Treatment of blunt thoracic aortic injury in Germany—Assessment of the TraumaRegister DGU®

Purpose Using the data delivered by the German Trauma Register DGU® from 2002 till 2013, the value of different therapies of blunt thoracic aortic injury (BTAI) in Germany was analyzed. Methods Prospectively collected data of patients suffering from BTAI were retrospectively analyzed with focus on the different treatment modalities for grade I–IV injuries. Results 821 patients suffering from BTAI were identified: 51.6% (424) grade I injury, 35.4% (291) grade II or III injury and 12.9% (106) grade IV injury (77.5% men [44.94 ± 20.6 years]). The main patterns of injury were high- speed accidents and falls (78.0% [n = 640], 21.8% [n = 171] respectively). Significant differences between grade I and grade II/III as well as IV injuries could be assessed for the incidence of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a Glasgow Coma Scale score below 8 and a systolic blood pressure below 90 mmHg (p-value: <0.001). In the primary admission subgroup, 44.1% (197/447) of the patients received best medical treatment, 55.9% received surgical intervention (250/447): Thereof 37.2% (93/250) received open surgery and 62.8% (147/250) had been treated by endovascular means. Significantly lower 24-h- and in-hospital-mortality rates were encountered after endovascular treatment for all gradings of BTAI (p-value: <0.001). Yet this subgroup of patients showed the lowest incidence of further severe injuries and cardiac arrest. Conclusion Endovascular therapy became the treatment of choice for BTAI in Germany. Patients who have been treated by surgical means showed the highest survival rate, especially endovascular therapy showed a favorable low mortality rate

Phase Space Dissimilarity Measures for Structural Health Monitoring

A novel method for structural health monitoring (SHM), known as the Phase Space Dissimilarity Measures (PSDM) approach, is proposed and developed. The patented PSDM approach has already been developed and demonstrated for a variety of equipment and biomedical applications. Here, we investigate SHM of bridges via analysis of time serial accelerometer measurements. This work has four aspects. The first is algorithm scalability, which was found to scale linearly from one processing core to four cores. Second, the same data are analyzed to determine how the use of the PSDM approach affects sensor placement. We found that a relatively low-density placement sufficiently captures the dynamics of the structure. Third, the same data are analyzed by unique combinations of accelerometer axes (vertical, longitudinal, and lateral with respect to the bridge) to determine how the choice of axes affects the analysis. The vertical axis is found to provide satisfactory SHM data. Fourth, statistical methods were investigated to validate the PSDM approach for this application, yielding statistically significant results

Relating a calcium indicator signal to the unperturbed calcium concentration time-course

BACKGROUND: Optical indicators of cytosolic calcium levels have become important experimental tools in systems and cellular neuroscience. Indicators are known to interfere with intracellular calcium levels by acting as additional buffers, and this may strongly alter the time-course of various dynamical variables to be measured. RESULTS: By investigating the underlying reaction kinetics, we show that in some ranges of kinetic parameters one can explicitly link the time dependent indicator signal to the time-course of the calcium influx, and thus, to the unperturbed calcium level had there been no indicator in the cell

Study of Tau-pair Production in Photon-Photon Collisions at LEP and Limits on the Anomalous Electromagnetic Moments of the Tau Lepton

Tau-pair production in the process e+e- -> e+e-tau+tau- was studied using data collected by the DELPHI experiment at LEP2 during the years 1997 - 2000. The corresponding integrated luminosity is 650 pb^{-1}. The values of the cross-section obtained are found to be in agreement with QED predictions. Limits on the anomalous magnetic and electric dipole moments of the tau lepton are deduced.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.

Energy dependence of Cronin momentum in saturation model for p+Ap+A and A+AA+A collisions

We calculate $\sqrt{s}$ dependence of Cronin momentum for $p+A$ and $A+A$ collisions in saturation model. We show that this dependence is consistent with expectation from formula which was obtained using simple dimentional consideration. This can be used to test validity of saturation model (and distinguish among its variants) and measure $x$ dependence of saturation momentum from experimental data.Comment: LaTeX2e, 12 pages, 8 figure

CP asymmetry in B→ϕKSB \to \phi K_S in a general two-Higgs-doublet model with fourth-generation quarks

We discuss the time-dependent CP asymmetry of decay $B \to \phi K_S$ in an extension of the Standard Model with both two Higgs doublets and additional fourth-generation quarks. We show that although the Standard Model with two-Higgs-doublet and the Standard model with fourth generation quarks alone are not likely to largely change the effective $\sin 2 \beta$ from the decay of $B \to \phi K_S$, the model with both additional Higgs doublet and fourth-generation quarks can easily account for the possible large negative value of $\sin 2 \beta$ without conflicting with other experimental constraints. In this model, additional large CP violating effects may arise from the flavor changing Yukawa interactions between neutral Higgs bosons and the heavy fourth generation down type quark, which can modify the QCD penguin contributions. With the constraints obtained from $b \to s \bar{s} s$ processes such as $B \to X_s \gamma$ and $\Delta m_{B_s^0}$, this model can lead to the effective $\sin 2 \beta$ to be as large as $- 0.4$ in the CP asymmetry of $B \to \phi K_S$.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, references added, to appear in Eur.Phys.J.

Search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu decay channel, where l = e or mu, in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The data were collected at the LHC, with the CMS detector, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 inverse femtobarns. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation, and upper limits are set on the Higgs boson production cross section. The presence of the standard model Higgs boson with a mass in the 270-440 GeV range is excluded at 95% confidence level.Comment: Submitted to JHE

A Precise Measurement of the Tau Lifetime

The tau lepton lifetime has been measured with the e+e- -> tau+tau- events collected by the DELPHI detector at LEP in the years 1991-1995. Three different methods have been exploited, using both one-prong and three-prong tau decay channels. Two measurements have been made using events in which both taus decay to a single charged particle. Combining these measurements gave tau_tau (1 prong) = 291.8 +/- 2.3 (stat) +/- 1.5 (sys) fs. A third measurement using taus which decayed to three charged particles yielded tau_tau (3 prong) = 288.6 +/- 2.4 (stat) +/- 1.3 (sys) fs. These were combined with previous DELPHI results to measure the tau lifetime, using the full LEP1 data sample, to be tau_tau = 290.9 +/- 1.4 (stat) +/- 1.0 (sys) fs.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figure

Search for composite and exotic fermions at LEP 2

A search for unstable heavy fermions with the DELPHI detector at LEP is reported. Sequential and non-canonical leptons, as well as excited leptons and quarks, are considered. The data analysed correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 48 pb^{-1} at an e^+e^- centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV and about 20 pb^{-1} equally shared between the centre-of-mass energies of 172 GeV and 161 GeV. The search for pair-produced new leptons establishes 95% confidence level mass limits in the region between 70 GeV/c^2 and 90 GeV/c^2, depending on the channel. The search for singly produced excited leptons and quarks establishes upper limits on the ratio of the coupling of the excited fermio

Combined search for the quarks of a sequential fourth generation

Results are presented from a search for a fourth generation of quarks produced singly or in pairs in a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 inverse femtobarns recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011. A novel strategy has been developed for a combined search for quarks of the up and down type in decay channels with at least one isolated muon or electron. Limits on the mass of the fourth-generation quarks and the relevant Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements are derived in the context of a simple extension of the standard model with a sequential fourth generation of fermions. The existence of mass-degenerate fourth-generation quarks with masses below 685 GeV is excluded at 95% confidence level for minimal off-diagonal mixing between the third- and the fourth-generation quarks. With a mass difference of 25 GeV between the quark masses, the obtained limit on the masses of the fourth-generation quarks shifts by about +/- 20 GeV. These results significantly reduce the allowed parameter space for a fourth generation of fermions.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO