Three Generations in Type I Compactifications

Generalizing the recent work on three-family Type I compactifications, we classify perturbative Type I vacua obtained via compactifying on the T^6/Z_2 X Z_2 X Z_3 orbifold with all possible Wilson lines. In particular, we concentrate on models with gauge groups containing the Standard Model gauge group SU(3)_c X SU(2)_w X U(1)_Y as a subgroup. All of the vacua we obtain contain D5-branes and are non-perturbative from the heterotic viewpoint. The models we discuss have three-chiral families. We study some of their phenomenological properties, and point out non-trivial problems arising in these models in the phenomenological context.Comment: 16 pages, revtex, minor misprints correcte

The detection of Gravitational Waves

This chapter is concerned with the question: how do gravitational waves (GWs) interact with their detectors? It is intended to be a theory review of the fundamental concepts involved in interferometric and acoustic (Weber bar) GW antennas. In particular, the type of signal the GW deposits in the detector in each case will be assessed, as well as its intensity and deconvolution. Brief reference will also be made to detector sensitivity characterisation, including very summary data on current state of the art GW detectors.Comment: 33 pages, 12 figures, LaTeX2e, Springer style files --included. For Proceedings of the ERE-2001 Conference (Madrid, September 2001

Genetic Variants of the Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System and Reverse Remodeling After Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy

Background: Reverse remodeling (RR) after cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is associated with favorable clinical outcomes in heart failure (HF). The renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) is involved in the remodeling process. Methods and Results: We assessed the association between RR and 8 common RAAS gene variants, which were determined by TaqMan assays, in 156 outpatients with chronic HF. RR was defined as a O15% decrease in left ventricular end systolic volume (LVESV) at 9 (interquartile range 7e12) months after CRT. We matched 76 patients who did not show RR (RR) to 80 RR? control subjects by age, sex, HF etiology, New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). The frequency of the minor allele of the NR3C2 gene (rs5522 C/T), encoding the mineralocorticoid receptor, was higher in RR than in RR (24/126 vs 10/150; P value after false discovery rate correction: <.0193). Conversely, LVESV decreased significantly less after CRT in carriers of the NR3C2 minor C allele (P 5 .02). After adjustment for age, sex, NYHA functional class, previous myocardial infarction, atrial fibrillation, and LVEF, RR remained independently associated with NR3C2 C allele carriage (odds ratio 3.093, 95% confidence interval 1.253e7.632). Conclusions: The association of RR after CRT with a common polymorphism in the mineralocorticoid receptor gene involved in aldosterone signaling suggests a possible role for variants in RAAS genes in progressive LV function decline, despite apparently effective CRT

Free breathing lung T1 mapping using image registration in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

Purpose To assess the use of image registration for correcting respiratory motion in free breathing lung T1 mapping acquisition in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Theory and Methods The method presented used image registration to synthetic images during postprocessing to remove respiratory motion. Synthetic images were generated from a model of the inversion recovery signal of the acquired images that incorporated a periodic lung motion model. Ten healthy volunteers and 19 patients with IPF underwent 2D Look‐Locker T1 mapping acquisition at 1.5T during inspiratory breath‐hold and free breathing. Eight healthy volunteers and seven patients with IPF underwent T1 mapping acquisition during expiratory breath‐hold. Fourteen patients had follow‐up scanning at 6 months. Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) was used to evaluate registration efficacy. Results Image registration increased image DSC (P < .001) in the free breathing inversion recovery images. Lung T1 measured during a free breathing acquisition was lower in patients with IPF when compared with healthy controls (inspiration: P = .238; expiration: P = .261; free breathing: P = .021). Measured lung T1 was higher in expiration breath‐hold than inspiration breath‐hold in healthy volunteers (P < .001) but not in patients with IPF (P = .645). There were no other significant differences between lung T1 values within subject groups. Conclusions The registration technique significantly reduced motion in the Look‐Locker images acquired during free breathing and may improve the robustness of lung T1 mapping in patients who struggle to hold their breath. Lung T1 measured during a free breathing acquisition was significantly lower in patients with IPF when compared with healthy controls

How consistently do physicians diagnose and manage drug-induced interstitial lung disease? Two surveys of European ILD specialist physicians

Introduction Currently there are no general guidelines for diagnosis or management of suspected drug-induced (DI) interstitial lung disease (ILD). The objective was to survey a sample of current European practice in the diagnosis and management of DI-ILD, in the context of the prescribing information approved by regulatory authorities for 28 licenced drugs with a recognised risk of DI-ILD. Methods Consultant physicians working in specialist ILD centres across Europe were emailed two surveys via a website link. Initially, opinion was sought regarding various diagnostic and management options based on seven clinical ILD case vignettes and five general questions regarding DI-ILD. The second survey involved 29 statements regarding the diagnosis and management of DI-ILD, derived from the results of the first survey. Consensus agreement was defined as 75% or greater. Results When making a diagnosis of DI-ILD, the favoured investigations used (other than computed tomography) included pulmonary function tests, bronchoscopy and blood tests. The preferred method used to decide when to stop treatment was a pulmonary function test. In the second survey, the majority of the statements were accepted by the 33 respondents, with only four of 29 statements not achieving consensus when the responses “agree” and “strongly agree” were combined as one answer. Conclusion The two surveys provide guidance for clinicians regarding an approach to the diagnosis and management of DI-ILD in which the current evidence base is severely lacking, as demonstrated by the limited information provided by the manufacturers of the drugs associated with a high risk of DI-ILD that we reviewed

Fitting the integrated Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies

Fitting the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies is an almost universally used technique that has matured significantly in the last decade. Model predictions and fitting procedures have improved significantly over this time, attempting to keep up with the vastly increased volume and quality of available data. We review here the field of SED fitting, describing the modelling of ultraviolet to infrared galaxy SEDs, the creation of multiwavelength data sets, and the methods used to fit model SEDs to observed galaxy data sets. We touch upon the achievements and challenges in the major ingredients of SED fitting, with a special emphasis on describing the interplay between the quality of the available data, the quality of the available models, and the best fitting technique to use in order to obtain a realistic measurement as well as realistic uncertainties. We conclude that SED fitting can be used effectively to derive a range of physical properties of galaxies, such as redshift, stellar masses, star formation rates, dust masses, and metallicities, with care taken not to over-interpret the available data. Yet there still exist many issues such as estimating the age of the oldest stars in a galaxy, finer details ofdust properties and dust-star geometry, and the influences of poorly understood, luminous stellar types and phases. The challenge for the coming years will be to improve both the models and the observational data sets to resolve these uncertainties. The present review will be made available on an interactive, moderated web page (sedfitting.org), where the community can access and change the text. The intention is to expand the text and keep it up to date over the coming years.Comment: 54 pages, 26 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Observing Supermassive Black Holes across cosmic time: from phenomenology to physics

In the last decade, a combination of high sensitivity, high spatial resolution observations and of coordinated multi-wavelength surveys has revolutionized our view of extra-galactic black hole (BH) astrophysics. We now know that supermassive black holes reside in the nuclei of almost every galaxy, grow over cosmological times by accreting matter, interact and merge with each other, and in the process liberate enormous amounts of energy that influence dramatically the evolution of the surrounding gas and stars, providing a powerful self-regulatory mechanism for galaxy formation. The different energetic phenomena associated to growing black holes and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), their cosmological evolution and the observational techniques used to unveil them, are the subject of this chapter. In particular, I will focus my attention on the connection between the theory of high-energy astrophysical processes giving rise to the observed emission in AGN, the observable imprints they leave at different wavelengths, and the methods used to uncover them in a statistically robust way. I will show how such a combined effort of theorists and observers have led us to unveil most of the SMBH growth over a large fraction of the age of the Universe, but that nagging uncertainties remain, preventing us from fully understating the exact role of black holes in the complex process of galaxy and large-scale structure formation, assembly and evolution.Comment: 46 pages, 21 figures. This review article appears as a chapter in the book: "Astrophysical Black Holes", Haardt, F., Gorini, V., Moschella, U and Treves A. (Eds), 2015, Springer International Publishing AG, Cha

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Comparison of advanced gravitational-wave detectors

We compare two advanced designs for gravitational-wave antennas in terms of their ability to detect two possible gravitational wave sources. Spherical, resonant mass antennas and interferometers incorporating resonant sideband extraction (RSE) were modeled using experimentally measurable parameters. The signal-to-noise ratio of each detector for a binary neutron star system and a rapidly rotating stellar core were calculated. For a range of plausible parameters we found that the advanced LIGO interferometer incorporating RSE gave higher signal-to-noise ratios than a spherical detector resonant at the same frequency for both sources. Spheres were found to be sensitive to these sources at distances beyond our galaxy. Interferometers were sensitive to these sources at far enough distances that several events per year would be expected

Study of CP violation in Dalitz-plot analyses of B0 --> K+K-KS, B+ --> K+K-K+, and B+ --> KSKSK+

We perform amplitude analyses of the decays $B^0 \to K^+K^-K^0_S$, $B^+ \rightarrow K^+K^-K^+$, and $B^+ \to K^0_S K^0_S K^+$, and measure CP-violating parameters and partial branching fractions. The results are based on a data sample of approximately $470\times 10^6$ $B\bar{B}$ decays, collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy $B$ factory at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. For $B^+ \to K^+K^-K^+$, we find a direct CP asymmetry in $B^+ \to \phi(1020)K^+$ of $A_{CP}= (12.8\pm 4.4 \pm 1.3)$, which differs from zero by $2.8 \sigma$. For $B^0 \to K^+K^-K^0_S$, we measure the CP-violating phase $\beta_{\rm eff} (\phi(1020)K^0_S) = (21\pm 6 \pm 2)^\circ$. For $B^+ \to K^0_S K^0_S K^+$, we measure an overall direct CP asymmetry of $A_{CP} = (4 ^{+4}_{-5} \pm 2)$. We also perform an angular-moment analysis of the three channels, and determine that the $f_X(1500)$ state can be described well by the sum of the resonances $f_0(1500)$, $f_2^{\prime}(1525)$, and $f_0(1710)$.Comment: 35 pages, 68 postscript figures. v3 - minor modifications to agree with published versio