We use big bang nucleosynthesis calculations and light element abundance data to constrain the relative variation of the deuteron binding energy since the Universe was a few minutes old, ␦QϭQ(BBN) ϪQ(present). Two approaches are used, first treating the baryon to photon ratio as a free parameter, but with the additional freedom of varying ␦Q, and second using the WMAP value of and solving only for ␦Q.Including varying Q yields a better fit to the observational data than imposing the present day value, rectifying the discrepancy between the 4 He abundance and the deuterium and 7 Li abundances, and yields good agreement with the independently determined WMAP . Using WMAP , the minimal deviation consistent with the data is significant at about the 4 level; ␦Q/QϭϪ0.019Ϯ0.005. If the primordial 4 He abundance lies towards the low end of values in the literature, this deviation is even larger and more statistically significant. Taking the light element abundance data at face value, our result may be interpreted as variation of the dimensionless ratio Xϭm s /⌳ QCD of the strange quark mass and strong scale: ␦X/Xϭ(1.1Ϯ0.3)ϫ10 Ϫ3 . These results provide a strong motivation for a more thorough exploration of the potential systematic errors in the light element abundance data.

We calculated the contribution of internal nucleon electric dipole moments to the Schiff moment of 199 Hg. The contribution of the proton electric dipole moment was obtained via core polarization effects that were treated in the framework of random phase approximation with effective residual forces. We derived a new upper bound |dp| < 5.4 × 10 −24 e·cm of the proton electric dipole moment.

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