Star and Planet Formation with ALMA: an Overview

Submillimeter observations with ALMA will be the essential next step in our understanding of how stars and planets form. Key projects range from detailed imaging of the collapse of pre-stellar cores and measuring the accretion rate of matter onto deeply embedded protostars, to unravelling the chemistry and dynamics of high-mass star-forming clusters and high-spatial resolution studies of protoplanetary disks down to the 1 AU scale.Comment: Invited review, 8 pages, 5 figures; to appear in the proceedings of "Science with ALMA: a New Era for Astrophysics". Astrophysics & Space Science, in pres

Volume I. Introduction to DUNE

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early universe, the dynamics of the supernovae that produced the heavy elements necessary for life, and whether protons eventually decay—these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our universe, its current state, and its eventual fate. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions as it searches for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation, stands ready to capture supernova neutrino bursts, and seeks to observe nucleon decay as a signature of a grand unified theory underlying the standard model. The DUNE far detector technical design report (TDR) describes the DUNE physics program and the technical designs of the single- and dual-phase DUNE liquid argon TPC far detector modules. This TDR is intended to justify the technical choices for the far detector that flow down from the high-level physics goals through requirements at all levels of the Project. Volume I contains an executive summary that introduces the DUNE science program, the far detector and the strategy for its modular designs, and the organization and management of the Project. The remainder of Volume I provides more detail on the science program that drives the choice of detector technologies and on the technologies themselves. It also introduces the designs for the DUNE near detector and the DUNE computing model, for which DUNE is planning design reports. Volume II of this TDR describes DUNE\u27s physics program in detail. Volume III describes the technical coordination required for the far detector design, construction, installation, and integration, and its organizational structure. Volume IV describes the single-phase far detector technology. A planned Volume V will describe the dual-phase technology

Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), far detector technical design report, volume III: DUNE far detector technical coordination

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early universe, the dynamics of the supernovae that produced the heavy elements necessary for life, and whether protons eventually decay—these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our universe, its current state, and its eventual fate. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions as it searches for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation, stands ready to capture supernova neutrino bursts, and seeks to observe nucleon decay as a signature of a grand unified theory underlying the standard model. The DUNE far detector technical design report (TDR) describes the DUNE physics program and the technical designs of the single- and dual-phase DUNE liquid argon TPC far detector modules. Volume III of this TDR describes how the activities required to design, construct, fabricate, install, and commission the DUNE far detector modules are organized and managed. This volume details the organizational structures that will carry out and/or oversee the planned far detector activities safely, successfully, on time, and on budget. It presents overviews of the facilities, supporting infrastructure, and detectors for context, and it outlines the project-related functions and methodologies used by the DUNE technical coordination organization, focusing on the areas of integration engineering, technical reviews, quality assurance and control, and safety oversight. Because of its more advanced stage of development, functional examples presented in this volume focus primarily on the single-phase (SP) detector module

Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU

The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 10^3 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype

Assessing Left Ventricular Unloading and Wall Tension to Predict the Need for Durable Mechanical Circulatory Support after Peripheral VA-ECMO

Peripheral veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (pVA-ECMO) has gained increasing value in the management of advanced cardiogenic shock. Unloading the left ventricle (LV) while reducing myocardial oxygen consumption (MVO2) are crucial for myocardial recovery during pVA-ECMO. To study the effects of a pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP)-directed protocol in patients on pVA-ECMO (goal: PCWP <18 mmHg), we performed a retrospective analysis of our ECMO database. In particular, we sought to identify risk factors for lack of myocardial recovery, i.e. need for durable mechanical circulatory support (dMCS) after pVA-ECMO. Following IRB approval, we identified 99 patients with advanced cardiogenic shock undergoing pVA-ECMO and at least one formal transthoracic echocardiography study (TTE) during pVA-ECMO. We analyzed demographic data, routine laboratory data, hemodynamic parameters, and TTE results. We used PCWP measurements and calculations of LV systolic wall tension (LVSWT) to assess LV unloading and MVO2 during pVA-ECMO, respectively. Statistical analyses included Mann-Whitney-U test and logistic regression modeling. Data are given as median (interquartile range). Survival to hospital discharge was 60.6%. 27.3% of all patients required transition to dMCS to be weaned off pVA-ECMO. 10.1% of all patients developed refractory LV distention with pulmonary edema despite maximum medical treatment and required either atrial septostomy or additional mechanical support. Minimum PCWP readings during pVA-ECMO were 12.8 mmHg (11.0-14.4) in patients without and 10.0 mmHg (8.0-17.0) in patients with need for dMCS (p=0.236). Minimum LVSWT during pVA-ECMO were 2.7 × 105 dynes/cm (2.0-3.5) in patients without and 3.5 × 105 dynes/cm (3.1-4.0) in patients with need for dMCS (p=0.002). Adjusting for age and race in a logistic regression model revealed that only post-cardiotomy pVA-ECMO and LVSWT, but not minimum PCWP were independently associated with need for dMCS after pVA-ECMO. We show that strict medical management can lead to LV unloading, i.e. minimum PCWP < 18 mmHg, in the vast majority of patients requiring pVA-ECMO for advanced cardiogenic shock. However, high LVSWT during pVA-ECMO remained predictive of need for dMCS even with unloaded LV