Cardiovascular Risk Factors In Middle-Aged Men In 24 Towns

Abstract included in text

Cardiovascular Risk Factors In Middle-Aged Men In 24 Towns

Abstract included in text

Electrolyte measurements differ between point-of-care and reference analysers in dogs with hypoadrenocorticism

Introduction: Dogs treated for hypoadrenocorticism are monitored through analysis of their blood electrolytes. This is routinely performed with point‐of‐care analysers and doses of medications are adjusted based on the results. Objectives: To investigate the performance of two point‐of‐care analysers (IDEXX Catalyst Dx and IDEXX VetStat) against a reference laboratory method for the measurement of blood sodium, potassium and chloride concentrations, as well as sodium: potassium ratios, in dogs diagnosed with and treated for hypoadrenocorticism. Methods: Forty‐eight dogs were enrolled into a prospective cross‐sectional study. Paired blood samples were taken and tested on two point‐of‐care analysers and at a reference laboratory. Statistical analysis was then performed with Bland‐Altman analysis and Passing‐Bablok regression. The clinical effects of inaccurate electrolyte analysis were investigated. Results: In total, 329 samples were tested on the Catalyst analyser, while another 72 samples were tested on the VetStat. Passing‐Bablok regression identified both proportional and constant bias for some analytes. There was poor agreement between sodium and chloride concentrations on both analysers. Both analysers tended to give higher results than the reference method for all analytes, except for potassium when measured on the VetStat. Clinical Significance: There are inherent differences between the electrolyte concentrations measured by these two point‐of‐care analysers and reference laboratory methods in dogs with hypoadrenocorticism

Implications of the 125 GeV Higgs boson for scalar dark matter and for the CMSSM phenomenology

We study phenomenological implications of the ATLAS and CMS hint of a $125\pm 1$ GeV Higgs boson for the singlet, and singlet plus doublet non-supersymmetric dark matter models, and for the phenomenology of the CMSSM. We show that in scalar dark matter models the vacuum stability bound on Higgs boson mass is lower than in the standard model and the 125 GeV Higgs boson is consistent with the models being valid up the GUT or Planck scale. We perform a detailed study of the full CMSSM parameter space keeping the Higgs boson mass fixed to $125\pm 1$ GeV, and study in detail the freeze-out processes that imply the observed amount of dark matter. After imposing all phenomenological constraints except for the muon $(g-2)_\mu,$ we show that the CMSSM parameter space is divided into well separated regions with distinctive but in general heavy sparticle mass spectra. Imposing the $(g-2)_\mu$ constraint introduces severe tension between the high SUSY scale and the experimental measurements -- only the slepton co-annihilation region survives with potentially testable sparticle masses at the LHC. In the latter case the spin-independent DM-nucleon scattering cross section is predicted to be below detectable limit at the XENON100 but might be of measurable magnitude in the general case of light dark matter with large bino-higgsino mixing and unobservably large scalar masses.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. v3: same as published versio

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

Optical properties of LaNiO3 films tuned from compressive to tensile strain

Materials with strong electronic correlations host remarkable -- and technologically relevant -- phenomena such as magnetism, superconductivity and metal-insulator transitions. Harnessing and controlling these effects is a major challenge, on which key advances are being made through lattice and strain engineering in thin films and heterostructures, leveraging the complex interplay between electronic and structural degrees of freedom. Here we show that the electronic structure of LaNiO3 can be tuned by means of lattice engineering. We use different substrates to induce compressive and tensile biaxial epitaxial strain in LaNiO3 thin films. Our measurements reveal systematic changes of the optical spectrum as a function of strain and, notably, an increase of the low-frequency free carrier weight as tensile strain is applied. Using density functional theory (DFT) calculations, we show that this apparently counter-intuitive effect is due to a change of orientation of the oxygen octahedra.The calculations also reveal drastic changes of the electronic structure under strain, associated with a Fermi surface Lifshitz transition. We provide an online applet to explore these effects. The experimental value of integrated spectral weight below 2 eV is significantly (up to a factor of 3) smaller than the DFT results, indicating a transfer of spectral weight from the infrared to energies above 2 eV. The suppression of the free carrier weight and the transfer of spectral weight to high energies together indicate a correlation-induced band narrowing and free carrier mass enhancement due to electronic correlations. Our findings provide a promising avenue for the tuning and control of quantum materials employing lattice engineering.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

MFV Reductions of MSSM Parameter Space

The 100+ free parameters of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) make it computationally difficult to compare systematically with data, motivating the study of specific parameter reductions such as the cMSSM and pMSSM. Here we instead study the reductions of parameter space implied by using minimal flavour violation (MFV) to organise the R-parity conserving MSSM, with a view towards systematically building in constraints on flavour-violating physics. Within this framework the space of parameters is reduced by expanding soft supersymmetry-breaking terms in powers of the Cabibbo angle, leading to a 24-, 30- or 42-parameter framework (which we call MSSM-24, MSSM-30, and MSSM-42 respectively), depending on the order kept in the expansion. We provide a Bayesian global fit to data of the MSSM-30 parameter set to show that this is manageable with current tools. We compare the MFV reductions to the 19-parameter pMSSM choice and show that the pMSSM is not contained as a subset. The MSSM-30 analysis favours a relatively lighter TeV-scale pseudoscalar Higgs boson and $\tan \beta \sim 10$ with multi-TeV sparticles.Comment: 2nd version, minor comments and references added, accepted for publication in JHE

Probing natural SUSY from stop pair production at the LHC

We consider the natural supersymmetry scenario in the framework of the R-parity conserving minimal supersymmetric standard model (called natural MSSM) and examine the observability of stop pair production at the LHC. We first scan the parameters of this scenario under various experimental constraints, including the SM-like Higgs boson mass, the indirect limits from precision electroweak data and B-decays. Then in the allowed parameter space we study the stop pair production at the LHC followed by the stop decay into a top quark plus a lightest neutralino or into a bottom quark plus a chargino. From detailed Monte Carlo simulations of the signals and backgrounds, we find the two decay modes are complementary to each other in probing the stop pair production, and the LHC with $\sqrt{s}= 14$ TeV and 100 $fb^{-1}$ luminosity is capable of discovering the stop predicted in natural MSSM up to 450 GeV. If no excess events were observed at the LHC, the 95% C.L. exclusion limits of the stop masses can reach around 537 GeV.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, version accepted by JHE