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Levothyroxine effects on depressive symptoms and limbic glucose metabolism in bipolar disorder: a randomized, placebo-controlled positron emission tomography study.
Adding supraphysiologic doses of levothyroxine (L-T4) to standard treatment for bipolar depression shows promise, but the mechanisms underlying clinical improvement are unknown. In a previous pilot study, L-T4 treatment reduced depression scores and activity within the anterior limbic network. Here we extended this work in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of patients with bipolar depression. Cerebral glucose metabolism was assessed with positron emission tomography and [F-18]fluorodeoxyglucose before and after 6 weeks of treatment with L-T4 (n=15) or placebo (n=10) in 12 volumes of interest (VOIs): the bilateral thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, dorsal striatum and ventral striatum, and midline cerebellar vermis and subgenual cingulate cortex. Radioactivity in the VOIs, normalized to whole-brain radioactivity was taken as a surrogate index of glucose metabolism, and markers of thyroid function were assayed. Changes in brain activity and their association with clinical response were assessed using statistical parametric mapping. Adjunctive L-T4 treatment produced a significant decline in depression scores during the 6-week treatment. In patients treated with L-T4, we found a significant decrease in regional activity at P<0.05 after Bonferroni correction in the left thalamus, right amygdala, right hippocampus, left ventral striatum and the right dorsal striatum. Decreases in the left thalamus, left dorsal striatum and the subgenual cingulate were correlated with a reduction in depression scores (P<0.05 after Bonferroni correction). Placebo treatment was associated with a significant decrease in activity only in the right amygdala, and no region had a change in activity that was correlated with change in depression scores. The groups differed significantly in the relationship between the changes in depression scores and in activity in the thalamus bilaterally and the left ventral striatum. The findings provide evidence that administration of supraphysiologic thyroid hormone improves depressive symptoms in patients with bipolar disorder by modulating function in components of the anterior limbic network
Exploring CP Violation with B_d -> D K_s Decays
We (re)examine CP violation in the decays B_d -> D K_s, where D represents
D^0, D(bar), or one of their excited states. The quantity can be extracted from the time-dependent rates for and , where the decays to
. If one considers a non-CP-eigenstate hadronic final state to
which both D(bar) and D^0 can decay (e.g. ), then one can obtain two
of the angles of the unitarity triangle from measurements of the time-dependent
rates for and .
There are no penguin contributions to these decays, so all measurements are
theoretically clean.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX, no figure
Transition Temperature of a Uniform Imperfect Bose Gas
We calculate the transition temperature of a uniform dilute Bose gas with
repulsive interactions, using a known virial expansion of the equation of
state. We find that the transition temperature is higher than that of an ideal
gas, with a fractional increase K_0(na^3)^{1/6}, where n is the density and a
is the S-wave scattering length, and K_0 is a constant given in the paper. This
disagrees with all existing results, analytical or numerical. It agrees exactly
in magnitude with a result due to Toyoda, but has the opposite sign.Comment: Email correspondence to [email protected] ; 2 pages using REVTe
Number phase uncertainty relations: verification by homodyning
It is shown that fundamental uncertainty relations between photon number and
canonical phase of a single-mode optical field can be verified by means of
balanced homodyne measurement. All the relevant quantities can be sampled
directly from the measured phase-dependent quadrature distribution.Comment: 1 Ps figure (divided in 3 subfigures) using REVTE
Weak Coupling Phase from Decays of Charged B Mesons to and
The theory of violation based on phases in weak couplings in the
Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix requires the phase (in a standard convention) to be nonzero. A measurement of
is proposed based on charged meson decay rates to ,
, , and the charge-conjugate states. The corresponding
branching ratios are expected to be of the order of . (submitted to
Physical Review Letters)Comment: LaTeX, 8 pages, 2 figures (not included, available upon request),
TECHNION-PH-94-7, EFI-94-14, UdeM-LPN-TH-94-19
B-Decay CP Asymmetries, Discrete Ambiguities and New Physics
The first measurements of CP violation in the system will likely probe
, and . Assuming that the CP angles
, and are the interior angles of the unitarity
triangle, these measurements determine the angle set
except for a twofold discrete ambiguity. If one allows for the possibility of
new physics, the presence of this discrete ambiguity can make its discovery
difficult: if only one of the two candidate solutions is consistent with
constraints from other measurements in the and systems, one is not sure
whether new physics is present or not. We review the methods used to resolve
the discrete ambiguity and show that, even in the presence of new physics, they
can usually be used to uncover this new physics. There are some exceptions,
which we describe in detail. We systematically scan the parameter space and
present examples of values of and the new-physics
parameters which correspond to all possibilities. Finally, we show that if one
relaxes the assumption that the bag parameters \BBd and \BK are positive,
one can no longer definitively establish the presence of new physics.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX, 1 figures, presentation substantially reworked,
physics conclusions unchanged. This version will be published in Phys. Rev.
Crossover from hc/e to hc/2e current oscillations in rings of s-wave superconductors
We analyze the crossover from an hc/e-periodicity of the persistent current
in flux threaded clean metallic rings towards an hc/2e-flux periodicity of the
supercurrent upon entering the superconducting state. On the basis of a model
calculation for a one-dimensional ring we identify the underlying mechanism,
which balances the hc/e versus the hc/2e periodic components of the current
density. When the ring circumference exceeds the coherence length of the
superconductor, the flux dependence is strictly hc/2e periodic. Further, we
develop a multi-channel model which reduces the Bogoliubov - de Gennes
equations to a one-dimensional differential equation for the radial component
of the wave function. The discretization of this differential equation
introduces transverse channels, whose number scales with the thickness of the
ring. The periodicity crossover is analyzed close the critical temperature
Single Production in Collisions at the NLC
Single production in collisions at the NLC can be used to
probe the Majorana nature of the heavy neutrinos present in the Left-Right
Symmetric Model below the kinematic threshold for their direct production. For
colliders in the TeV range, typical cross sections of order
are obtained, depending on the specific choice of model parameters.
Backgrounds arising from Standard Model processes are shown to be small. This
analysis greatly extends the kinematic range of previous studies wherein the
production of an on-shell, like-sign pair of 's at the NLC was considered.Comment: 13pp, 3 figures (available on request), LaTex, SLAC-PUB-647
Hypercharge and baryon minus lepton number in E6
We study assignments of the hypercharge and baryon minus lepton number for
particles in the grand unification model. It is shown that there are
three assignments of hypercharge and three assignments of baryon minus lepton
number which are consistent with the Standard Model. Their explicit expressions
and detailed properties are given. In particular, we show that the
symmetry in cannot be orthogonal to the symmetry. Based on
these investigations, we propose an alternative SU(5) grand unification model.Comment: 16 pages, JHEP3.cls, To appear in JHE
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