Standard model explanation of a CDF dijet excess in Wjj

We demonstrate the recent observation of a peak in the dijet invariant mass of the Wjj signal observed by the CDF Collaboration can be explained as the same upward fluctuation observed by CDF in single-top-quark production. In general, both t-channel and s-channel single-top-quark production produce kinematically induced peaks in the dijet spectrum. Since CDF used a Monte Carlo simulation to subtract the single-top backgrounds instead of data, a peak in the dijet spectrum is expected. The D0 Collaboration has a small upward fluctuation in their published t-channel data; and hence we predict they would see at most a small peak in the dijet invariant mass spectrum of Wjj if they follow the same procedure as CDF.Comment: 3 pg., 2 figs, revtex, minor clarifications, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Knowledge, attitudes and practices of barbers about hepatitis B and C transmission in Hyderabad, Pakistan.

Hepatitis B and C virus (HBV/HCV) infections are serious global health problems. Shaving by barbers has been identified as the key risk factor for spread of HBV. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of barbers in Hyderabad city, Pakistan in 2007 to establish their knowledge and attitudes to the risk of HBV and HCV transmission and their working patterns. Observations showed that 96.2% washed razors with antiseptic after each client and 95.7% used a new blade with new clients. However, knowledge about the diseases and modes of transmission were poor and only 36.6% knew that hepatitis can be transmitted via shaving instruments. Only 3.2% of 186 barbers were vaccinated against HBV. Strategies are needed for raising awareness and regulations of barbers\u27 practices

VANT-GAN: adversarial learning for discrepancy-based visual attribution in medical imaging

Visual attribution (VA) in relation to medical images is an essential aspect of modern automation-assisted diagnosis. Since it is generally not straightforward to obtain pixel-level ground-truth labelling of medical images, classification-based interpretation approaches have become the de facto standard for automated diagnosis, in which the ability of classifiers to make categorical predictions based on class-salient regions is harnessed within the learning algorithm. Such regions, however, typically constitute only a small subset of the full range of features of potential medical interest. They may hence not be useful for VA of medical images where capturing all of the disease evidence is a critical requirement. This hence motivates the proposal of a novel strategy for visual attribution that is not reliant on image classification. We instead obtain normal counterparts of abnormal images and find discrepancy maps between the two. To perform the abnormal-to-normal mapping in unsupervised way, we employ a Cycle-Consistency Generative Adversarial Network, thereby formulating visual attribution in terms of a discrepancy map that, when subtracted from the abnormal image, makes it indistinguishable from the counterpart normal image. Experiments are performed on three datasets including a synthetic, Alzheimer’s disease Neuro imaging Initiative and, BraTS dataset. We outperform baseline and related methods in both experiments

Role of Activity in Human Dynamics

The human society is a very complex system; still, there are several non-trivial, general features. One type of them is the presence of power-law distributed quantities in temporal statistics. In this Letter, we focus on the origin of power-laws in rating of movies. We present a systematic empirical exploration of the time between two consecutive ratings of movies (the interevent time). At an aggregate level, we find a monotonous relation between the activity of individuals and the power-law exponent of the interevent-time distribution. At an individual level, we observe a heavy-tailed distribution for each user, as well as a negative correlation between the activity and the width of the distribution. We support these findings by a similar data set from mobile phone text-message communication. Our results demonstrate a significant role of the activity of individuals on the society-level patterns of human behavior. We believe this is a common character in the interest-driven human dynamics, corresponding to (but different from) the universality classes of task-driven dynamics.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures. Accepted by EP

Ogbu and the debate on educational achievement: an exploration of the links between education, migration, identity and belonging

This paper looks at some of the issues raised by Ogbu’s work in relation to the education of different minority ethnic groups. Ogbu poses questions such as the value attached to education, its links to the future and its measurable outcomes in terms of ‘success’ as experienced by black participants. The desire for better life chances leads families to consider migration to a new country or resettlement within the same country, thus making migration both a local and a global phenomenon. As an example, attention is drawn to the situation facing South Asian children and their families in the UK. In terms of ethnicity and belonging, the wider question that is significant for many countries in the West after ‘Nine-Eleven’ is the education of Muslim children. A consideration of this current situation throws Ogbu’s identification of ‘autonomous minority’ into question. It is argued that a greater understanding of diverse needs has to be accompanied by a concerted effort to confront racism and intolerance in schools and in society, thus enabling all communities to make a useful contribution and to avoid the ‘risk’ of failure and disenchantment

Searching for Multijet Resonances at the LHC

Recently it was shown that there is a class of models in which colored vector and scalar resonances can be copiously produced at the Tevatron with decays to multijet final states, consistent with all experimental constraints and having strong discovery potential. We investigate the collider phenomenology of TeV scale colored resonances at the LHC and demonstrate a strong discovery potential for the scalars with early data as well as the vectors with additional statistics. We argue that the signal can be self-calibrating and using this fact we propose a search strategy which we show to be robust to systematic errors typically expected from Monte Carlo background estimates. We model the resonances with a phenomenological Lagrangian that describes them as bound states of colored vectorlike fermions due to new confining gauge interactions. However, the phenomenological Lagrangian treatment is quite general and can represent other scenarios of microscopic physics as well.Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures, pdflatex. Discussion of background expanded, minor modifications made. Version to appear in JHE

Bacterial isolates from neutropenic febrile pediatric patients and their sensitivity patterns to antibiotics

Patients on cytotoxic therapy often develop neutropenia and fever. Our interest was to identify the common pathogens isolated from such patients and to study the sensitivity patterns of these organisms to the antibiotics used in their treatment. Thus, guidelines can be established by hospitals to identify which antibiotics can be used in the treatment of these patients when the results of cultures and sensitivities are not available. We conducted a retrospective study of neutropenic pediatrics presenting to AKUH from July, 1990 to June, 1996. A total of 153 isolates in 35 different patients were studied. Samples for culture were taken from the sites at risk. The majority of samples consisted of blood, stool, pus and urine. Twenty stool samples were also sent for microscopy. Malignancies were both hematological and non-hematological. Gram negatives were isolated in 52.9%, gram positives in 33.9% and parasites in 13.2%. Salmonella paratyphi B was the most commonly isolated organism, followed by Pseudomonas aeroginosa, Giardia lamblia was the most common parasite. Sensitivity patterns of these organisms to antibiotics studied showed that Escheria coli had the lowest sensitivity rate being only 40% sensitive to Aztreonam and 64% sensitive to Ofloxacillin. A comparison was made between our findings and those reported in literature, as well as the risk factors for developing neutropenia. A guide to management is also discussed