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The most remarkable recent discovery in fundamental physics is that the Universe is undergoing accelerated expansion. A proper understanding of its physical origin forces us to make a hard choice between dynamical and environmental scenarios. The former approach predicts the existence of a new long distance physics in the gravitational sector, while the second relies on the vast landscape of vacua with different values of the cosmological constant. I will discuss achievements and shortcomings of both approaches, and illustrate them in the concrete examples.

Cosmological observations will soon distinguish between the standard slow roll inflationary paradigm and some of its recently developed alternatives. Driven by developments in string theory, many new models include features such as non-minimal kinetic terms, leading to large non-gaussianities, making them observationally testable in the CMB. Models of slow roll inflation can also give rise to large non- gaussianities if the initial inflationary state was sufficiently excited, with a shape dependence that will be clearly distinguishable. I will review these different possibilities and discuss how they provide new theoretical challenges in understanding the initial conditions problem and the global structure of the inflationary universe.

The history of human knowledge is often highlighted by our efforts to explore beyond our apparent horizon. In this talk, I will describe how this challenge has now evolved into our quest to understand the physics at/beyond the cosmological horizon, some twenty orders of magnitude above Columbus\' original goal. I then recount how the study of physics on the horizon scale has led to the successful development of inflationary cosmology, and how we can use the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect in the Cosmic Microwave Background to probe cosmological physics, such as late-time inflation, the nature of gravity, and primordial non-gaussianity on the horizon scale.

The consequences of a modified gravity (MOG) are explored. I demonstrate how the solutions of the field equations obtained from the action principle of the MOG lead to a theory without any free, adjustable parameters or ad-hoc empirical formulae. The theory successfully explains solar system observations, the dispersion velocities of globular clusters, the rotation curves of galaxies, the mass profiles of X-ray clusters, the dispersion velocities of satellite galaxies, the Bullet Cluster and cosmological observations without exotic dark matter. The peculiar features of the recent data obtained for the merging cluster Abell 520 are discussed. MOG predicts agreement with data from the scale of the solar system to cosmological scales without dark matter. With no undetermined free parameters, the theory can be used to make firm predictions that may be verifiable in the foreseeable future.

I\'ll introduce a particular class of fundamental string configurations in the form of closed loops stabilized by internal dynamics. I\\\'ll describe their classical treatment and embedding in models of string cosmology. I\\\'ll present the quantum version and the semiclassical limit that provides a microscopic description of dipole black rings. I\\\'ll show the parametric matching between the degeneracy of microstates and the entropy of the supergravity solution.

The history of human knowledge is often highlighted by our efforts to explore beyond our apparent horizon. In this talk, I will describe how this challenge has now evolved into our quest to understand the physics at/beyond the cosmological horizon, some twenty orders of magnitude above Columbus’s original goal. I also argue why inflationary paradigm predicts the existence of non-trivial physics beyond the cosmological horizon, and how we can use the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect in the Cosmic Microwave Background to probe this physics, including the nature of gravity and primordial non-gaussianity on the horizon scale.

We consider a consistent construction of the supersymmetric action for a codimension-two brane in six-dimensional Salam-Sezgin supergravity. When the brane carries a tension, we supersymmetrize the brane tension action by introducing a localized Fayet-Iliopoulos term on the brane and modifying the bulk SUSY transformations. As a result, we find that among the axisymmetric vacua of the system, the unwarped background with football-shaped extra dimensions respects N=1 supersymmetry. We extend the analysis to include the brane multiplets with the couplings to the bulk fields.

I shall review the potential relevance of antisymmetric tensor fields in physics, perhaps the most intriguing being a massive antisymmetric tensor as dark matter. Next, based on the most general quadratic action for the antisymmetric tensor field, I shall discuss what are possible extensions of Einstein\\\'s theory which include antisymmetric tensor field and thus torsion in a dynamical fashion.

After almost a century of observations, the ultra-high energy sky has finally displayed an anisotropic distribution. A significant correlation between the arrival directions of ultra-high cosmic rays measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory and the distribution of nearby active galactic nuclei signals the dawn of particle astronomy. These historic results have important implications to both astrophysics and particle physics.

With the discovery of many new satellite galaxies, in recent years our understanding of the Milky Way environment has undergone a dramatic transformation. I will discuss what these discoveries are telling us about galaxy formation and the nature of dark matter itself. Issues I will focus on include: identifying the least luminous dark matter halo in the Universe, distinguishing between warm and cold dark matter, and indirect dark matter detection.