Dominant two-loop electroweak corrections to the hadroproduction of a pseudoscalar Higgs boson and its photonic decay

We present the dominant two-loop electroweak corrections to the partial decay widths to gluon jets and prompt photons of the neutral CP-odd Higgs boson A^0, with mass M_{A^0} < 2 M_W, in the two-Higgs-doublet model for low to intermediate values of the ratio tan(beta) = v_2/v_1 of the vacuum expectation values. They apply as they stand to the production cross sections in hadronic and two-photon collisions, at the Tevatron, the LHC, and a future photon collider. The appearance of three gamma_5 matrices in closed fermion loops requires special care in the dimensional regularization of ultraviolet divergences. The corrections are negative and amount to several percent, so that they fully compensate or partly screen the enhancement due to QCD corrections.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Fundamental Bonding Concepts of Inorganic Chemistry Revisited

The bonding situation in a variety of systems from inorganic chemistry is analyzed by application of a variety of bond analysis methods from real space, orbital space und energy space - a complementary bonding analysis. Fundamental bonding concepts such as bond polarization, resonance, hyperconjugative interactions and hypervalency are analyzed by this approach. It is shown that a complementary bonding analysis is a powerful tool to tackle complex bonding situations. The analysis is based on theoretically obtained wavefunctions and on the novel approach of X-ray wavefunction refinement

Economics of stratified medicine:Challenges and opportunities in adapting stratified medicine approaches to enhance patient access, population health, cost-effectiveness and return on investment

Stratified medicine (SM) is an innovative treatment concept which has drawn major attention in the pharmaceutical research community due to improved diagnostic technologies and a better understanding of diseases´ heterogeneity. The ability to target patient subpopulations has the potential to improve treatment efficacy and minimize side effects, enabling physician to more selectively deploy therapeutics in those patient groups. Several SM interventions have proven beneficial in a number of cancers and genetic diseases and researchers are working to identify more and more biomarkers that could be used to refine treatments in the future. At the same time, the process of stratification of patients and the implementation of this “disruptive innovation” has raised economic questions for payers, the healthcare system and for the manufacturer. Decision makers at all levels want value for money and require economic evaluations on the opportunity costs before implementing such approaches into clinical practice. This thesis investigates these economic challenges and opportunities in adapting SM approaches to enhance patient access, population health, cost effectiveness and return on investment

Economic Evaluation in Stratified Medicine:Methodological Issues and Challenges

Background: Stratified Medicine (SM) is becoming a practical reality with the targeting of medicines by using a biomarker or genetic-based diagnostic to identify the eligible patient sub-population. Like any healthcare intervention, SM interventions have costs and consequences that must be considered by reimbursement authorities with limited resources. Methodological standards and guidelines exist for economic evaluations in clinical pharmacology and are an important component for health technology assessments (HTAs) in many countries. However, these guidelines have initially been developed for traditional pharmaceuticals and not for complex interventions with multiple components. This raises the issue as to whether these guidelines are adequate to SM interventions or whether new specific guidance and methodology is needed to avoid inconsistencies and contradictory findings when assessing economic value in SM.Objective: This article describes specific methodological challenges when conducting health economic (HE) evaluations for SM interventions and outlines potential modifications necessary to existing evaluation guidelines /principles that would promote consistent economic evaluations for SM.Results/Conclusions: Specific methodological aspects for SM comprise considerations on the choice of comparator, measuring effectiveness and outcomes, appropriate modelling structure and the scope of sensitivity analyses. Although current HE methodology can be applied for SM, greater complexity requires further methodology development and modifications in the guidelines

Economic evaluation in stratified medicine: Methodological issues and challenges

Background: Stratified Medicine (SM) is becoming a practical reality with the targeting of medicines by using a biomarker or genetic-based diagnostic to identify the eligible patient sub-population. Like any healthcare intervention, SM interventions have costs and consequences that must be considered by reimbursement authorities with limited resources. Methodological standards and guidelines exist for economic evaluations in clinical pharmacology and are an important component for health technology assessments (HTAs) in many countries. However, these guidelines have initially been developed for traditional pharmaceuticals and not for complex interventions with multiple components. This raises the issue as to whether these guidelines are adequate to SM interventions or whether new specific guidance and methodology is needed to avoid inconsistencies and contradictory findings when assessing economic value in SM. Objective: This article describes specific methodological challenges when conducting health economic (HE) evaluations for SM interventions and outlines potential modifications necessary to existing evaluation guidelines /principles that would promote consistent economic evaluations for SM. Results/Conclusions: Specific methodological aspects for SM comprise considerations on the choice of comparator, measuring effectiveness and outcomes, appropriate modeling structure and the scope of sensitivity analyses. Although current HE methodology can be applied for SM, greater complexity requires further methodology development and modifications in the guidelines

Two-loop electroweak correction of O(G_F M_t^2) to the Higgs-boson decay into photons

We compute the dominant two-loop electroweak correction, of O(G_F M_t^2), to the partial width of the decay of an intermediate-mass Higgs boson into a pair of photons. We use the asymptotic-expansion technique in order to extract the leading dependence on the top-quark mass plus four expansion terms that describe the dependence on the W- and Higgs-boson masses. This correction reduces the Born result by approximately 2.5%. As a by-product of our analysis, we also recover the O(G_F M_t^2) correction to the partial width of the Higgs-boson decay to two gluon jets.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

Covalency and ionicity do not oppose each other : relationship between Si-O bond character and basicity of siloxanes

Covalency and ionicity are orthogonal rather than antipodal concepts. We demonstrate for the case of siloxane systems [R3Si-(O-SiR2)(n)-O-SiR3] that both covalency and ionicity of the Si-O bonds impact on the basicity of the Si-O-Si linkage. The relationship between the siloxane basicity and the Si-O bond character has been under debate since previous studies have presented conflicting explanations. It has been shown with natural bond orbital methods that increased hyperconjugative interactions of LP(O)->sigma*(Si-R) type, that is, increased orbital overlap and hence covalency, are responsible for the low siloxane basicity at large Si-O-Si angles. On the other hand, increased ionicity towards larger Si-O-Si angles has been revealed with real-space bonding indicators. To resolve this ostensible contradiction, we perform a complementary bonding analysis, which combines orbital-space, real-space, and bond-index considerations. We analyze the isolated disiloxane molecule H3SiOSiH3 with varying Si-O-Si angles, and n-membered cyclic siloxane systems Si2H4O(CH2)(n-3). All methods from quite different realms show that both covalent and ionic interactions increase simultaneously towards larger Si-O-Si angles. In addition, we present highly accurate absolute hydrogen-bond interaction energies of the investigated siloxane molecules with water and silanol as donors. It is found that intermolecular hydrogen bonding is significant at small Si-O-Si angles and weakens as the Si-O-Si angle increases until no stable hydrogen-bond complexes are obtained beyond phi(SiOSi) = 168 degrees, angles typically displayed by minerals or polymers. The maximum hydrogen-bond interaction energy, which is obtained at an angle of 105 degrees, is 11.05 kJ mol(-1) for the siloxane-water complex and 18.40 kJ mol(-1) for the siloxane-silanol complex

Two-loop electroweak corrections to the Higgs-boson decay H -> gamma gamma

The complete set of two-loop electroweak corrections to the decay width of the Higgs boson into two photons is presented. Two-loop contributions involving weak bosons and the top quark are computed in terms of an expansion in the Higgs external momentum. Adding these results to the previously known light fermion contributions, we find that the total electroweak corrections for a Higgs boson with 100 GeV <m_H < 150 GeV are moderate and negative, between -4% < delta_EW < 0%. Combination with the QCD corrections, which are small and positive, gives a total correction to the one-loop results of | delta_{EW+QCD}|< 1.5 %.Comment: 15 page

Complete Electroweak Corrections to Higgs production in a Standard Model with four generations at the LHC

Complete electroweak two-loop corrections to the process $gg \to H$ are presented and discussed in a Standard Model with a fourth generation of heavy fermions. The latter is studied at the LHC to put exclusion limits on a fourth generation of heavy fermions. Therefore also a precise knowledge of the electroweak(EW) next-to-leading-order(NLO) corrections is important. The corrections due to the fourth generation are positive and large for a light Higgs boson, positive but relatively small around the $\bar{t}-t$ threshold and start to become negative for a Higgs boson mass around $M_H = 450 GeV$. Increasing further the value of the Higgs boson mass, the EW NLO effects tend to become huge and negative, ${\cal O}(-100$, around the heavy-fermion threshold, assumed at $1.2 TeV$, so that $gg$-fusion becomes non-perturbative. Above that threshold they start to grow again and become positive around $M_H= 1.75 TeV$. The behaviour at even larger values of $M_H$ shows a positive enhancement, ${\cal O}(+100$ at $M_H= 3 TeV$.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure