Development of Prognosis in Palliative care Study (PiPS) predictor models to improve prognostication in advanced cancer: prospective cohort study

OBJECTIVE: To develop a novel prognostic indicator for use in patients with advanced cancer that is significantly better than clinicians' estimates of survival. DESIGN: Prospective multicentre observational cohort study. SETTING: 18 palliative care services in the UK (including hospices, hospital support teams, and community teams). PARTICIPANTS: 1018 patients with locally advanced or metastatic cancer, no longer being treated for cancer, and recently referred to palliative care services. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Performance of a composite model to predict whether patients were likely to survive for "days" (0-13 days), "weeks" (14-55 days), or "months+" (>55 days), compared with actual survival and clinicians' predictions. RESULTS: On multivariate analysis, 11 core variables (pulse rate, general health status, mental test score, performance status, presence of anorexia, presence of any site of metastatic disease, presence of liver metastases, C reactive protein, white blood count, platelet count, and urea) independently predicted both two week and two month survival. Four variables had prognostic significance only for two week survival (dyspnoea, dysphagia, bone metastases, and alanine transaminase), and eight variables had prognostic significance only for two month survival (primary breast cancer, male genital cancer, tiredness, loss of weight, lymphocyte count, neutrophil count, alkaline phosphatase, and albumin). Separate prognostic models were created for patients without (PiPS-A) or with (PiPS-B) blood results. The area under the curve for all models varied between 0.79 and 0.86. Absolute agreement between actual survival and PiPS predictions was 57.3% (after correction for over-optimism). The median survival across the PiPS-A categories was 5, 33, and 92 days and survival across PiPS-B categories was 7, 32, and 100.5 days. All models performed as well as, or better than, clinicians' estimates of survival. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with advanced cancer no longer being treated, a combination of clinical and laboratory variables can reliably predict two week and two month survival

Preparation of chalcogenide materials for next generation optoelectronic devices

Chalcogenide materials are finding increasing interest as an active material in next generation optical and electronic devices. There wide range of properties, ranging from photosensitivity, ability to host rare earth ions, electrical conductivity, phase change, exceptional optical non-linearities to name only a few are fueling this interest. Moreover, the ability to synthesize these materials in numerous forms as diverse as 2D monolayers, microspheres, optical fibres, nanowires, thin films as well as bulk glass ingots of over a kilogram in size ensures their application space is vast. We began preparation of chalcogenides, largely based on sulphides, in 1992 and since then have built up an extensive capability for their purification, synthesis and fabrication in various forms. A key aspect of this facility is the ability to process in a flowing atmosphere of hydrogen sulphide which provided the capability of synthesis from elemental, oxide or halide precursors, processing through various chemical vapour deposition reactions as well as post purification.In this talk we describe recent additions to the range of materials we synthesize highlighting transition metal di-chalcogenides for electronic applications, an example of which is shown below, crystalline semiconductors for solar cell applications, ion implanted thin films which provide carrier type reversal, low power phase change memory devices, switchable metamaterial devices as well as traditional chalcogenides glass and optical fibre

Search for Doubly-Charged Higgs Boson Production at HERA

A search for the single production of doubly-charged Higgs bosons H^{\pm \pm} in ep collisions is presented. The signal is searched for via the Higgs decays into a high mass pair of same charge leptons, one of them being an electron. The analysis uses up to 118 pb^{-1} of ep data collected by the H1 experiment at HERA. No evidence for doubly-charged Higgs production is observed and mass dependent upper limits are derived on the Yukawa couplings h_{el} of the Higgs boson to an electron-lepton pair. Assuming that the doubly-charged Higgs only decays into an electron and a muon via a coupling of electromagnetic strength h_{e \mu} = \sqrt{4 \pi \alpha_{em}} = 0.3, a lower limit of 141 GeV on the H^{\pm\pm} mass is obtained at the 95% confidence level. For a doubly-charged Higgs decaying only into an electron and a tau and a coupling h_{e\tau} = 0.3, masses below 112 GeV are ruled out.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal

Measurement of χ c1 and χ c2 production with s√ = 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

The prompt and non-prompt production cross-sections for the χ c1 and χ c2 charmonium states are measured in pp collisions at s√ = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using 4.5 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. The χ c states are reconstructed through the radiative decay χ c → J/ψγ (with J/ψ → μ + μ −) where photons are reconstructed from γ → e + e − conversions. The production rate of the χ c2 state relative to the χ c1 state is measured for prompt and non-prompt χ c as a function of J/ψ transverse momentum. The prompt χ c cross-sections are combined with existing measurements of prompt J/ψ production to derive the fraction of prompt J/ψ produced in feed-down from χ c decays. The fractions of χ c1 and χ c2 produced in b-hadron decays are also measured

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson

Measurements of fiducial and differential cross sections for Higgs boson production in the diphoton decay channel at s√=8 TeV with ATLAS

Measurements of fiducial and differential cross sections are presented for Higgs boson production in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of s√=8 TeV. The analysis is performed in the H → γγ decay channel using 20.3 fb−1 of data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The signal is extracted using a fit to the diphoton invariant mass spectrum assuming that the width of the resonance is much smaller than the experimental resolution. The signal yields are corrected for the effects of detector inefficiency and resolution. The pp → H → γγ fiducial cross section is measured to be 43.2 ±9.4(stat.) − 2.9 + 3.2 (syst.) ±1.2(lumi)fb for a Higgs boson of mass 125.4GeV decaying to two isolated photons that have transverse momentum greater than 35% and 25% of the diphoton invariant mass and each with absolute pseudorapidity less than 2.37. Four additional fiducial cross sections and two cross-section limits are presented in phase space regions that test the theoretical modelling of different Higgs boson production mechanisms, or are sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model. Differential cross sections are also presented, as a function of variables related to the diphoton kinematics and the jet activity produced in the Higgs boson events. The observed spectra are statistically limited but broadly in line with the theoretical expectations

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13