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Recent reports identify the ratio between absolute neutrophil count (ANC) and absolute lymphocyte count (ALC), called neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), as a predictor of progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in various malignancies. We retrospectively examined the NLR in a cohort of 309 newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (MM) patients treated upfront with novel agents. NLR was calculated using data obtained from the complete blood count (CBC) at diagnosis and subsequently correlated with PFS and OS. The median NLR was 1.9 (range 0.4-15.9). Higher NLR was independent of international staging system (ISS) stage, plasma cell infiltration or cytogenetics. The 5-year PFS and OS estimates were, respectively, 18.2 and 36.4 % for patients with NLR ≥ 2 versus 25.5 and 66.6 % in patients with NLR < 2. Among younger patients (age <65 years, N = 179), NLR ≥ 2 had a negative prognostic impact on both PFS and OS, in all ISS stages. By combining ISS stage and NLR in a model limited to young patients, we found that 19 % of the patients were classified as very low risk, 70 % standard risk and 11 % very high risk. The 5-year estimates were 39.3, 19.4 and 10.9 % for PFS and 95.8, 50.9 and 23.6 % for OS for very low, standard-risk and very high-risk groups. We found NLR to be a predictor of PFS and OS in MM patients treated upfront with novel agents. NLR can be combined with ISS staging system to identify patients with dismal outcome. However, larger cohorts and prospective studies are needed to use NLR as additional parameter to personalise MM therapy in the era of novel agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low-energy spectrum of a one-component, spontaneously broken Φ4 theory is generally believed to have the same simple massive form $\sqrt{{\bf p}^2+m^2_h}$ as in the symmetric phase where 〈Φ〉 = 0. However, in lattice simulations of the 4D Ising limit of the theory, the two-point connected correlator and the connected scalar propagator show deviations from a standard massive behavior that do not exist in the symmetric phase. As a support for this observed discrepancy, we present a variational, analytic calculation of the energy spectrum E1(p) in the broken phase. This analytic result, while providing the trend $E_1({\bf p})\sim \sqrt{{\bf p}^2+m^2_h}$ at large |p|, gives an energy gap E1(0)< mh, even when approaching the infinite-cutoff limit Λ→∞ with that infinitesimal coupling λ ~ 1/ln Λ suggested by the standard interpretation of "triviality" within leading-order perturbation theory. We also compare with other approaches and discuss the more general implications of the result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ording to several authors, gravity might be a long-wavelength phenomenon emerging in some 'hydrodynamic limit' from the same physical, flat-space vacuum viewed as a form of superfluid medium. In this framework, light might propagate in an effective acoustic geometry and exhibit a tiny anisotropy that could be measurable in the present ether-drift experiments. By accepting this view of the vacuum, one should also consider the possibility of sizeable random fluctuations of the signal that reflect the stochastic nature of the underlying 'quantum ether' and could be erroneously interpreted as instrumental noise. To test the present interpretation, we have extracted the mean amplitude of the signal from various experiments with different systematics, operating both at room temperature and in the cryogenic regime. They all give the same consistent value $${\langle A \rangle ={\mathcal O}(10^{-15})}$$ which is precisely the magnitude expected in an emergent-gravity approach, for an apparatus placed on the Earth's surface. Since physical implications could be substantial, it would be important to obtain more direct checks from the instantaneous raw data and, possibly, with new experimental set-ups operating in gravity-free environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In principle, by accepting the idea of a non-zero vacuum energy, the physical vacuum of present particle physics might represent a preferred reference frame. By treating this quantum vacuum as a relativistic medium, the non-zero energy-momentum flow expected in a moving frame should effectively behave as a small thermal gradient and could, in principle, induce a measurable anisotropy of the speed of light in a loosely bound system as a gas. We explore the phenomenological implications of this scenario by considering a new class of dedicated ether-drift experiments in which arbitrary gaseous media fill the resonating optical cavities. Our predictions cover most experimental set ups and should motivate precise experimental tests of these fundamental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally assumed that the physical vacuum of particle physics should be characterized by an energy-momentum tensor in such a way as to preserve exact Lorentz invariance. On the other hand, if the ground state were characterized by its energy-momentum vector, with zero spatial momentum and a non-zero energy, the vacuum would represent a preferred frame. Since both theoretical approaches have their own good motivations, we propose an experimental test to decide between the two scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking admits a physical interpretation in terms of the Bose condensation process of elementary spinless quanta. In this picture, the broken-symmetry phase emerges as a real physical medium, endowed with a hierarchical pattern of scales, supporting two types of elementary excitations for k μ 0: a massive energy branch Eb(k) &rarr MH, corresponding to the usual Eggs boson field, and a collective gapless branch Eb(k) → 0. This is similar to the coexistence of phonons and rotons in superfluid 4He that, in fact, is usually considered the condensed-matter analog of the Eggs condensate. After previous work dedicated to the properties of the gapless phonon branch, in this paper we use quantum hydrodynamics to propose a physical interpretation of the massive branch. On the base of our results, MH coincides with the energy gap for vortex formation and a massive Higgs boson is like a roton in superfluid 4Fle. Within this interpretation of the Fliggs particle, there is no naturalness problem since MH remains a naturally intermediate, fixed energy scale, even for an ultimate ultraviolet cutoff Λ → ∞. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss the phase transition in (3 + 1)-dimensional λΦ[sup 4] theory from a very physical perspective. The particles of the symmetric phase ("phions") interact via a hard-core repulsion and an induced, long-range -1/r³ attraction. If the phion mass is sufficiently small, the lowest-energy state is not the "empty" state with no phions, but is a state with a nonzero density of phions Bose-Einstein condensed in the zero-momentum mode. The condensate corresponds to the spontaneous-symmetry-breaking vacuum with 〈 Φ 〉 ≠ 0 and its excitations ("phonons" in atomic physics language) correspond to Higgs particles. The phase transition happens when the phion's physical mass m is still positive; it does not wait until m² passes through zero and becomes negative. However, at and near the phase transition, m is much, much less than the Higgs mass M[sub h]. This interesting physics coexists with "triviality;" all scattering amplitudes vanish in the continuum limit, but the vacuum condensate becomes infinitely dense. The ratio m/M[sub h], which goes to zero in the continuum limit, can be viewed as a measure of nonlocality in the regularized theory. An intricate hierarchy of length scales naturally arises. We speculate about the possible implications of these ideas for gravity and inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a high-statistics lattice simulation of the Ising limit of (λΦ[sup 4])[sub 4] theory, we have measured the susceptibility and propagator in the broken phase. We confirm our earlier finding of a discrepancy between the field rescaling implied by the propagator data and that implied by the susceptibility. The discrepancy becomes worse as one goes closer to the continuum limit; thus, it cannot be explained by residual perturbative effects. The data are consistent with an unconventional description of symmetry breaking and “triviality” in which the rescaling factor for the finite-momentum fluctuations tends to unity, but the rescaling factor for the condensate becomes larger and larger as one approaches the continuum limit. In the standard model this changes the interpretation of the Fermi-constant scale and its relation to the Higgs mass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Il Nuovo Cimento: A is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Il Nuovo Cimento: B is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We present a critical reappraisal of the available results on the broken phase of λ( Φ) theory, as obtained from rigorous formal analyses and from lattice calculations. All the existing evidence is compatible with Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking but dictates a trivially free shifted field that becomes controlled by a quadratic hamiltonian in the continuum limit. As recently pointed out, this implies that the simple one-loop effective potential should become effectively exact. Moreover, the usual naive assumption that the Higgs mass-squared m is proportional to its 'renormalized' self-coupling λ is not valid outside perturbation theory: the appropriate continuum limit has m finite and vanishing λ. A Monte Carlo lattice computation of the λ( Φ) effective potential, both in the single-component and in the O(2)-symmetric cases, is shown to agree very well with the one-loop prediction. Moreover, its perturbative leading-log improvement (based on the concept of λ) fails to reproduce the Monte Carlo data. These results, while supporting in a new fashion the peculiar 'triviality' of the λ( Φ) theory, also imply that, outside perturbation theory, the magnitude of the Higgs mass does not give a measure of the observable interactions in the scalar sector of the standard model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strong evidence for the 'triviality' of (λΦ) theory is not incompatible with spontaneous symmetry breaking. Indeed, for a 'trivial' theory the effective potential should be given exactly by the classical potential plus the free-field zero-point energy of the shifted field; i.e., by the one-loop effective potential. When this is renormalized in a simple, but nonperturbative way, one finds, self-consistently, that the shifted field does become non-interacting in the continuum limit. For a classically scale-invariant (CSI) λΦ theory one finds m, predicting a 2.2 TeV Higgs boson. Here we extend our earlier work in three ways: (i) we discuss the analogy with the hard-sphere Bose gas; (ii) we extend the analysis from the CSI case to the general case; and (iii) we propose a test of the predicted shape of the effective potential that could be tested in a lattice simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implications of both one loop and gaussian approximation to the effective potential of massless λΦ theories are analyzed. By assuming only the unavoidable existence of a regularization scheme which preserves the variational inequality, it is possible to obtain an estimate of the weak coupling ß-function with is remarkably consistent with the Coleman-Weinberg one loop calculation. Both indicate that massless λΦ theories are asymptotically free, not in contradiction with any known rigorous result. The consequences of our analysis for the Standard Model of electroweak interactions are briefly illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Il Nuovo Cimento: A is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Il Nuovo Cimento: A is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Il Nuovo Cimento: A is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The possibility to correlate ether-drift measurements in laboratory and direct CMB observations with satellites in space would definitely confirm the existence of a fundamental preferred frame for relativity. Today, the small residuals observed so far (from Michelson-Morley onward) are just considered typical instrumental effects in experiments with better and better sensitivity. Though, if the velocity of light propagating in the various interferometers is not exactly the same parameter c of Lorentz transformations, nothing would really prevent to observe an ether drift. Thus, for the Earth cosmic velocity v = 370 km/s, we argue that a fundamental 10-15 light anisotropy, as presently observed in vacuum and in solid dielectrics, is revealing a 10-9 difference in the vacuum effective refractivity between an apparatus in an ideal freely falling frame and an apparatus on the Earth surface. In this perspective, the stochastic nature of the physical vacuum could also explain the irregular character of the signal and the observed substantial reduction from its instantaneous 10-15 value to its statistical average 10-18 (or smaller). For the same v = 370 km/s the different refractivities, respectively, O(10-4) and O(10-5) for air or helium at atmospheric pressure, could also explain the observed light anisotropy, respectively O(10-10) and O(10-11). However, for consistency, one should also understand the physical mechanism which enhances the signal in weakly bound gaseous matter but remains ineffective in solid dielectrics where the refractivity is O(1). This mechanism is naturally identified in a non-local, tiny temperature gradient of a fraction of millikelvin which is found in all classical experiments and might ultimately be related to the CMB temperature dipole of ±3 mK or reflect the fundamental energy flow associated with a Lorentz-non-invariant vacuum state. The importance of the issue would deserve more stringent tests with dedicated experiments and significant improvements in the data analysis.-1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]