Comparison between Actual and Perceived Height of Parents of Children with Short Stature and Controls

Objectives. We investigate whether parents complaining of their children's short stature have misconception of their height. Methods. Parents were asked to report their own height and were then measured. We compared the difference between reported and actual height of parents of children with short stature (CSS) with that of parents coming for a well child care visit (WCC) and parents of children referred to the endocrinologist without short stature (Endo). The accuracy of reported height from short (below 25%) and tall (above 75%) parents was compared. Results. The CSS fathers were shorter than WCC (P < .01) fathers. The CSS mothers were shorter than the Endo (P < .01) and WCC (P < .001) mothers. There was no difference between reported and actual height when comparing the groups based on the reason for the visit or based on the parental height. Conclusions. Parents of CSS and short parents do not have a misconception of their height

On the terms violating the custodial symmetry in multi-Higgs-doublet models

We prove that a generic multi-Higgs-doublet model (NHDM) generally must contain terms in the potential that violate the custodial symmetry. This is done by showing that the O(4) violating terms of the NHDM potential cannot be excluded by imposing a symmetry on the NHDM Lagrangian. Hence we expect higher-order corrections to necessarily introduce such terms. We also note, in the case of custodially symmetric Higgs-quark couplings, that vacuum alignment will lead to up-down mass degeneration; this is not true if the vacua are not aligned.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure. Title and abstract are modified, conclusions remain the same. Section on Yukawa couplings is extended. Published versio

Comparison of transabdominal ultrasound and electromagnetic transponders for prostate localization.

The aim of this study is to compare two methodologies of prostate localization in a large cohort of patients. Daily prostate localization using B-mode ultrasound has been performed at the Nebraska Medical Center since 2000. More recently, a technology using electromagnetic transponders implanted within the prostate was introduced into our clinic (Calypso(R)). With each technology, patients were localized initially using skin marks. Localization error distributions were determined from offsets between the initial setup positions and those determined by ultrasound or Calypso. Ultrasound localization data was summarized from 16619 imaging sessions spanning 7 years; Calypso localization data consists of 1524 fractions in 41 prostate patients treated in the course of a clinical trial at five institutions and 640 localizations from the first 16 patients treated with our clinical system. Ultrasound and Calypso patients treated between March and September 2007 at the Nebraska Medical Center were analyzed and compared, allowing a single institutional comparison of the two technologies. In this group of patients, the isocenter determined by ultrasound-based localization is on average 5.3 mm posterior to that determined by Calypso, while the systematic and random errors and PTV margins calculated from the ultrasound localizations were 3 - 4 times smaller than those calculated from the Calypso localizations. Our study finds that there are systematic differences between Calypso and ultrasound for prostate localization

An alternative to killing? Treatment of reservoir hosts to control a vector and pathogen in a susceptible species

Parasite-mediated apparent competition occurs when one species affects another through the action of a shared parasite. One way of controlling the parasite in the more susceptible host is to manage the reservoir host. Culling can cause issues in terms of ethics and biodiversity impacts, therefore we ask: can treating, as compared to culling, a wildlife host protect a target species from the shared parasite? We used Susceptible Infected Recovered (SIR) models parameterized for the tick-borne louping ill virus (LIV) system. Deer are the key hosts of the vector (Ixodes ricinus) that transmits LIV to red grouse Lagopus lagopus scoticus, causing high mortality. The model was run under scenarios of varying acaricide efficacy and deer densities. The model predicted that treating deer can increase grouse density through controlling ticks and LIV, if acaricide efficacies are high and deer densities low. Comparing deer treated with 70% acaricide efficacy with a 70% cull rate suggested that treatment may be more effective than culling if initial deer densities are high. Our results will help inform tick control policies, optimize the targeting of control methods and identify conditions where host management is most likely to succeed. Our approach is applicable to other host-vector-pathogen systems

The Dimension Six Triple Gluon Operator in Higgs+Jet Observables

Recently a lot of progress has been made towards a full classification of new physics effects in Higgs observables by means of effective dimension six operators. Specifically, Higgs production in association with a high transverse momentum jet has been suggested as a way to discriminate between operators that modify the Higgs-top coupling and operators that induce an effective Higgs-gluon coupling---a distinction that is hard to achieve with signal strength measurements alone. With this article we would like to draw attention to another source of new physics in Higgs+jet observables: the triple gluon operator $O_{3g}$ (consisting of three factors of the gluon field strength tensor). We compute the distortions of kinematic distributions in Higgs+jet production at a 14 TeV LHC due to $O_{3g}$ and compare them with the distortions due to dimension six operators involving the Higgs doublet. We find that the transverse momentum, the jet rapidity and the difference between the Higgs and jet rapidity are well suited to distinguish between the contributions from $O_{3g}$ and those from other operators, and that the size of the distortions are similar if the Wilson coefficients are of the same order as the expected bounds from other observables. We conclude that a full analysis of new physics in Higgs+jet observables must take the contributions from $O_{3g}$ into account.Comment: To appear as a Rapid Communication in Physical Review

Weinberg's 3HDM potential with spontaneous CP violation

We study the potential of Weinberg's $\mathbb{Z}_2\times\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetric three-Higgs-doublet model (3HDM). The potential is designed to accommodate CP violation in the scalar sector within a gauge theory, while at the same time allowing for natural flavour conservation. This framework allows for both explicit and spontaneous CP violation. CP can be explicitly violated when the coefficients of the potential are taken to be complex. With coefficients chosen to be real, CP can be spontaneously violated via complex vacuum expectation values (vevs). In the absence of the terms leading to the possibility of CP violation, either explicit or induced by complex vevs, the potential has two global U(1) symmetries. In this case, spontaneous symmetry breaking would in general give rise to massless states. In a realistic implementation, those terms must be included, thus preventing the existence of Goldstone bosons. A scan over parameters, imposing the existence of a neutral state at 125 GeV that is nearly CP-even shows that, in the absence of fine-tuning, the scalar spectrum contains one or two states with masses below 125 GeV that have a significant CP-odd component. These light states would have a low production rate via the Bjorken process and could thus have escaped detection at LEP. At the LHC the situation is less clear. While we do not here aim for a full phenomenological study of the light states, we point out that the $\gamma\gamma$ decay channel would be challenging to measure because of suppressed couplings to $WW$.Comment: Minor changes, some references added. Matches Phys. Rev. D versio

Photometric Variability in the Ultracool Dwarf BRI 0021-0214: Possible Evidence for Dust Clouds

We report CCD photometric monitoring of the nonemission ultracool dwarf BRI 0021-0214 (M9.5) obtained during 10 nights in 1995 November and 4 nights in 1996 August, with CCD cameras at 1 m class telescopes on the observatories of the Canary Islands. We present differential photometry of BRI 0021-0214, and we report significant variability in the I-band light curve obtained in 1995. A periodogram analysis finds a strong peak at a period of 0.84 day. This modulation appears to be transient because it is present in the 1995 data but not in the 1996 data. We also find a possible period of 0.20 day, which appears to be present in both the 1995 and 1996 datasets. However, we do not find any periodicity close to the rotation period expected from the spectroscopic rotational broadening (< 0.14 day). BRI 0021-0214 is a very inactive object, with extremely low levels of Halpha and X-ray emission. Thus, it is unlikely that magnetically induced cool spots can account for the photometric variability. The photometric variability of BRI 0021-0214 could be explained by the presence of an active meteorology that leads to inhomogeneous clouds on the surface. The lack of photometric modulation at the expected rotational period suggests that the pattern of surface features may be more complicated than previously anticipated.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 26 pages, 13 figures include