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\"A landmark presentation that will radically redefine our understanding of Africa's relationship with the West, Kongo: Power and Majesty, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this September, will focus on one of the continent's most influential artistic traditions, from the earliest moment of direct engagement between African and European leaders at the end of the 15th century through the early 20th century. The creative output of Kongo artists of Central Africa will be represented by 134 works drawn from more than 50 institutional and private collections across Europe and the United States, reflecting five hundred years of encounters and shifting relations between European and Kongo leaders. From a dynamic assembly of 15 monumental power figures to elegantly carved ivories and finely woven textiles, the exhibition will explore how the talents of Central Africa's most gifted artists were directed toward articulating a culturally distinct vernacular of power.\"--Metropolitan Museum of Art website

A bstract If dark matter (DM) interacts with the Standard Model (SM) via the kinetic mixing (KM) portal, it necessitates the existence of portal matter (PM) particles which carry both dark and SM quantum numbers that will appear in vacuum polarization-like loop graphs. In addition to the familiar ∼ eϵQ strength, QED-like interaction for the dark photon (DP), in some setups different loop graphs of these PM states can also induce other coupling structures for the SM fermions that may come to dominate in at least some regions of parameter space regions and which can take the form of ‘dark’ moments, e.g., magnetic dipole-type interactions in the IR, associated with a large mass scale, Λ. In this paper, motivated by a simple toy model, we perform a phenomenological investigation of a possible loop-induced dark magnetic dipole moment for SM fermions, in particular, for the electron. We show that at the phenomenological level such a scenario can not only be made compatible with existing experimental constraints for a significant range of correlated values for Λ and the dark U(1) D gauge coupling, g D , but can also lead to quantitatively different signatures once the DP is discovered. In this setup, assuming complex scalar DM to satisfy CMB constraints, parameter space regions where the DP decays invisibly are found to be somewhat preferred if PM mass limits from direct searches at the LHC and our toy model setup are all taken seriously. High precision searches for, or measurements of, the e + e − → γ + DP process at Belle II are shown to provide some of the strongest future constraints on this scenario.

A bstract Extra dimensions can be very useful tools when constructing new physics models. Previously, we began investigating toy models for the 5-D analog of the kinetic mixing/vector portal scenario where the interactions of bulk dark matter with the brane-localized fields of the Standard Model are mediated by a massive U(1) D dark photon also living in the bulk. In that setup, where the dark matter was taken to be a complex scalar, a number of nice features were obtained such as U(1) D breaking by boundary conditions without the introduction of a dark Higgs field, the absence of potentially troublesome SM Higgs-dark singlet mixing, also by boundary conditions, the natural similarity of the dark matter and dark photon masses and the decoupling of the heavy gauge Kaluza-Klein states from the Standard Model. In the present paper we extend this approach by examining the more complex cases of Dirac and Majorana fermionic dark matter. In particular, we discuss a new mechanism that can occur in 5-D (but not in 4-D) that allows for light Dirac dark matter in the ∼ 100 MeV mass range, even though it has an s -wave annihilation into Standard Model fields, by avoiding the strong constraints that arise from both the CMB and 21 cm data. This mechanism makes use of the presence of the Kaluza-Klein excitations of the dark photon to extremize the increase in the annihilation cross section usually obtained via resonant enhancement. In the Majorana dark matter case, we explore the possibility of a direct s -channel dark matter pair-annihilation process producing the observed relic density, due to the general presence of parity-violating dark matter interactions, without employing the usual co-annihilation mechanism which is naturally suppressed in this 5-D setup.

A bstract Extra dimensions (ED) can provide a useful tool for model-building. In this paper we introduce a single, flat ED extension of the kinetic-mixing/dark photon (DP) portal for dark matter (DM) interactions with the Standard Model (SM) assuming a compactification ‘radius’ of order R −1 ∼ 10−1000 MeV and examine the resulting modifications to and augmentation of the usual DP phenomenology. In the present scenario, both the DP and DM experience the full 5-D while the SM fields are constrained to lie on a 4-D brane at the boundary of the ED. Such a setup can naturally yield the observed value of the DM relic density and explain the required rough degeneracy of the DM and DP masses needed to obtain it. Gauge symmetry breaking can occur via boundary conditions without the introduction of an additional singlet Higgs scalar thus avoiding all constraints associated with the coupling of such a field to the usual SM Higgs field in 5-D. The self-consistency in the removal of the kinetic mixing terms is found to lead to a brane localized kinetic term for the 5-D gauge field on the SM brane. Multiple variations of this scenario are found to be possible which are consistent with current experimental constraints but which predict very different phenomenologies. In this paper, we discuss the case of a complex scalar 5-D DM field, consistent with constraints arising from the CMB, which may or may not obtain a vacuum expectation value (vev). This approach can lead to interesting and distinctive signatures while being constrained by a wide array of existing measurements but with the details being dependent upon the model specifics.

A bstract Data from Planck measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) place important constraints on models with light dark matter (DM) and light mediators especially when both lie in the mass range below ∼ 1 GeV. In models involving kinetic mixing where the dark photon acts as the mediator, these constraints are easily satisfied and the appropriate DM relic density achievable if the DM is, e.g., a complex scalar, where p -wave annihilation occurs, or is the lighter component of a split pseudo-Dirac state where co-annihilation dominates. In both of these cases, although higher order in the dark gauge coupling, g D , the corresponding annihilation processes including dark photon initial state radiation (ISR) will be dominantly s -wave with essentially temperature independent cross sections. The rates for these dark ISR associated processes, though not yielding cross sections large enough to contribute to the relic density, can still run into possible conflicts with the bounds arising from the CMB. In this paper we perform a preliminary study of the present and potential future constraints that the CMB imposes on the parameter spaces for both of these scenarios due to the existence of this dark ISR. Further analyses of the effects of dark ISR in DM annihilation is clearly warranted.

A bstract As experimental searches for WIMP dark matter continue to yield null results, models beyond the WIMP paradigm have proliferated in order to elude ever improving observational constraints, among them that of sub-GeV dark matter mediated by a massive vector portal (a dark photon) associated with a new dark U(1) gauge symmetry. It has been previously noted that for a significant range of the parameter space of this class of models, the annihilation of dark matter particles into a pair of dark photons can dominate the freeze-out process even when this process is kinematically forbidden for dark matter at rest — this is known as the “forbidden dark matter” (FDM) regime. Prior studies of this regime, however, assume that any “dark Higgs” associated with breaking the dark U(1) and imparting mass to the dark photon is decoupled from the dark matter and as such plays no role in the freeze-out process. In this paper, we explore the effects of a dark Higgs on sub-GeV dark matter phenomenology in this FDM regime by considering the simplest possible construction in which there exist non-trivial dark matter-dark Higgs couplings: a model with a single complex scalar DM candidate coupled directly to the dark Higgs field. We find that for a wide range of parameter space, the dark Higgs can alter the resulting relic abundance by many orders of magnitude, and that this effect can remain significant even for a small dark matter-dark Higgs coupling constant. Considering measurements from direct detection and measurements of the CMB, we further find that points in this model’s parameter space which recreate the appropriate dark matter relic abundance suffer only mild constraints from other sources at present, but may become accessible in near-future direct detection experiments.

A bstract The possibility of light dark matter (DM) annihilating through a dark photon (DP) which kinetically mixes (KM) with the Standard Model (SM) hypercharge field is a very attractive scenario. For DM in the interesting mass range below ∼ 1 GeV, it is well known that bounds from the CMB provide a very strong model building constraint forcing the DM annihilation cross section to be roughly 3 orders of magnitude below that needed to reproduce the observed relic density. Under most circumstances this removes the possibility of an s -wave annihilation process for DM in this mass range as would be the case, e.g., if the DM were a Dirac fermion. In an extra-dimensional setup explored previously, it was found that the s -channel exchange of multiple gauge bosons could simultaneously encompass a suppressed annihilation cross section during the CMB era while also producing a sufficiently large annihilation rate during freeze-out to recover the DM relic density. In this paper, we analyze more globally the necessary requirements for this mechanism to work successfully and then realize them within the context of a simple model with two ‘dark’ gauge bosons having masses of a similar magnitude and whose contributions to the annihilation amplitude destructively interfere. We show that if the DM mass threshold lies appropriately in the saddle region of this destructive interference between the two resonance humps it then becomes possible to satisfy these requirements simultaneously provided several ancillary conditions are met. The multiple constraints on the parameter space of this setup are then explored in detail to identify the phenomenologically successful regions.

Mice with macrophages deficient in fatty acid synthase exhibit lower levels of diabetes-related insulin resistance and inflammation, qualities that are restored on addition of exogenous cholesterol. Cells must make fat to respond to fat Dietary fat promotes chronic inflammation and insulin resistance. This involves the recruitment of macrophages to adipose tissue. This study shows that macrophage fatty acid synthase (FAS) is necessary for diet-induced inflammation. Deleting FAS from macrophages alters membrane order and composition of the macrophage, impairing retention of plasma membrane cholesterol and Rho GTPase trafficking required for cell adhesion, migration and activation. Hence, the absence of FAS prevents adipose macrophage recruitment, chronic inflammation and diet-induced insulin resistance in mice. Dietary fat promotes pathological insulin resistance through chronic inflammation 1 , 2 , 3 . The inactivation of inflammatory proteins produced by macrophages improves diet-induced diabetes 4 , but how nutrient-dense diets induce diabetes is unknown 5 . Membrane lipids affect the innate immune response 6 , which requires domains 7 that influence high-fat-diet-induced chronic inflammation 8 , 9 and alter cell function based on phospholipid composition 10 . Endogenous fatty acid synthesis, mediated by fatty acid synthase (FAS) 11 , affects membrane composition. Here we show that macrophage FAS is indispensable for diet-induced inflammation. Deleting Fasn in macrophages prevents diet-induced insulin resistance, recruitment of macrophages to adipose tissue and chronic inflammation in mice. We found that FAS deficiency alters membrane order and composition, impairing the retention of plasma membrane cholesterol and disrupting Rho GTPase trafficking—a process required for cell adhesion, migration and activation. Expression of a constitutively active Rho GTPase, however, restored inflammatory signalling. Exogenous palmitate was partitioned to different pools from endogenous lipids and did not rescue inflammatory signalling. However, exogenous cholesterol, as well as other planar sterols, did rescue signalling, with cholesterol restoring FAS-induced perturbations in membrane order. Our results show that the production of endogenous fat in macrophages is necessary for the development of exogenous-fat-induced insulin resistance through the creation of a receptive environment at the plasma membrane for the assembly of cholesterol-dependent signalling networks.

A bstract Observational evidence for dark matter stems from its gravitational interactions, and as of yet there has been no evidence for dark matter interacting via other means. We examine models where dark matter interactions are purely gravitational in a Randall-Sundrum background. In particular, the Kaluza-Klein tower of gravitons which result from the warped fifth dimension can provide viable annihilation channels into Standard Model final states, and we find that we can achieve values of the annihilation cross section, 〈 σv 〉, which are consistent with the observed relic abundance in the case of spin-1 dark matter. We examine constraints on these models employing both the current photon line and continuum indirect dark matter searches, and assess the prospects of hunting for the signals of such models in future direct and indirect detection experiments.

Infectious threats, like the COVID-19 pandemic, hinder maintenance of a productive and healthy workforce. If subtle physiological changes precede overt illness, then proactive isolation and testing can reduce labor force impacts. This study hypothesized that an early infection warning service based on wearable physiological monitoring and predictive models created with machine learning could be developed and deployed. We developed a prototype tool, first deployed June 23, 2020, that delivered continuously updated scores of infection risk for SARS-CoV-2 through April 8, 2021. Data were acquired from 9381 United States Department of Defense (US DoD) personnel wearing Garmin and Oura devices, totaling 599,174 user-days of service and 201 million hours of data. There were 491 COVID-19 positive cases. A predictive algorithm identified infection before diagnostic testing with an AUC of 0.82. Barriers to implementation included adequate data capture (at least 48% data was needed) and delays in data transmission. We observe increased risk scores as early as 6 days prior to diagnostic testing (2.3 days average). This study showed feasibility of a real-time risk prediction score to minimize workforce impacts of infection.