Optic nerve sheath meningioma: a case report

A case of a 75-year old male with right-sided exopthalmos is presented. Outside proptosis of the right eye was initially observed 6 years ago. Opthalmological and endocrinological clinical examination as well as laboratory tests revealed no pathology from optic nerve disc, optic bulb and thyroid related hormones. MRI study demonstrated an optic nerve meningioma. The key imaging findings and the differential diagnosis were discussed in this present paper

The impact of XENON100 and the LHC on Supersymmetric Dark Matter

The effect of 2010 and 2011 LHC data are discussed in connection to the potential for the direct detection of supersymmetric dark matter. The impact of the recent XENON100 results are contrasted to these predictions.Comment: 14 pages, 23 figures, To be published in the Proceedings of the 7th DSU Conference, Beijing Chin

An Alternative Yukawa Unified SUSY Scenario

Supersymmetric SO(10) Grand Unified Theories with Yukawa unification represent an appealing possibility for physics beyond the Standard Model. However Yukawa unification is made difficult by large threshold corrections to the bottom mass. Generally one is led to consider models where the sfermion masses are large in order to suppress these corrections. Here we present another possibility, in which the top and bottom GUT scale Yukawa couplings are equal to a component of the charged lepton Yukawa matrix at the GUT scale in a basis where this matrix is not diagonal. Physically, this weak eigenstate Yukawa unification scenario corresponds to the case where the charged leptons that are in the 16 of SO(10) containing the top and bottom quarks mix with their counterparts in another SO(10) multiplet. Diagonalizing the resulting Yukawa matrix introduces mixings in the neutrino sector. Specifically we find that for a large region of parameter space with relatively light sparticles, and which has not been ruled out by current LHC or other data, the mixing induced in the neutrino sector is such that $sin^2 2\Theta_{23} \approx 1$, in agreement with data. The phenomenological implications are analyzed in some detail.Comment: 32 pages, 22 Figure

Dark Matter and Higgs Mass in the CMSSM with Yukawa Quasi-Unification

We present an updated analysis of the constrained minimal supersymmetric standard model with mu>0 supplemented by an `asymptotic' Yukawa coupling quasi-unification condition, which allows an acceptable b-quark mass. Imposing constraints from the cold dark matter abundance in the universe, B physics, the muon anomalous magnetic moment, and the mass m_h of the lightest neutral CP-even Higgs boson, we find that the lightest neutralino cannot act as a cold dark matter candidate. This is mainly because the upper bound on the lightest neutralino relic abundance from cold dark matter considerations, despite the fact that this abundance is drastically reduced by neutralino-stau coannihilations, is incompatible with the recent data on the branching ratio of B_s --> mu^+ mu^-. Allowing for a different particle, such as the axino or the gravitino, to be the lightest supersymmetric particle and, thus, constitute the cold dark matter in the universe, we find that the predicted m_h's in our model favor the range (119-126) GeV.Comment: 13 pages including 4 figures and 1 table, talk given by G. Lazarides at the 7th International Workshop on the Dark Side of the Universe, KITPC, Beijing, China, September 26-30, 2011 (to appear in the proceedings