Quantitative classification of breast fine needle aspirates using the AxioHOME system

Fine needle aspiration cytology is useful in the pre-operative assessment of patients with breast lumps. Lesions are reported as benign, suspicious or malignant. The number of suspicious categories is high in inexperienced hands thus limiting this useful diagnostic tool. The aim was to evaluate quantitative methods of classifying breast fine needle aspirates using the Highly Optimized Microscope Environment system. May- Grumwald Giemsa-stained archived slides were retrieved and smear quality assessed. Fifty epithelial cells corresponding to the cytological grading on each slide were measured using the system\'s general morphometry program. Generated data was exported to Microsoft Excel for analysis. A significant difference in the mean nuclear area, mean nuclear perimeter, mean largest nuclear diameter was found between the slides graded as benign, suspicious malignant and malignant. C2 & C4, D 1, P < 0.004. C4 & C5, Area P < 0.001. The means of the number count of nucleoli was able to distinguish between FNAC Benign and Malignant category C2/C5, P = 00440 and suspicious benign and malignant C3/C5 P = 0.00486. Morphometry could be useful in situations where experienced cytopathologists are unavailable especially when this program can also measure the degree of dispersion between cells Keywords: Morphometric image analysis, aspiration cytology, breast. International Journal of Biological and Chemical Sciences Vol. 2 (2) 2008: pp. 139-14

Atomic Model of Susy Hubbard Operators

We apply the recently proposed susy Hubbard operators to an atomic model. In the limiting case of free spins, we derive exact results for the entropy which are compared with a mean field + gaussian corrections description. We show how these results can be extended to the case of charge fluctuations and calculate exact results for the partition function, free energy and heat capacity of an atomic model for some simple examples. Wavefunctions of possible states are listed. We compare the accuracy of large N expansions of the susy spin operators with those obtained using `Schwinger bosons' and `Abrikosov pseudo-fermions'. For the atomic model, we compare results of slave boson, slave fermion, and susy Hubbard operator approximations in the physically interesting but uncontrolled limiting case of N->2. For a mixed representation of spins we estimate the accuracy of large N expansions of the atomic model. In the single box limit, we find that the lowest energy saddle-point solution reduces to simply either slave bosons or slave fermions, while for higher boxes this is not the case. The highest energy saddle-point solution has the interesting feature that it admits a small region of a mixed representation, which bears a superficial resemblance to that seen experimentally close to an antiferromagnetic quantum critical point.Comment: 17 pages + 7 pages Appendices, 14 figures. Substantial revision

Exponentially Large Probabilities in Quantum Gravity

The problem of topology change transitions in quantum gravity is investigated from the Wheeler-de Witt wave function point of view. It is argued that for all theories allowing wormhole effects the wave function of the universe is exponentially large. If the wormhole action is positive, one can try to overcome this difficulty by redefinition of the inner product, while for the case of negative wormhole action the more serious problems arise.Comment: 9 pages in LaTeX, 4 figures in PostScript, the brief version of this paper is to appear in Proceedings of the XXIV ITEP Winter School of Physic

Minority Becomes Majority in Social Networks

It is often observed that agents tend to imitate the behavior of their neighbors in a social network. This imitating behavior might lead to the strategic decision of adopting a public behavior that differs from what the agent believes is the right one and this can subvert the behavior of the population as a whole. In this paper, we consider the case in which agents express preferences over two alternatives and model social pressure with the majority dynamics: at each step an agent is selected and its preference is replaced by the majority of the preferences of her neighbors. In case of a tie, the agent does not change her current preference. A profile of the agents' preferences is stable if the preference of each agent coincides with the preference of at least half of the neighbors (thus, the system is in equilibrium). We ask whether there are network topologies that are robust to social pressure. That is, we ask if there are graphs in which the majority of preferences in an initial profile always coincides with the majority of the preference in all stable profiles reachable from that profile. We completely characterize the graphs with this robustness property by showing that this is possible only if the graph has no edge or is a clique or very close to a clique. In other words, except for this handful of graphs, every graph admits at least one initial profile of preferences in which the majority dynamics can subvert the initial majority. We also show that deciding whether a graph admits a minority that becomes majority is NP-hard when the minority size is at most 1/4-th of the social network size.Comment: To appear in WINE 201

An Upper Bound on the Higgs Boson Mass from a Positivity Condition on the Mass Matrix

We impose the condition that the eigenvalues of the mass matrix in the shifted Lagrangian density be positive at \phi=\phi_{0}, the vacuum expectation value of the scalar field. Using the one-loop effective potential of the standard model, this condition leads to an upper bound on the Higgs boson mass m_{H}: m_{H}<230GeV, for a top quark mass of 175GeV.Comment: LaTex, 5 page

Fermionic Determinant of the Massive Schwinger Model

A representation for the fermionic determinant of the massive Schwinger model, or $QED_2$, is obtained that makes a clean separation between the Schwinger model and its massive counterpart. From this it is shown that the index theorem for $QED_2$ follows from gauge invariance, that the Schwinger model's contribution to the determinant is canceled in the weak field limit, and that the determinant vanishes when the field strength is sufficiently strong to form a zero-energy bound state

Failure of Mean Field Theory at Large N

We study strongly coupled lattice QCD with $N$ colors of staggered fermions in 3+1 dimensions. While mean field theory describes the low temperature behavior of this theory at large $N$, it fails in the scaling region close to the finite temperature second order chiral phase transition. The universal critical region close to the phase transition belongs to the 3d XY universality class even when $N$ becomes large. This is in contrast to Gross-Neveu models where the critical region shrinks as $N$ (the number of flavors) increases and mean field theory is expected to describe the phase transition exactly in the limit of infinite $N$. Our work demonstrates that close to second order phase transitions infrared fluctuations can sometimes be important even when $N$ is strictly infinite.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Co-operative Kondo Effect in the two-channel Kondo Lattice

We discuss the possibility of a co-operative Kondo effect driven by channel interference in a Kondo lattice where local moments are coupled to a single Fermi sea via two orthogonal scattering channels. In this situation, the channel quantum number is not conserved. We argue that the absence of channel conservation causes the Kondo effect in the two channels to constructively interfere, giving rise to a superconducting condensate of composite pairs, formed between the local moments and the conduction electrons. Our arguments are based on the observation that a heavy Fermi surface gives rise to zero modes for Kondo singlets to fluctuate between screening channels of different symmetry, producing a divergent composite pair susceptibility. Secondary screening channels couple to these divergent fluctuations, promoting an instability into a state with long-range composite order. We present detailed a detailed mean-field theory for this superconducting phase, and discuss the possible implications for heavy fermion physics.Comment: 23 double column pages. 9 fig

Can measurements of the near-infrared solar spectral irradiance be reconciled? A new ground-based assessment between 4000-10000 cm-1

The near-infrared solar spectral irradiance (SSI) is of vital importance for understanding the Earth’s radiation budget, and in Earth observation applications. Differences between previously published solar spectra (including the commonly-used ATLAS3 spectrum) reach up to 10% at the low-wavenumber end of the 4000-10000 cm-1 (2.5 – 1 μm) spectral region. The implications for the atmospheric sciences are significant, since this spectral region contains 25% of the incoming total solar irradiance. This work details an updated analysis of the CAVIAR SSI, featuring additional analysis techniques and an updated uncertainty budget using a Monte Carlo method. We report good consistency with ATLAS3 in the 7000-10000 cm-1 region where there is confidence in these results due to agreement with other spectra, but ~7% lower in the 4000-7000 cm-1 region, in general agreement with several other analyses