Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Using Computer Vision

6-pagesDiabetic Retinopathy (DR) is one of the main causes of blindness and visual impairment in developed countries, stemming solely from diabetes mellitus. Current screening methods using fundus images rely on the experience of the operator as they are manually examined. Automated methods based on neural networks and other approaches have not provided sensitivity or specificity above 85%. This work presents a computer vision based method that directly identifies hard exudates and dot haemorrhages (DH) from 100 digital fundus images from a graded database of images using standard computer vision techniques, and clinical observation and knowledge. Sensitivity and specificity in diagnosis are 95-100% in both cases. Positive and negative prediction values (PPV, NPV) were 95-100% for both cases. The overall method is general, computationally efficient and suitable for further clinical trials to test both accuracy and the ability to the track DR status over time

Constraints on the pMSSM from LAT Observations of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies

We examine the ability for the Large Area Telescope (LAT) to constrain Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) dark matter through a combined analysis of Milky Way dwarf spheroidal galaxies. We examine the Lightest Supersymmetric Particles (LSPs) for a set of ~71k experimentally valid supersymmetric models derived from the phenomenological-MSSM (pMSSM). We find that none of these models can be excluded at 95% confidence by the current analysis; nevertheless, many lie within the predicted reach of future LAT analyses. With two years of data, we find that the LAT is currently most sensitive to light LSPs (m_LSP < 50 GeV) annihilating into tau-pairs and heavier LSPs annihilating into b-bbar. Additionally, we find that future LAT analyses will be able to probe some LSPs that form a sub-dominant component of dark matter. We directly compare the LAT results to direct detection experiments and show the complementarity of these search methods.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, submitted to JCA

Rare top decays t -> c gamma, t -> c g and CKM unitarity

Top flavour-changing neutral decays are extremely suppressed within the Standard Model (SM) by the GIM mechanism, but can reach observable rates in some of its extensions. We compute the branching ratios for t -> c gamma and t -> c g in minimal SM extensions where the addition of a vector-like up or down quark singlet breaks the unitarity of the 3 x 3 Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. The maximum rates obtained indicate to what extent present experimental data allow 3 x 3 CKM unitarity to be broken in these models, and are too small to be observed in the near future. As a by-product, we reproduce the calculation of these branching ratios in the SM, and with an improved set of parameters we obtain values one order of magnitude smaller than the ones usually quoted in the literature. We study the CP asymmetries between the decay rates of the top quark and antiquark, which can be much larger than in the SM, also as a consequence of the partial breaking of 3 x 3 CKM unitarity.Comment: LaTeX, 15 pages, 12 PS figures, minor changes. To be published in PL

Constraining Supergravity Scenarios through the b→s,γb\to s,\gamma Decay.

We evaluate the branching ratio BR($b\rightarrow s,\gamma$) in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM), determining the corresponding phenomenological restrictions on two attractive supergravity scenarios, namely minimal supergravity and a class of models with a natural solution to the $\mu$ problem. We have included in the calculation some one--loop refinements that have a substantial impact on the results. The numerical results show some disagreements with part of the previous results in the literature, while they are in agreement with others. For minimal supergravity the CLEO upper and lower bounds put important restrictions on the scalar and gaugino masses in both cases $\mu0$. For the other supergravity scenarios the relevant CLEO bound is the upper one. It is stressed the fact that an eventual improvement of the experimental bounds of order $10^{-4}$ would strengthen the restrictions on the MSSM dramatically. This would be enough to discard these supergravity scenarios with $\mu<0$ if no discrepancy is found with the standard model prediction, while for $\mu>0$ there will remain low-energy windows.Comment: 13 pages + 8 figures included in a separate file, Latex, requires psfig.sty. We have corrected a mistake affecting some figures and their corresponding quotations in the text, as well as several misprints

The Intermediate Higgs

Two paradigms for the origin of electroweak superconductivity are a weakly coupled scalar condensate, and a strongly coupled fermion condensate. The former suffers from a finetuning problem unless there are cancelations to radiative corrections, while the latter presents potential discrepancies with precision electroweak physics. Here we present a framework for electroweak symmetry breaking which interpolates between these two paradigms, and mitigates their faults. As in Little Higgs theories, the Higgs is a pseudo-Nambu Goldstone boson, potentially composite. The cutoff sensitivity of the one loop top quark contribution to the effective potential is canceled by contributions from additional vector-like quarks, and the cutoff can naturally be higher than in the minimal Standard Model. Unlike the Little Higgs models, the cutoff sensitivity from one loop gauge contributions is not canceled. However, such gauge contributions are naturally small as long as the cutoff is below 6 TeV. Precision electroweak corrections are suppressed relative to those of Technicolor or generic Little Higgs theories. In some versions of the intermediate scenario, the Higgs mass is computable in terms of the masses of these additional fermions and the Nambu-Goldstone Boson decay constant. In addition to the Higgs, new scalar and pseudoscalar particles are typically present at the weak scale

The littlest Higgs model and Higgs boson associated production with top quark pair at high energy linear e+e−e^{+}e^{-} collider

In the parameter space allowed by the electroweak precision measurement data, we consider the contributions of the new particles predicted by the littlest Higgs($LH$) model to the Higgs boson associated production with top quark pair in the future high energy linear $e^{+}e^{-}$ collider($ILC$). We find that the contributions mainly come from the new gauge bosons $Z_{H}$ and $B_{H}$. For reasonable values of the free parameters, the absolute value of the relative correction parameter $\delta\sigma/\sigma^{SM}$ can be significanly large, which might be observed in the future $ILC$ experiment with $\sqrt{S}=800GeV$.Comment: latex files, 13 pages, 3 figure

Chromomagnetic Dipole Moment of the Top Quark Revisited

We study the complete one-loop contributions to the chromagnetic dipole moment $\Delta\kappa$ of the top quark in the Standard Model, two Higgs doublet models, topcolor assited technicolor models (TC2), 331 models and extended models with a single extra dimension. We find that the SM predicts $\Delta\kappa = - 0.056$ and that the predictions of the other models are also consitent with the constraints imposed on $\Delta\kappa$ by low-energy precision measurements.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, Updat

Combined analysis of Z' -> t tbar and Z' -> t tbar j production for vector resonance searches at LHC

We have implemented a code for Z' + n jets production in ALPGEN, with Z' decays into several final states, including l+ l- and t tbar. The MLM prescription is used for matching the matrix element with the parton shower, including in this way the leading soft and collinear corrections. In order to demonstrate its capabilities, we perform a combined analysis of Z' -> t tbar and Z' -> t tbar j production for a heavy leptophobic gauge boson. It is found that the effect of the extra jet cannot only be accounted for by a K factor multiplying the leading-order cross section. In fact, the combined analysis for Z' -> t tbar and Z' -> t tbar j presented improves the statistical significance of the signal by 25% (8.55 sigma versus 6.77 sigma for a Z' mass of 1 TeV), compared with the results of an inclusive analysis carried out on the same sample of t tbar + t tbar j events.Comment: LaTeX 17 pages, 13 PS figure