Minimal Potentials with Very Many Minima

We demonstrate, by construction, that simple renormalizable matrix potentials with S_N, as opposed to O(N), symmetry can exhibit an exponentially large number of inequivalent deep local minima.Comment: LaTeX, 9 pages, 2 figures. Additional applications and references adde

Risk-adapted FDG-PET/CT-based follow-up in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma after first-line therapy

Background: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of 2-[fluorine-18]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose-positron emission tomography/computed tomography (FDG-PET/CT) during follow-up of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) being in complete remission or unconfirmed complete remission after first-line therapy. Patients and methods: DLBCL patients receiving FDG-PET/CT during follow-up were analyzed retrospectively. Confirmatory biopsy was mandatory in cases of suspected disease recurrence. Results: Seventy-five patients were analyzed and 23 (30%) had disease recurrence. The positive predictive value (PPV) of FDG-PET/CT was 0.85. Patients >60 years [P = 0.036, hazard ratio (HR) = 3.82, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.02-7.77] and patients with symptoms indicative of a relapse (P = 0.015; HR = 4.1; 95% CI 1.20-14.03) had a significantly higher risk for relapse. A risk score on the basis of signs of relapse, age >60 years, or a combination of these factors identified patients at high risk for recurrence (P = 0.041). Conclusions: FDG-PET/CT detects recurrent DLBCL after first-line therapy with high PPV. However, it should not be used routinely and if only in selected high-risk patients to reduce radiation burden and costs. On the basis of our retrospective data, FDG-PET/CT during follow-up is indicated for patients 60 years with and without clinical signs of relaps

A Gaussian Sum-Rules Analysis of Scalar Glueballs

Although marginally more complicated than the traditional Laplace sum-rules, Gaussian sum-rules have the advantage of being able to probe excited and ground states with similar sensitivity. Gaussian sum-rule analysis techniques are applied to the problematic scalar glueball channel to determine masses, widths and relative resonance strengths of low-lying scalar glueball states contributing to the hadronic spectral function. A feature of our analysis is the inclusion of instanton contributions to the scalar gluonic correlation function. Compared with the next-to-leading Gaussian sum-rule, the analysis of the lowest-weighted sum-rule (which contains a large scale-independent contribution from the low energy theorem) is shown to be unreliable because of instability under QCD uncertainties. However, the presence of instanton effects leads to approximately consistent mass scales in the lowest weighted and next-lowest weighted sum-rules. The analysis of the next-to-leading sum-rule demonstrates that a single narrow resonance model does not provide an adequate description of the hadronic spectral function. Consequently, we consider a wide variety of phenomenological models which distribute resonance strength over a broad region---some of which lead to excellent agreement between the theoretical prediction and phenomenological models. Including QCD uncertainties, our results indicate that the hadronic contributions to the spectral function stem from a pair of resonances with masses in the range 0.8--1.6 GeV, with the lighter of the two potentially having a large width.Comment: latex2e, 22 pages, 5 figures. Analysis extended in revised versio

Near-Maximal Mixing of Scalar Gluonium and Quark Mesons: A Gaussian Sum-Rule Analysis

Gaussian QCD sum-rules are ideally suited to the study of mixed states of gluonium (glueballs) and quark ($q\bar q$) mesons because of their capability to resolve widely-separated states of comparable strength. The analysis of the Gaussian QCD sum-rules (GSRs) for all possible two-point correlation functions of gluonic and non-strange ($I=0$) quark scalar ($J^{PC}=0^{++}$) currents is discussed. For the non-diagonal sum-rule of gluonic and $q\bar q$ currents we show that perturbative and gluon condensate contributions are chirally suppressed compared to non-perturbative effects of the quark condensate, mixed condensate, and instantons, implying that the mixing of quark mesons and gluonium is of non-perturbative origin. The independent predictions of the masses and relative coupling strengths from the non-diagonal and the two diagonal GSRs are remarkably consistent with a scenario of two states with masses of approximately 1 GeV and 1.4 GeV that couple to significant mixtures of quark and gluonic currents. The mixing is nearly maximal with the heavier mixed state having a slightly larger coupling to gluonic currents than the lighter state.Comment: Updated version contains extended analysis and revised analysis methods. 21 pages, 14 figure

A haplotype block downstream of plasminogen is associated with chronic and aggressive periodontitis

Aim The intronic variant rs4252120 in the plasminogen gene (PLG) is known to be associated with aggressive periodontitis (AgP) and atherosclerosis. Here, we examined the chromosomal region spanning PLG for associations with both chronic periodontitis (CP) and AgP. Materials and Methods The association of PLG candidate rs4252120 was tested in a German case–control sample of 1,419 CP cases using the genotyping assay hCV11225947 and 4,562 controls, genotyped with HumanOmni BeadChips. The German and Dutch sample of AgP cases (N = 851) and controls (N = 6,836) were genotyped with HumanOmni BeadChips. The North American CP sample (N = 2,681 cases, 1,823 controls) was previously genotyped on the Genome‐Wide Human SNP Array 6.0. Genotypes were imputed (software Impute v2), and association tests were performed using an additive genetic model adjusting for sex and smoking. Results Rs4252120 was not associated with CP. However, a haplotype block downstream of PLG and not in linkage disequilibrium with rs4252120 (r2 = .08) was associated with both AgP (rs1247559; p = .002, odds ratio [OR] = 1.33) and CP (p = .02, OR = 1.15). That locus was also significantly associated with PLG expression in osteoblasts (p = 6.9 × 10−5). Conclusions Our findings support a role of genetic variants in PLG in the aetiology of periodontitis