Diagrammatic Exponentiation for Products of Wilson Lines

We provide a recursive diagrammatic prescription for the exponentiation of gauge theory amplitudes involving products of Wilson lines and loops. This construction generalizes the concept of webs, originally developed for eikonal form factors and cross sections with two eikonal lines, to general soft functions in QCD and related gauge theories. Our coordinate space arguments apply to arbitrary paths for the lines.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures; minor corrections, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

NK Cells and Their Role in Disease and Cancer Treatment

Natural killer (NK) cells are a crucial part of the human immune system. They play an important role in fighting and controlling viral infections as well as killing cells that have transformed into tumors. NK cells are involved in the pathogenesis of a number of diseases and in this thesis we will explore NK cells and their role in disease and cancer treatment. First, we will discuss antibody dependent cell mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) and how deficiencies in ADCC play a role in human disease. We will also cover improvements we have made to quantifying and measuring ADCC through an improved chromium 51 assay. Then we will look at chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and the role innate immunity and impairment of NK cells function contribute to the disease. We report the results of our research on patients with CFS and compare their innate immunity to their healthy family members. Finally, we will discuss NK cells and their role in cancer treatment as well as ongoing work involving development of an “off the shelf” NK cell therapy for cancer treatment through CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing and deletion of MHC I. The last chapter provides my insights into potential research directions for the study of human NK cells

Quantitative and empirical demonstration of the Matthew effect in a study of career longevity

The Matthew effect refers to the adage written some two-thousand years ago in the Gospel of St. Matthew: "For to all those who have, more will be given." Even two millennia later, this idiom is used by sociologists to qualitatively describe the dynamics of individual progress and the interplay between status and reward. Quantitative studies of professional careers are traditionally limited by the difficulty in measuring progress and the lack of data on individual careers. However, in some professions, there are well-defined metrics that quantify career longevity, success, and prowess, which together contribute to the overall success rating for an individual employee. Here we demonstrate testable evidence of the age-old Matthew "rich get richer" effect, wherein the longevity and past success of an individual lead to a cumulative advantage in further developing his/her career. We develop an exactly solvable stochastic career progress model that quantitatively incorporates the Matthew effect, and validate our model predictions for several competitive professions. We test our model on the careers of 400,000 scientists using data from six high-impact journals, and further confirm our findings by testing the model on the careers of more than 20,000 athletes in four sports leagues. Our model highlights the importance of early career development, showing that many careers are stunted by the relative disadvantage associated with inexperience.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 4 Tables; Revisions in response to critique and suggestions of referee

Epidemiology and potential preventative measures for viral infections in children with malignancy and those undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation.

In pediatric patients with malignancy and those receiving hematopoietic stem cell transplants, bacterial and fungal infections have been the focus of fever and neutropenia episodes for decades. However, improved diagnostic capabilities have revealed viral pathogens as a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Because of limited effective antiviral therapies, prevention of viral infections is paramount. Pre-exposure and post-exposure prophylaxis and antiviral suppressive therapeutic approaches are reviewed. Additionally, infection control practices specific to this patient population are discussed. A comprehensive approach utilizing each of these can be effective at reducing the negative impact of viral infections

Treatment-related Mortality in Newly Diagnosed Pediatric Cancer: a Population-based Analysis.

Using a previously developed reliable and valid treatment-related mortality (TRM) definition, our objective was to describe the proportion of children newly diagnosed with cancer experiencing TRM and to identify risk factors for TRM in a population-based cohort. We included children with cancerincluded, 179 had TRM, 478 died of progressive disease, and 4522 were still alive. At 5 years, the cumulative incidence of TRM among the entire cohort was 3.9% (95% confidence interval (CI) 3.3-4.5%). When compared to brain tumor patients, leukemia and lymphoma patients had a significantly higher risk of TRM (hazard ratio (HR) 2.5, 95% CI: 1.6-4.0; P \u3c 0.0001). Infants were at significantly higher risk of TRM across diagnostic groups. Other factors associated with higher risks of TRM were metastatic disease (P \u3c 0.0001), diagnosis prior to 1 January 2008 (P = 0.001), hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) (P \u3c 0.0001), and relapse (P \u3c 0.0001). The 5-year cumulative incidence of TRM was 3.9% among newly diagnosed children with cancer. Infants were at higher risk of TRM across diagnostic groups. Other risk factors for TRM were leukemia or lymphoma, metastatic disease, earlier diagnosis year, HSCT, and relapse. Future work should further refine prognostic factors by specific cancer diagnosis to best understand when and how to intervene to improve outcomes