Season of Birth and Exceptional Longevity: Comparative Study of American Centenarians, Their Siblings, and Spouses

This study explores the effects of month of birth (a proxy for early-life environmental influences) on the chances of survival to age 100. Months of birth for 1,574 validated centenarians born in the United States in 1880–1895 were compared to the same information obtained for centenarians' 10,885 shorter-lived siblings and 1,083 spouses. Comparison was conducted using a within-family analysis by the method of conditional logistic regression, which allows researchers to control for unobserved shared childhood or adulthood environment and common genetic background. It was found that months of birth have significant long-lasting effect on survival to age 100: siblings born in September–November have higher odds to become centenarians compared to siblings born in March. A similar month-of-birth pattern was found for centenarian spouses. These results support the idea of early-life programming of human aging and longevity

Optimal Social Insurance and Health Inequality

This paper integrates into public economics a biologically founded, stochastic process of individual ageing. The novel approach enables us to quantitatively characterize the optimal joint design of health and retirement policy behind the veil of ignorance for today and in response to future medical progress. Calibrating our model to Germany, we find that future progress in medical technology calls for a potentially drastic increase in health spending that typically should be accompanied by a lower pension savings rate and a higher retirement age. Interestingly, medical progress and higher health spending are in conflict with the goal to reduce health inequality

Design, Performance and Calibration of the CMS Forward Calorimeter Wedges

We report on the test beam results and calibration methods using charged particles of the CMS Forward Calorimeter (HF). The HF calorimeter covers a large pseudorapidity region (3\l |\eta| \le 5), and is essential for large number of physics channels with missing transverse energy. It is also expected to play a prominent role in the measurement of forward tagging jets in weak boson fusion channels. The HF calorimeter is based on steel absorber with embedded fused-silica-core optical fibers where Cherenkov radiation forms the basis of signal generation. Thus, the detector is essentially sensitive only to the electromagnetic shower core and is highly non-compensating (e/h \approx 5). This feature is also manifest in narrow and relatively short showers compared to similar calorimeters based on ionization. The choice of fused-silica optical fibers as active material is dictated by its exceptional radiation hardness. The electromagnetic energy resolution is dominated by photoelectron statistics and can be expressed in the customary form as a/\sqrt{E} + b. The stochastic term a is 198% and the constant term b is 9%. The hadronic energy resolution is largely determined by the fluctuations in the neutral pion production in showers, and when it is expressed as in the electromagnetic case, a = 280% and b = 11%

Design, Performance, and Calibration of CMS Hadron-Barrel Calorimeter Wedges

Extensive measurements have been made with pions, electrons and muons on four production wedges of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) hadron barrel (HB) calorimeter in the H2 beam line at CERN with particle momenta varying from 20 to 300 GeV/c. Data were taken both with and without a prototype electromagnetic lead tungstate crystal calorimeter (EB) in front of the hadron calorimeter. The time structure of the events was measured with the full chain of preproduction front-end electronics running at 34 MHz. Moving-wire radioactive source data were also collected for all scintillator layers in the HB. These measurements set the absolute calibration of the HB prior to first pp collisions to approximately 4%

Synchronization and Timing in CMS HCAL

The synchronization and timing of the hadron calorimeter (HCAL) for the Compact Muon Solenoid has been extensively studied with test beams at CERN during the period 2003-4, including runs with 40 MHz structured beam. The relative phases of the signals from different calorimeter segments are timed to 1 ns accuracy using a laser and equalized using programmable delay settings in the front-end electronics. The beam was used to verify the timing and to map out the entire range of pulse shapes over the 25 ns interval between beam crossings. These data were used to make detailed measurements of energy-dependent time slewing effects and to tune the electronics for optimal performance

Energy Response and Longitudinal Shower Profiles Measured in CMS HCAL and Comparison With Geant4

The response of the CMS combined electromagnetic and hadron calorimeter to beams of pions with momenta in the range 5-300 GeV/c has been measured in the H2 test beam at CERN. The raw response with the electromagnetic compartment calibrated to electrons and the hadron compartment calibrated to 300 GeV pions may be represented by sigma = (1.2) sqrt{E} oplus (0.095) E. The fraction of energy visible in the calorimeter ranges from 0.72 at 5 GeV to 0.95 at 300 GeV, indicating a substantial nonlinearity. The intrinsic electron to hadron ratios are fit as a function of energy and found to be in the range 1.3-2.7 for the electromagnetic compartment and 1.4-1.8 for the hadronic compartment. The fits are used to correct the non-linearity of the e pi response to 5% over the entire measured range resulting in a substantially improved resolution at low energy. Longitudinal shower profile have been measured in detail and compared to Geant4 models, LHEP-3.7 and QGSP-2.8. At energies below 30 GeV, the data, LHEP and QGSP are in agreement. Above 30 GeV, LHEP gives a more accurate simulation of the longitudinal shower profile

Design, Performance, and Calibration of CMS Hadron Endcap Calorimeters

Detailed measurements have been made with the CMS hadron calorimeter endcaps (HE) in response to beams of muons, electrons, and pions. Readout of HE with custom electronics and hybrid photodiodes (HPDs) shows no change of performance compared to readout with commercial electronics and photomultipliers. When combined with lead-tungstenate crystals, an energy resolution of 8\% is achieved with 300 GeV/c pions. A laser calibration system is used to set the timing and monitor operation of the complete electronics chain. Data taken with radioactive sources in comparison with test beam pions provides an absolute initial calibration of HE to approximately 4\% to 5\%