutron stars

Neutron stars contain a significant number of stable muons due to the large chemical potential and degenerate electrons. This makes them the unique vessel to capture muonphilic dark matter, which does not interact with other astrophysical objects, including Earth and its direct-detection experiments. The infalling dark matter can heat up the neutron star both kinetically and via annihilations, which is potentially observable with future infrared telescopes. New physics models for muonphilic dark matter can easily be motivated by, and connected to, existing anomalies in the muon sector, e.g., the anomalous magnetic moment or LHCb's recent hints for lepton-flavor non-universality in $B\to K\mu^+\mu^-$ decays. We study the implications for a model with dark matter charged under a local $U(1)_{L_\mu-L_\tau}$.Comment: 7 pages; v2: added references and improved heating from annihilations; v3: matches PRD versio

Observing the thermalization of dark matter in neutron stars

A promising probe to unmask particle dark matter is to observe its effect on neutron stars, the prospects of which depend critically on whether captured dark matter thermalizes in a timely manner with the stellar core via repeated scattering with the Fermi-degenerate medium. In this work we estimate the timescales for thermalization for multiple scenarios. These include: (a) spin-0 and spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ dark matter, (b) scattering on non-relativistic neutron and relativistic electron targets accounting for the respective kinematics, (c) interactions via a range of Lorentz-invariant structures, (d) mediators both heavy and light in comparison to the typical transfer momenta in the problem. We discuss the analytic behavior of the thermalization time as a function of the dark matter and mediator masses, and the stellar temperature. Finally, we identify parametric ranges where both stellar capture is efficient and thermalization occurs within the age of the universe. For dark matter that can annihilate in the core, these regions indicate parametric ranges that can be probed by upcoming infrared telescopes observing cold neutron stars.Comment: 12 pages revtex4, 7 figures, 2 tables; v2: references added, minor typos fixe