616 research outputs found
New public health approaches to palliative care, a brave new horizon or an impractical ideal? An Integrative literature review with thematic synthesis
Access to palliative care for marginalized communities is frequently problematized as a major challenge facing palliative care services. The traditional response of asking what services can do for the disadvantaged has been invigorated by a new wave of public health measures that embrace death and dying as social processes and ask, what can be done together with such communities as partners working in palliative care. Such work has generated a significant amount of academic, social and political interests over the last 20 years; however, we are yet to see a consistent and sustained change in approach from providers. We argue that this is due to inherent tensions that arise when modelling death, dying and loss as a unified and shared social process. Unresolved tensions destabilize the theoretical foundations and risk misrepresentation of core philosophies. In this integrative review of 75 articles, we present previously undiscussed areas of contention drawing from a pan-disciplinary field of theoretical and empirical evidence. We conclude that new public health approaches lack a consistent and unified theoretical approach. From philosophical, ontological and existential ideas relating to how different stakeholders conceptualize death, to the processes by which communities are motivated and their constituent members empowered through responsibilized notions of duty and reciprocity, there is little acknowledgement of the complex tensions at hand. Increasing academic and political initiative alone is not enough to progress this movement in a manner that achieves its full potential. Instead, we must pay greater attention to the tensions described. This article aims to work with such tensions to better define the landscape of collective moral responsibility in end-of-life care. We believe that this is crucial if palliative care is to avoid becoming a technical speciality with community and communitization reduced to a mere technical solution to more profound questions
NLL+NNLO predictions for jet-veto efficiencies in Higgs-boson and Drell-Yan production
Using the technology of the CAESAR approach to resummation, we examine the
jet-veto efficiency in Higgs-boson and Drell-Yan production at hadron colliders
and show that at next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) accuracy the resummation
reduces to just a Sudakov form factor. Matching with NNLO calculations results
in stable predictions for the case of Drell-Yan production, but reveals
substantial uncertainties in gluon-fusion Higgs production, connected in part
with the poor behaviour of the perturbative series for the total cross section.
We compare our results to those from POWHEG with and without reweighting by
HqT, as used experimentally, and observe acceptable agreement. In an appendix
we derive the part of the NNLL resummation corrections associated with the
radius dependence of the jet algorithm.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures; v2 as published in JHE
Heavy Higgs signal-background interference in gg → VV in the Standard Model plus real singlet
For the Standard Model extended with a real scalar singlet field, the
modification of the heavy Higgs signal due to interference with the continuum
background and the off-shell light Higgs contribution is studied for gg --> ZZ,
WW --> 4 lepton processes at the Large Hadron Collider. Interference effects
can range from O(10%) to O(1) effects for integrated cross sections. Despite a
strong cancellation between the heavy Higgs-continuum and the heavy Higgs-light
Higgs interference, the full interference is clearly non-negligible and
modifies the heavy Higgs line shape. A |M_VV - M_h2| < Gamma_h2 cut mitigates
interference effects to O(10%) or less. A public program that allows to
simulate the full interference is presented.Comment: 22 pages, 15 figures, 9 tables; added results and references,
improved discussion, corrected v2 results (heavy top approximation was
inadvertently active, results deviate by less than 5%), conclusions
unchanged, updated gg2VV code, version to appear in EPJ
Inadequacy of zero-width approximation for a light Higgs boson signal
In the Higgs search at the LHC, a light Higgs boson (115 GeV <~ M_H <~ 130
GeV) is not excluded by experimental data. In this mass range, the width of the
Standard Model Higgs boson is more than four orders of magnitude smaller than
its mass. The zero-width approximation is hence expected to be an excellent
approximation. We show that this is not always the case. The inclusion of
off-shell contributions is essential to obtain an accurate Higgs signal
normalisation at the 1% precision level. For gg (-> H) -> VV, V= W,Z, O(10%)
corrections occur due to an enhanced Higgs signal in the region M_VV > 2 M_V,
where also sizable Higgs-continuum interference occurs. We discuss how
experimental selection cuts can be used to exclude this region in search
channels where the Higgs invariant mass cannot be reconstructed. We note that
the H -> VV decay modes in weak boson fusion are similarly affected.Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures, 6 tables; added references, expanded
introduction, version to appear in JHE
Supersymmetric Higgs Yukawa Couplings to Bottom Quarks at next-to-next-to-leading Order
The effective bottom Yukawa couplings are analyzed for the minimal
supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model at two-loop accuracy within
SUSY-QCD. They include the resummation of the dominant corrections for large
values of tg(beta). In particular the two-loop SUSY-QCD corrections to the
leading SUSY-QCD and top-induced SUSY-electroweak contributions are addressed.
The residual theoretical uncertainties range at the per-cent level.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures, added comments and references, typos corrected,
results unchanged, published versio
Episodic Memory and Appetite Regulation in Humans
Psychological and neurobiological evidence implicates hippocampal-dependent memory processes in the control of hunger and food intake. In humans, these have been revealed in the hyperphagia that is associated with amnesia. However, it remains unclear whether 'memory for recent eating' plays a significant role in neurologically intact humans. In this study we isolated the extent to which memory for a recently consumed meal influences hunger and fullness over a three-hour period. Before lunch, half of our volunteers were shown 300 ml of soup and half were shown 500 ml. Orthogonal to this, half consumed 300 ml and half consumed 500 ml. This process yielded four separate groups (25 volunteers in each). Independent manipulation of the 'actual' and 'perceived' soup portion was achieved using a computer-controlled peristaltic pump. This was designed to either refill or draw soup from a soup bowl in a covert manner. Immediately after lunch, self-reported hunger was influenced by the actual and not the perceived amount of soup consumed. However, two and three hours after meal termination this pattern was reversed - hunger was predicted by the perceived amount and not the actual amount. Participants who thought they had consumed the larger 500-ml portion reported significantly less hunger. This was also associated with an increase in the 'expected satiation' of the soup 24-hours later. For the first time, this manipulation exposes the independent and important contribution of memory processes to satiety. Opportunities exist to capitalise on this finding to reduce energy intake in humans
Spin and Chirality Effects in Antler-Topology Processes at High Energy Colliders
We perform a model-independent investigation of spin and chirality
correlation effects in the antler-topology processes
at high energy colliders with polarized
beams. Generally the production process
can occur not only through the -channel exchange of vector bosons,
, including the neutral Standard Model (SM) gauge bosons,
and , but also through the - and -channel exchanges of new
neutral states, and , and the -channel
exchange of new doubly-charged states, . The general set of
(non-chiral) three-point couplings of the new particles and leptons allowed in
a renormalizable quantum field theory is considered. The general spin and
chirality analysis is based on the threshold behavior of the excitation curves
for pair production in collisions with
longitudinal and transverse polarized beams, the angular distributions in the
production process and also the production-decay angular correlations. In the
first step, we present the observables in the helicity formalism. Subsequently,
we show how a set of observables can be designed for determining the spins and
chiral structures of the new particles without any model assumptions. Finally,
taking into account a typical set of approximately chiral invariant scenarios,
we demonstrate how the spin and chirality effects can be probed experimentally
at a high energy collider.Comment: 50 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables, matches version published in EPJ
Host Immune Response to Mosquito-Transmitted Chikungunya Virus Differs from That Elicited by Needle Inoculated Virus
Mosquito-borne diseases are a worldwide public health threat. Mosquitoes transmit viruses or parasites during feeding, along with salivary proteins that modulate host responses to facilitate both blood feeding and pathogen transmission. Understanding these earliest events in mosquito transmission of arboviruses by mosquitoes is essential for development and assessment of rational vaccine and treatment strategies. In this report, we compared host immune responses to chikungunya virus (CHIKV) transmission by (1) mosquito bite, or (2) by needle inoculation.Differential cytokine expression was measured using quantitative real-time RT-PCR, at sites of uninfected mosquito bites, CHIKV-infected mosquito bites, and needle-inoculated CHIKV. Both uninfected and CHIKV infected mosquitoes polarized host cytokine response to a TH2 profile. Compared to uninfected mosquito bites, expression of IL-4 induced by CHIKV-infected mosquitoes were 150 fold and 527.1 fold higher at 3 hours post feeding (hpf) and 6 hpf, respectively. A significant suppression of TH1 cytokines and TLR-3 was also observed. These significant differences may result from variation in the composition of uninfected and CHIKV-infected mosquito saliva. Needle injected CHIKV induced a robust interferon-gamma, no detectable IL-4, and a significant up-regulation of TLR-3.This report describes the first analysis of cutaneous cytokines in mice bitten by CHIKV-infected mosquitoes. Our data demonstrate contrasting immune activation in the response to CHIKV infection by mosquito bite or needle inoculation. The significant role of mosquito saliva in these earliest events of CHIKV transmission and infection are highlighted
Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for production at LHC
We calculate the complete next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections to the
production in association with a jet at the LHC. We study the impacts
of the NLO QCD radiative corrections to the integrated and differential cross
sections and the dependence of the cross section on the
factorization/renormalization scale. We present the transverse momentum
distributions of the final -, Higgs-boson and leading-jet. We find that
the NLO QCD corrections significantly modify the physical observables, and
obviously reduce the scale uncertainty of the LO cross section. The QCD
K-factors can be 1.183 and 1.180 at the and
LHC respectively, when we adopt the inclusive event selection scheme with
, and . Furthermore, we make the comparison between the two scale
choices, and , and find the scale choice seems to be more
appropriate than the fixed scale .Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure
Analytic Results for Higgs Production in Bottom Fusion
We evaluate analytically the cross section for Higgs production plus one jet
through bottom quark fusion. By considering the small pT limit we derive
expressions for the resummation coefficients governing the structure of large
logarithms, and compare these expressions with those available in the
literature.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure
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