42 research outputs found
The Parton Structure of the Nucleon and Precision Determination of the Weinberg Angle in Neutrino Scattering
A recently completed next-to-leading-order program to calculate neutrino
cross sections, including power-suppressed mass correction terms, has been
applied to evaluate the Paschos-Wolfenstein relation, in order to
quantitatively assess the validity and significance of the NuTeV anomaly. In
particular, we study the shift of obtained in
calculations with a new generation of PDF sets that allow , enabled by recent neutrino dimuon data from CCFR and NuTeV, as
compared to the previous parton distribution functions like
CTEQ6M. The extracted value of is closely
correlated with the strangeness asymmetry momentum integral
. We also consider isospin violating effects
that have recently been explored by the MRST group. The results of our study
suggest that the new dimuon data, the Weinberg angle measurement, and other
data sets used in global QCD parton structure analysis can all be consistent
within the Standard Model.Comment: 4 page
Heavy Quarks: Lessons Learned from HERA and Tevatron
We review some of the recent developments which have enabled the heavy quark
mass to be incorporated into both the calculation of the hard-scattering cross
section and the PDFs. We compare and contrast some of the schemes that have
been used in recent global PDF analyses, and look at issues that arise when
these calculations are extended to NNLO.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the Ringberg
Workshop "New Trends in HERA Physics 2008
A Review of Target Mass Corrections
With recent advances in the precision of inclusive lepton--nuclear scattering
experiments, it has become apparent that comparable improvements are needed in
the accuracy of the theoretical analysis tools. In particular, when extracting
parton distribution functions in the large-x region, it is crucial to correct
the data for effects associated with the nonzero mass of the target. We present
here a comprehensive review of these target mass corrections (TMC) to structure
functions data, summarizing the relevant formulas for TMCs in electromagnetic
and weak processes. We include a full analysis of both hadronic and partonic
masses, and trace how these effects appear in the operator product expansion
and the factorized parton model formalism, as well as their limitations when
applied to data in the x->1 limit. We evaluate the numerical effects of TMCs on
various structure functions, and compare fits to data with and without these
corrections.Comment: 41 pages, 13 figures; minor updates to match published versio
Leptoproduction of Heavy Quarks II -- A Unified QCD Formulation of Charged and Neutral Current Processes from Fixed-target to Collider Energies
A unified QCD formulation of leptoproduction of massive quarks in charged
current and neutral current processes is described. This involves adopting
consistent factorization and renormalization schemes which encompass both
vector-boson-gluon-fusion (flavor creation) and
vector-boson-massive-quark-scattering (flavor excitation) production
mechanisms. It provides a framework which is valid from the threshold for
producing the massive quark (where gluon-fusion is dominant) to the very high
energy regime when the typical energy scale \mu is much larger than the quark
mass m_Q (where the quark-scattering should be prevalent). This approach
effectively resums all large logarithms of the type (alpha_s(mu)
log(mu^2/m_Q^2)^n which limit the validity of existing fixed-order calculations
to the region mu ~ O(m_Q). We show that the (massive) quark-scattering
contribution (after subtraction of overlaps) is important in most parts of the
(x, Q) plane except near the threshold region. We demonstrate that the
factorization scale dependence of the structure functions calculated in this
approach is substantially less than those obtained in the fixed-order
calculations, as one would expect from a more consistent formulation.Comment: LaTeX format, 29 pages, 11 figures. Revised to make auto-TeX-abl
Leptoproduction of Heavy Quarks in the Fixed and Variable Flavor Schemes
We compare the results of the fixed-flavor scheme calculation of Laenen,
Riemersma, Smith and van Neerven with the variable-flavor scheme calculation of
Aivazis, Collins, Olness and Tung for the case of neutral-current
(photon-mediated) heavy-flavor (charm and bottom) production. Specifically, we
examine the features of both calculations throughout phase space and compare
the structure function . We also analyze the dependence of on
the mass factorization scale . We find that the former is most applicable
near threshold, while the latter works well for asymptotic . The validity
of each calculation in the intermediate region is dependent upon the and
values chosen.Comment: LaTeX format, 19 pages, 20 figures in uuencoded format. Postscript
file available at ftp://smuphy.physics.smu.edu/usr/ftpdir/pub/paper
2q36.3 is associated with prognosis for oestrogen receptor-negative breast cancer patients treated with chemotherapy.
Large population-based registry studies have shown that breast cancer prognosis is inherited. Here we analyse single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of genes implicated in human immunology and inflammation as candidates for prognostic markers of breast cancer survival involving 1,804 oestrogen receptor (ER)-negative patients treated with chemotherapy (279 events) from 14 European studies in a prior large-scale genotyping experiment, which is part of the Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study (COGS) initiative. We carry out replication using Asian COGS samples (n=522, 53 events) and the Prospective Study of Outcomes in Sporadic versus Hereditary breast cancer (POSH) study (n=315, 108 events). Rs4458204_A near CCL20 (2q36.3) is found to be associated with breast cancer-specific death at a genome-wide significant level (n=2,641, 440 events, combined allelic hazard ratio (HR)=1.81 (1.49-2.19); P for trend=1.90 Ă 10(-9)). Such survival-associated variants can represent ideal targets for tailored therapeutics, and may also enhance our current prognostic prediction capabilities
2q36.3 is associated with prognosis for oestrogen receptor-negative breast cancer patients treated with chemotherapy
Large population-based registry studies have shown that breast cancer prognosis is inherited. Here we analyse single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of genes implicated in human immunology and inflammation as candidates for prognostic markers of breast cancer survival involving 1,804 oestrogen receptor (ER)-negative patients treated with chemotherapy (279 events) from 14 European studies in a prior large-scale genotyping experiment, which is part of the Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study (COGS) initiative. We carry out replication using Asian COGS samples (n=522, 53 events) and the Prospective Study of Outcomes in Sporadic versus Hereditary breast cancer (POSH) study (n=315, 108 events). Rs4458204-A near CCL20 (2q36.3) is found to be associated with breast cancer-specific death at a genome-wide significant level (n=2,641, 440 events, combined allelic hazard ratio (HR)=1.81 (1.49-2.19); P for trend=1.90 Ă 10 Ăą Ì'9). Such survival-associated variants can represent ideal targets for tailored therapeutics, and may also enhance our current prognostic prediction capabilities
Evidence that breast cancer risk at the 2q35 locus is mediated through IGFBP5 regulation.
GWAS have identified a breast cancer susceptibility locus on 2q35. Here we report the fine mapping of this locus using data from 101,943 subjects from 50 case-control studies. We genotype 276 SNPs using the 'iCOGS' genotyping array and impute genotypes for a further 1,284 using 1000 Genomes Project data. All but two, strongly correlated SNPs (rs4442975 G/T and rs6721996 G/A) are excluded as candidate causal variants at odds against >100:1. The best functional candidate, rs4442975, is associated with oestrogen receptor positive (ER+) disease with an odds ratio (OR) in Europeans of 0.85 (95% confidence interval=0.84-0.87; P=1.7 Ă 10(-43)) per t-allele. This SNP flanks a transcriptional enhancer that physically interacts with the promoter of IGFBP5 (encoding insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 5) and displays allele-specific gene expression, FOXA1 binding and chromatin looping. Evidence suggests that the g-allele confers increased breast cancer susceptibility through relative downregulation of IGFBP5, a gene with known roles in breast cell biology