Latest news from the HAWC outrigger array

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is a very high energy gamma-ray detector located in Mexico. In late 2018, the HAWC collaboration completed a major upgrade consisting of the addition of a sparse outrigger array of 345 small water Cherenkov detectors (WCDs) surrounding the 300 WCDs of the main array and extending the instrumented area by a factor of 4. It provides an improved reconstruction of the showers whose core and footprint are not well contained in the array and increases the effective area in the range of a few TeV to beyond 100 TeV. This improvement in sensitivity will help to have a better understanding of the Galactic sources that accelerate particles up to the knee of the cosmic ray spectrum. In this contribution, we will show the current status, the performance, and the first results from the HAWC outrigger array

The acceleration and storage of radioactive ions for a neutrino factory

The term beta-beam has been coined for the production of a pure beam of electron neutrinos or their antiparticles through the decay of radioactive ions circulating in a storage ring. This concept requires radioactive ions to be accelerated to a Lorentz gamma of 150 for 6He and 60 for 18Ne. The neutrino source itself consists of a storage ring for this energy range, with long straight sections in line with the experiment(s). Such a decay ring does not exist at CERN today, nor does a high-intensity proton source for the production of the radioactive ions. Nevertheless, the existing CERN accelerator infrastructure could be used as this would still represent an important saving for a beta-beam facility. This paper outlines the first study, while some of the more speculative ideas will need further investigations.Comment: Accepted for publication in proceedings of Nufact02, London, 200

Typhlitis as a complication of alemtuzumab therapy

Alemtuzumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody directed against lymphocytes through the CD-52 receptor, an antigen being found on > 95% of peripheral blood lymphocytes and monocytes, and to a smaller extent on granulocytes.1–7 It is an effective immunotherapeutic agent in patients with malignancies such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia and T cell prolymphocytic leukemia.1–7 Adverse side effects are increasingly recognized in patients receiving alemtuzumab, mainly including fever, rigors, nausea/vomiting, skin rash; other severe alemtuzumab-related reactions have also been described, such as lymphopenia and neutropenia leading to both opportunistic (e.g. cytomegalovirus) and non-opportunistic infections.7–10 Digestive complications have more rarely been described, i.e.: gastroenteritis and peritonitis.10 We recently observed a case of particular interest as the patient with T cell prolymphocytic leukaemia treated with alemtuzumab, exhibited symptomatic reactivation of CMV infection and developed subsequently typhliti

Distributed forcing of the flow past a blunt-based axisymmetric bluff body

In this paper we address the influence of a blowing/suction-type distributed forcing on the flow past a blunt-based axisymmetric bluff body by means of direct numerical simulations. The forcing is applied via consecutive blowing and suction slots azimuthally distributed along the trailing edge of the bluff body. We examine the impact of the forcing wavelength, amplitude and waveform on the drag experienced by the bluff body and on the occurrence of the reflectional symmetry preserving (RSP) and reflectional symmetry breaking (RSB) wake modes, for Reynolds numbers 800 and 1000. We show that forcing the flow at wavelengths inherent to the unforced flow drastically damps drag oscillations associated with the vortex shedding and vorticity bursts, up to their complete suppression. The overall parameter analysis suggests that this damping results from the surplus of streamwise vorticity provided by the forcing, that tends to stabilize the ternary vorticity lobes observed at the aft part of the bluff body. In addition, conversely to a blowing-type or suction-type forcing, the blowing/suction-type forcing involves strong nonlinear interactions between locally decelerated and accelerated regions, severely affecting both the mean drag and the frequencies representative of the vortex shedding and vorticity bursts

Numerical study of tilt stability of prolate field-reversed configurations

Global stability of the Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC) has been investigated numerically using both 3D MHD and hybrid (fluid electron and delta f particle ion) simulations. The stabilizing effects of velocity shear and large ion orbits on the n = 1 internal tilt mode in the prolate FRCs have been studied. Sheared rotation is found to reduce the growth rate, however a large rotation rate with Mach number of M greater than or approximately equal to 1 is required in order for significant reduction in the instability growth rate to occur. Kinetic effects associated with large thermal ion orbits have been studied for different kinetic equilibria. These simulations show that there is a reduction in the tilt mode growth rate due to finite ion Larmor radius (FLR) effects, but complete linear stability has not been found, even when the thermal ion gyroradius is comparable to the distance between the field null and the separatrix. The instability existing beyond the FLR theory threshold could be due to the resonant interaction of the wave with ions whose Doppler shifted frequency matches the betatron frequency

Numerical Study of Global Stability of Oblate Field-Reversed Configurations

Global stability of the oblate (small elongation, E < 1) Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC) has been investigated numerically using both three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) and hybrid (fluid electrons and kinetic ions) simulations. For every non-zero value of the toroidal mode number n, there are three MHD modes that must be stabilized. For n = 1, these are the interchange, the tilt and the radial shift; while for n > 1 these are the interchange and two co-interchange modes with different polarization. It is shown that the n = 1 tilt mode becomes an external mode when E < 1, and it can be effectively stabilized by close-fitting conducting shells, even in the small Larmor radii (MHD) regime. The tilt mode stability improves with increasing oblateness, however at suffciently small elongations the radial shift mode becomes more unstable than the tilt mode. The interchange mode stability is strongly profile dependent, and all n * 1 interchange modes can be stabilized for a class of pressure profile with separatrix beta larger than 0.035. Our results show that all three n = 1 modes can be stabilized in the MHD regime, but the stabilization of the n > 1 co-interchange modes still remains an open question

A 57-year-old man who developed arthritis during R-CHOP chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Rituximab is a chimeric human-mouse anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody, which is used in the treatment of both B-cell lymphomas and rheumatic diseases. We describe a case of a previously healthy 57-year-old man developing arthritis while being treated with rituximab-CHOP chemotherapy (R-CHOP) for a non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The remittant arthritis developed at successively shorter time-intervals after R-CHOP administration and only improved after rituximab was removed from the chemotherapy schedule, suggesting a rituximab-related phenomenon, as extensive diagnostic testing ruled out any other diagnosis

Respiratory Physiology and the Impact of Different Modes of Ventilation on the Photoplethysmographic Waveform

The photoplethysmographic waveform sits at the core of the most used, and arguably the most important, clinical monitor, the pulse oximeter. Interestingly, the pulse oximeter was discovered while examining an artifact during the development of a noninvasive cardiac output monitor. This article will explore the response of the pulse oximeter waveform to various modes of ventilation. Modern digital signal processing is allowing for a re-examination of this ubiquitous signal. The effect of ventilation on the photoplethysmographic waveform has long been thought of as a source of artifact. The primary goal of this article is to improve the understanding of the underlying physiology responsible for the observed phenomena, thereby encouraging the utilization of this understanding to develop new methods of patient monitoring. The reader will be presented with a review of respiratory physiology followed by numerous examples of the impact of ventilation on the photoplethysmographic waveform