Anesthesia Options and the Recurrence of Cancer: What We Know so Far?

Surgery is a critical period in the survival of patients with cancer. While resective surgery of primary tumors has shown to prolong the life of these patients, it can also promote mechanisms associated with metastatic progression. During surgery, patients require general and sometimes local anesthetics that also modulate mechanisms that can favor or reduce metastasis. In this narrative review, we summarized the evidence about the impact of local, regional and general anesthesia on metastatic mechanisms and the survival of patients. The available evidence suggests that cancer recurrence is not significantly impacted by neither regional anesthesia nor volatile or total intravenous anesthesia

Toward a Systematic Holographic QCD: A Braneless Approach

Recently a holographic model of hadrons motivated by AdS/CFT has been proposed to fit the low energy data of mesons. We point out that the infrared physics can be developed in a more systematic manner by exploiting backreaction of the nonperturbative condensates. We show that these condensates can naturally provide the IR cutoff corresponding to confinement, thus removing some of the ambiguities from the original formulation of the model. We also show how asymptotic freedom can be incorporated into the theory, and the substantial effect it has on the glueball spectrum and gluon condensate of the theory. A simple reinterpretation of the holographic scale results in a non-perturbative running for alpha_s which remains finite for all energies. We also find the leading effects of adding the higher condensate into the theory. The difficulties for such models to reproduce the proper Regge physics lead us to speculate about extensions of our model incorporating tachyon condensation.Comment: 27 pages, LaTe

Holography, Pade Approximants and Deconstruction

We investigate the relation between holographic calculations in 5D and the Migdal approach to correlation functions in large N theories. The latter employs Pade approximation to extrapolate short distance correlation functions to large distances. We make the Migdal/5D relation more precise by quantifying the correspondence between Pade approximation and the background and boundary conditions in 5D. We also establish a connection between the Migdal approach and the models of deconstructed dimensions.Comment: 28 page

Pseudo Goldstone Bosons Phenomenology in Minimal Walking Technicolor

We construct the non-linear realized Lagrangian for the Goldstone Bosons associated to the breaking pattern of SU(4) to SO(4). This pattern is expected to occur in any Technicolor extension of the standard model featuring two Dirac fermions transforming according to real representations of the underlying gauge group. We concentrate on the Minimal Walking Technicolor quantum number assignments with respect to the standard model symmetries. We demonstrate that for, any choice of the quantum numbers, consistent with gauge and Witten anomalies the spectrum of the pseudo Goldstone Bosons contains electrically doubly charged states which can be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure

Interpolating between low and high energy QCD via a 5D Yang-Mills model

We describe the Goldstone bosons of massless QCD together with an infinite number of spin-1 mesons. The field content of the model is SU(Nf)xSU(Nf) Yang-Mills in a compact extra-dimension. Electroweak interactions reside on one brane. Breaking of chiral symmetry occurs due to the boundary conditions on the other brane, away from our world, and is therefore spontaneous. Our implementation of the holographic recipe maintains chiral symmetry explicit throughout. For intermediate energies, we extract resonance couplings. These satisfy sum rules due to the 5D nature of the model. These sum rules imply, when taking the high energy limit, that perturbative QCD constraints are satisfied. We also illustrate how the 5D model implies a definite prescription for handling infinite sums over 4D resonances. Taking the low energy limit, we recover the chiral expansion and the corresponding non-local order parameters. All local order parameters are introduced separately.Comment: Corresponds to published version, with some typos correcte

Top quark effects in composite vector pair production at the LHC

In the context of a strongly coupled Electroweak Symmetry Breaking, composite light scalar singlet and composite triplet of heavy vectors may arise from an unspecified strong dynamics and the interactions among themselves and with the Standard Model gauge bosons and fermions can be described by a $SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R/SU(2)_{L+R}$ Effective Chiral Lagrangian. In this framework, the production of the $V^{+}V^{-}$ and $V^{0}V^{0}$ final states at the LHC by gluon fusion mechanism is studied in the region of parameter space consistent with the unitarity constraints in the elastic channel of longitudinal gauge boson scattering and in the inelastic scattering of two longitudinal Standard Model gauge bosons into Standard Model fermions pairs. The expected rates of same-sign di-lepton and tri-lepton events from the decay of the $V^{0}V^{0}$ final state are computed and their corresponding backgrounds are estimated. It is of remarkable relevance that the $V^{0}V^{0}$ final state can only be produced at the LHC via gluon fusion mechanism since this state is absent in the Drell-Yan process. It is also found that the $V^{+}V^{-}$ final state production cross section via gluon fusion mechanism is comparable with the $V^{+}V^{-}$ Drell-Yan production cross section. The comparison of the $V^{0}V^{0}$ and $V^{+}V^{-}$ total cross sections will be crucial for distinguishing the different models since the vector pair production is sensitive to many couplings. This will also be useful to determine if the heavy vectors are only composite vectors or are gauge vectors of a spontaneously broken gauge symmetry.Comment: 18 pages, 5 tables, 6 figures. Missing figures added. Matches published versio

The Determination of alpha_s from Tau Decays Revisited

We revisit the determination of alpha_s(m_tau) using a fit to inclusive tau hadronic spectral moments in light of (1) the recent calculation of the fourth-order perturbative coefficient K_4 in the expansion of the Adler function, (2) new precision measurements from BABAR of e+e- annihilation cross sections, which decrease the uncertainty in the separation of vector and axial-vector spectral functions, and (3) improved results from BABAR and Belle on tau branching fractions involving kaons. We estimate that the fourth-order perturbative prediction reduces the theoretical uncertainty, introduced by the truncation of the series, by 20% with respect to earlier determinations. We discuss to some detail the perturbative prediction and show that the effect of the incomplete knowledge of the series is reduced by using the so-called contour-improved calculation, as opposed to fixed-order perturbation theory which manifests convergence problems. The corresponding theoretical uncertainties are studied at the tau and Z mass scales. Nonperturbative contributions extracted from the most inclusive fit are small, in agreement with earlier determinations. Systematic effects from quark-hadron duality violation are estimated with simple models and found to be within the quoted systematic errors. The fit gives alpha_s(m_tau) = 0.344 +- 0.005 +- 0.007, where the first error is experimental and the second theoretical. After evolution to M_Z we obtain alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.1212 +- 0.0005 +- 0.0008 +- 0.0005, where the errors are respectively experimental, theoretical and due to the evolution. The result is in agreement with the corresponding NNNLO value derived from essentially the Z width in the global electroweak fit. The alpha_s(M_Z) determination from tau decays is the most precise one to date.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

The LBNO long-baseline oscillation sensitivities with two conventional neutrino beams at different baselines

The proposed Long Baseline Neutrino Observatory (LBNO) initially consists of $\sim 20$ kton liquid double phase TPC complemented by a magnetised iron calorimeter, to be installed at the Pyh\"asalmi mine, at a distance of 2300 km from CERN. The conventional neutrino beam is produced by 400 GeV protons accelerated at the SPS accelerator delivering 700 kW of power. The long baseline provides a unique opportunity to study neutrino flavour oscillations over their 1st and 2nd oscillation maxima exploring the $L/E$ behaviour, and distinguishing effects arising from $\delta_{CP}$ and matter. In this paper we show how this comprehensive physics case can be further enhanced and complemented if a neutrino beam produced at the Protvino IHEP accelerator complex, at a distance of 1160 km, and with modest power of 450 kW is aimed towards the same far detectors. We show that the coupling of two independent sub-MW conventional neutrino and antineutrino beams at different baselines from CERN and Protvino will allow to measure CP violation in the leptonic sector at a confidence level of at least $3\sigma$ for 50\% of the true values of $\delta_{CP}$ with a 20 kton detector. With a far detector of 70 kton, the combination allows a $3\sigma$ sensitivity for 75\% of the true values of $\delta_{CP}$ after 10 years of running. Running two independent neutrino beams, each at a power below 1 MW, is more within today's state of the art than the long-term operation of a new single high-energy multi-MW facility, which has several technical challenges and will likely require a learning curve.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figure

Multimodal assessment of painful peripheral neuropathy induced by chronic oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy in mice

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A major clinical issue affecting 10-40% of cancer patients treated with oxaliplatin is severe peripheral neuropathy with symptoms including cold sensitivity and neuropathic pain. Rat models have been used to describe the pathological features of oxaliplatin-induced peripheral neuropathy; however, they are inadequate for parallel studies of oxaliplatin's antineoplastic activity and neurotoxicity because most cancer models are developed in mice. Thus, we characterized the effects of chronic, bi-weekly administration of oxaliplatin in BALB/c mice. We first studied oxaliplatin's effects on the peripheral nervous system by measuring caudal and digital nerve conduction velocities (NCV) followed by ultrastructural and morphometric analyses of dorsal root ganglia (DRG) and sciatic nerves. To further characterize the model, we examined nocifensive behavior and central nervous system excitability by <it>in vivo </it>electrophysiological recording of spinal dorsal horn (SDH) wide dynamic range neurons in oxaliplatin-treated mice</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found significantly decreased NCV and action potential amplitude after oxaliplatin treatment along with neuronal atrophy and multinucleolated DRG neurons that have eccentric nucleoli. Oxaliplatin also induced significant mechanical allodynia and cold hyperalgesia, starting from the first week of treatment, and a significant increase in the activity of wide dynamic range neurons in the SDH.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our findings demonstrate that chronic treatment with oxaliplatin produces neurotoxic changes in BALB/c mice, confirming that this model is a suitable tool to conduct further mechanistic studies of oxaliplatin-related antineoplastic activity, peripheral neurotoxicity and pain. Further, this model can be used for the preclinical discovery of new neuroprotective and analgesic compounds.</p

The LAGUNA design study- towards giant liquid based underground detectors for neutrino physics and astrophysics and proton decay searches

The feasibility of a next generation neutrino observatory in Europe is being considered within the LAGUNA design study. To accommodate giant neutrino detectors and shield them from cosmic rays, a new very large underground infrastructure is required. Seven potential candidate sites in different parts of Europe and at several distances from CERN are being studied: Boulby (UK), Canfranc (Spain), Fr\'ejus (France/Italy), Pyh\"asalmi (Finland), Polkowice-Sieroszowice (Poland), Slanic (Romania) and Umbria (Italy). The design study aims at the comprehensive and coordinated technical assessment of each site, at a coherent cost estimation, and at a prioritization of the sites within the summer 2010.Comment: 5 pages, contribution to the Workshop "European Strategy for Future Neutrino Physics", CERN, Oct. 200