Abstract: The framed standard model (FSM) is obtained from the standard model by incorporating, as field variables, the frame vectors (vielbeins) in internal symmetry space. It gives the standard Higgs boson and 3 generations of quarks and leptons as immediate consequences. It gives moreover a fermion mass matrix of the form: m = mT alpha alpha dagger, where alpha is a vector in generation space independent of the fermion species and rotating with changing scale, which has already been shown to lead, generically, to up-down mixing, neutrino oscillations and mass hierarchy. In this paper, pushing the FSM further, one first derives to 1-loop order the RGE for the rotation of alpha, and then applies it to fit mass and mixing data as a first test of the model. With 7 real adjustable parameters, 18 measured quantities are fitted, most (12) to within experimental error or to better than 0.5 percent, and the rest (6) not far off. (A summary of this fit can be found in Table 2 of this paper.) Two notable features, both generic to FSM, not just specific to the fit, are: (i) that a theta-angle of order unity in the instanton term in QCD would translate via rotation into a Kobayashi-Maskawa phase in the CKM matrix of about the observed magnitude (J similar to 10(-5)), (ii) that it would come out correctly that m(u) < m(d), despite the fact that m(t) >> m(b), m(c) >> m(s). Of the 18 quantities fitted, 12 are deemed independent in the usual formulation of the standard model. In fact, the fit gives a total of 17 independent parameters of the standard model, but 5 of these have not been measured by experiment.

Abstract: With the historic discovery of the Higgs boson our picutre of particle physics would have been complete were it nor for the neutrino sector and cosmology. I briefly discuss the role of neutrino masses and mixing upon gauge coupling unification, electroweak breaking and the flavor sector. Time is ripe for new discoveries such as leptonic CP violation, charged lepton flavor violation and neutrinoless double beta decay. Neutrinos could also play a role is elucidating the nature of dark matter and cosmic inflation.

Abstract: In this paper, we present a review of recent works on weak decay of heavy mesons and baryons with two mesons, or a meson and a baryon, interacting strongly in the final state. The aim is to learn about the interaction of hadrons and how some particular resonances are produced in the reactions. It is shown that these reactions have peculiar features and act as filters for some quantum numbers which allow to identify easily some resonances and learn about their nature. The combination of basic elements of the weak interaction with the framework of the chiral unitary approach allow for an interpretation of results of many reactions and add a novel information to different aspects of the hadron interaction and the properties of dynamically generated resonances.

Abstract: The origin of small mixing among the quarks and a large mixing among the neutrinos has been an open question in particle physics. In order to answer this question, we postulate general relations among the quarks and the leptonic mixing angles at a high scale, which could be the scale of Grand Unified Theories. The central idea of these relations is that the quark and the leptonic mixing angles can be unified at some high scale either due to some quark lepton symmetry or some other underlying mechanism and as a consequence, the mixing angles of the leptonic sector are proportional to that of the quark sector. We investigate the phenomenology of the possible relations where the leptonic mixing angles are proportional to the quark mixing angles at the unification scale by taking into account the latest experimental constraints from the neutrino sector. These relations are able to explain the pattern of leptonic mixing at the low scale and thereby hint that these relations could be possible signatures of a quark lepton symmetry or some other underlying quark lepton mixing unification mechanism at some high scale linked to Grand Unified Theories.

Abstract: Using the most recent release of the ALEPH tau decay data, we present a very detailed phenomenological update of the alpha(s)(m(tau)(2)) determination. We have exploited the sensitivity to the strong coupling in many different ways, exploring several complementary methodologies. All determinations turn out to be in excellent agreement, allowing us to extract a very reliable value of the strong coupling. We find alpha((nf =3))(s)(m(tau)(2)) = 0.328 +/- 0.012 which implies alpha((nf=5))(s)(M-Z(2)) = 0.1197 +/- 0.0014. We critically revise previous work, and point out the problems flawing some recent analyses which claim slightly smaller values.