Mechanisms of vascular damage in SSc—implications for vascular treatment strategies

Vascular abnormalities are a major component of SSc, but little is known about the events or mechanisms that initiate vascular injury and prevent its repair. In SSc, angiogenesis is incomplete or lacking despite the increased expression of a large array of pro-angiogenic factors such as VEGF. Conflicting results have recently been published concerning the presence and role of vasculogenesis and circulating endothelial progenitor cells in SSc. It remains to be established if these endothelial progenitor cells are a marker of endothelial disease or a cause of insufficient vascular repair. Human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) may be an alternative source for endothelial progenitor cells, and it has been observed that the angiogenic potential of endothelial-like MSCs is reduced. Other mechanisms of vascular damage include oxidative stress and factors released from activated platelets. In addition, growth factors such as ET-1 and PDGF induce proliferation of vascular smooth muscle cells resulting in intimal thickening. For the development of new therapeutic strategies, it is important to realize that the different vascular pathologies—uncompensated loss of capillaries on one hand and vascular remodelling with a proliferative vasculopathy on the other—might require different treatment approache

Status of the Super-B factory Design

The SuperB international team continues to optimize the design of an electron-positron collider, which will allow the enhanced study of the origins of flavor physics. The project combines the best features of a linear collider (high single-collision luminosity) and a storage-ring collider (high repetition rate), bringing together all accelerator physics aspects to make a very high luminosity of 10$^{36}$ cm$^{-2}$ sec$^{-1}$. This asymmetric-energy collider with a polarized electron beam will produce hundreds of millions of B-mesons at the $\Upsilon$(4S) resonance. The present design is based on extremely low emittance beams colliding at a large Piwinski angle to allow very low $\beta_y^\star$ without the need for ultra short bunches. Use of crab-waist sextupoles will enhance the luminosity, suppressing dangerous resonances and allowing for a higher beam-beam parameter. The project has flexible beam parameters, improved dynamic aperture, and spin-rotators in the Low Energy Ring for longitudinal polarization of the electron beam at the Interaction Point. Optimized for best colliding-beam performance, the facility may also provide high-brightness photon beams for synchrotron radiation applications

The Injection System of the INFN-SuperB Factory Project: Preliminary Design

THPEA007International audienceThe ultra high luminosity B-factory (SuperB) project of INFN requires a high performance and reliable injection system, providing electrons at 4 GeV and positrons at 7 GeV, to fulfill the very tight requirements of the collider. Due to the short beam lifetime, continuous injection of electrons and positrons in both HER and LER rings is necessary to keep the average luminosity at a high level. Polarized electrons are required for experiments and must be delivered by the injection system, due to the beam lifetime shorter than the polarization build-up: they will be produced by means of a SLAC-SLC polarized gun. One or two 1 GeV damping rings are used to reduce e+ and e- emittances. Two schemes for positron production are under study, one with electron-positron conversion at low energy (<1 Gev), the second at 6 GeV with a recirculation line to bring the positrons back to the damping ring. Acceleration through the Linac is provided by a S-band RF system made of traveling wave, room temperature accelerating structures. An option to use the C-band technology is also presented

Positron Production and Capture based on Low Energy Electrons for SuperB

TUPEB057International audienceProviding a high quality and sufficient high current positron beam for the ultra high luminosity B-factory SuperB is a major goal. In this paper a proposition for positrons production and capture scheme based on low energy electrons up to1 GeV is presented. For this technique, several types of flux concentrator used to capture the positrons are being studied. The following accelerating section bringing the positrons up to 280 MeV and the total yield for L-band and S-band type accelerators are given. Also the result of the benchmark between ASTRA and a LAL code based on Geant4 toolkit simulation is discussed

Work Plans of the EUROTeV Technical Work Packages for 2005-2007

This report summarises the status of the work in the seven scientific Work Packages of EUROTeV as presented during the ILC-European Regional Meeting at Royal Holloway in June 2005. The purpose of the meeting was to monitor the progress and to contrast the developments inside EUROTeV with the worldwide developments of the GDE. The presentations of the entire meeting are available from http://www.pp.rhul.ac.uk/workshop/

A novel application of Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors in MPGD

We present a novel application of Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors in the construction and characterisation of Micro Pattern Gaseous Detector (MPGD), with particular attention to the realisation of the largest triple (Gas electron Multiplier) GEM chambers so far operated, the GE1/1 chambers of the CMS experiment at LHC. The GE1/1 CMS project consists of 144 GEM chambers of about 0.5 m2 active area each, employing three GEM foils per chamber, to be installed in the forward region of the CMS endcap during the long shutdown of LHC in 2108-2019. The large active area of each GE1/1 chamber consists of GEM foils that are mechanically stretched in order to secure their flatness and the consequent uniform performance of the GE1/1 chamber across its whole active surface. So far FBGs have been used in high energy physics mainly as high precision positioning and re-positioning sensors and as low cost, easy to mount, low space consuming temperature sensors. FBGs are also commonly used for very precise strain measurements in material studies. In this work we present a novel use of FBGs as flatness and mechanical tensioning sensors applied to the wide GEM foils of the GE1/1 chambers. A network of FBG sensors have been used to determine the optimal mechanical tension applied and to characterise the mechanical tension that should be applied to the foils. We discuss the results of the test done on a full-sized GE1/1 final prototype, the studies done to fully characterise the GEM material, how this information was used to define a standard assembly procedure and possible future developments.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, presented by Luigi Benussi at MPGD 2015 (Trieste, Italy). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1512.0848

Development and performance of Triple-GEM detectors for the upgrade of the muon system of the CMS experiment

The CMS Collaboration is evaluating GEM detectors for the upgrade of the muon system. This contribution will focus on the R&D performed on chambers design features and will discuss the performance of the upgraded detector