Percolating Reaction-Diffusion Waves (PERWAVES) — Sounding Rocket Combustion Experiments

Percolating reaction–diffusion waves in disordered random media are encountered in many branches of modern science, ranging from physics and biology to material science and combustion. Most disordered reaction–diffusion systems, however, have complex morphologies and reaction kinetics that complicate the study of the dynamics. Flames in suspensions of heterogeneously reacting metal-fuel particles is a rare example of a reaction–diffusion wave with a simple structure formed by point-like heat sources having well-defined ignition temperature thresholds and combustion times. Particle sedimentation and natural convection can be suppressed in the free-fall conditions of sounding rocket experiments, enabling the properties of percolating flames in suspensions to be observed, studied, and compared with emerging theoretical models. The current paper describes the design of the European Space Agency PERWAVES microgravity combustion apparatus, built by the Airbus Defense and Space team from Bremen in collaboration with the scientific research teams from McGill University and the Technical University of Eindhoven, and discusses the results of two sounding-rocket flight experiments. The apparatus allows multiple flame experiments in quartz glass tubes filled with uniform suspensions of 25-micron iron particles in oxygen/xenon gas mixtures. The experiments performed during the MAXUS-9 (April 2017) and TEXUS-56 (November 2019) sounding rocket flights have confirmed flame propagation in the discrete mode, which is a pre-requisite for percolating-flame behavior, and have allowed observation of the flame structure in the vicinity of the propagation threshold

Sensory Experience Differentially Modulates the mRNA Expression of the Polysialyltransferases ST8SiaII and ST8SiaIV in Postnatal Mouse Visual Cortex

Polysialic acid (PSA) is a unique carbohydrate composed of a linear homopolymer of α-2,8 linked sialic acid, and is mainly attached to the fifth immunoglobulin-like domain of the neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) in vertebrate neural system. In the brain, PSA is exclusively synthesized by the two polysialyltransferases ST8SiaII (also known as STX) and ST8SiaIV (also known as PST). By modulating adhesive property of NCAM, PSA plays a critical role in several neural development processes such as cell migration, neurite outgrowth, axon pathfinding, synaptogenesis and activity-dependent plasticity. The expression of PSA is temporally and spatially regulated during neural development and a tight regulation of PSA expression is essential to its biological function. In mouse visual cortex, PSA is downregulated following eye opening and its decrease allows the maturation of GABAergic synapses and the opening of the critical period for ocular dominance plasticity. Relatively little is known about how PSA levels are regulated by sensory experience and neuronal activity. Here, we demonstrate that while both ST8SiaII and ST8SiaIV mRNA levels decrease around the time of eye opening in mouse visual cortex, only ST8SiaII mRNA level reduction is regulated by sensory experience. Using an organotypic culture system from mouse visual cortex, we further show that ST8SiaII gene expression is regulated by spiking activity and NMDA-mediated excitation. Further, we show that both ST8SiaII and ST8SiaIV mRNA levels are positively regulated by PKC-mediated signaling. Therefore, sensory experience-dependent ST8SiaII gene expression regulates PSA levels in postnatal visual cortex, thus acting as molecular link between visual activity and PSA expression

First data with the ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger

The ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger is one of the main elements of the first stage of event selection for the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The input stage consists of a mixed analogue/digital component taking trigger sums from the ATLAS calorimeters. The trigger logic is performed in a digital, pipelined system with several stages of processing, largely based on FPGAs, which perform programmable algorithms in parallel with a fixed latency to process about 300 Gbyte/s of input data. The real-time output consists of counts of different types of physics objects, and energy sums. The final system consists of over 300 custom-built VME modules, of several different types. The installation at ATLAS of these modules, and the necessary infrastructure, was completed at the end of 2007. The system has since undergone intensive testing, both in standalone mode, and in conjunction with the whole of the ATLAS detector in combined running. The final steps of commissioning, and experience with running the full-scale system are presented. Results of integration tests performed with the upstream calorimeters, and downstream trigger and data-flow systems, are shown, along with an analysis of the performance of the calorimeter trigger in full ATLAS data-taking. This includes trigger operation during the cosmic muon runs from before LHC start-up, and a first look at LHC proton beam data

Analysis of the initial performance of the ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger

The ATLAS first-level calorimeter trigger is a hardware-based system designed to identify high-pT jets, electron/photon and tau candidates and to measure total and missing ET in the calorimeters. The installation of the full system of custom modules, crates and cables was completed in late 2007, but, even before the completion, it was being used as a trigger during ATLAS commissioning and integration. During 2008, the performance of the full system has been tuned during further commissioning and cosmic runs, leading to its use in initial LHC data taking. Results and analysis of the trigger performance in these runs will be presented

The ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger

The ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger uses reduced-granularity information from all the ATLAS calorimeters to search for high transverse-energy electrons, photons, tau leptons and jets, as well as high missing and total transverse energy. The calorimeter trigger electronics has a fixed latency of about 1 microsecond, using programmable custom-built digital electronics. This paper describes the Calorimeter Trigger hardware, as installed in the ATLAS electronics cavern

Testing and calibrating analogue inputs to the ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger

The ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger is a hardwarebased system which aims to identify objects with high transverse momentum within an overall latency of 2.5 μs. It is composed of a PreProcessor system (PPr) which digitises 7200 analogue input channels, determines the bunch crossing of the interaction, applies a digital noise filter, and provides a fine calibration; and two subsequent digital processors. The PreProcessor system needs various channel dependent parameters to be set in order to provide digital signals which are aligned in time and have proper energy calibration. The different techniques which are used to derive these parameters are described along with the quality tests of the analogue input signals

Digital signal integrity and stability in the ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger

The ATLAS Level-1 calorimeter trigger is a hardware-based system with the goal of identifying high-pT objects and to measure total and missing ET in the ATLAS calorimeters within an overall latency of 2.5 microseconds. This trigger system is composed of the Preprocessor which digitises about 7200 analogue input channels and two digital processors to identify high-pT signatures and to calculate the energy sums. The digital part consists of multi-stage, pipelined custom-built modules. The high demands on connectivity between the initial analogue stage and digital part and between the custom-built modules are presented. Furthermore the techniques to establish timing regimes and verify connectivity and stable operation of these digital links will be described

Control, Test and Monitoring Software Framework for the ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger

The ATLAS first-level calorimeter trigger is a hardware-based system designed to identify high-pT jets, electron/photon and tau candidates and to measure total and missing ET in the ATLAS calorimeters. The complete trigger system consists of over 300 customdesignedVME modules of varying complexity. These modules are based around FPGAs or ASICs with many configurable parameters, both to initialize the system with correct calibrations and timings and to allow flexibility in the trigger algorithms. The control, testing and monitoring of these modules requires a comprehensive, but well-designed and modular, software framework, which we will describe in this paper

The ATLAS Trigger/DAQ Authorlist, version 1.0

This is a reference document giving the ATLAS Trigger/DAQ author list, version 1.0 of 20 Nov 2008

The ATLAS Trigger/DAQ Authorlist, version 2.0

This is the ATLAS Trigger/DAQ Authorlist, version 2.0, 31 July 200