Collins and Sivers asymmetries in muonproduction of pions and kaons off transversely polarised protons

Measurements of the Collins and Sivers asymmetries for charged pions and charged and neutral kaons produced in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering of high energy muons off transversely polarised protons are presented. The results were obtained using all the available COMPASS proton data, which were taken in the years 2007 and 2010. The Collins asymmetries exhibit in the valence region a non-zero signal for pions and there are hints of non-zero signal also for kaons. The Sivers asymmetries are found to be positive for positive pions and kaons and compatible with zero otherwise. © 2015

Composition and Antimicrobial Activity of Euphrasia rostkoviana Hayne Essential Oil

Eyebright, Euphrasia rostkoviana Hayne (Scrophulariaceae), is a medicinal plant traditionally used in Europe for the treatment of various health disorders, especially as eyewash to treat eye ailments such as conjunctivitis and blepharitis that can be associated with bacterial infections. Some Euphrasia species have been previously reported to contain essential oil. However, the composition and bioactivity of E. rostkoviana oil are unknown. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the chemical composition and antimicrobial activity of the eyebright essential oil against some organisms associated with eye infections: Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, S. epidermidis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Candida albicans. GC-MS analysis revealed more than 70 constituents, with n-hexadecanoic acid (18.47%) as the main constituent followed by thymol (7.97%), myristic acid (4.71%), linalool (4.65%), and anethole (4.09%). The essential oil showed antimicrobial effect against all organisms tested with the exception of P. aeruginosa. The best activity was observed against all Gram-positive bacteria tested with the minimum inhibitory concentrations of 512 µg/mL. This is the first report on the chemical composition of E. rostkoviana essential oil and its antimicrobial activity

Overview and Future Developments of the intelligent, FPGA-based DAQ (iFDAQ) of COMPASS

Modern experiments in high energy physics impose great demands on reliability, efficiency, and data rate of Data Acquisition Systems (DAQ). In order to address these needs, we present a versa- tile and scalable DAQ which executes the event building task entirely in FPGA modules. In 2014, the intelligent FPGA-based DAQ (iFDAQ) was deployed at the COMPASS experiment located at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at CERN. The core of the iFDAQ is its hardware Event Builder (EB), which consists of up to nine custom designed FPGA modules complying with the μ TCA/AMC standard. The EB replaced 30 distributed online computers and around 100 PCI cards increasing compactness, scalability, reliability, and bandwidth compared to the previous system. The iFDAQ in the configuration of COMPASS provides a bandwidth of up to 500 MB/s of sustained rate. By buffering data on different levels, the system exploits the spill structure of the SPS beam and averages the maximum on-spill data rate of 1.5 GB/s over the whole SPS duty cycle. It can even handle peak data rates of 8 GB/s. Its Run Control Configuration and Readout (RCCAR) software offers native user-friendly control and monitoring tools and together with the firmware of the modules provides built-in intelligence like self-diagnostics, data consis- tency checks, and front-end error handling. From 2017, all involved point-to-point high-speed links between front-end electronics, the hardware EB, and the readout computers will be wired via a passive programmable crosspoint switch. Thus, multiple event building topologies can be configured to adapt to different system sizes and communication patterns

Data Acquisition System for the COMPASS++/ AMBER Experiment

We present a new data acquisition system for the COMPASS++/AMBER experiment designed as a further development of the intelligent FPGA-based data acquisition framework. The system is designed to have a maximum throughput of 5 GB/s. We designed the system to provide free-running continuous readout, which allows us to implement a sophisticated data filtering by delaying the decision until the hardware filter and high-level trigger stage which processes data. The system includes front-end cards, fully digital hardware filter, data multiplexers, a timeslice builder, and a high-level trigger farm. The data selection and data assembly require a time structure of the data streams with different granularity for different detectors. We define a unit of detector data as image and combine images from different detectors within a time window to timeslices. By routing data based on the timeslices, we can average data rates and easily achieve scalability. The main component that allows us to achieve these goals is a high-performance and cost-effective hardware timeslice builder. The timeslice builder combines streaming data by their time and consists of the data switch and the spillbuffer build. The scalable architecture allows us to increase the throughput of the system and achieve a true triggerless mode of operation

Free-running data acquisition system for the AMBER experiment

Triggered data acquisition systems provide only limited possibilities of triggering methods. In our paper, we propose a novel approach that completely removes the hardware trigger and its logic. It introduces an innovative free-running mode instead, which provides unprecedented possibilities to physics experiments. We would like to present such system, which is being developed for the AMBER experiment at CERN. It is based on an intelligent data acquisition framework including FPGA modules and advanced software processing. The system provides a triggerless mode that allows more time for data filtering and implementation of more complex algorithms. Moreover, it utilises a custom data protocol optimized for needs of the free-running system. The filtering procedure takes place in a server farm playing the role of the highlevel trigger. For this purpose, we introduce a high-performance filtering framework providing optimized algorithms and load balancing to cope with excessive data rates. Furthermore, this paper also describes the filter pipeline as well as the simulation chain that is being used for production of artificial data, for testing, and validation

FPGA based event building and data acqiusition system for the COMPASS experiment

The purely software based old data acquisition system of the COMPASS experiment at CERN is replaced by the new hybrid FPGA-software system. The two level FPGA subsystem takes over the data handling role. The hardware is built in a compact AMC form factor using a Xilinx Virtex-6 VLX130T FPGA as a data processor. The data handling includes a 15:1 data link multiplexing and complete event building in firmware. All high speed links of the system are commutated by the 144×144 channels cross point switch which is used to provide dynamic load balancing. The designed throughput of the system is 1.6 GB/s while the maximum estimated data rate of the experiment is 1.5 GB/s for the 50 kHz trigger rate. The system makes use of the accelerator spill structure for optimizing the load on the read-out PCs. The distributed software runs on a server farm and integrates control and configuration functionality. The software closely monitors data flow for consistency on all stages of the event building process to perform load balancing and error recovery. The prototype of the system was successfully tested during the commissioning of the experiment and the full system will be used in the physics run 2015