Abstract: Neutrinos can play an important role in the evolution of the Universe, modifying some of the cosmological observables. We describe how the precision of present cosmological data can be used to learn about neutrino properties, in particular their mass. We show how the analysis of current cosmological observations provides an upper bound on the sum of neutrino masses, with improved sensitivity from future cosmological measurements.

Abstract: The anti-D meson self-energy is evaluated self-consistently, using unitarized coupled-channel theory, by computing the in-medium meson-baryon T matrix in the C = -1, S = 0 sector. The heavy pseudo-scalar and heavy vector mesons, (D) over bar and (D) over bar*, are treated on equal footing as required by heavy-quark spin symmetry. Results for energy levels and widths of (D) over bar (-) mesic atoms in C-12, Ca-40, Sn-118, and Pb-208 are presented. The spectrum contains states of atomic and of nuclear types for all nuclei. (D) over bar (0)-nucleus bound states are also obtained. We find that, after electromagnetic and nuclear cascade, these systems end up with the (D) over bar bound in the nucleus, either as a meson or as part of an exotic (D) over barN (pentaquark) loosely bound state.

Abstract: We present a way to evaluate the scattering of unstable particles quantized in a finite volume with the aim of extracting physical observables for infinite volume from lattice data. We illustrate the method with the pi rho scattering which generates dynamically the axial-vector a(1)(1260) resonance. Energy levels in a finite box are evaluated both considering the rho as a stable and unstable resonance and we find significant differences between both cases. We discuss how to solve the problem to get the physical scattering amplitudes in the infinite volume, and hence phase shifts, from possible lattice results on energy levels quantized inside a finite box.

Abstract: In emission tomography, iterative statistical methods are accepted as the reconstruction algorithms that achieve the best image quality. The accuracy of these methods relies partly on the quality of the system response matrix (SRM) that characterizes the scanner. The more physical phenomena included in the SRM, the higher the SRM quality, and therefore higher image quality is obtained from the reconstruction process. High-resolution small animal scanners contain as many as 10(3)-10(4) small crystal pairs, while the field of view (FOV) is divided into hundreds of thousands of small voxels. These two characteristics have a significant impact on the number of elements to be calculated in the SRM. Monte Carlo (MC) methods have gained popularity as a way of calculating the SRM, due to the increased accuracy achievable, at the cost of introducing some statistical noise and long simulation times. In the work presented here the SRM is calculated using MC methods exploiting the cylindrical symmetries of the scanner, significantly reducing the simulation time necessary to calculate a high statistical quality SRM and the storage space necessary. The use of cylindrical symmetries makes polar voxels a convenient basis function. Alternatively, spherically symmetric basis functions result in improved noise properties compared to cubic and polar basis functions. The quality of reconstructed images using polar voxels, spherically symmetric basis functions on a polar grid, cubic voxels and post-reconstruction filtered polar and cubic voxels is compared from a noise and spatial resolution perspective. This study demonstrates that polar voxels perform as well as cubic voxels, reducing the simulation time necessary to calculate the SRM and the disk space necessary to store it. Results showed that spherically symmetric functions outperform polar and cubic basis functions in terms of noise properties, at the cost of slightly degraded spatial resolution, larger SRM file size and longer reconstruction times. However, we demonstrate that post-reconstruction smoothing, usually applied in emission imaging to reduce the level of noise, can produce a spatial resolution degradation of similar to 50%, while spherically symmetric basis functions produce a degradation of only similar to 6%, compared to polar and cubic voxels, at the same noise level. Therefore, the image quality trade-off obtained with blobs is higher than that obtained with cubic or polar voxels.

Abstract: A large number of new states have been reported during the last few years in charmonium spectroscopy above the charmed meson production threshold. They have been called X's, Y's, and Z's. We reflect on the influence of thresholds on heavy meson spectroscopy comparing different flavor sectors and quantum numbers. The validity of a quark-model picture above open-flavor thresholds would severely restrict the number of channels that may lodge meson-meson molecules.