Evaluation of a New Recombinant K39 Rapid Diagnostic Test for Sudanese Visceral Leishmaniasis.

A new rK39 rapid diagnostic dipstick test (DiaMed-IT-Leish) was compared with aspiration and a direct agglutination test (DAT) for diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in 201 parasitologically confirmed cases, 133 endemic controls, and in 356 clinical suspects in disease-endemic and -epidemic areas in Sudan. The sensitivity of the rK39 test in parasitologically confirmed VL cases was 90%, whereas the specificity in disease-endemic controls was 99%. The sensitivity of the DAT was 98%. In clinically suspected cases, the sensitivity of the rK39 test was 81% and the specificity was 97%. When compared with the diagnostic protocol based on the DAT and aspiration used by Médecins sans Frontières in epidemic situations, the positive predictive value was 98%, and the negative predictive value was 71%. This rK39 rapid diagnostic test is suitable for screening as well as diagnosis of VL. Further diagnostic work-up of dipstick-negative patients with clinically suspected VL is important. The ease and convenience of the dipstick test will allow decentralization and improved access to care in disease-endemic areas in Sudan

Reconstructing Seesaws

We explore some aspects of "reconstructing" the heavy singlet sector of supersymmetric type I seesaw models, for two, three or four singlets. We work in the limit where one light neutrino is massless. In an ideal world, where selected coefficients of the TeV-scale effective Lagrangian could be measured with arbitrary accuracy, the two-singlet case can be reconstructed, two three or more singlets can be differentiated, and an inverse seesaw with four singlets can be reconstructed. In a more realistic world, we estimate \ell_\a \to \ell_\b \gamma expectations with a "Minimal-Flavour-Violation-like" ansatz, which gives a relation between ratios of the three branching ratios. The two singlet model predicts a discrete set of ratios.Comment: 14 page

Neutrino Physics: Open Theoretical Questions

We know that neutrino mass and mixing provide a window to physics beyond the Standard Model. Now this window is open, at least partly. And the questions are: what do we see, which kind of new physics, and how far "beyond"? I summarize the present knowledge of neutrino mass and mixing, and then formulate the main open questions. Following the bottom-up approach, properties of the neutrino mass matrix are considered. Then different possible ways to uncover the underlying physics are discussed. Some results along the line of: see-saw, GUT and SUSY GUT are reviewed.Comment: 17 pages, latex, 12 figures. Talk given at the XXI International Symposium on Lepton and Photon Interactions at High Energies, ``Lepton Photon 2003", August 11-16, 2003 - Fermilab, Batavia, IL US

Effective Lagrangian Approach to the Fermion Mass Problem

An effective theory is proposed, combining the standard gauge group $SU(3)_{C}\otimes SU(2)_{L}\otimes U(1)_{Y}$ with a horizontal discrete symmetry. By assigning appropriate charges under this discrete symmetry to the various fermion fields and to (at least) two Higgs doublets, the broad spread of the fermion mass and mixing angle spectrum can be explained as a result of suppressed, non-renormalisable terms. A particular model is constructed which achieves the above while simultaneously suppressing neutral Higgs-induced flavour-changing processes.Comment: 21 pages, UM-P-93/81, latex file, 1 figure available on reques

Effective Interaction Techniques for the Gamow Shell Model

We apply a contour deformation technique in momentum space to the newly developed Gamow shell model, and study the drip-line nuclei 5He, 6He and 7He. A major problem in Gamow shell-model studies of nuclear many-body systems is the increasing dimensionality of many-body configurations due to the large number of resonant and complex continuum states necessary to reproduce bound and resonant state energies. We address this problem using two different effective operator approaches generalized to the complex momentum plane. These are the Lee-Suzuki similarity transformation method for complex interactions and the multi-reference perturbation theory method. The combination of these two approaches results in a large truncation of the relevant configurations compared with direct diagonalization. This offers interesting perspectives for studies of weakly bound systems.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figs, Revtex

Scotland, Catalonia and the “right” to self-determination: a comment suggested by Kathryn Crameri’s “Do Catalans Have the Right to Decide?

No abstract available

Topology and Phases in Fermionic Systems

There can exist topological obstructions to continuously deforming a gapped Hamiltonian for free fermions into a trivial form without closing the gap. These topological obstructions are closely related to obstructions to the existence of exponentially localized Wannier functions. We show that by taking two copies of a gapped, free fermionic system with complex conjugate Hamiltonians, it is always possible to overcome these obstructions. This allows us to write the ground state in matrix product form using Grassman-valued bond variables, and show insensitivity of the ground state density matrix to boundary conditions.Comment: 4 pages, see also arxiv:0710.329

Jobseekers Regime and Flexible New Deal, the Six Month Offer and Support for the Newly Unemployed evaluations: An early process study

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