Exploring the Higgs Sector of a Most Natural NMSSM and its Prediction on Higgs Pair Production at the LHC

As a most natural realization of the Next-to Minimal Supersymmetry Standard Model (NMSSM), {\lambda}-SUSY is parameterized by a large {\lambda} around one and a low tan$\beta$ below 10. In this work, we first scan the parameter space of {\lambda}-SUSY by considering various experimental constraints, including the limitation from the Higgs data updated by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations in the summer of 2014, then we study the properties of the Higgs bosons. We get two characteristic features of {\lambda}-SUSY in experimentally allowed parameter space. One is the triple self coupling of the SM-like Higgs boson may get enhanced by a factor over 10 in comparison with its SM prediction. The other is the pair production of the SM-like Higgs boson at the LHC may be two orders larger than its SM prediction. All these features seems to be unachievable in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model and in the NMSSM with a low {\lambda}. Moreover, we also find that naturalness plays an important role in selecting the parameter space of {\lambda}-SUSY, and that the Higgs $\chi^2$ obtained with the latest data is usually significantly smaller than before due to the more consistency of the two collaboration measurements

Efficient non-uniform deblurring based on generalized additive convolution model

Image with non-uniform blurring caused by camera shake can be modeled as a linear combination of the homographically transformed versions of the latent sharp image during exposure. Although such a geometrically motivated model can well approximate camera motion poses, deblurring methods in this line usually suffer from the problems of heavy computational demanding or extensive memory cost. In this paper, we develop generalized additive convolution (GAC) model to address these issues. In GAC model, a camera motion trajectory can be decomposed into a set of camera poses, i.e., in-plane translations (slice) or roll rotations (fiber), which can both be formulated as convolution operation. Moreover, we suggest a greedy algorithm to decompose a camera motion trajectory into a more compact set of slices and fibers, and together with the efficient convolution computation via fast Fourier transform (FFT), the proposed GAC models concurrently overcome the difficulties of computational cost and memory burden, leading to efficient GAC-based deblurring methods. Besides, by incorporating group sparsity of the pose weight matrix into slice GAC, the non-uniform deblurring method naturally approaches toward the uniform blind deconvolution.Department of Computin

Project Overview of the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey

The Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) is a wide-field two-band photometric survey of the Northern Galactic Cap using the 90Prime imager on the 2.3 m Bok telescope at Kitt Peak. It is a four-year collaboration between the National Astronomical Observatory of China and Steward Observatory, the University of Arizona, serving as one of the three imaging surveys to provide photometric input catalogs for target selection of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project. BASS will take up to 240 dark/grey nights to cover an area of about 5400 deg$^2$ in the $g$ and $r$ bands. The 5$\sigma$ limiting AB magnitudes for point sources in the two bands, corrected for the Galactic extinction, are 24.0 and 23.4 mag, respectively. BASS, together with other DESI imaging surveys, will provide unique science opportunities that cover a wide range of topics in both Galactic and extragalactic astronomy.Comment: 10 pages, submitted to PAS

Application of microneedles to enhance delivery of micro-particles from gene guns

Gene gun assisted micro-particle delivery system is an excellent method for the delivery of DNA into target tissue so as to carry out gene transfection in the target cells. The gene gun is primarily a particle accelerator which accelerates DNA-coated micro-particles to sufficient velocities to breach the target layer enabling the micro-particles to penetrate to a desired depth and target the cells of interest to achieve gene transfer. However, an inevitable problem in this process is the tissue/cell damage due to the impaction of the pressurized gas and micro-particles on the target. The purpose of this research is developing a new conceptual system which improves the penetration depth of micro-particles at less imposed pressure and particle injection velocity. This is achieved by applying a microneedle array and ground slide in the gene gun system, thus a study involving microneedle assisted micro-particle delivery is conducted in this work. Microneedle array is used to create holes in the target which allows a number of micro-particles to penetrate through the skin which enhances the penetration depth inside target. The ground slide is used to load a pellet of the micro-particles and prevent the pressurized gas to avoid the impaction on the target. The operation principle is that the pellet is attached to ground slide which is accelerated to a sufficient velocity by the pressurized gas. The pellet is released from the ground slide which separates into individual micro-particles by a mesh and penetrates to a desired depth inside the target. An experimental rig to study various aspects of microneedle assisted micro-particle delivery is designed in this PhD research. The passage percentage of the micro-particles and size of the separated micro-particles are analysed in relation to the operating pressure, mesh pore size and Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) concentration to verify the applicability of this system for the micro-particle delivery. The results have shown that the passage percentage increases from an increase in the mesh pore size and operating pressure and a decrease in PVP concentration. A mesh pore size of 178 μm and pellet PVP concentration of 40 mg/ml were used for the bulk of the experiments in this study as these seem to provide higher passage percentage and the narrow size distribution of the separated micro-particles. In addition, the velocity of the ground slide is detected by the photoelectric sensor and shown that it increases from an increase in operating pressure and reaches 148 m/s at 6 bar pressure, A further analysis in the penetration depths of the micro-particles to determine whether they achieve enhanced penetration depths inside the target after using microneedles is carried out. A skin mimicked agarose gel is obtained from comparing the viscoelastic properties of various concentration of agarose gel in comparison with the porcine skin, which is assumed to mimic the human skin. These experiments are used to relate the micro-particle penetration depth with the operating pressure, microneedle length and particle size. In addition, a theoretical model is developed based on the experimental data to simulate the microneedle assisted micro-particle delivery which provide further understanding of the microneedle assisted micro-particle delivery. The developed model was used to analyse the penetration depth of micro-particles in relation to the operation pressure, target properties, microneedle length and particle size and density. The modelling results were compared with the experimental results to verify the feasibility of the microneedle assisted micro-particle delivery for micro-particles delivery. As expected, both experimental and theoretical results show that the micro-particles achieve an enhanced penetration depth inside target. The maximum penetration depth of micro-particles is increased from an increase in operating pressure, microneedle length, particle size and density

The Galactic extinction and reddening from the South Galactic Cap U-band Sky Survey: u band galaxy number counts and u−ru-r color distribution

We study the integral Galactic extinction and reddening based on the galaxy catalog of the South Galactic Cap U-band Sky Survey (SCUSS), where $u$ band galaxy number counts and $u-r$ color distribution are used to derive the Galactic extinction and reddening respectively. We compare these independent statistical measurements with the reddening map of \citet{Schlegel1998}(SFD) and find that both the extinction and reddening from the number counts and color distribution are in good agreement with the SFD results at low extinction regions ($E(B-V)^{SFD}<0.12$ mag). However, for high extinction regions ($E(B-V)^{SFD}>0.12$ mag), the SFD map overestimates the Galactic reddening systematically, which can be approximated by a linear relation $\Delta E(B-V)= 0.43[E(B-V)^{SFD}-0.12$]. By combing the results of galaxy number counts and color distribution together, we find that the shape of the Galactic extinction curve is in good agreement with the standard $R_V=3.1$ extinction law of \cite{ODonnell1994}