Middle Segment Pancreatectomy: A Useful Tool in the Management of Pancreatic Neoplasms

Small, benign, or low-grade malignant tumors located in the neck of the pancreas are usually treated with enucleation. However, if enucleation is too risky because of possible damage of the main pancreatic duct, standard pancreatic resections are performed. Such operations can lead to impaired long-term exocrine–endocrine function. Middle segment pancreatectomy consists of a limited resection of the midportion of the pancreas and can be performed in selected patients affected by tumors of the pancreatic neck. Middle segment pancreatectomy is a safe and feasible procedure for treating tumors of the pancreatic neck; in experienced hands it is associated with no mortality but with high morbidity, even if the rate of “clinical” pancreatic fistula is about 20%. Moreover, it allows a surgeon to preserve pancreatic parenchyma and consequently long-term endocrine and exocrine pancreatic function

Stochastic Ion Channel Gating in Dendritic Neurons: Morphology Dependence and Probabilistic Synaptic Activation of Dendritic Spikes

Neuronal activity is mediated through changes in the probability of stochastic transitions between open and closed states of ion channels. While differences in morphology define neuronal cell types and may underlie neurological disorders, very little is known about influences of stochastic ion channel gating in neurons with complex morphology. We introduce and validate new computational tools that enable efficient generation and simulation of models containing stochastic ion channels distributed across dendritic and axonal membranes. Comparison of five morphologically distinct neuronal cell types reveals that when all simulated neurons contain identical densities of stochastic ion channels, the amplitude of stochastic membrane potential fluctuations differs between cell types and depends on sub-cellular location. For typical neurons, the amplitude of membrane potential fluctuations depends on channel kinetics as well as open probability. Using a detailed model of a hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neuron, we show that when intrinsic ion channels gate stochastically, the probability of initiation of dendritic or somatic spikes by dendritic synaptic input varies continuously between zero and one, whereas when ion channels gate deterministically, the probability is either zero or one. At physiological firing rates, stochastic gating of dendritic ion channels almost completely accounts for probabilistic somatic and dendritic spikes generated by the fully stochastic model. These results suggest that the consequences of stochastic ion channel gating differ globally between neuronal cell-types and locally between neuronal compartments. Whereas dendritic neurons are often assumed to behave deterministically, our simulations suggest that a direct consequence of stochastic gating of intrinsic ion channels is that spike output may instead be a probabilistic function of patterns of synaptic input to dendrites

Measurement of the W±Z boson pair-production cross section in pp collisions at √s=13TeV with the ATLAS detector

published_or_final_versio

Anatomy of the sign-problem in heavy-dense QCD

QCD at finite densities of heavy quarks is investigated using the density-of-states method. The phase factor expectation value of the quark determinant is calculated to unprecedented precision as a function of the chemical potential. Results are validated using those from a reweighting approach where the latter can produce a significant signalto-noise ratio. We confirm the particle–hole symmetry at low temperatures, find a strong sign problem at intermediate values of the chemical potential, and an inverse Silver Blaze feature for chemical potentials close to the onset value: here, the phase-quenched theory underestimates the density of the full theory

Charged-particle distributions at low transverse momentum in √s=13 13 TeV pp interactions measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of distributions of charged particles produced in proton–proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV are presented. The data were recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 151 μb −1 μb−1 . The particles are required to have a transverse momentum greater than 100 MeV and an absolute pseudorapidity less than 2.5. The charged-particle multiplicity, its dependence on transverse momentum and pseudorapidity and the dependence of the mean transverse momentum on multiplicity are measured in events containing at least two charged particles satisfying the above kinematic criteria. The results are corrected for detector effects and compared to the predictions from several Monte Carlo event generators

Measurement of the inelastic proton-proton cross section at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

This Letter presents a measurement of the inelastic proton-proton cross section using 60  μb −1 of pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy √s of 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Inelastic interactions are selected using rings of plastic scintillators in the forward region (2.0710 −6 , where M X is the larger invariant mass of the two hadronic systems separated by the largest rapidity gap in the event. In this ξ range the scintillators are highly efficient. For diffractive events this corresponds to cases where at least one proton dissociates to a system with M X >13  GeV . The measured cross section is compared with a range of theoretical predictions. When extrapolated to the full phase space, a cross section of 78.1±2.9  mb is measured, consistent with the inelastic cross section increasing with center-of-mass energy

Measurement of W+W− production in association with one jet in proton–proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 8TeV with the ATLAS detector

The production of W boson pairs in association with one jet in pp collisions at View the MathML sources=8 TeV is studied using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1 collected by the ATLAS detector during 2012 at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The cross section is measured in a fiducial phase-space region defined by the presence of exactly one electron and one muon, missing transverse momentum and exactly one jet with a transverse momentum above 25 GeV and a pseudorapidity of |η|<4.5|η|<4.5. The leptons are required to have opposite electric charge and to pass transverse momentum and pseudorapidity requirements. The fiducial cross section is found to be View the MathML sourceσWWfid,1-jet=136±6(stat)±14(syst)±3(lumi) fb. In combination with a previous measurement restricted to leptonic final states with no associated jets, the fiducial cross section of WW production with zero or one jet is measured to be View the MathML sourceσWWfid,≤1-jet=511±9(stat)±26(syst)±10(lumi) fb. The ratio of fiducial cross sections in final states with one and zero jets is determined to be 0.36±0.050.36±0.05. Finally, a total cross section extrapolated from the fiducial measurement of WW production with zero or one associated jet is reported. The measurements are compared to theoretical predictions and found in good agreement

Search for pair production of Higgs bosons in the bb¯bb¯ final state using proton-proton collisions at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for Higgs-boson pair production in the bb ¯ bb ¯ final state is carried out with 3.2  fb −1 of proton-proton collision data collected at s √ =13  TeV with the ATLAS detector. The data are consistent with the estimated background and are used to set upper limits on the production cross section of Higgs-boson pairs times branching ratio to bb ¯ bb ¯ for both nonresonant and resonant production. In the case of resonant production of Kaluza-Klein gravitons within the Randall-Sundrum model, upper limits in the 24 to 91 fb range are obtained for masses between 600 and 3000 GeV, at the 95% confidence level. The production cross section times branching ratio for nonresonant Higgs-boson pairs is also constrained to be less than 1.22 pb, at the 95% confidence level