Manifestations cliniques et agrégation familiale du trouble bipolaire en fonction de la réponse au lithium

Buts: La réponse au lithium pourrait être un critère important pour déterminer les sous-types du trouble bipolaire. Les études portant sur les critères cliniques et l'agrégation familiale en fonction de la réponse au lithium sont rares. Nos objectifs sont les suivants: En fonction de la réponse ou non à un traitement au lithium, déterminer: 1) la forme des symptômes maniaques et dépressifs durant les épisodes du trouble; 2) l'âge d'apparition du trouble; 3) la présence de comorbidités psychiatriques; 4) l'agrégation familiale Méthodes: Le travail porte sur un échantillon de 63 patients avec un trouble bipolaire, et leurs membres de famille de premier degré, recrutés dans les départements de psychiatrie du CHUV et des HUG. En utilisant une échelle déjà validée, le travail inclut la répartition des sujets en fonction de leur réponse au lithium pour ceux qui ont reçu ce traitement (selon l'information issue des entretiens diagnostiques ou des dossiers médicaux). Résultats: Nous avons trouvé les résultats suivants: 1) Pas de différence dans le nombre d'épisodes maniaques entre le groupe de répondeurs et les non répondeurs au lithium, mais un comportement provocateur plus présent chez les non répondeurs lors de ces épisodes. 2) Pas de différence signi ficative entre les 2 groupes de patients au niveau de l'âge du début du trouble. 3) Pas de différence significative dans la fréquence des troubles anxieux ni des troubles de l'enfance, même si ces derniers tendent à être plus fréquents chez les non répondeurs. Cependant, la dépendance et l'abus de cannabis ne sont présents que chez les non répondeurs de notre étude. 4) Pas de différence signi ficative dans la prévalence du trouble bipolaire chez les membres de famille des patients en fonction de la réponse au lithium, mais une plus grande prévalence de dépendance et d'abus d'alcool chez les proches adultes des non répondeurs. Conclusion: Les résultats de notre étude tendent, pour la plupart, vers ce que nous attendions, même si certains de nos résultats n'atteignent pas le niveau de significativité statistique. La recherche de la caractérisation des patients répondant ou non au lithium reste pertinente et des analyses sur un plus grand échantillon seraient d'une grande utilité dans le traitement du trouble bipolaire

Heavy neutrino signals at large hadron colliders

We study the LHC discovery potential for heavy Majorana neutrino singlets in the process pp -> W+ -> l+ N -> l+ l+ jj (l=e,mu) plus its charge conjugate. With a fast detector simulation we show that backgrounds involving two like-sign charged leptons are not negligible and, moreover, they cannot be eliminated with simple sequential kinematical cuts. Using a likelihood analysis it is shown that, for heavy neutrinos coupling only to the muon, LHC has 5 sigma sensitivity for masses up to 200 GeV in the final state mu+- mu+- jj. This reduction in sensitivity, compared to previous parton-level estimates, is driven by the ~ 10^2-10^3 times larger background. Limits are also provided for e+- e+- jj and e+- mu+- jj final states, as well as for Tevatron. For heavy Dirac neutrinos the prospects are worse because backgrounds involving two opposite charge leptons are much larger. For this case, we study the observability of the lepton flavour violating signal e+- mu-+ jj. As a by-product of our analysis, heavy neutrino production has been implemented within the ALPGEN framework.Comment: Latex 36 pages, 49 PS figures. Major extension incorporating analysis for e+- e+-, e+- mu+- and e+- mu-+ final states. Final version to appear in JHE

Tree FCNC and non-unitarity of CKM matrix

We discuss possible signatures of the tree level FCNC, which results from the non-unitarity of CKM matrix. We first define the unitaity step-by-step, and possible test of the non-unitaity through the 4-value-KM parametrization. We, then, show how the phase angle of the unitary triangle would change in case of the vector-like down quark model. As another example of tree FCNC, we investigate the leptophobic $Z'$ model and its application to the recent $B_s$ mixing measurements.Comment: Talk given at Neutrino Masses and Mixings 2006 (NMM2006), Shizuoka, Japan (December 2006

The lepton flavor violating decays Z→liljZ\to l_i l_j in the simplest little Higgs model

In the simplest little Higgs model the new flavor-changing interactions between heavy neutrinos and the Standard Model leptons can generate contributions to some lepton flavor violating decays of $Z$-boson at one-loop level, such as $Z \to \tau^{\pm}\mu^{\mp}$, $Z\to \tau^{\pm}e^{\mp}$, and $Z \to \mu^{\pm}e^{\mp}$. We examine the decay modes, and find that the branching ratios can reach $10^{-7}$ for the three decays, which should be accessible at the Giga$Z$ option of the ILC.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Quark mixings and flavor changing interactions with singlet quarks

Aspects of the quark mixings and flavor changing interactions are investigated in electroweak models with singlet quarks. The effects on the ordinary quark mixing are determined in terms of the quark masses and the parameters describing the mixing between the ordinary quarks q and the singlet quarks Q (q-Q mixing). Some salient features arise in the flavor changing interactions through the q-Q mixing. The unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix within the ordinary quark sector is violated, and the flavor changing neutral currents (FCNC's) appear both in the gauge and scalar couplings. The flavor changing interactions are calculated appropriately in terms of the q-Q mixing parameters and the quark masses, which really exhibit specific flavor structures. It is found that there are reasonable ranges of the model parameters to reproduce the ordinary quark mass hierarchy and the actual CKM structure even in the presence of q-Q mixing. Some phenomenological effects of the singlet quarks are also discussed. In particular, the scalar FCNC's may be more important in some cases, if the singlet quarks as well as the extra scalar particles from the singlet Higgs fields have masses $\sim$ 100 GeV -- 1 TeV.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, added reference

The Effective Lagrangian for Bulk Fermions in Models with Extra Dimensions

We compute the dimension 6 effective Lagrangian arising from the tree level integration of an arbitrary number of bulk fermions in models with warped extra dimensions. The coefficients of the effective operators are written in terms of simple integrals of the metric and are valid for arbitrary warp factors, with or without an infrared brane, and for a general Higgs profile. All relevant tree level fermion effects in electroweak and flavor observables can be computed using this effective Lagrangian.Comment: 22 pages. V2: typos corrected, matches published versio

Impact of right-handed interactions on the propagation of Dirac and Majorana neutrinos in matter

Dirac and Majorana neutrinos can be distinguished in relativistic neutrino oscillations if new right-handed interactions exist, due to their different propagation in matter. We review how these new interactions affect neutrino oscillation experiments and discuss the size of this eventually observable effect for different oscillation channels, baselines and neutrino energies.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figure

Identifying Unconventional E6_{\bf 6} Models at e+e−e^+ e^- Colliders

Recently it was shown that, in the framework of superstring inspired \E models, the presence of generation dependent discrete symmetries allows us to construct a phenomenologically viable class of models in which the three generations of fermions do not have the same embedding within the fundamental {\bf 27} dimensional representation of E$_6$. In this scenario, these different embeddings of the conventional fermions imply that the left-handed charged leptons and the right-handed $d$-type quarks are coupled in a non--universal way to the new neutral gauge bosons $(Z_\theta)$ present in these models. It was also shown that a unique signature for this scenario, would be a deviation from unity for the ratio of cross sections for the production of two different lepton species in $e^+e^-$ annihilation. However, several different scenarios are possible, depending on the particular assignment chosen for $e_L$, $\mu_L$ and $\tau_L$ and for the right-handed $d$-type quarks, as well as on the type of $Z_\theta$ boson. Such scenarios can not be disentangled from one another by means of cross section measurements alone. In this paper we examine the possibility of identifying the pattern of embeddings through measurements of polarized and unpolarized asymmetries for fermion pair-production at the 500 GeV $e^+e^-$ Next Linear Collider (NLC). We show that it will be possible to identify the different patterns of unconventional assignments for the left-handed leptons and for the $b_R$ quark, for $Z_\theta$ masses as large as $\sim 1.5$ TeV.Comment: Plain Tex, 15 pages, + 9 figure available upon request ([email protected] or [email protected]), UM-TH 93--1

Antisymmetric tensor unparticle and the radiative lepton flavor violating decays

We study the contribution of the tensor unparticle mediation to the branching ratios of the radiative lepton flavor violating decays and predict a restriction region for free parameters of the scenario by using experimental upper limits. We observe that the branching ratios of the radiative lepton flavor violating decays are sensitive to the fundamental mass scales of the scenario and to the scale dimension of antisymmetric tensor unparticle. We obtain a more restricted set for the free parameters in the case of the \mu\rightarrow e \gamma decayComment: 15 pages, 10 figure