Has a Higgs-flavon with a 750750 GeV mass been detected at the LHC13?

Higgs-flavon fields appear as a part of the Froggatt-Nielsen (FN) mechanism, which attempts to explain the hierarchy of Yukawa couplings. We explore the possibility that the 750 GeV diphoton resonance recently reported at the LHC13, could be identified with a low-scale Higgs-flavon field $H_F$ and find the region of the parameter space consistent with CMS and ATLAS data. It is found that the extra vector-like fermions of the ultraviolet completion of the FN mechanism are necessary in order to reproduce the observed signal. We consider a standard model (SM) extension that contains two Higgs doublets (a standard one and an inert one) and one complex FN singlet. The inert doublet includes a stable neutral boson, which provides a viable dark matter candidate, while the mixing of the standard doublet and the FN singlet induces flavor violation in the Higgs sector at the tree-level. Constraints on the parameters of the model are derived from the LHC Higgs data, which include the search for the lepton flavor violating decay of the SM Higgs boson $h\to \bar{\mu}\tau$. It is also found that in some region of the parameter space the model may give rise to a large branching ratio for the $H_F \to hh$ decay, of the order of 0.1, which could be searched for at the LHC.Comment: 18 pages, 7 Figures, includes updated files to match published versio

Encapsulation of gold nanostructures and oil-in-water nanocarriers in microgels with biomedical potential

Indexación: Scopus.Funding: This research was funded by FONDECYT 1161450, 1150744, 11130494 and 1170929, FONDEQUIP EQM160157, EQM170111, CONICYT-FONDAP 15130011, and CONICYT PhD Scholarship 21141137.Here we report the incorporation of gold nanostructures (nanospheres or nanorods, functionalized with carboxylate-end PEG) and curcumin oil-in-water (O/W) nanoemulsions (CurNem) into alginate microgels using the dripping technique. While gold nanostructures are promising nanomaterials for photothermal therapy applications, CurNem possess important pharmacological activities as reported here. In this sense, we evaluated the effect of CurNem on cell viability of both cancerous and non-cancerous cell lines (AGS and HEK293T, respectively), demonstrating preferential toxicity in cancer cells and safety for the non-cancerous cells. After incorporating gold nanostructures and CurNem together into the microgels, microstructures with diameters of 220 and 540 µm were obtained. When stimulating microgels with a laser, the plasmon effect promoted a significant rise in the temperature of the medium; the temperature increase was higher for those containing gold nanorods (11–12 ◦ C) than nanospheres (1–2 ◦ C). Interestingly, the incorporation of both nanosystems in the microgels maintains the photothermal properties of the gold nanostructures unmodified and retains with high efficiency the curcumin nanocarriers. We conclude that these results will be of interest to design hydrogel formulations with therapeutic applications. © 2018 by the authors.https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/5/120

Unparticle physics and neutrino phenomenology

We have constrained unparticle interactions with neutrinos and electrons using available data on neutrino-electron elastic scattering and the four CERN LEP experiments data on mono photon production. We have found that, for neutrino-electron elastic scattering, the MUNU experiment gives better constraints than previous reported limits in the region d>1.5. The results are compared with the current astrophysical limits, pointing out the cases where these limits may or may not apply. We also discuss the sensitivity of future experiments to unparticle physics. In particular, we show that the measurement of coherent reactor neutrino scattering off nuclei could provide a good sensitivity to the couplings of unparticle interaction with neutrinos and quarks. We also discuss the case of future neutrino-electron experiments as well as the International Linear Collider.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures. Minor changes, final versio

Serious Games Application for Memory Training Using Egocentric Images

Mild cognitive impairment is the early stage of several neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's. In this work, we address the use of lifelogging as a tool to obtain pictures from a patient's daily life from an egocentric point of view. We propose to use them in combination with serious games as a way to provide a non-pharmacological treatment to improve their quality of life. To do so, we introduce a novel computer vision technique that classifies rich and non rich egocentric images and uses them in serious games. We present results over a dataset composed by 10,997 images, recorded by 7 different users, achieving 79% of F1-score. Our model presents the first method used for automatic egocentric images selection applicable to serious games.Comment: 11 page

Presencia de reptiles en la región de Anchicayá, pacífico colombiano, a través de un gradiente de deforestación

La transformación de zonas boscosas en pastizales o áreas de cultivo es una problemática a nivel mundial, que poco a poco va reduciendo el hábitat natural de muchas especies, aumentando así los riesgos de extinción, ya sea a nivel local o global. Ante esta situación, es importante conocer la fauna y flora de los ecosistemas naturales y establecer qué especies pueden ser más susceptibles y cuáles pueden subsistir o incluso verse beneficiadas con las nuevas características del hábitat. De esta manera, futuros planes de conservación pueden optimizar esfuerzos

Refined multiscale entropy using fuzzy metrics: validation and application to nociception assessmentt

The refined multiscale entropy (RMSE) approach is commonly applied to assess complexity as a function of the time scale. RMSE is normally based on the computation of sample entropy (SampEn) estimating complexity as conditional entropy. However, SampEn is dependent on the length and standard deviation of the data. Recently, fuzzy entropy (FuzEn) has been proposed, including several refinements, as an alternative to counteract these limitations. In this work, FuzEn, translated FuzEn (TFuzEn), translated-reflected FuzEn (TRFuzEn), inherent FuzEn (IFuzEn), and inherent translated FuzEn (ITFuzEn) were exploited as entropy-based measures in the computation of RMSE and their performance was compared to that of SampEn. FuzEn metrics were applied to synthetic time series of different lengths to evaluate the consistency of the different approaches. In addition, electroencephalograms of patients under sedation-analgesia procedure were analyzed based on the patient’s response after the application of painful stimulation, such as nail bed compression or endoscopy tube insertion. Significant differences in FuzEn metrics were observed over simulations and real data as a function of the data length and the pain responses. Findings indicated that FuzEn, when exploited in RMSE applications, showed similar behavior to SampEn in long series, but its consistency was better than that of SampEn in short series both over simulations and real data. Conversely, its variants should be utilized with more caution, especially whether processes exhibit an important deterministic component and/or in nociception prediction at long scalesPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Dnmt3a regulates emotional behavior and spine plasticity in the nucleus accumbens.

Despite abundant expression of DNA methyltransferases (Dnmts) in brain, the regulation and behavioral role of DNA methylation remain poorly understood. We found that Dnmt3a expression was regulated in mouse nucleus accumbens (NAc) by chronic cocaine use and chronic social defeat stress. Moreover, NAc-specific manipulations that block DNA methylation potentiated cocaine reward and exerted antidepressant-like effects, whereas NAc-specific Dnmt3a overexpression attenuated cocaine reward and was pro-depressant. On a cellular level, we found that chronic cocaine use selectively increased thin dendritic spines on NAc neurons and that DNA methylation was both necessary and sufficient to mediate these effects. These data establish the importance of Dnmt3a in the NAc in regulating cellular and behavioral plasticity to emotional stimuli

Trematodes: una revisión a la importancia de Fasciola hepática

Fasciola hepática es un trematode de la subclase Digenea, que tiene una extensa distribución mundial llegando a estar presente en todos los continentes e infectando a una gran cantidad de mamíferos, inclusive al hombre. Produce una enfermedad conocida como fasciolasis y su principal fuente de transmisión es el consumo de alimentos contaminados con heces, en especial los pastos. Para realizar su ciclo biológico este parásito necesita de un hospedador intermediario, el cual es un molusco de la familia Lymnaeidae. El hígado es el órgano principal donde se presentan las lesiones; las manifestaciones clínicas suelen ser inespecíficas y varían de acuerdo a la fase de la enfermedad, que puede ser aguda, crónica o latente. El diagnóstico puede realizarse mediante varios métodos, como parasitológicos (a partir de técnicas de flotación o sedimentación), inmunológicos (utilizando pruebas de ELISA) e interpretación de los hallazgos anatomopa- tológicos (en la necropsia). En cuanto a la epidemiología de esta parasitosis, desde 1980 el número de casos de animales infectados ha crecido significativamente. En muchos países fue considerada como una enfermedad enzoótica de los bovinos, provocando grandes pérdidas económicas para la industria pecuaria y alimenticia, debido al decomiso de las canales y su alta mortalidad, al convertirse en una patología de gran importancia en el área de veterinaria. Su prevención se enfoca principalmente en el control de los hospedadores intermediarios y -en segundo lugar- en la administración de fármacos a los animales. En las zonas endémicas es necesario realizar una intervención sanitaria inmediata. La presente revisión abarcará aspectos relevantes acerca de la infección causada por Fasciola hepática