Use of and irradiation from plain lumbar spine radiography in Switzerland.

Plain lumbar spine radiographic examination (LSRE) is frequently used in medical practice and delivers a high dose of ionising radiation. The objectives of the study were to determine the annual frequency of LSRE in Switzerland and its distribution according to practitioners' and patients' characteristics, as well as the related population dose of ionising radiation. Data were extrapolated from a nationwide questionnaire survey on radiation exposure resulting from medical imaging in 1998, involving physicians and other healthcare providers performing radiological examinations in Switzerland. An estimated number of 273,000 LSRE are performed annually in Switzerland (39 LSRE per 1000 inhabitants per year). The collective dose to the population due to LSRE was 1130 Sv (0.16 mSv per person per year). 50-60% of these procedures were performed to confirm or rule out a diagnosis, the majority (85%) in the context of an illness. LSRE is the third most frequent radiographic procedure performed and delivers the highest population dose of ionising radiation of any radiodiagnostic procedure. Efforts to reduce the frequency and the radiation dose of this procedure must be kept up, technically by optimising the equipment and radioprotection measures, and clinically by implementing evidence-based approaches to appropriate indications for this imaging technique

Direct CP Violation in B decays with rho0-omega Mixing

A complete study of the process B to pi+ pi- V(V=1--) is performed both in the framework of the helicity formalism and the effective lagrangian approach. Emphasis is put on the factorization hypothesis and the importance of the rho0- omega mixing in enhancing the direct CP violation. New results involving some branching ratios and the ratio of the Penguin/Tree amplitude are given in details.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Talk oresented by ZJA at the 18th International Workshop on High energy Physics and Quantum Field Theory, QFTHEP004, St-Petersbug, RUSSIA, JUne 17-23, 200

Level 0 trigger decision unit for the LHCb experiment

The Level-0 Decision Unit (L0DU) is the central part of the first trigger level of the LHCb detector. The L0DU receives information from the Calorimeter, Muon and Pile-Up sub-triggers, with fixed latencies, at 40 MHz via 24 high speed optical fiber links running at 1.6 Gb/s. The L0DU performs simple physics algorithm to compute the decision in order to reduce the data flow down to 1 MHz for the next trigger level and a L0Block is constructed. The processing is implemented in FPGA using a 40 MHz synchronous pipelined architecture. The algorithm can be easily configured with the Experiment Control System (ECS) without FPGA reprogramming. The L0DU is a 16 layer custom board

Exposure to Amosite-Containing Ceiling Boards in a Public School in Switzerland: A Case Study.

The measurement of an airborne concentration in Amosite fibers above 5035 F/m <sup>3</sup> in a school prompted a retrospective quantitative health risk assessment. Dose estimates were built using air measurements, laboratory experiments, previous exposure data, and interviews. A dose response model was adapted for amosite-only exposure and adjusted for the life expectancy and lung cancer incidence in the Swiss population. The average yearly concentrations found were 52-320 F/m <sup>3</sup> . The high concentration previously observed was not representative of the average exposure in the building. Overall, the risk estimates for the different populations of the school were low and in the range of 2 × 10 <sup>-6</sup> to 3 × 10 <sup>-5</sup> for mesothelioma and 4 × 10 <sup>-7</sup> to 8 × 10 <sup>-6</sup> for lung cancer. The results evidenced however that children have to be considered at higher risk when exposed to asbestos, and that the current reference method and target values are of limited use for amphibole-only exposures. This study confirmed that quantitative health risk assessments and participatory approaches are powerful tools to support public decisions and build constructive communication between exposed people, experts, and policy-makers

MASSIV: Mass Assembly Survey with SINFONI in VVDS. VI. Metallicity-related fundamental relations in star-forming galaxies at 1<z<21 < z < 2

The MASSIV (Mass Assembly Survey with SINFONI in VVDS) project aims at finding constraints on the different processes involved in galaxy evolution. This study proposes to improve the understanding of the galaxy mass assembly through chemical evolution using the metallicity as a tracer of the star formation and interaction history. Methods. We analyse the full sample of MASSIV galaxies for which a metallicity estimate has been possible, that is 48 star-forming galaxies at $z\sim 0.9-1.8$, and compute the integrated values of some fundamental parameters, such as the stellar mass, the metallicity and the star formation rate (SFR). The sample of star-forming galaxies at similar redshift from zCOSMOS (P\'erez-Montero et al. 2013) is also combined with the MASSIV sample. We study the cosmic evolution of the mass-metallicty relation (MZR) together with the effect of close environment and galaxy kinematics on this relation. We then focus on the so-called fundamental metallicity relation (FMR) proposed by Mannucci et al. (2010) and other relations between stellar mass, SFR and metallicity as studied by Lara-L\'opez et al. (2010). We investigate if these relations are really fundamental, i.e. if they do not evolve with redshift. Results. The MASSIV galaxies follow the expected mass-metallicity relation for their median redshift. We find however a significant difference between isolated and interacting galaxies as found for local galaxies: interacting galaxies tend to have a lower metallicity. The study of the relation between stellar mass, SFR and metallicity gives such large scattering for our sample, even combined with zCOSMOS, that it is diffcult to confirm or deny the existence of a fundamental relation