BACKGROUND: The aim of this prospective study was to evaluate the effects of hormone therapy (HT) on olfactory sensitivity in post-menopausal women. METHODS: Forty-six naturally post-menopausal women underwent rhinomanometric and olfactometric measurements to compare nasal airflow resistance values and olfactometric thresholds during the eighth month of HT treatment with baseline...
BACKGROUND: The aim of this prospective study was to evaluate the effects of the new monophasic oral contraceptives on the audiological system in premenopausal women. METHODS: The auditory brainstem response (ABR) was measured in 94 women during the follicular, periovular and luteal phases of one menstrual cycle in which ovulation was confirmed using sonography and serum...
BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether treatment with acarbose, an α-glucosidase inhibitor, improved hyperandrogenic symptoms, insulin and androgen serum concentrations in hyperinsulinaemic patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). METHODS: 30 hyperinsulinaemic women with PCOS and 15 controls were evaluated. Patients were randomized, using a computer...
Abstract Precision measurements of high energy top quarks at the LHC constitute a powerful probe of new physics. We study the effect of four fermion operators involving two tops and two light quarks on the high energy tail of the \( t\overline{t} \) invariant mass distribution. We use existing measurements at a center of mass energy of 13 TeV, and state of the art calculations of...
New physics, that is too heavy to be produced directly, can leave measurable imprints on the tails of kinematic distributions at the LHC. We use energetic QCD processes to perform novel measurements of the Standard Model (SM) Effective Field Theory. We show that the dijet invariant mass spectrum, and the inclusive jet transverse momentum spectrum, are sensitive to a dimension 6...
We propose a framework in which the QCD axion has an exponentially large coupling to photons, relying on the “clockwork” mechanism. We discuss the impact of present and future axion experiments on the parameter space of the model. In addition to the axion, the model predicts a large number of pseudoscalars which can be light and observable at the LHC. In the most favorable...
Abstract A hidden sector with a mass gap undergoes an epoch of cannibalism if number changing interactions are active when the temperature drops below the mass of the lightest hidden particle. During cannibalism, the hidden sector temperature decreases only logarithmically with the scale factor. We consider the possibility that dark matter resides in a hidden sector that...
Deviations of the top electroweak couplings from their Standard Model values imply that certain amplitudes for the scattering of third generation fermions and longitudinally polarized vector bosons or Higgses diverge quadratically with momenta. This high-energy growth is a genuine signal of models where the top quark is strongly coupled to the sector responsible for electroweak...
A “Higgs factory”, an electron-positron collider with center-of-mass energy of about 250 GeV, will measure the cross section of the Higgsstrahlung process, e + e − → hZ, with sub-percent precision. This measurement is sensitive to a variety of new physics scenarios. In this paper, we study two examples. First, we compute corrections to the e + e − → hZ differential cross section...
We study Higgs boson couplings in the large-λ version of the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, known as λ-SUSY. We find that the predicted deviations from the Standard Model (SM) in these couplings are inversely correlated with the amount of fine-tuning needed to accommodate a 126 GeV Higgs. In the most natural regions of parameter space, the 126 GeV Higgs has large...
Current Higgs data show an ambiguity in the value of the Yukawa couplings to quarks and leptons. Not so much because of still large uncertainties in the measurements but as the result of several almost degenerate minima in the coupling profile likelihood function. To break these degeneracies, it is important to identify and measure processes where the Higgs coupling to fermions...
Abstract Electroweak precision measurements established that custodial symmetry is preserved to a good accuracy in the gauge sector after electroweak symmetry breaking. However, recent LHC results might be interpreted as pointing towards Higgs couplings that do not respect such symmetry. Motivated by this possibility, we reconsider the presence of an explicitly custodial breaking...
The exceptional interest in improving the limitations of data storage, molecular electronics and optoelectronics has promoted the development of an ever increasing number of techniques used to pattern polymers at micro and nanoscale. Most of them rely on atomic force microscopy to thermally or electrostatically induce mass transport, thereby creating topographic features. Here we...
Introduction and Aims: All guidelines recommend an arteriovenous fistula (AVF) as preferred bloodstream access. Still, many patients in Europe receive haemodialysis (HD) via a permanent catheter. This ERBP initiated study explored potential barriers related to attitude, organisation and reimbursement that may explain non-adherence to this fistula-first (FF) policy. Methods: We...
Background. Anaemia is one of the major clinical characteristics of patients with chronic renal failure, and has a considerable effect on morbidity and mortality. Adequate dialysis is of paramount importance in correcting anaemia by removing small and medium‐sized molecules, which may inhibit erythropoiesis. However, high‐molecular‐weight inhibitors cleared only by means of...
Background. The regulation of PTH secretion by calcium is altered in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (HPT). A similar abnormality may occur in secondary HPT, but comparisons of PTH secretion in normal subjects and those with secondary HPT have given contrasting results. Differences in baseline serum ionized calcium (ICa) may partly account for these conflicting results...
The author, after having briefly outlined the various issues relating to the identification of the object of the contract, and its possible incompleteness, focuses on the problem of the incompleteness of the contract itself. By addressing the topic from both an economic and legal perspective, the author attempts to identify the interplay between these two operational levels. The...
