540 research outputs found
Thyroxine treatment in patients with symptoms of hypothyroidism but thyroid function tests within the reference range: randomised double blind placebo controlled crossover trial
OBJECTIVES: To determine whether thyroxine treatment is effective in patients with symptoms of hypothyroidism but with thyroid function tests within the reference range, and to investigate the effect of thyroxine treatment on psychological and physical wellbeing in healthy participants. DESIGN: Randomised double blind placebo controlled crossover trial. SETTING: Outpatient clinic in a general hospital. Participants: 25 patients with symptoms of hypothyroidism who had thyroid function tests within the reference range, and 19 controls. Methods: Participants were given thyroxine 100 microgram or placebo to take once a day for 12 weeks. Washout period was six weeks. They were then given the other to take once a day for 12 weeks. All participants were assessed physiologically and psychologically at baseline and on completion of each phase. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Thyroid function tests, measures of cognitive function and of psychological and physical wellbeing. RESULTS: 22 patients and 19 healthy controls completed the study. At baseline, patients' scores on 9 out of 15 psychological measures were impaired when compared with controls. Patients showed a significantly greater response to placebo than controls in 3 out of 15 psychological measures. Healthy participants had significantly lower scores for vitality when taking thyroxine compared to placebo (mean (SD) 60 (17) v 73 (16), P<0.01). However, patients' scores from psychological tests when taking thyroxine were no different from those when taking placebo except for a poorer performance on one visual reproduction test when taking thyroxine. Serum concentrations of free thyroxine increased and those of thyroid stimulating hormone decreased in patients and controls while they were taking thyroxine, confirming compliance with treatment. Although serum concentrations of free triiodothyronine increased in patients and controls taking thyroxine, the difference between the response to placebo and to thyroxine was significant only in the controls. CONCLUSIONS: Thyroxine was no more effective than placebo in improving cognitive function and psychological wellbeing in patients with symptoms of hypothyroidism but thyroid function tests within the reference range. Thyroxine did not improve cognitive function and psychological wellbeing in healthy participants
Production of massive stable particles in inflaton decay
We point out that inflaton decays can be a copious source of stable or
long--lived particles with mass exceeding the reheat temperature .
Once higher order processes are included, this statement is true for any
particle with renormalizable (gauge or Yukawa) interactions. This contribution
to the density often exceeds the contribution from thermal
production, leading to significantly stronger constraints on model parameters
than those resulting from thermal production alone. For example, we all
but exclude models containing stable charged particles with mass less than half
the mass of the inflaton.Comment: 4 revtex pages, 1 figure (uses axodraw). Slightly modified for better
clarification, few changes in references. Final verssion published in Phys.
Rev. Let
Flavour Matters in Leptogenesis
We give analytic approximations to the baryon asymmetry produced by thermal
leptogenesis with hierarchical right-handed neutrinos. Our calculation includes
flavour-dependent washout processes and CP violation in scattering, and
neglects gauge interactions and finite temperature corrections. Our approximate
formulae depend upon the three CP asymmetries in the individual lepton flavours
as well as on three flavour-dependent efficiency factors. We show that the
commonly used expressions for the lepton asymmetry, which depend on the total
CP asymmetry and one single efficiency factor, may fail to reproduce the
correct lepton asymmetry in a number of cases. We illustrate the importance of
using the flavour-dependent formulae in the context of a two right-handed
neutrino model.Comment: Additional typos corrected (in particular, the plots and captions now
agree
New bounds on millicharged particles from cosmology
Particles with millicharge q and sub-eV mass can be produced in photon-photon
collisions, distorting the energy spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background.
We derive the conservative bound q < 10^-7 e (as well as model-dependent bounds
two orders of magnitude stronger), incompatible with proposed interpretations
of the PVLAS anomaly based on millicharged production or on
millicharged-mediated axion-like couplings.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Final versio
Multilocus sequence typing of the pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus
A multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme was devised for Aspergillus fumigatus. The system involved
sequencing seven gene fragments and was applied to a panel of 100 isolates of A. fumigatus from diverse
sources. Thirty different sequence types were found among the 100 isolates, and 93% of the isolates differed
from the other isolates by only one allele sequence, forming a single clonal cluster as indicated by the eBURST
algorithm. The discriminatory power of the MLST method was only 0.93. These results strongly indicate that
A. fumigatus is a species of a relatively recent origin, with low levels of sequence dissimilarity. Typing methods
based on variable numbers of tandem repeats offer higher levels of strain discrimination. Mating type data for
the 100 isolates showed that 71 isolates were type MAT1-2 and 29 isolates were MAT1-1
TeV scale resonant leptogenesis from supersymmetry breaking
We propose a model of TeV-scale resonant leptogenesis based upon recent
models of the generation of light neutrino masses from supersymmetry-breaking
effects with TeV-scale right-handed (rhd) neutrinos, . The model leads to
naturally large cosmological lepton asymmetries via the resonant behaviour of
the one-loop self-energy contribution to decay. Our model addresses the
primary problems of previous phenomenological studies of low-energy
leptogenesis: a rational for TeV-scale rhd neutrinos with small Yukawa
couplings so that the out-of equilibrium condition for decay is
satisfied; the origin of the tiny, but non-zero mass splitting required between
at least two masses; and the necessary non-trivial breaking of flavour
symmetries in the rhd neutrino sector. The low mass-scale of the rhd neutrinos
and their superpartners, and the TeV-scale -terms automatically contained
within the model offer opportunities for partial direct experimental tests of
this leptogenesis mechanism at future colliders.Comment: 10 Pages latex, version for JHE
Epileptic multi-seizure type classification using electroencephalogram signals from the Temple University Hospital Seizure Corpus:A review
Epilepsy is one of the most paramount neurological diseases, affecting about 1% of the world's population. Seizure detection and classification are difficult tasks and are ongoing challenges in biomedical signal processing to enhance medical diagnosis. This paper presents and highlights the unique frequency and amplitude information found within multiple seizure types, including their morphologies, to aid the development of future seizure classification algorithms. Whilst many published works in the literature have reported on seizure detection using electroencephalogram (EEG), there has yet to be an exhaustive review detailing multi-seizure type classification using EEG. Therefore, this paper also includes a detailed review of multi-seizure type classification performance based on the Temple University Hospital Seizure Corpus (TUSZ) dataset for focal and generalised classification, and multi-seizure type classification. Deep learning techniques have a higher overall average performance for focal and generalised classification compared to machine learning techniques, whereas hybrid deep learning approaches have the highest overall average performance for multi-seizure type classification. Finally, this paper also highlights the limitations of the TUSZ dataset and suggests some future work, including the curation of a standardised training and testing dataset from the TUSZ that would allow a proper comparison of classification methods and spur advancement in the field.</p
On the reheating stage after inflation
We point out that inflaton decay products acquire plasma masses during the
reheating phase following inflation. The plasma masses may render inflaton
decay kinematicaly forbidden, causing the temperature to remain frozen for a
period at a plateau value. We show that the final reheating temperature may be
uniquely determined by the inflaton mass, and may not depend on its coupling.
Our findings have important implications for the thermal production of
dangerous relics during reheating (e.g., gravitinos), for extracting bounds on
particle physics models of inflation from Cosmic Microwave Background
anisotropy data, for the production of massive dark matter candidates during
reheating, and for models of baryogenesis or leptogensis where massive
particles are produced during reheating.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. Submitted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Stealth Branes
We discuss the brane world model of Dvali, Gabadadze and Porrati in which
branes evolve in an infinite bulk and the brane curvature term is added to the
action. If Z_2 symmetry between the two sides of the brane is not imposed, we
show that the model admits the existence of "stealth branes" which follow the
standard 4D internal evolution and have no gravitational effect on the bulk
space. Stealth branes can nucleate spontaneosly in a Minkowski bulk. This
process is described by the standard 4D quantum cosmology formalism with
tunneling boundary conditions for the brane world wave function. The notorious
ambiguity in the choice of boundary conditions is fixed in this case due to the
presence of the embedding spacetime. We also point to some problematic aspects
of models admitting stealth brane solutions.Comment: 24 pages; Final version, to appear in Phys. Rev. D. The discussion of
"embeddability obstruction" is removed (thanks to Takahiro Tanaka who
convinced us that there is no such obstruction
CP violation in scatterings, three body processes and the Boltzmann equations for leptogenesis
We obtain the Boltzmann equations for leptogenesis including decay and
scattering processes with two and three body initial or final states. We
present an explicit computation of the CP violating scattering asymmetries. We
analyze their possible impact in leptogenesis, and we discuss the validity of
their approximate expressions in terms of the decay asymmetry. In scenarios in
which the initial heavy neutrino density vanishes, the inclusion of CP
asymmetries in scatterings can enforce a cancellation between the lepton
asymmetry generated at early times and the asymmetry produced at later times.
We argue that a sizeable amount of washout is crucial for spoiling this
cancellation, and we show that in the regimes in which the washouts are
particularly weak, the inclusion of CP violation in scatterings yields a
reduction in the final value of the lepton asymmetry. In the strong washout
regimes the inclusion of CP violation in scatterings still leads to a
significant enhancement of the lepton asymmetry at high temperatures; however,
due to the independence from the early conditions that is characteristic of
these regimes, the final value of the lepton asymmetry remains approximately
unchanged.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures. One appendix added. Some numerical results and
corresponding figures (mainly fig. 3) corrected. Final version to be
published in JHE
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