On prospects for dark matter indirect detection in the Constrained MSSM

In the framework of the Constrained MSSM we derive the most probable ranges of the diffuse gamma radiation flux from the direction of the Galactic center and of the positron flux from the Galactic halo due to neutralino dark matter annihilation. We find that, for a given halo model, and assuming flat priors, the 68% probability range of the integrated gamma-ray flux spans about one order of magnitude, while the 95% probability range can be much larger and extend over four orders of magnitude (even exceeding five for a tiny region at small neutralino mass). The detectability of the signal by GLAST depending primarily on the cuspiness of the halo profile. The positron flux, on the other hand, appears to be too small to be detectable by PAMELA, unless the boost factor is at least of order ten and/or the halo profile is extremely cuspy. We also briefly discuss the sensitivity of our results to the choice of priors

Efficient reconstruction of CMSSM parameters from LHC data - A case study

We present an efficient method of reconstructing the parameters of the Constrained MSSM from assumed future LHC data, applied both on their own right and in combination with the cosmological determination of the relic dark matter abundance. Focusing on the ATLAS SU3 benchmark point, we demonstrate that our simple Gaussian approximation can recover the values of its parameters remarkably well. We examine two popular non-informative priors and obtain very similar results, although when we use an informative, naturalness-motivated prior, we find some sizeable differences. We show that a further strong improvement in reconstructing the SU3 parameters can by achieved by applying additional information about the relic abundance at the level of WMAP accuracy, although the expected data from Planck will have only a very limited additional impact. Further external data may be required to break some remaining degeneracies. We argue that the method presented here is applicable to a wide class of low-energy effective supersymmetric models, as it does not require to deal with purely experimental issues, eg, detector performance, and has the additional advantages of computational efficiency. Furthermore, our approach allows one to distinguish the effect of the model's internal structure and of the external data on the final parameters constraints.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures - moderate revision: includes naturalness prior. Matches published versio

Cultivating Knowing and Relationships: A Grounded Theory of Quality of Death in the Nursing Home

ABSTRACT CULTIVATING KNOWING AND RELATIONSHIPS: A GROUNDED THEORY OF QUALITY OF DEATH IN THE NURSING HOME Rebecca L. Trotta, Author Sarah H. Kagan, Supervisor Understanding quality of death in the nursing home is mandated both by demographics and morality in an aging society. Nursing home residents are among the oldest and most physically and mentally frail members of our society. Today, approximately 40% of people die in nursing homes in the Untied States. Despite being a relatively commonplace event, death in the nursing home and the quality of it, are understood in limited terms. A recent dimensional analysis on palliative care in the nursing home poses “quality of death” as an outcome that could improve the experience of death in the nursing home for all involved. Quality of death assumes explicit acknowledgement of death as the event of interest, and embraces dying as an imperceptible time period that precedes it. This emergent mode grounded theory study applied qualitative event analysis techniques to prospectively verify and refine this emergent concept by delineating dimensions embedded in quality of death. Using observations, interviews, and document review, events in the lives of residents receiving palliative care were analyzed according to grounded theory methods. Through a focus on events surrounding residents’ deaths, the Grounded Theory (GT) “Cultivating Knowing and Relationships” emerged. This GT provides a process whereby certified nursing assistants (CNAs) come to understand and know their residents. These CNAs develop personal relationships with residents to whom they are initially assigned for care. As they cultivate relationships with these most frail older people who are at the end of their lives, the CNAs create reciprocity and achieve gratification in their work. The findings of this study challenge current understanding of what constitutes quality, the meaning of palliative care, and the experience of death in the nursing home. By focusing on human interaction and emotional connections, Cultivating Knowing and Relationships has the potential to transform current approaches to care of those who die in nursing homes

The effect of local optically thick regions in the long-wave emission of young circumstellar disks

Multi-wavelength observations of protoplanetary disks in the sub-millimeter continuum have measured spectral indices values which are significantly lower than what is found in the diffuse interstellar medium. Under the assumption that mm-wave emission of disks is mostly optically thin, these data have been generally interpreted as evidence for the presence of mm/cm-sized pebbles in the disk outer regions. In this work we investigate the effect of possible local optically thick regions on the mm-wave emission of protoplanetary disks without mm/cm-sized grains. A significant local increase of the optical depth in the disk can be caused by the concentration of solid particles, as predicted to result from a variety of proposed physical mechanisms. We calculate the filling factors and implied overdensities these optically thick regions would need to significantly affect the millimeter fluxes of disks, and we discuss their plausibility. We find that optically thick regions characterized by relatively small filling factors can reproduce the mm-data of young disks without requesting emission from mm/cm-sized pebbles. However, these optically thick regions require dust overdensities much larger than what predicted by any of the physical processes proposed in the literature to drive the concentration of solids. We find that only for the most massive disks it is possible and plausible to imagine that the presence of optically thick regions in the disk is responsible for the low measured values of the mm spectral index. For the majority of the disk population, optically thin emission from a population of large mm-sized grains remains the most plausible explanation. The results of this analysis further strengthen the scenario for which the measured low spectral indices of protoplanetary disks at mm wavelengths are due to the presence of large mm/cm-sized pebbles in the disk outer regions.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, A&A in pres

The impact of priors and observables on parameter inferences in the Constrained MSSM

We use a newly released version of the SuperBayeS code to analyze the impact of the choice of priors and the influence of various constraints on the statistical conclusions for the preferred values of the parameters of the Constrained MSSM. We assess the effect in a Bayesian framework and compare it with an alternative likelihood-based measure of a profile likelihood. We employ a new scanning algorithm (MultiNest) which increases the computational efficiency by a factor ~200 with respect to previously used techniques. We demonstrate that the currently available data are not yet sufficiently constraining to allow one to determine the preferred values of CMSSM parameters in a way that is completely independent of the choice of priors and statistical measures. While b->s gamma generally favors large m_0, this is in some contrast with the preference for low values of m_0 and m_1/2 that is almost entirely a consequence of a combination of prior effects and a single constraint coming from the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, which remains somewhat controversial. Using an information-theoretical measure, we find that the cosmological dark matter abundance determination provides at least 80% of the total constraining power of all available observables. Despite the remaining uncertainties, prospects for direct detection in the CMSSM remain excellent, with the spin-independent neutralino-proton cross section almost guaranteed above sigma_SI ~ 10^{-10} pb, independently of the choice of priors or statistics. Likewise, gluino and lightest Higgs discovery at the LHC remain highly encouraging. While in this work we have used the CMSSM as particle physics model, our formalism and scanning technique can be readily applied to a wider class of models with several free parameters.Comment: Minor changes, extended discussion of profile likelihood. Matches JHEP accepted version. SuperBayeS code with MultiNest algorithm available at http://www.superbayes.or

Rate-Control or Rhythm-Contol: Where do we stand?

Atrial fibrillation is the most common sustained rhythm disturbance and its prevalence is increasing worldwide due to the progressive aging of the population. Current guidelines clearly depict the gold standard management of acute symptomatic atrial fibrillation but the best-long term approach for first or recurrent atrial fibrillation is still debated with regard to quality of life, risk of new hospitalizations, and possible disabling complications, such as thromboembolic stroke, major bleeds and death. Some authors propose that regaining sinus rhythm in all cases, thus re-establishing a physiologic cardiac function not requiring a prolonged antithrombotic therapy, avoids the threat of intracranial or extracranial haemorrhages due to Vitamin K antagonists or aspirin. On the contrary, advocates of a rate control approach with an accurate antithrombotic prophylaxis propose that such a strategy may avoid the risk of cardiovascular and non cardiovascular side effects related to antiarrhythmic drugs. This review aims to explore the state of our knowledge in order to summarize evidences and issues that need to be furthermore clarified

Pippi - painless parsing, post-processing and plotting of posterior and likelihood samples

Interpreting samples from likelihood or posterior probability density functions is rarely as straightforward as it seems it should be. Producing publication-quality graphics of these distributions is often similarly painful. In this short note I describe pippi, a simple, publicly-available package for parsing and post-processing such samples, as well as generating high-quality PDF graphics of the results. Pippi is easily and extensively configurable and customisable, both in its options for parsing and post-processing samples, and in the visual aspects of the figures it produces. I illustrate some of these using an existing supersymmetric global fit, performed in the context of a gamma-ray search for dark matter. Pippi can be downloaded and followed at http://github.com/patscott/pippi .Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. v3: Updated for pippi 2.0. New features include hdf5 support, out-of-core processing, inline post-processing with arbitrary Python code in the input file, and observable-specific data cuts. Pippi can be downloaded from http://github.com/patscott/pipp

A modified proximity approach in the fusion of heavy-ions

By using a suitable set of the surface energy coefficient, nuclear radius, and universal function, the original proximity potential 1977 is modified. The overestimate of the data by 4 % reported in the literature is significantly reduced. Our modified proximity potential reproduces the experimental data nicely compared to its older versions.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, Chin. Phys. lett.(2010) in pres

Testing the theory of grain growth and fragmentation by millimeter observations of protoplanetary disks

Context. Observations at sub-millimeter and mm wavelengths will in the near future be able to resolve the radial dependence of the mm spectral slope in circumstellar disks with a resolution of around a few AU at the distance of the closest star-forming regions. Aims. We aim to constrain physical models of grain growth and fragmentation by a large sample of (sub-)mm observations of disks around pre-main sequence stars in the Taurus-Auriga and Ophiuchus star-forming regions. Methods. State-of-the-art coagulation/fragmentation and disk-structure codes are coupled to produce steady-state grain size distributions and to predict the spectral slopes at (sub-)mm wavelengths. Results. This work presents the first calculations predicting the mm spectral slope based on a physical model of grain growth. Our models can quite naturally reproduce the observed mm-slopes, but a simultaneous match to the observed range of flux levels can only be reached by a reduction of the dust mass by a factor of a few up to about 30 while keeping the gas mass of the disk the same. This dust reduction can either be due to radial drift at a reduced rate or during an earlier evolutionary time (otherwise the predicted fluxes would become too low) or due to efficient conversion of dust into larger, unseen bodies.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A Letters. 5 pages, 3 figure

Bluetooth Mesh Technology for the Joint Monitoring of Indoor Environments and Mobile Device Localization: A Performance Study

Bluetooth Mesh is a recent SIG standard enabling the deployment of multi-hop Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) over Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication links. The standard introduces many novel and interesting features in the Internet of Things (IoT) domain, such as the seamless integration among sensors and mobile and wearable devices, and the support for a wide range of different IoT application profiles. At the same time, fine-grained assessments of the performance are still needed to understand the potential of the technology. In this paper, we investigate the usage of Bluetooth Mesh solutions for the joint monitoring of indoor spaces and humans. Through the deployment of a test-bed, we evaluate the performance of Bluetooth Mesh WSNs under varying traffic loads and network sizes. In addition, by exploiting the short-range, multi-hop communications, we propose a procedure for the indoor localization of mobile devices and evaluate its accuracy. The results demonstrate that the technology supports reasonable delivery ratio under high traffic loads, however the network and localization performance sharply decreases when increasing the number of hops between the source and destination nodes