ATLAS and CMS applications on the WorldGrid testbed

WorldGrid is an intercontinental testbed spanning Europe and the US integrating architecturally different Grid implementations based on the Globus toolkit. It has been developed in the context of the DataTAG and iVDGL projects, and successfully demonstrated during the WorldGrid demos at IST2002 (Copenhagen) and SC2002 (Baltimore). Two HEP experiments, ATLAS and CMS, successful exploited the WorldGrid testbed for executing jobs simulating the response of their detectors to physics eve nts produced by real collisions expected at the LHC accelerator starting from 2007. This data intensive activity has been run since many years on local dedicated computing farms consisting of hundreds of nodes and Terabytes of disk and tape storage. Within the WorldGrid testbed, for the first time HEP simulation jobs were submitted and run indifferently on US and European resources, despite of their underlying different Grid implementations, and produced data which could be retrieved and further analysed on the submitting machine, or simply stored on the remote resources and registered on a Replica Catalogue which made them available to the Grid for further processing. In this contribution we describe the job submission from Europe for both ATLAS and CMS applications, performed through the GENIUS portal operating on top of an EDG User Interface submitting to an EDG Resource Broker, pointing out the chosen interoperability solutions which made US and European resources equivalent from the applications point of view, the data management in the WorldGrid environment, and the CMS specific production tools which were interfaced to the GENIUS portal.Comment: Poster paper from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 10 pages, PDF. PSN TUCP004; added credit to funding agenc

The new TNM classification of lymph node metastasis minimises stage migration problems in gastric cancer patients

The present study aimed at investigating whether in gastric cancer patients stage migration occurs with extension of lymphadenectomy, when node metastases are staged according to the new pN classification (UICC 1997). The investigation involved 921 patients, who underwent R0 gastric resection for gastric cancer between 1988 and 1998 in three different Italian centres: Verona (n=236), Forlì (n=409), Siena (n=276). The relation among lymphadenectomy and pN category was assessed by Kendall's partial rank-order correlation coefficient, controlling for depth of tumour invasion. A direct evaluation of the Will Rogers phenomenon was accomplished in the Verona series, by comparing the number of positive nodes actually observed with the number of positive nodes which would have been retrieved by a less extended lymphadenectomy (D1). The number of positive nodes increased remarkably with the enlargement of lymphadenectomy, especially in pT2 patients (from 2.2±3.9 in D1 to 3.9±5.0 in D3) and in pT3/pT4 patients (from 5.1±5.9 in D1 to 11.3±12.6 in D3). Non-parametric statistics highlighted a weak (Kendall's partial T=0.128) but significant (P<0.001) correlation between pN category and extension of lymphadenectomy. In the direct analysis of the Verona series, 22 patients out of 230 (9.6%) migrated to a lower pN tier when ignoring positive nodes retrieved from the second and third level. This percentage increased to 39.1% (90 out of 230) when adopting the TNM 87 classification. In conclusion stage migration is of minor importance in gastric cancer patients, staged according to the new pN classification

Gastritis and gastroesophageal reflux disease are strongly associated with non-allergic nasal disorders

Background: Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) has been reported to be significantly associated with chronic rhinosinusitis, but the strength of the association is still debated. Aims: To evaluate the strength of the association between gastritis/GERD and non-allergic rhinitis (NAR)/allergic rhinitis (AR)/sinusitis. Methods: We investigated 2887 subjects aged 20–84&nbsp;years, who underwent a clinical visit in seven Italian centres (Ancona, Palermo, Pavia, Terni, Sassari, Torino, Verona) within the study on Gene Environment Interactions in Respiratory Diseases, a population-based multicase-control study between 2008 and 2014. Subjects were asked if they had doctor-diagnosed “gastritis or stomach ulcer (confirmed by gastroscopy)” or “gastroesophageal reflux disease, hiatal hernia or esophagitis”. The association between NAR/AR/sinusitis and either gastritis or GERD was evaluated through relative risk ratios (RRR) by multinomial logistic regression. Results: The prevalence of gastritis/GERD increased from subjects without nasal disturbances (22.8% = 323/1414) to subjects with AR (25.8% = 152/590) and further to subjects with NAR (36.7% = 69/188) or sinusitis (39.9% = 276/691). When adjusting for centre, sex, age, education level, BMI, smoking habits and alcohol intake, the combination of gastritis and GERD was associated with a four-fold increase in the risk of NAR (RRR = 3.80, 95% CI 2.56–5.62) and sinusitis (RRR = 3.70, 2.62–5.23) with respect to controls, and with a much smaller increase in the risk of AR (RRR = 1.79, 1.37–2.35). Conclusion: The study confirmed the association between gastritis/GERD and nasal disturbances, which is stronger for NAR and sinusitis than for AR

Neoadjuvant Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy for Locally Advanced Esophageal Cancer in a Single High-Volume Center.

Background. Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (CRT) is now considered the standard of care bymany centers in the treatment of both squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and adenocarcinoma of the esophagus. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a neoadjuvant CRT protocol, as regards pathological complete response (pCR) rate and long-term survival.Methods. From 2003 to 2011, at Upper G.I. Surgery Division of Verona University, 155 consecutive patients with locally advanced esophageal cancers (90 SCC, 65 adenocarcinoma) were treated with a single protocol of neoadjuvant CRT (docetaxel, cisplatin, and 5-fluorouracil with 50.4 Gy of concurrent radiotherapy). Response to CRT was evaluated through percentage of pathological complete response (pCR or ypT0N0), overall (OS) and disease-related survival (DRS), and pattern of relapse.Results. One hundred thirty-one patients (84.5 %) underwent surgery. Radical resection (R0) was achieved in 123 patients (79.3 %), and pCR in 65 (41.9 %). Postoperative mortality was 0.7 % (one case). Five-year OS and DRS were respectively 43 and 49 % in the entire cohort, 52 and 59 % in R0 cases, and 72 and 81 % in pCR cases. Survival did not significantly differ between SCC and adenocarcinoma, except for pCR cases. Forty-nine patients suffered from relapse, which was mainly systemic in adenocarcinoma. Only three out of 26 pCR patients with previous adenocarcinoma developed relapse, always systemic.Conclusions. This study suggests that patients treated with the present protocol achieve good survival and high pCR rate. Further research is necessary to evaluate whether surgery on demand is feasible in selected patients, such as pCR patients with adenocarcinoma

Trends in High-Risk HLA Susceptibility Genes Among Colorado Youth With Type 1 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE—Type 1 diabetes is associated with a wide spectrum of susceptibility and protective genotypes within the HLA class II system. It has been reported that adults diagnosed with youth-onset type 1 diabetes more recently have been found to have fewer classical high-risk HLA class II genotypes than those diagnosed several decades ago. We hypothesized that such temporal trends in the distribution of HLA-DR, DQ genotypes would be evident, and perhaps even stronger, among 5- to 17-year-old Hispanic and non-Hispanic white (NHW) youth diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in Colorado between 1978 and 2004

The INFN-grid testbed

The Italian INFN-Grid Project is committed to set-up, run and manage an unprecedented nation-wide Grid infrastructure. The implementation and use of this INFN-Grid Testbed is presented and discussed. Particular care and attention are devoted to those activities, relevant for the management of the Testbed, carried out by the INFN within international Grid Projects

Search for charginos in e+e- interactions at sqrt(s) = 189 GeV

An update of the searches for charginos and gravitinos is presented, based on a data sample corresponding to the 158 pb^{-1} recorded by the DELPHI detector in 1998, at a centre-of-mass energy of 189 GeV. No evidence for a signal was found. The lower mass limits are 4-5 GeV/c^2 higher than those obtained at a centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV. The (\mu,M_2) MSSM domain excluded by combining the chargino searches with neutralino searches at the Z resonance implies a limit on the mass of the lightest neutralino which, for a heavy sneutrino, is constrained to be above 31.0 GeV/c^2 for tan(beta) \geq 1.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure

Search for composite and exotic fermions at LEP 2

A search for unstable heavy fermions with the DELPHI detector at LEP is reported. Sequential and non-canonical leptons, as well as excited leptons and quarks, are considered. The data analysed correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 48 pb^{-1} at an e^+e^- centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV and about 20 pb^{-1} equally shared between the centre-of-mass energies of 172 GeV and 161 GeV. The search for pair-produced new leptons establishes 95% confidence level mass limits in the region between 70 GeV/c^2 and 90 GeV/c^2, depending on the channel. The search for singly produced excited leptons and quarks establishes upper limits on the ratio of the coupling of the excited fermio

Hadronization properties of b quarks compared to light quarks in e+e- -> q qbar from 183 to 200 GeV

The DELPHI detector at LEP has collected 54 pb^{-1} of data at a centre-of-mass energy around 183 GeV during 1997, 158 pb^{-1} around 189 GeV during 1998, and 187 pb^{-1} between 192 and 200 GeV during 1999. These data were used to measure the average charged particle multiplicity in e+e- -> b bbar events, _{bb}, and the difference delta_{bl} between _{bb} and the multiplicity, _{ll}, in generic light quark (u,d,s) events: delta_{bl}(183 GeV) = 4.55 +/- 1.31 (stat) +/- 0.73 (syst) delta_{bl}(189 GeV) = 4.43 +/- 0.85 (stat) +/- 0.61 (syst) delta_{bl}(200 GeV) = 3.39 +/- 0.89 (stat) +/- 1.01 (syst). This result is consistent with QCD predictions, while it is inconsistent with calculations assuming that the multiplicity accompanying the decay of a heavy quark is independent of the mass of the quark itself.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Search for supersymmetric particles in scenarios with a gravitino LSP and stau NLSP

Sleptons, neutralinos and charginos were searched for in the context of scenarios where the lightest supersymmetric particle is the gravitino. It was assumed that the stau is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle. Data collected with the DELPHI detector at a centre-of-mass energy near 189 GeV were analysed combining the methods developed in previous searches at lower energies. No evidence for the production of these supersymmetric particles was found. Hence, limits were derived at 95% confidence level.Comment: 31 pages, 14 figure