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An introduction to the physics and instrumentation of positron emission tomography
Positron-emitting radionuclides permit the use of electronic collimation and thus achieve higher resolution and better sensitivity than can be obtained with gamma-emitting radiotracers. The evolution of PET imaging systems can be traced from the use of opposed collimated scanning detectors, which had all the limitations of traditional single photon imaging devices, to the present systems which surround the subject with a large volume of detector material. The improvements in system resolution now approach the theoretical limitation imposed by positron-range, and angular deviation. The use of coding permits the use of shared electronics for reading our multiple detectors, which promises to decrease the cost of PET imaging devices, at some penalty of degraded performance. Improvements in computer architectures and capabilities permit faster reconstruction of the multiple planes imaged by multi-slice imaging systems. Software for distortion correction and image processing are still under development, and the ability to map between different devices requires the coordination of efforts between different groups in the same institution. The development and validation of the mathematical models for tracer kinetic analyses will continue to occupy the attention of clinicians and scientists involved in these developments. The desire to make these devices simple and cheap enough to be used in routine patient care is occupying the attention of industry and pioneering users, but this goal has not yet been achieved. 17 refs., 15 figs., 3 tabs
Entanglement without Dissipation: A Touchstone for an exact Comparison of Entanglement Measures
Entanglement, which is an essential characteristic of quantum mechanics, is
the key element in potential practical quantum information and quantum
communication systems. However, there are many open and fundamental questions
(relating to entanglement measures, sudden death, etc.) that require a deeper
understanding. Thus, we are motivated to investigate a simple but non-trivial
correlated two-body continuous variable system in the absence of a heat bath,
which facilitates an \underline{exact} measure of the entanglement at all
times. In particular, we find that the results obtained from all well-known
existing entanglement measures agree with each other but that, in practice,
some are more straightforward to use than others
Information and entropy in quantum Brownian motion: Thermodynamic entropy versus von Neumann entropy
We compare the thermodynamic entropy of a quantum Brownian oscillator derived
from the partition function of the subsystem with the von Neumann entropy of
its reduced density matrix. At low temperatures we find deviations between
these two entropies which are due to the fact that the Brownian particle and
its environment are entangled. We give an explanation for these findings and
point out that these deviations become important in cases where statements
about the information capacity of the subsystem are associated with
thermodynamic properties, as it is the case for the Landauer principle.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure
Entropy of a Quantum Oscillator coupled to a Heat Bath and implications for Quantum Thermodynamics
The free energy of a quantum oscillator in an arbitrary heat bath at a
temperature T is given by a "remarkable formula" which involves only a single
integral. This leads to a corresponding simple result for the entropy. The low
temperature limit is examined in detail and we obtain explicit results both for
the case of an Ohmic heat bath and a radiation heat bath. More general heat
bath models are also examined. This enables us to determine the entropy at zero
temperature in order to check the third law of thermodynamics in the quantum
regimeComment: International Conference on "Frontiers of Quantum and Mesoscopic
Thermodynamics
Cosmological gravitino problem confronts electroweak physics
A generic feature of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking models is that the
gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). In order not to
overclose the universe, the gravitino LSP should be light enough (~ 1 keV), or
appropriately heavy (~ 1 GeV). We study further constraints on the mass of the
gravitino imposed by electroweak experiments, i.e., muon g-2 measurements,
electroweak precision measurements, and direct searches for supersymmetric
particles at LEP2. We find that the heavy gravitino is strongly disfavored from
the lower mass bound on the next-to-LSP. The sufficiently light gravitino, on
the other hand, has rather sizable allowed regions in the model parameter
space.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, version to appear in PR
Neutrino-induced lepton flavor violation in gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking
Gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking is known to greatly suppress flavor
changing neutral current effects. However, we show that gauge mediation in the
context of leptogenesis implies potentially large lepton flavor violating
signals. If the heavy right-handed neutrinos that participate in leptogenesis
are lighter than the messenger scale of gauge mediation, they will induce
flavor off-diagonal masses to the sleptons which in turn can induce large
effects in mu to e gamma, tau to mu gamma, and mu-e conversion in nuclei. We
demonstrate this result and compute numerically the lepton-flavor violating
decay and conversion rates in scenarios of direct gauge mediation.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure
Moduli Instability in Warped Compactifications of the Type IIB Supergravity
We show that the conifold and deformed-conifold warped compactifications of
the ten-dimensional type IIB supergravity, including the Klebanov-Strassler
solution, are dynamically unstable in the moduli sector representing the scale
of a Calabi-Yau space, although it can be practically stable for a quite long
time in a region with a large warp factor. This instability is associated with
complete supersymmetry breaking except for a special case and produces
significant time-dependence in the structure of the four-dimensional base
spacetime as well as of the internal space.Comment: 24 pages, no figure. Typos corrected, and some arguments in section 5
are adde
Probing mSUGRA via the Extreme Universe Space Observatory
An analysis is carried out within mSUGRA of the estimated number of events
originating from upward moving ultra-high energy neutralinos that could be
detected by the Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO). The analysis
exploits a recently proposed technique that differentiates ultra-high energy
neutralinos from ultra-high energy neutrinos using their different absorption
lengths in the Earth's crust. It is shown that for a significant part of the
parameter space, where the neutralino is mostly a Bino and with squark mass
TeV, EUSO could see ultra-high energy neutralino events with
essentially no background. In the energy range 10^9 GeV < E < 10^11 GeV, the
unprecedented aperture of EUSO makes the telescope sensitive to neutralino
fluxes as low as 1.1 \times 10^{-6} (E/GeV)^{-1.3} GeV^{-1} cm^{-2} yr^{-1}
sr^{-1}, at the 95% CL. Such a hard spectrum is characteristic of supermassive
particles' -body hadronic decay. The case in which the flux of ultra-high
energy neutralinos is produced via decay of metastable heavy particles with
uniform distribution throughout the universe is analyzed in detail. The
normalization of the ratio of the relics' density to their lifetime has been
fixed so that the baryon flux produced in the supermassive particle decays
contributes to about 1/3 of the events reported by the AGASA Collaboration
below 10^{11} GeV, and hence the associated GeV gamma-ray flux is in complete
agreement with EGRET data. For this particular case, EUSO will collect between
4 and 5 neutralino events (with 0.3 of background) in ~ 3 yr of running. NASA's
planned mission, the Orbiting Wide-angle Light-collectors (OWL), is also
briefly discussed in this context.Comment: Some discussion added, final version to be published in Physical
Review
Molecular epidemiology of penicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia in Australia and reliability of diagnostic phenotypic susceptibility methods to detect penicillin susceptibility
Background: Defined by the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains, Staphylococcus aureus is a priority bacterial species with high antibiotic resistance. However, a rise in the prevalence of penicillin-susceptible S. aureus (PSSA) bloodstream infections has recently been observed worldwide, including in Australia, where the proportion of methicillin-susceptible S. aureus causing bacteremia identified phenotypically as penicillin-susceptible has increased by over 35%, from 17.5% in 2013 to 23.7% in 2020. Objectives: To determine the population structure of PSSA causing community- and hospital-onset bacteremia in Australia and to evaluate routine phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility methods to reliably confirm penicillin resistance on blaZ-positive S. aureus initially classified as penicillin-susceptible by the Vitek® 2 automated microbiology system. Results: Whole genome sequencing on 470 PSSA collected in the 2020 Australian Group on Antimicrobial Resistance Australian Staphylococcus aureus Sepsis Outcome Programme identified 84 multilocus sequence types (STs), of which 79 (463 isolates) were grouped into 22 clonal complexes (CCs). The dominant CCs included CC5 (31.9%), CC97 (10.2%), CC45 (10.0%), CC15 (8.7%), and CC188 (4.9%). Many of the CCs had multiple STs and spa types and, based on the immune evasion cluster type, isolates within a CC could be classified into different strains harboring a range of virulence and resistance genes. Phylogenetic analyses of the isolates showed most CCs were represented by one clade. The blaZ gene was identified in 45 (9.6%) PSSA. Although multiclonal, approximately 50% of blaZ-positive PSSA were from CC15 and were found to be genetically distant from the blaZ-negative CC15 PSSA. The broth microdilution, Etest® and cefinase, performed poorly; however, when the appearance of the zone edge was considered; as per the EUCAST and CLSI criteria, disc diffusion detected 100% of blaZ-positive PSSA. Conclusions: In Australia, PSSA bacteremia is not caused by the expansion of a single clone. Approximately 10% of S. aureus classified as penicillin-susceptible by the Vitek® 2 harbored blaZ. Consequently, we recommend that confirmation of Vitek® 2 PSSA be performed using an alternative method, such as disc diffusion with careful interpretation of the zone edge
On MSSM charged Higgs boson production in association with an electroweak W boson at electron positron colliders
We present a calculation of the cross section for the process e+ e- --> W+/-
H-/+ in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) and the Two Higgs
Doublet Model (THDM). We study the basic features of the MSSM prediction for
some distinctive parameter scenarios. We find large effects from virtual
squarks for scenarios with large mixing in the stop sector which can lead to a
cross section vastly different from a THDM with identical Higgs sector
parameters. We investigate this interesting behaviour in more detail by
thoroughly scanning the MSSM parameter space for regions of large cross
section. For a charged Higgs boson too heavy to be pair-produced at such a
machine, it turns out that a large MSSM cross section with a good chance of
observation is linked to a squark mass scale below 600 GeV and a considerable
amount of mixing in either the stop and sbottom sector.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures (two in colour). Substantially improved on the
MSSM parameter restrictions taken into account. Added some reference
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