Quasipartiele model for the quark-gluon plasma: Equation of state near Tc

We test the quark mass dependence implemented in the quasiparticle dispersion relations of our quasiparticle model for the QCD equation of state by comparing with recently available lattice QCD data employing almost physical quark masses. In addition, we emphasize the capability of our model to successfully describe lattice QCD results (or imaginary chemical potential and to analytically continue the latter to real chemical potential.