Repair of traumatic avulsion of the right bronchus in children using extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support

Traumatic avulsion of the right main bronchus in children is usually caused by blunt trauma or traffic accidents. Primary repair by suturing is the preferred treatment. Lesions are life threatening and urgent or emergency surgical repair is indicated. We report our experience with 2 cases of traumatic avulsion of right bronchus in children successfully suture repaired with the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.Thoracic Surger

Prior dengue virus exposure shapes T Cell immunity to Zika Virus in humans

While progress has been made in characterizing humoral immunity to Zika virus (ZIKV) in humans, little is known regarding the corresponding T cell responses to ZIKV. Here we investigate the kinetics and viral epitopes targeted by T cells responding to ZIKV and address the critical question of whether pre-existing dengue virus (DENV) T cell immunity modulates these responses. We find that memory T cell responses elicited by prior infection with DENV or vaccination with Tetravalent Dengue Attenuated Vaccines (TDLAV) recognize ZIKV-derived peptides. This cross-reactivity is explained by the sequence similarity of the two viruses, as the ZIKV peptides recognized by DENV-elicited memory T cells are identical or highly conserved in DENV and ZIKV. DENV exposure prior to ZIKV infection also influences the timing and magnitude of the T cell response. ZIKV-reactive T cells in the acute phase of infection are detected earlier and in greater magnitude in DENV-immune patients. Conversely, the frequency of ZIKV-reactive T cells continues to rise in the convalescent phase in DENV-naive donors, but declines in DENV pre-exposed donors, compatible with more efficient control of ZIKV replication and/or clearance of ZIKV antigen. The quality of responses is also influenced by previous DENV exposure, and ZIKV-specific CD8 T cells form DENV pre-exposed donors selectively up-regulated granzyme B and PD1, as compared to DENV-naïve donors. Finally, we discovered that ZIKV structural proteins (E, prM and C) are major targets of both the CD4 and CD8 T cell responses, whereas DENV T cell epitopes are found primarily in nonstructural proteins

BB flavour tagging using charm decays at the LHCb experiment

An algorithm is described for tagging the flavour content at production of neutral $B$ mesons in the LHCb experiment. The algorithm exploits the correlation of the flavour of a $B$ meson with the charge of a reconstructed secondary charm hadron from the decay of the other $b$ hadron produced in the proton-proton collision. Charm hadron candidates are identified in a number of fully or partially reconstructed Cabibbo-favoured decay modes. The algorithm is calibrated on the self-tagged decay modes $B^+ \to J/\psi \, K^+$ and $B^0 \to J/\psi \, K^{*0}$ using $3.0\mathrm{\,fb}^{-1}$ of data collected by the LHCb experiment at $pp$ centre-of-mass energies of $7\mathrm{\,TeV}$ and $8\mathrm{\,TeV}$. Its tagging power on these samples of $B \to J/\psi \, X$ decays is $(0.30 \pm 0.01 \pm 0.01) \%$.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at http://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2015-027.htm

Pion contamination in the MICE muon beam

The international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) will perform a systematic investigation of ionization cooling with muon beams of momentum between 140 and 240\,MeV/c at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory ISIS facility. The measurement of ionization cooling in MICE relies on the selection of a pure sample of muons that traverse the experiment. To make this selection, the MICE Muon Beam is designed to deliver a beam of muons with less than $\sim$1\% contamination. To make the final muon selection, MICE employs a particle-identification (PID) system upstream and downstream of the cooling cell. The PID system includes time-of-flight hodoscopes, threshold-Cherenkov counters and calorimetry. The upper limit for the pion contamination measured in this paper is $f_\pi < 1.4\%$ at 90\% C.L., including systematic uncertainties. Therefore, the MICE Muon Beam is able to meet the stringent pion-contamination requirements of the study of ionization cooling.Department of Energy and National Science Foundation (U.S.A.), the Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italy), the Science and Technology Facilities Council (U.K.), the European Community under the European Commission Framework Programme 7 (AIDA project, grant agreement no. 262025, TIARA project, grant agreement no. 261905, and EuCARD), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Swiss National Science Foundation, in the framework of the SCOPES programme

Measurement of CP observables in B± → D(⁎)K± and B± → D(⁎)π± decays

Measurements of CP observables in B ± →D (⁎) K ± and B ± →D (⁎) π ± decays are presented, where D (⁎) indicates a neutral D or D ⁎ meson that is an admixture of D (⁎)0 and D¯ (⁎)0 states. Decays of the D ⁎ meson to the Dπ 0 and Dγ final states are partially reconstructed without inclusion of the neutral pion or photon, resulting in distinctive shapes in the B candidate invariant mass distribution. Decays of the D meson are fully reconstructed in the K ± π ∓ , K + K − and π + π − final states. The analysis uses a sample of charged B mesons produced in pp collisions collected by the LHCb experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.0, 1.0 and 2.0 fb −1 taken at centre-of-mass energies of s=7, 8 and 13 TeV, respectively. The study of B ± →D ⁎ K ± and B ± →D ⁎ π ± decays using a partial reconstruction method is the first of its kind, while the measurement of B ± →DK ± and B ± →Dπ ± decays is an update of previous LHCb measurements. The B ± →DK ± results are the most precise to date

Identification of beauty and charm quark jets at LHCb

Identification of jets originating from beauty and charm quarks is important for measuring Standard Model processes and for searching for new physics. The performance of algorithms developed to select $b$- and $c$-quark jets is measured using data recorded by LHCb from proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV in 2011 and at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV in 2012. The efficiency for identifying a $b(c)$ jet is about 65%(25%) with a probability for misidentifying a light-parton jet of 0.3% for jets with transverse momentum $p_{\rm T} > 20$ GeV and pseudorapidity $2.2 < \eta < 4.2$. The dependence of the performance on the $p_{\rm T}$ and $\eta$ of the jet is also measured

Search for B⁺c decays to the pp‾π⁺ final state

A search for the decays of the B + c meson to pp-π + is performed for the first time using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 fb -1 collected by the LHCb experiment in pp collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. No signal is found and an upper limit, at 95% confidence level, is set, fcfu×B(B + c →ppπ + ) < 3.6×10-8 in the kinematic region m(pp) < 2.85 GeV/c2, p T (B) < 20 GeV/c and 2.0 < y(B) < 4.5, where B is the branching fraction and f c (f u ) is the fragmentation fraction of the b quark into a B c + (B + ) meson

Measurement of the CP-Violating Asymmetry Amplitude sin2β\beta

We present results on time-dependent CP-violating asymmetries in neutral B decays to several CP eigenstates. The measurements use a data sample of about 88 million Y(4S) --> B Bbar decays collected between 1999 and 2002 with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC. We study events in which one neutral B meson is fully reconstructed in a final state containing a charmonium meson and the other B meson is determined to be either a B0 or B0bar from its decay products. The amplitude of the CP-violating asymmetry, which in the Standard Model is proportional to sin2beta, is derived from the decay-time distributions in such events. We measure sin2beta = 0.741 +/- 0.067 (stat) +/- 0.033 (syst) and |lambda| = 0.948 +/- 0.051 (stat) +/- 0.017 (syst). The magnitude of lambda is consistent with unity, in agreement with the Standard Model expectation of no direct CP violation in these modes