Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for associated production of top squarks and charginos at the CERN LHC

We present the calculations of the complete next-to-leading order (NLO) inclusive total cross sections for the associated production processes $pp\to \tilde{t}_i\tilde{\chi}_k^-+X$ in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Our calculations show that the total cross sections for the $\tilde{t}_1\tilde{\chi}_1^-$ production for the lighter top squark masses in the region 100 GeV $< m_{\tilde{t}_1}<$ 160 GeV can reach 1 pb in the favorable parameter space allowed by the current precise experiments, and in other cases the total cross sections generally vary from 10 fb to several hundred fb except both $m_{\tilde{t}_1}>$ 500 GeV and the $\tilde{t}_2\tilde{\chi}_2^-$ production channel. Moreover, we find that the NLO QCD corrections in general enhance the leading order total cross sections significantly, and vastly reduce the dependence of the total cross sections on the renormalization/factorization scale, which leads to increased confidence in predictions based on these results.Comment: 42 pages, 13 figures, RevTex4. Journal-ref adde

Bag-of-visual-words expansion using visual relatedness for video indexing, SIGIR ’08

Bag-of-visual-words (BoW) has been popular for visual classification in recent years. In this paper, we propose a novel BoW expansion method to alleviate the effect of visual word correlation problem. We achieve this by diffusing the weights of visual words in BoW based on visual word relatedness, which is rigorously defined within a visual ontology. The proposed method is tested in video indexing experiment on TRECVID-2006 video retrieval benchmark, and an improvement of 7 % over the traditional BoW is reported

Spin Correlations in top quark pair production near threshold at the e−e+ e^- e^+ Linear Collider

We investigate the spin correlations in top quark pair production near threshold at the $e^- e^+$ linear collider. Comparing with the results above the threshold region, we find that near the threshold region the off-diagonal basis, the optimized decomposition of the top quark spins above the threshold region, does not exist, and the beamline basis is the optimal basis, in which there are the dominant spin components: the up-down (UD) component for $e_L^- e^+$ scattering and the down-up (DU) component for $e_R^- e^+$ scattering can make up more than 50% of the total cross section, respectively.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, minor modification

t→cVt\to cV via SUSY FCNC couplings in the unconstrained MSSM

We recalculate the branching ratios for $t\to cV$ ($V=g,\gamma,Z$) induced by SUSY FCNC couplings within the general unconstrained MSSM framework using mass eigenstate approach. Our results show that the branching ratios for these decays are larger than ones reported in previous literatures in the MSSM with R-parity conservation, and they can reach $\sim 10^{-4}$, $\sim 10^{-6}$, and $\sim 10^{-6}$, respectively, for favorable parameter values allowed by current precise experiments. Thus, the branching ratios for $t\to cg$ and $t\to c\gamma$ may be measurable at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, minor changs in the Table

MiR-574-5p alleviates sepsis-induced acute lung injury by regulating TRAF6/NF-κB pathway

Purpose: To investigate the protective effect of miR-574-5p pretreatment against acute lung injury (ALI) induced by sepsis.Methods: A male C57BL/6 mouse model of sepsis-induced ALI was established by cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) and treated with miR-574-5p agomir (intravenous injection, 80 mg/kg per day, 3 days). After that, blood and lung samples were obtained for histopathological observation. Myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity, inflammatory cell infiltration, and cytokine expression were analyzed. The target gene of miR-574-5p was predicted using TargetScan prediction, and verified by luciferase assay and western blot.Results: In sepsis-induced ALI mice model, downregulation of miR-574-5p was observed. Pretreatment of miR-574-5p significantly alleviated ALI by suppressing histological damage, and reducing MPO activity and inflammatory cell infiltration, as well as decreasing cytokine expression. The&nbsp; underlying mechanism was that miR-574-5p targeted TNF receptor associated factor 6 (TRAF6) and suppressed the downstream NF-κB pathway. Moreover, TRAF6 overexpression reversed the effects of miR-574-5p on ALI.Conclusion: MiR-574-5p pretreatment suppresses inflammatory responses, thus reducing lung injury induced by sepsis in mice, partly via the regulation of TRAF6 and NF-κB pathway. Therefore, this approach can potentially be used for the clinical management of ALI in humans Keywords: Sepsis, Acute lung injury, MiR-574-5p, TRAF6, NF-κB pathwa