417 research outputs found
Gaugino Anomaly Mediated SUSY Breaking: phenomenology and prospects for the LHC
We examine the supersymmetry phenomenology of a novel scenario of
supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking which we call Gaugino Anomaly Mediation, or
inoAMSB. This is suggested by recent work on the phenomenology of flux
compactified type IIB string theory. The essential features of this scenario
are that the gaugino masses are of the anomaly-mediated SUSY breaking (AMSB)
form, while scalar and trilinear soft SUSY breaking terms are highly
suppressed. Renormalization group effects yield an allowable sparticle mass
spectrum, while at the same time avoiding charged LSPs; the latter are common
in models with negligible soft scalar masses, such as no-scale or gaugino
mediation models. Since scalar and trilinear soft terms are highly suppressed,
the SUSY induced flavor and CP-violating processes are also suppressed. The
lightest SUSY particle is the neutral wino, while the heaviest is the gluino.
In this model, there should be a strong multi-jet +etmiss signal from squark
pair production at the LHC. We find a 100 fb^{-1} reach of LHC out to
m_{3/2}\sim 118 TeV, corresponding to a gluino mass of \sim 2.6 TeV. A double
mass edge from the opposite-sign/same flavor dilepton invariant mass
distribution should be visible at LHC; this, along with the presence of short--
but visible-- highly ionizing tracks from quasi-stable charginos, should
provide a smoking gun signature for inoAMSB.Comment: 30 pages including 14 .eps figure
Higgs production in CP-violating supersymmetric cascade decays: probing the `open hole' at the Large Hadron Collider
A benchmark CP-violating supersymmetric scenario (known as 'CPX-scenario' in
the literature) is studied in the context of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
It is shown that the LHC, with low to moderate accumulated luminosity, will be
able to probe the existing `hole' in the - plane, which
cannot be ruled out by the LEP data. We explore the parameter space with
cascade decay of third generation squarks and gluino with CP-violating decay
branching fractions. We propose a multi-channel analysis to probe this
parameter space some of which are background free at an integrated luminosity
of 5-10 fb. Specially, multi-lepton final states (3\l,\, 4\l and like
sign di-lepton) are almost background free and have reach for the
corresponding signals with very early data of LHC for both 14 TeV and 7 TeV
center of mass energy.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, references added as in the journal versio
Carbogen breathing increases prostate cancer oxygenation: a translational MRI study in murine xenografts and humans
Hypoxia has been associated with poor local tumour control and relapse in many cancer sites, including carcinoma of the prostate. This translational study tests whether breathing carbogen gas improves the oxygenation of human prostate carcinoma xenografts in mice and in human patients with prostate cancer. A total of 23 DU145 tumour-bearing mice, 17 PC3 tumour-bearing mice and 17 human patients with prostate cancer were investigated. Intrinsic susceptibility-weighted MRI was performed before and during a period of carbogen gas breathing. Quantitative R2* pixel maps were produced for each tumour and at each time point and changes in R2* induced by carbogen were determined. There was a mean reduction in R2* of 6.4% (P=0.003) for DU145 xenografts and 5.8% (P=0.007) for PC3 xenografts. In all, 14 human subjects were evaluable; 64% had reductions in tumour R2* during carbogen inhalation with a mean reduction of 21.6% (P=0.0005). Decreases in prostate tumour R2* in both animal models and human patients as a result of carbogen inhalation suggests the presence of significant hypoxia. The finding that carbogen gas breathing improves prostate tumour oxygenation provides a rationale for testing the radiosensitising effects of combining carbogen gas breathing with radiotherapy in prostate cancer patients
Twenty Years of SUGRA
A brief review is given of the developments of mSUGRA and its extensions
since the formulation of these models in 1982. Future directions and prospects
are also discussed.Comment: Invited talk at the International Conference BEYOND-2003, Schloss
Ringberg, Germany, June 10-14, 2003; 21 pages, Late
Multifocal sclerosing angiomatoid nodular transformation of the spleen: a case report and review of literature
Quantitative imaging of concentrated suspensions under flow
We review recent advances in imaging the flow of concentrated suspensions,
focussing on the use of confocal microscopy to obtain time-resolved information
on the single-particle level in these systems. After motivating the need for
quantitative (confocal) imaging in suspension rheology, we briefly describe the
particles, sample environments, microscopy tools and analysis algorithms needed
to perform this kind of experiments. The second part of the review focusses on
microscopic aspects of the flow of concentrated model hard-sphere-like
suspensions, and the relation to non-linear rheological phenomena such as
yielding, shear localization, wall slip and shear-induced ordering. Both
Brownian and non-Brownian systems will be described. We show how quantitative
imaging can improve our understanding of the connection between microscopic
dynamics and bulk flow.Comment: Review on imaging hard-sphere suspensions, incl summary of
methodology. Submitted for special volume 'High Solid Dispersions' ed. M.
Cloitre, Vol. xx of 'Advances and Polymer Science' (Springer, Berlin, 2009);
22 pages, 16 fig
The design and implementation of a study to investigate the effectiveness of community vs hospital eye service follow-up for patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration with quiescent disease
IntroductionStandard treatment for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) is intravitreal injections of anti-VEGF drugs. Following multiple injections, nAMD lesions often become quiescent but there is a high risk of reactivation, and regular review by hospital ophthalmologists is the norm. The present trial examines the feasibility of community optometrists making lesion reactivation decisions.MethodsThe Effectiveness of Community vs Hospital Eye Service (ECHoES) trial is a virtual trial; lesion reactivation decisions were made about vignettes that comprised clinical data, colour fundus photographs, and optical coherence tomograms displayed on a web-based platform. Participants were either hospital ophthalmologists or community optometrists. All participants were provided with webinar training on the disease, its management, and assessment of the retinal imaging outputs. In a balanced design, 96 participants each assessed 42 vignettes; a total of 288 vignettes were assessed seven times by each professional group.The primary outcome is a participant's judgement of lesion reactivation compared with a reference standard. Secondary outcomes are the frequency of sight threatening errors; judgements about specific lesion components; participant-rated confidence in their decisions about the primary outcome; cost effectiveness of follow-up by optometrists rather than ophthalmologists.DiscussionThis trial addresses an important question for the NHS, namely whether, with appropriate training, community optometrists can make retreatment decisions for patients with nAMD to the same standard as hospital ophthalmologists. The trial employed a novel approach as participation was entirely through a web-based application; the trial required very few resources compared with those that would have been needed for a conventional randomised controlled clinical trial
A novel family of diversified immunoregulatory receptors in teleosts is homologous to both mammalian Fc receptors and molecules encoded within the leukocyte receptor complex
Three novel and closely related leukocyte immune-type receptors (IpLITR) have been identified in channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus). These receptors belong to a large polymorphic and polygenic subset of the Ig superfamily with members located on at least three independently segregating loci. Like mammalian and avian innate immune regulatory receptors, IpLITRs have both putative inhibitory and stimulatory forms, with multiple types coexpressed in various lymphoid tissues and clonal leukocyte cell lines. IpLITRs have an unusual and novel relationship to mammalian and avian innate immune receptors: the membrane distal Ig domains of an individual IpLITR are related to fragment crystallizable receptors (FcRs) and FcR-like proteins, whereas the membrane proximal Ig domains are related to several leukocyte receptor complex encoded receptors. This unique composition of Ig domains within individual receptors supports the hypothesis that functionally and genomically distinct immune receptor families found in tetrapods may have evolved from such ancestral genes by duplication and recombination events. Furthermore, the discovery of a large heterogeneous family of immunoregulatory receptors in teleosts, reminiscent of amphibian, avian, and mammalian Ig-like receptors, suggests that complex innate immune receptor networks have been conserved during vertebrate evolution. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: Supplementary material is available for this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00251-006-0134-1 and is accessible for authorized users
Higgs boson masses and mixings in the complex MSSM with two-loop top-Yukawa-coupling corrections
- …