Design and validation of an innovative soft-sensor for pharmaceuticals freeze-drying monitoring

The paper is focused on the development of a Kalman filter type observer for the monitoring of the primary drying phase of the freeze-drying of pharmaceutical products in vials. The proposed soft-sensor is able to estimate the evolution of temperature of the product, the duration of the primary drying phase, the value of the overall heat transfer coefficient between the heating shelf and the product, as well as the mass transfer resistance of the dried cake to vapor flow. Accurate results are obtained for various types of products, characterized by a different dependence of the mass transfer resistance on the dried cake thickness. Theoretical results are confirmed by experimental tests carried out in a pilot-scale freeze-dryer. Finally, the strength and the weakness of the proposed observer are pointed out

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements