68 research outputs found
Population-based screening of newborns: Findings from the NBS Expansion Study (Part One)
Each year, through population-based newborn screening (NBS), 1 in 294 newborns is identified with a condition leading to early treatment and, in some cases, life-saving interventions. Rapid advancements in genomic technologies to screen, diagnose, and treat newborns promise to significantly expand the number of diseases and individuals impacted by NBS. However, expansion of NBS occurs slowly in the United States (US) and almost always occurs condition by condition and state by state with the goal of screening for all conditions on a federally recommended uniform panel. The Newborn Screening Translational Research Network (NBSTRN) conducted the NBS Expansion Study to describe current practices, identify expansion challenges, outline areas for improvement in NBS, and suggest how models could be used to evaluate changes and improvements. The NBS Expansion Study included a workshop of experts, a survey of clinicians, an analysis of data from online repositories of state NBS programs, reports and publications of completed pilots, federal committee reports, and proceedings, and the development of models to address the study findings. This manuscript (Part One) reports on the design, execution, and results of the NBS Expansion Study. The Study found that the capacity to expand NBS is variable across the US and that nationwide adoption of a new condition averages 9.5 years. Four factors that delay and/or complicate NBS expansion were identified. A companion paper (Part Two) presents a use case for each of the four factors and highlights how modeling could address these challenges to NBS expansion
Parity Doubling and the S Parameter Below the Conformal Window
We describe a lattice simulation of the masses and decay constants of the
lowest-lying vector and axial resonances, and the electroweak S parameter, in
an SU(3) gauge theory with and 6 fermions in the fundamental
representation. The spectrum becomes more parity doubled and the S parameter
per electroweak doublet decreases when is increased from 2 to 6,
motivating study of these trends as is increased further, toward the
critical value for transition from confinement to infrared conformality.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures; to be submitted to PR
Stealth dark matter confinement transition and gravitational waves
We use non-perturbative lattice calculations to investigate the finite-temperature confinement transition of stealth dark matter, focusing on the regime in which this early-universe transition is first order and would generate a stochastic background of gravitational waves. Stealth dark matter extends the standard model with a new strongly coupled SU(4) gauge sector with four massive fermions in the fundamental representation, producing a stable spin-0 'dark baryon' as a viable composite dark matter candidate. Future searches for stochastic gravitational waves will provide a new way to discover or constrain stealth dark matter, in addition to previously investigated direct-detection and collider experiments. As a first step to enabling this phenomenology, we determine how heavy the dark fermions need to be in order to produce a first-order stealth dark matter confinement transition
Stealth dark matter confinement transition and gravitational waves
We use non-perturbative lattice calculations to investigate the
finite-temperature confinement transition of stealth dark matter, focusing on
the regime in which this early-universe transition is first order and would
generate a stochastic background of gravitational waves. Stealth dark matter
extends the standard model with a new strongly coupled SU(4) gauge sector with
four massive fermions in the fundamental representation, producing a stable
spin-0 'dark baryon' as a viable composite dark matter candidate. Future
searches for stochastic gravitational waves will provide a new way to discover
or constrain stealth dark matter, in addition to previously investigated
direct-detection and collider experiments. As a first step to enabling this
phenomenology, we determine how heavy the dark fermions need to be in order to
produce a first-order stealth dark matter confinement transition.Comment: Data release at doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.392187
Maximum-likelihood approach to topological charge fluctuations in lattice gauge theory
We present a novel technique for the determination of the topological
susceptibility (related to the variance of the distribution of global
topological charge) from lattice gauge theory simulations, based on
maximum-likelihood analysis of the Markov-chain Monte Carlo time series. This
technique is expected to be particularly useful in situations where relatively
few tunneling events are observed. Restriction to a lattice subvolume on which
topological charge is not quantized is explored, and may lead to further
improvement when the global topology is poorly sampled. We test our proposed
method on a set of lattice data, and compare it to traditional methods.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. v2: update to published versio
Strongly interacting dynamics and the search for new physics at the LHC
We present results for the spectrum of a strongly interacting SU(3) gauge
theory with light fermions in the fundamental representation.
Carrying out non-perturbative lattice calculations at the lightest masses and
largest volumes considered to date, we confirm the existence of a remarkably
light singlet scalar particle. We explore the rich resonance spectrum of the
8-flavor theory in the context of the search for new physics beyond the
standard model at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Connecting our results to
models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking, we estimate the vector
resonance mass to be about 2 TeV with a width of roughly 450 GeV, and predict
additional resonances with masses below ~3 TeV.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. Added report number. Version submitted to journa
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