Parthenogenesis in vertebrates is considered an evolutionary novelty. In snakes, all of which exhibit genetic sex determination with ZZ : ZW sex chromosomes, this rare form of asexual reproduction has failed to yield viable female WW offspring. Only through complex experimental manipulations have WW females been produced, and only in fish and amphibians. Through microsatellite DNA fingerprintin...

We consider the most minimal scale invariant extension of the standard model that allows for successful radiative electroweak symmetry breaking and inflation. The framework involves an extra scalar singlet, that plays the rôle of the inflaton, and is compatibile with current experimental bounds owing to the non-minimal coupling of the latter to gravity. This inflationary scenario predicts a ver...

We give a non-trivially interacting field theory example of scale invariant but non-conformal field theory. The model is based on the exactly solvable Liouville field theory coupled with free scalars deformed by an exactly marginal operator. We show non-vanishing of the trace of the energy-momentum tensor by using the quantum Schwinger-Dyson equation for the Liouville field theory, which is a s...