694 research outputs found
The impact of the LHC Z-boson transverse momentum data on PDF determinations
The LHC has recently released precise measurements of the transverse momentum distribution of the Z-boson that provide a unique constraint on the structure of the proton. Theoretical developments now allow the prediction of these observables through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD. In this work we study the impact of incorporating these latest advances into a determination of parton distribution functions (PDFs) through NNLO including the recent ATLAS and CMS 7 TeV and 8 TeV pTZ data. We investigate the consistency of these measurements in a global fit to the available data and quantify the impact of including the pTZ distributions on the PDFs. The inclusion of these new data sets significantly reduces the uncertainties on select parton distributions and the corresponding parton-parton luminosities. In particular, we find that the pTZ data ultimately leads to a reduction of the PDF uncertainty on the gluon-fusion and vector-boson fusion Higgs production cross sections by about 30%, while keeping the central values nearly unchanged.This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY11-25915 to the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara. R. B. is supported by the DOE contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. F. P. is supported by the DOE grants DE-FG02- 91ER40684 and DE-AC02-06CH11357. M. U. is supported by a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellowship and partially supported by the STFC grant ST/L000385/1. A. G. is supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk lodowska-Curie grant agreement No 659128 - NEXTGENPDF. This research used resources of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported under Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357
Progress on neural parton distributions
We give a status report on the determination of a set of parton distributions
based on neural networks. In particular, we summarize the determination of the
nonsinglet quark distribution up to NNLO, we compare it with results obtained
using other approaches, and we discuss its use for a determination of
.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figs, uses dis2007.cls, to appear in the DIS 2007 workshop
proceeding
Recent progress on NNPDF for LHC
We present recent results of the NNPDF collaboration on a full DIS analysis
of Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs). Our method is based on the idea of
combining a Monte Carlo sampling of the probability measure in the space of
PDFs with the use of neural networks as unbiased universal interpolating
functions. The general structure of the project and the features of the fit are
described and compared to those of the traditional approaches.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, contribution for the proceedings of the
conference "Rencontres de Moriond, QCD and High Energy Interactions
The impact of heavy quark mass effects in the NNPDF global analysis
We discuss the implementation of the FONLL general-mass scheme for heavy
quarks in deep-inelastic scattering in the FastKernel framework, used in the
NNPDF series of global PDF analysis. We present the general features of FONLL
and benchmark the accuracy of its implementation in FastKernel comparing with
the Les Houches heavy quark benchmark tables. We then show preliminary results
of the NNPDF2.1 analysis, in which heavy quark mass effects are included
following the FONLL-A GM scheme.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; to appear in the proceedings of DIS 2010, Firenz
Progress in the Neural Network Determination of Polarized Parton Distributions
We review recent progress towards a determination of a set of polarized
parton distributions from a global set of deep-inelastic scattering data based
on the NNPDF methodology, in analogy with the unpolarized case. This method is
designed to provide a faithful and statistically sound representation of parton
distributions and their uncertainties. We show how the FastKernel method
provides a fast and accurate method for solving the polarized DGLAP equations.
We discuss the polarized PDF parametrizations and the physical constraints
which can be imposed. Preliminary results suggest that the uncertainty on
polarized PDFs, most notably the gluon, has been underestimated in previous
studies.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; to appear in the proceedings of DIS 2010, Firenz
FKBP5 DNA methylation does not mediate the association between childhood maltreatment and depression symptom severity in the Detroit Neighborhood Health Study
Exposure to childhood maltreatment increases the risk of developing mental illness later in life. Childhood maltreatment and depression have both been associated with dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis—a key regulator of the body's stress response. Additionally, HPA axis dysregulation has been implicated in the etiology of a range of mental illnesses. A substantial body of work has shown history of childhood maltreatment alters DNA methylation levels within key HPA axis genes. We therefore investigated whether one of these key genes, FKBP5 mediates the relationship between childhood maltreatment and depression, and assessed FKBP5 DNA methylation and gene expression within 112 adults from the Detroit Neighborhood Health Study (DNHS). DNA methylation was assessed in 4 regions, including the upstream promoter, downstream promoter, and two glucocorticoid response elements (GREs) via pyrosequencing using whole blood derived DNA; Taqman assays measured relative RNA expression from leukocytes. Mediation analyses were conducted using sequential linear regression. Childhood maltreatment was significantly associated with depression symptom severity (FDR 0.05). Our results suggest DNA methylation does not mediate the childhood maltreatment-depression association in the DNHS
A model of non-perturbative gluon emission in an initial state parton shower
We consider a model of transverse momentum production in which
non-perturbative smearing takes place throughout the perturbative evolution, by
a simple modification to an initial state parton shower algorithm. Using this
as the important non-perturbative ingredient, we get a good fit to data over a
wide range of energy. Combining it with the non-perturbative masses and cutoffs
that are a feature of conventional parton showers also leads to a reasonable
fit. We discuss the extrapolation to the LHC.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures; version accepted by JHE
The Bjorken sum rule with Monte Carlo and Neural Network techniques
Determinations of structure functions and parton distribution functions have
been recently obtained using Monte Carlo methods and neural networks as
universal, unbiased interpolants for the unknown functional dependence. In this
work the same methods are applied to obtain a parametrization of polarized Deep
Inelastic Scattering (DIS) structure functions. The Monte Carlo approach
provides a bias--free determination of the probability measure in the space of
structure functions, while retaining all the information on experimental errors
and correlations. In particular the error on the data is propagated into an
error on the structure functions that has a clear statistical meaning. We
present the application of this method to the parametrization from polarized
DIS data of the photon asymmetries and from which we determine
the structure functions and , and discuss the
possibility to extract physical parameters from these parametrizations. This
work can be used as a starting point for the determination of polarized parton
distributions.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figure
PO-473 Quantification of ERCC1-XPF complexes in ovarian cancer xenografts with different sensitivity to cisplatin
Introduction Epithelial ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynaecological cancer due to the development of resistance to a platinum based therapy. As DNA repair capacity is a key determinant for the cellular response to platinum (DDP) agents, DNA repair functional assays are required to study its relevance in DDP resistance. We set up a proximity ligation assay (PLA) to study the activity of nucleotide excision repair (NER) in patient derived ovarian carcinoma xenografts (PDXs) sensitive (S) and resistant (R) to DDP. Material and methods Patient derived xenografts from fresh ovarian carcinomas were recently established in our laboratory. DDP antitumour activity was evaluated in most of the PDXs. Mice were sacrificed when tumours reached 1,5–2 gr. Tumours were fixed in formalin and paraffin embedded (FFPE). PLA was performed on tumour slides, using DuolinkII reagents (Sigma-Aldrich) and following the manufacturer instructions. PLA detects the presence of the protein complexes ERCC1-XPF, that are quantified as foci per nucleus and represent a biomarker of NER activity. Images were acquired by Olympus Virtual Slider (Olympus) and analysed with ImageJ software. Statistical analysis was performed with GraphPad Prism7. Results and discussions Our xenobank comprises PDXs with different response to DDP: MNHOC266 and MNHOC230 are very sensitive to the drug, while MNHOC315 is resistant. We also obtained three sublines resistant to DDP (MNHOC124R, MNHOC124LPR and MNHOC239R) starting from sensitive PDXs (MNHOC124S, MNHOC124LPS and MNHOC239S), after several in vivo drug treatments. Statistically significant higher level of ERCC1-XPF foci could be observed in MNHOC124R and MNHOC124LPR as compared to their sensitive counterparts. No differences were observed between MNHOC239S and R PDXs, even if the number of ERCC1-XPF foci in MNHOC239S were statistically higher than the ones observed in MNHOC124S and in MNHOC124LPS. MNHOC266 and MNHOC230 showed levels of foci comparable to those of MNHOC124S and MNHOC124LPS. mRNA and protein levels of the different isoforms of ERCC1 and of XPF were not different among the PDXs studied. Conclusion PLA for the detection of ERCC1-XPF complexes was set up in FFPE xenograft tumour slides. These preliminary results highlight a possible link between DDP resistance and higher NER activity that need to be confirmed in a wider panel of PDXs. In addition, these data confirm the importance to develop functional assays to directly evaluate the activity of different DNA repair pathways to predict DDP activity
The aT distribution of the Z boson at hadron colliders
We provide the first theoretical study of a novel variable, , proposed
in Ref.[1] as a more accurate probe of the region of low transverse momentum
, for the boson distribution at hadron colliders. The is
the component of transverse to a suitably defined axis. Our study
involves resummation of large logarithms in up to the next-to--leading
logarithmic accuracy and we compare the results to those for the well-known
distribution, identifying important physical differences between the two
cases. We also test our resummed result at the two-loop level by comparing its
expansion to order with the corresponding fixed-order results and
find agreement with our expectations.Comment: 30 pages, 3 figures, JHEP class included. Final version published in
JHE
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