Front-end Electronics for Silicon Trackers readout in Deep Sub-Micron CMOS Technology: The case of Silicon strips at the ILC

For the years to come, Silicon strips detectors will be read using the smallest available integrated technologies for room, transparency, and power considerations. CMOS, Bipolar- CMOS and Silicon-Germanium are presently offered in deepsubmicron (250 down to 90nm) at affordable cost through worldwide integrated circuits multiproject centers. As an example, a 180nm CMOS readout prototype chip has been designed and tested, and gave satisfactory results in terms of noise and power. Beam tests are under work, and prospectives in 130nm will be presented

A CMOS 130nm Evaluation digitzer chip for silicon strips readout

A CMOS 130nm evaluation chip intended to read Silicon strip detectors at the ILC has been designed and successfully tested. Optimized for a detector capacitance of 10 pF, it includes four channels of charge integration, pulse shaping, a 16-deep analogue sampler triggered on input analogue sums, and parallel analogue to digital conversion. Tests results of the full chain are reported, demonstrating the behaviour and performance of the full sampling process and analogue to digital conversion. Each channel dissipates less than one milli-Watt static power

The Virgo data acquisition system

International audienc

The gravitational wave detector VIRGO

International audienc

CMS physics technical design report : Addendum on high density QCD with heavy ions

Peer reviewe

The Emerging Role of Checkpoint Inhibition in Microsatellite Stable Colorectal Cancer

Checkpoint inhibitor therapy has introduced a revolution in contemporary anticancer therapy. It has led to dramatic improvements in patient outcomes and has spawned tremendous research into novel immunomodulatory agents and combination therapy that has changed the trajectory of cancer care. However, clinical benefit in patients with colorectal cancer has been generally limited to tumors with loss of mismatch repair function and those with specific germline mutations in the DNA polymerase gene. Unfortunately, tumors with these specific mutator phenotypes are in the minority. Recent pre-clinical and clinical studies have begun to reveal encouraging results suggesting that checkpoint inhibitor therapy can be expanded to an increasing number of colorectal tumors with microsatellite stability and the absence of traditional predictive biomarkers of checkpoint inhibitor response. These studies generally rely on combinations of checkpoint inhibitors with chemotherapy, molecular targeted therapy, radiation therapy, or other novel immunomodulatory agents. This article will review the most current data in microsatellite stable colorectal cancer

Do patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma to the lung have improved survival?

Abstract Introduction Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a genetically heterogeneous disease often diagnosed with synchronous metastatic disease involving the liver. Tumors with extra‐abdominal spread that bypass the liver are thought to represent a unique molecular subgroup and those with isolated pulmonary metastatic disease are thought to have a more favorable clinical phenotype. Method We conducted a retrospective review of patients with pathologically confirmed PDAC treated between the years 2007 and 2020 at a Scripps Health hospital. The final study sample (N = 205) included patients with isolated pulmonary metastasis (IL), isolated liver metastasis or synchronous liver and lung metastasis (LL), or metastasis to any site other than the liver or lung (NLL). Primary endpoint was overall survival (OS). Progression‐free survival (PFS) and recurrence‐free survival (RFS) were analyzed as secondary endpoints. Each survival outcome was analyzed using Cox proportional hazards tests. Results No statistically significant differences were seen between the three groups in OS, PFS, or RFS. Median OS for the IL group was 561 days, 341 days for the LL group, and 441 days for the NLL group. Median RFS was 748 days for the IL group, 574 days for the LL group, and 545 days for the NLL group. Median PFS was 307 for the IL group, 236 for the LL group, and 265 for the NLL group. When comparing only the IL and LL groups, a statistically significant difference in OS was seen favoring the IL group (HR1.59 LL vs IL [ref], CI 1.04–2.41, p = 0.031) Conclusion Though statistically significant differences in survival outcomes were not seen in our population, there was a trend toward improved survival for patients with isolated lung metastases. When comparing only the IL to LL group, statistically significant overall survival favoring the IL group was seen. These findings highlight a potential prognostic indicator of metastatic PDAC

Curated multiple sequence alignment for the Adenomatous Polyposis Coli (APC) gene and accuracy of in silico pathogenicity predictions.

Computational algorithms are often used to assess pathogenicity of Variants of Uncertain Significance (VUS) that are found in disease-associated genes. Most computational methods include analysis of protein multiple sequence alignments (PMSA), assessing interspecies variation. Careful validation of PMSA-based methods has been done for relatively few genes, partially because creation of curated PMSAs is labor-intensive. We assessed how PMSA-based computational tools predict the effects of the missense changes in the APC gene, in which pathogenic variants cause Familial Adenomatous Polyposis. Most Pathogenic or Likely Pathogenic APC variants are protein-truncating changes. However, public databases now contain thousands of variants reported as missense. We created a curated APC PMSA that contained >3 substitutions/site, which is large enough for statistically robust in silico analysis. The creation of the PMSA was not easily automated, requiring significant querying and computational analysis of protein and genome sequences. Of 1924 missense APC variants in the NCBI ClinVar database, 1800 (93.5%) are reported as VUS. All but two missense variants listed as P/LP occur at canonical splice or Exonic Splice Enhancer sites. Pathogenicity predictions by five computational tools (Align-GVGD, SIFT, PolyPhen2, MAPP, REVEL) differed widely in their predictions of Pathogenic/Likely Pathogenic (range 17.5-75.0%) and Benign/Likely Benign (range 25.0-82.5%) for APC missense variants in ClinVar. When applied to 21 missense variants reported in ClinVar and securely classified as Benign, the five methods ranged in accuracy from 76.2-100%. Computational PMSA-based methods can be an excellent classifier for variants of some hereditary cancer genes. However, there may be characteristics of the APC gene and protein that confound the results of in silico algorithms. A systematic study of these features could greatly improve the automation of alignment-based techniques and the use of predictive algorithms in hereditary cancer genes

Front-end Electronics for Silicon Trackers readout in Deep Sub-Micron CMOS Technology: The case of Silicon strips at the ILC.

International audienceFor the years to come, Silicon strips detectors will be read using the smallest available integrated technologies for room, transparency, and power considerations. CMOS, Bipolar-CMOS and Silicon-Germanium are presently offered in deepsubmicron (250 down to 90nm) at affordable cost through worldwide integrated circuits multiproject centers. As an example, a 180nm CMOS readout prototype chip has been designed and tested, and gave satisfactory results in terms of noise and power. Beam tests are under work, and prospectives in 130nm will be presented