The Higgs System in and Beyond the Standard Model

After the discovery of the Higgs boson particle on the 4th of July of 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider, sited at the european CERN laboratory, we are entering in a fascinating period for Particle Physics where both theorists and experimentalists are devoted to fully understand the features of this new particle and the possible consequences for High Energy Physics of the Higgs system both within and beyond the Standard Model of fundamental particle interactions. This paper is a summary of the lectures given at the third IDPASC school (Santiago de Compostela, Feb. 2013, Spain) addressed to PhD students, and contains a short introduction to the main basic aspects of the Higgs boson particle in and beyond the Standard Model.Comment: 62 pages, 31 figures, Lectures of the IDPASC School at Santiago de Compostela, Spain, February 201

Iron architecture in Britain and America (1706-1880): with special reference to the development of the portable building

"Ignorance, it has been said, is a prerequisite of the historian. This is particularly true of anyone who attempts to survey, however super- ficially, the achievements of the nineteenth century. The material at his hand is so overwhelming in bulk and so bewildering in texture and colour, that all he can do is pick over the tumbled debris of this vast quarry, and select at random a few stones which, when held up to the light, may reveal something of the nature of the complex mass from which they came. "(H. Casson, An Introduction to Victorian Architecture, 1948).As little recent research had been done on the 'portable building' a large part of my study was concentrated on this subject. It soon became obvious that the work of Andrew Handyside of Derby was of particular interest in this field and I was persuaded to publish a paper on their work separately.I have not, therefore, included this material in the main body of the thesis and have only referred to it where the text demanded.The major departure from a generally chronological account was the decision to single out, for reasons of clarity, the account of the contribution of iron to the development of a new style of architecture.Because many of the buildings examined in the thesis may be unfamiliar, I thought it sensible to include a rather large number of plates. This has had the beneficial effect of being able to reduce the length of descriptions of these buildings and to simplify the technical explanations that were necessary. In addition much of the illustrated material is only available in 19th century books, pamphlets and journals, many of which are scarce and therefore difficult to consult.A precise definition of iron architecture is almost impossible. As it was used in the 19th century it referred to the use of iron in a building as its major structural and constructional material and to the use of the material where it had a.radical influence on the appearance of the building. I have followed this general meaning and therefore have excluded from the study iron balconies, railings, gates, and other examples of ornamental ironwork that were added to buildings. In addition engineering structures, such as bridges, piers, and lighthouses, have not been included unless they had a direct effect on the use of iron in architecture

Error threshold in simple landscapes

We consider the quasispecies description of a population evolving in both the "master sequence" landscape (where a single sequence is evolutionarily preferred over all others) and the REM landscape (where the fitness of different sequences is an independent, identically distributed, random variable). We show that, in both cases, the error threshold is analogous to a first order thermodynamical transition, where the overlap between the average genotype and the optimal one drops discontinuously to zero.Comment: 10 pages and 2 figures, Plain LaTe

Bloch-Nordsieck Violation in Spontaneously Broken Abelian Theories

We point out that, in a spontaneously broken U(1) gauge theory, inclusive processes, whose primary particles are mass eigenstates that do not coincide with the gauge eigenstates, are not free of infrared logarithms. The charge mixing allowed by symmetry breaking and the ensuing Bloch-Nordsieck violation are here analyzed in a few relevant cases and in particular for processes initiated by longitudinal gauge bosons. Of particular interest is the example of weak hypercharge in the Standard Model where, in addition, left-right mixing effects arise in transversely polarized fermion beams.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

A viability criterion for modified gravity with an extra force

A recently proposed theory of modified gravity with an explicit ``anomalous'' coupling of the Ricci curvature to matter is discussed, and an inequality is derived which expresses a necessary and sufficient condition to avoid the notorius Dolgov-Kawasaki instability.Comment: 4 latex pages, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Probing the Higgs mechanism via γγ→W+W−\gamma\gamma\to W^+W^-

We investigate the sensitivity of the reaction $\gamma\gamma\to W^+W^-$ to the Higgs sector based on the complete one-loop corrections in the minimal Standard Model and the gauged non-linear $\sigma$-model. While this sensitivity is very strong for the suppressed cross-section of equally polarized photons and longitudinal W bosons, it is only marginal for the dominant mode of transverse polarizations. The corrections within the $\sigma$-model turn out to be UV-finite in accordance with the absence of \log\MH terms in the Standard Model with a heavy Higgs boson.Comment: 12 pages uuencoded postscrip

Presence of activatable Shiga toxin genotype (stx2d) in Shiga toxigenic Escherichia coli from livestock sources

Stx2d is a recently described Shiga toxin whose cytotoxicity is activated 10- to 1,000-fold by the elastase present in mouse or human intestinal mucus. We examined Shiga toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) strains isolated from food and livestock sources for the presence of activatable stx(2d). The stx(2) operons of STEC were first analyzed by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis and categorized as stx(2), stx(2c) (vha), stx(2c) (vhb), or stx(2d) (EH250). Subsequently, the stx(2c) (vha) and stx(2c) (vhb) operons were screened for the absence of a PstI site in the stx(2a) subunit gene, a restriction site polymorphism which is a predictive indicator for the stx(2d) (activatable) genotype. Twelve STEC isolates carrying putative stx(2d) operons were identified, and nucleotide sequencing was used to confirm the identification of these operons as stx(2d). The complete nucleotide sequences of seven representative stx(2d) operons were determined. Shiga toxin expression in stx(2d) isolates was confirmed by immunoblotting. stx(2d) isolates were induced for the production of bacteriophages carrying stx. Two isolates were able to produce bacteriophages phi1662a and phi1720a carrying the stx(2d) operons. RFLP analysis of bacteriophage genomic DNA revealed that phi1662a and phi1720a were highly related to each other; however, the DNA sequences of these two stx(2d) operons were distinct. The STEC strains carrying these operons were isolated from retail ground beef. Surveillance for STEC strains expressing activatable stx(2d) Shiga toxin among clinical cases may indicate the significance of this toxin subtype to human health

Next-to-leading Corrections to the Higgs Boson Transverse Momentum Spectrum in Gluon Fusion

We present a fully analytic calculation of the Higgs boson transverse momentum and rapidity distributions, for nonzero Higgs $p_\perp$, at next-to-leading order in the infinite-top-mass approximation. We separate the cross section into a part that contains the dominant soft, virtual, collinear, and small-$p_\perp$-enhanced contributions, and the remainder, which is organized by the contributions due to different parton helicities. We use this cross section to investigate analytically the small-$p_\perp$ limit and compare with the expectation from the resummation of large logarithms of the type $\ln{m_H/p_\perp}$. We also compute numerically the cross section at moderate $p_\perp$ where a fixed-order calculation is reliable. We find a $K$-factor that varies from $\approx1.6-1.8$, and a reduction in the scale dependence, as compared to leading order. Our analysis suggests that the contribution of current parton distributions to the total uncertainty on this cross section at the LHC is probably less than that due to uncalculated higher orders.Comment: 40 pages, 10 figures, JHEP style (minor changes, added reference

Similarities and Differences in Nurse-Reported Care Rationing Between Critical Care, Surgical, and Medical Specialties

Copyright © 2016 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to determine the similarities and differences in elements of nursing care that are commonly rationed in the critical care, medical, and surgical specialties within an acute hospital environment. METHODS: Registered nurses who provide bedside nursing care within the medical, surgical, and critical specialties at a single center were invited to anonymously complete the self-administered MISSCARE questionnaire. The frequency of rationing for each individual care element within the 4 broader care groups (assessment, intervention—individual needs, intervention—basic care, and planning) of the MISSCARE questionnaire was determined. A mean score for each care group was also determined, and multiple regression analysis was undertaken to determine the demographic predictors of care rationing. RESULTS: Interventions related to basic care was the most frequently rationed care group in the critical care/emergency specialty (missed care mean of 50.1%), whereas planning was the most frequently rationed care group among both the medical (missed care mean of 43.6%) and surgical (missed care mean of 44.8%) specialties. Assessment was the least frequently rationed care group among all 3 specialties (missed care mean of 19.7%–26.7%). Length of time practicing as a registered nurse was an independent predictor of care rationing in the critical care/emergency specialty, and age older than 50 was an independent predictor in the medical specialty. CONCLUSIONS: There are numerous similarities and differences in care rationing between critical care, surgical, and medical nurses. The development and implementation of specialty-based strategies should be undertaken to reduce the incidence of nursing care rationing

Gravitation Interaction and Electromagnetic Interaction in the Relativistic Universe with Total Zero and Local Non-Zero Energy

In the model of flat expansive homogeneous and isotropic relativistic universe with total zero and local non-zero energy the gravitation energy of bodies and the elecromagnetic energy of charged bodies can be localised.Comment: LaTeX, 10 pages, 1 figur