Higgs boson mass bounds in the presence of a heavy fourth quark family

We present Higgs boson mass bounds in a lattice regularization allowing thus for non-perturbative investigations. In particular, we employ a lattice modified chiral invariant Higgs-Yukawa model using the overlap operator. We show results for the upper and lower Higgs boson mass bounds in the presence of a heavy mass-degenerate quark doublet with masses ranging up to 700 GeV. We perform infinite volume extrapolations in most cases, and examine several values of the lattice cutoff. Furthermore, we argue that the lower Higgs boson mass bound is stable with respect to the addition of higher dimensional operators to the scalar field potential. Our results have severe consequences for the phenomenology of a fourth generation of quarks if a light Higgs boson is discovered at the LHC

Diagnosis and classification of pediatric acute appendicitis by artificial intelligence methods: An investigator-independent approach

Acute appendicitis is one of the major causes for emergency surgery in childhood and adolescence. Appendectomy is still the therapy of choice, but conservative strategies are increasingly being studied for uncomplicated inflammation. Diagnosis of acute appendicitis remains challenging, especially due to the frequently unspecific clinical picture. Inflammatory blood markers and imaging methods like ultrasound are limited as they have to be interpreted by experts and still do not offer sufficient diagnostic certainty. This study presents a method for automatic diagnosis of appendicitis as well as the differentiation between complicated and uncomplicated inflammation using values/parameters which are routinely and unbiasedly obtained for each patient with suspected appendicitis. We analyzed full blood counts, c-reactive protein (CRP) and appendiceal diameters in ultrasound investigations corresponding to children and adolescents aged 0–17 years from a hospital based population in Berlin, Germany. A total of 590 patients (473 patients with appendicitis in histopathology and 117 with negative histopathological findings) were analyzed retrospectively with modern algorithms from machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). The discovery of informative parameters (biomarker signatures) and training of the classification model were done with a maximum of 35% of the patients. The remaining minimum 65% of patients were used for validation. At clinical relevant cut-off points the accuracy of the biomarker signature for diagnosis of appendicitis was 90% (93% sensitivity, 67% specificity), while the accuracy to correctly identify complicated inflammation was 51% (95% sensitivity, 33% specificity) on validation data. Such a test would be capable to prevent two out of three patients without appendicitis from useless surgery as well as one out of three patients with uncomplicated appendicitis. The presented method has the potential to change today’s therapeutic approach for appendicitis and demonstrates the capability of algorithms from AI and ML to significantly improve diagnostics even based on routine diagnostic parameters

Transcriptomic responses of Solanum dulcamara to natural and simulated herbivory

Plants are attacked by diverse herbivores and respond with manifold defence responses. To study transcriptional and other early regulation events of these plant responses, herbivory is often simulated to standardize the temporal and spatial dynamics that vary tremendously for natural herbivory. Yet, to what extent such simulations of herbivory are able to elicit the same plant response as real herbivory remains largely undetermined. We examined the transcriptional response of a wild model plant to herbivory by lepidopteran larvae and to a commonly used herbivory simulation by applying the larvae's oral secretions to standardized wounds. We designed a microarray for Solanum dulcamara and showed that the transcriptional responses to real and to simulated herbivory by Spodoptera exigua overlapped moderately by about 40%. Interestingly, certain responses were mimicked better than others; 60% of the genes upregulated but not even a quarter of the genes downregulated by herbivory were similarly affected by application of oral secretions to wounds. While the regulation of genes involved in signalling, defence and water stress was mimicked well by the simulated herbivory, most of the genes related to photosynthesis, carbohydrate- and lipid metabolism were exclusively regulated by real herbivory. Thus, wounding and application of oral secretions decently mimics herbivory-induced defence responses but likely not the reallocation of primary metabolites induced by real herbivory

The Higgs boson resonance from a chiral Higgs-Yukawa model on the lattice

Das Higgs-Teilchen ist essentiell für die Erzeugung von Massen für Fermionen und Eich- bosonen der schwachen Wechselwirkung. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die Masse und die Zerfallsbreite des Higgs-Teilchens einzugrenzen. Grundlage für die Berechnung physikalischer Größen ist dabei das Pfadintegral, welches mittels Monte-Carlo Simulationen bestimmt wird. Ein polynomieller Hybrid-Monte- Carlo-Algorithmus berücksichtigt dabei alle dynamischen Freiheitsgrade der Fermionen. Die chirale Natur der Fermionen werden mit Hilfe des Neuberger- Overlap-Operators beschrieben. In dieser Arbeit wird das Standardmodell auf den Higgs-Yukawa-Sektor eingegrenzt, welcher keine Eichbosonen enthält und lediglich ein degeneriertes Quark-Doublet berücksichtigt. Anhand des Higgs-Teilchen-Propagators werden die Ergebnisse aus der Git- terstörungsrechnung bis zu einer Schleife mit denen aus der Monte-Carlo- Simulation verglichen. Für die untersuchten Parameter, stimmen die Ergeb- nisse aus der Störungstheorie mit den Monte-Carlo-Daten sehr gut überein. Ein Schwerpunkt dieser Arbeit ist die Analyse der Resonanzparameter des Higgs-Teilchens. Die Resonanzmasse und die Resonanzbreite werden bei schwachen als auch bei starken quartischen Kopplungen untersucht. Das Higgs-Teilchen erscheint nicht als asymptotisch stabiles Teilchen, sondern als Resonanz. In allen Fällen liegt die Resonanzbreite unter 10% der Resonanzmasse. Die Resonanzmasse wird sodann mit der Propagatormasse verglichen. Für alle betrachteten Kopplun- gen gibt es eine hervorragende Übereinstimmung beider Größen. Zuletzt gilt es, den Einfluss einer schweren vierten Generation von Quarks auf die obere und untere Massenschranke des Higgs-Teilchens zu untersuchen. Alle numerischen Resultate involvieren eine umfassende Analyse der Volu- menabhängigkeit und erfordern zwingend eine Extrapolation ins unendliche Volumen.The Higgs boson is a central part of the electroweak theory and is crucial to generate masses for fermions and the weak gauge bosons. The goal of this work is to set limits on the mass and the decay width of the Higgs boson. The basis to compute the physical quantities is the path integral which is here evaluated by means of Monte Carlo simulations thus allowing for fully non perturbative calculations. A polynomial hybrid Monte Carlo algo- rithm is used to incorporate dynamical fermions. The chiral symmetry of the electroweak model is incorporated by using the Neuberger overlap operator. Here, the standard model is considered in the limit of a Higgs-Yukawa sector which does not contain the weak gauge bosons and only a degenerate doublet of top- and bottom quarks are incorporated. Results from lattice perturbation theory up to one loop of the Higgs boson propagator are compared with those obtained from Monte Carlo simulations. At all values of the investigated couplings, the perturbative results agree very well with the Monte Carlo data. A main focus of this work is the investigation of the resonance parameters of the Higgs boson. The resonance width and the resonance mass are investigated at weak and at large quartic couplings. The Higgs boson does not appear as an asymptotic stable state but as a resonance. In all considered cases the Higgs boson resonance width lies below 10% of the resonance mass. The obtained resonance mass is compared with the mass obtained from the Higgs boson propagator. The results agree perfectly at all values of the quartic coupling considered. Finally, the effect of a heavy fourth generation of fermions on the upper and lower Higgs boson mass bound is studied. All numerical results presented in this work involve extensive finite volume analysis and an extrapolation to infinite volume is inevitable

PCRdrive: the largest qPCR assay archive to date and endless potential for lab workflow revitalization

Abstract Background Primer design is a crucial step in establishing specific and sensitive qPCR assays. Even though numerous tools for primer design exist, the majority of resulting assays still requires extensive testing and optimisation or does not allow for high quality target amplification. We developed a workflow for designing qPCR assays. Unlike other tools, we compute a PCR assay including primer design, concentrations and the optimal PCR program. Results Gene expression assays were already generated in a total of 283,226 genes from three species and are continued for all genes of the major model species. The results are available online at https://pcrdrive.com/lab#/assay-database. The workflow involves filtering Primer3-generated primers by considering diverse parameters including specificity, single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), secondary structure as well as compatibility with standard qPCR assay conditions. The resulting assays consist of transcript-specific primer sequences, a reagents protocol as well as instrument settings which are provided in a web-based tool called PCRdrive. PCRdrive was designed to support PCR users in their PCR-related tasks and is equipped with handy functions, components of an electronic lab notebook (ELN) as well as teamworking opportunities. Conclusion High quality ready to use qPCR assays for gene expression analysis are provided within the online platform PCRdrive. A built-in primer designer enables easy generation of assays which is not supported by any other tool. The wet lab optimisation of new assays can be transparently documented and shared within the team. PCRdrive also contains an archive of public PCRs which is updated regularly. Users may use the archive to publish their PCR to the community which makes it easy for other researchers worldwide to reproduce and validate the PCR. PCRdrive is a growing network of PCR users, simplifying and streamlining research through its useful existing features and continuous developments from the active development team

A 3-gene biomarker signature to predict response to taxane-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide, affecting one in eight women in their lifetime. Taxane-based chemotherapy is routinely used in the treatment of breast cancer. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a predictive biomarker to improve the benefit/risk ratio for that cytotoxic chemotherapy. We explicitly strived for a biomarker that enables secure translation into clinical practice. We used genome-wide gene expression data of the Hatzis et al. discovery cohort of 310 patients for biomarker development and three independent cohorts with a total of 567 breast cancer patients for validation. We were able to develop a biomarker signature that consists of just the three gene products ELF5, SCUBE2 and NFIB, measured on RNA level. Compared to Hatzis et al., we achieved a significant improvement in predicting responders and non-responders in the Hatzis et al. validation cohort with an area under the receiver operating characteristics curve of 0.73 [95% CI, 69%-77%]. Moreover, we could confirm the performance of our biomarker on two further independent validation cohorts. The overall performance on all three validation cohorts expressed as area under the receiver operating characteristics curve was 0.75 [95% CI, 70%-80%]. At the clinically relevant classifier's operation point to optimize the exclusion of non-responders, the biomarker correctly predicts three out of four patients not responding to neoadjuvant taxane-based chemotherapy, independent of the breast cancer subtype. At the same time, the response rate in the group of predicted responders increased to 42% compared to 23% response rate in all patients of the validation cohorts

Higgs Boson Mass Bounds in the Presence of a Heavy Fourth Quark Family

We present Higgs boson mass bounds in a lattice regularization allowing thus for non-perturbative investigations. In particular, we employ a lattice modified chiral invariant Higgs-Yukawa model using the overlap operator. We show results for the upper and lower Higgs boson mass bounds in the presence of a heavy mass-degenerate quark doublet with masses ranging up to 700 GeV. We perform infinite volume extrapolations in most cases, and examine several values of the lattice cutoff. Furthermore, we argue that the lower Higgs boson mass bound is stable with respect to the addition of higher dimensional operators to the scalar field potential. Our results have severe consequences for the phenomenology of a fourth generation of quarks if a light Higgs boson is discovered at the LHC