Prospects for New Physics in CP Violation and Rare Decays at LHCb

LHCb is the heavy flavour precision experiment of the proton-proton Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. It will search for new physics in CP violation and rare decays and is ready for the start-up of the LHC. An overview of its physics program will be given, illustrated by few key examples: measurements of the CKM angle $\gamma$, of the CP violating phase in $B_s \overline{B_s}$ oscillations and searches for new physics in $B^0_d \to K^*\mu^+\mu^-$ and in $B^0_s \to \mu^+\mu^-$.Comment: PANIC08 conference proceedings, 3 page

Status and expected performance of the LHCb experiment

LHCb is a dedicated b-physics experiment at the future LHC collider. Its construction has started and it will be ready to take data from the start of LHC operation, scheduled in 2007, and directly at its full physics potential. LHCb will benefit from an unprecedented source of b-hadrons, provided by LHC, to improve substantialy precision measurements of CP violation parameters in many different and complementary channels. The detector provides good particle identification, vertexing and has an efficient and flexible trigger. Its status and expected performance are reviewed.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, To appear in the Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Hyperons, Charm & Beauty Hadrons, Chicago, United States, June 27 -- July 3 200

b Physics

A summary of the most recent and important measurements in b physics is presented. The production of beauty particles in Z decays, b quark couplings, lifetimes, B0-B0bar oscillations, semileptonic b decays and studies of the number of charm quarks produced in b decays are reviewed. Extraction of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements |V_{td}|, |V_{cb}|, |V_{ub}| and implication for |V_{ts}| are discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures, Second Latin American Symposium on High Energy Physics, San Juan, Puerto Rico, April 199

Cued Speech Gesture Recognition: A First Prototype Based on Early Reduction

International audienceCued Speech is a specific linguistic code for hearing-impaired people. It is based on both lip reading and manual gestures. In the context of THIMP (Telephony for the Hearing-IMpaired Project), we work on automatic cued speech translation. In this paper, we only address the problem of automatic cued speech manual gesture recognition. Such a gesture recognition issue is really common from a theoretical point of view, but we approach it with respect to its particularities in order to derive an original method. This method is essentially built around a bioinspired method called early reduction. Prior to a complete analysis of each image of a sequence, the early reduction process automatically extracts a restricted number of key images which summarize the whole sequence. Only the key images are studied from a temporal point of view with lighter computation than the complete sequenc

Predictable composition of memory accesses on many-core processors

International audienceThe use of many-core COTS processors in safety critical embedded systems is a challenging research topic. The predictable execution of several applications on those processors is not possible without a precise analysis and mitigation of the possible sources of interference. In this paper, we identify the external DDR-SDRAM and the Network on Chip to be the main bottlenecks for both average performance and predictability in such platforms. As DDR-SDRAM memories are intrinsically stateful, the naive calculation of the Worst-Case Execution Times (WCETs) of tasks involves a significantly pessimistic upper-bounding of the memory access latencies. Moreover, the worst-case end-to-end delays of wormhole switched networks cannot be bounded without strong assumptions on the system model because of the possibility of deadlock. We provide an analysis of each potential source of interference and we give recommendations in order to build viable execution models enabling efficient composable computation of worst-case end-to-end memory access latencies compared to the naive worst-case-everywhere approach

Détermination pratique de quelques espèces de convolvulacées, adventices de l'Afrique du Centre et de l'Ouest

Détermination pratique de quelques espèces de convolvulacées, adventices de l'Afrique du Centre et de l'Ouest. Les auteurs décrivent une clé d'identification utilisant uniquement des critères végétatifs pour 22 espèces de Convolvulaceae, adventices des cultures en Afrique du Contre et de l'Ouest. Elle est accompagnée d'une liste des synonymes usuels pour chaque espèce, d'un tableau des caractères végétatifs des espèces volubiles, d'un texte de description et de planches. Ces éléments permettent la détermination des adventices au stade végétatif à partir de caractères visibles et facilement repérables, ne nécessitant pus une formation de botaniste. (Résumé d'auteur

The mixed analog/digital shaper of the LHCb preshower

The LHCb preshower signals show so many fluctuations at low energy that a classical shaping is not usable at all. Thanks to the fact that the fraction of the collected energy during a whole LHC beam crossing time is 85%, we studied the special solution we presented at Snowmass 1999 workshop. This solution consists of 2 interleaved fast integrators, one being in integrate mode when the other is digitally reset. Two track-and-hold systems and an analog multiplexer are used to give at the output 85% of the signal plus 15% of the previous one. These 15% are digitally computed from the previous sample, and subtracted. A completely new design of this solution had to be made. This new design is described, including new methods to decrease the supply voltage and the noise, as well as to increase the quality of the reset and the linearity. An output stage, consisting of an AB class push-pull using only NPN transistors is also described. Laboratory and beam test results are given. (5 refs)

A mixed analog/digital shaper for the LHCb preshower

This note describes, first, the experimental and theoretical studies of the LHCb's preshower signals performed with a prototype cell. Four designs of the very front end electronic are then discuted and a choice is proposed

RNY-derived small RNAs as a signature of coronary artery disease

International audienceBackgroundData from next generation sequencing technologies uncovered the existence of many classes of small RNAs. Recent studies reported that small RNAs are released by cells and can be detected in the blood. In this report, we aimed to discover the occurrence of novel circulating small RNAs in coronary artery disease (CAD).MethodsWe used high-throughput sequencing of small RNAs from human and mouse apoptotic primary macrophages, and analyzed the data by empirical Bayes moderated t-statistics to assess differential expression and the Benjamini and Hochberg method to control the false discovery rate. Results were then confirmed by Northern blot and RT-qPCR in foam cells and in two animal models for atherosclerosis, namely ApoE −/− and Ldlr −/− mouse lines. Quantitative RT-PCR to detect identified small RNAs, the RNY-derived small RNAs, was performed using sera of 263 patients with CAD compared to 514 matched healthy controls; the Student t-test was applied to statistically assess differences. Associations of small RNAs with clinical characteristics and biological markers were tested using Spearman’s rank correlations, while multivariate logistic regressions were performed to test the statistical association of small RNA levels with CAD.ResultsHere, we report that, in macrophages stimulated with pro-apoptotic or pro-atherogenic stimuli, the Ro-associated non-coding RNAs, called RNYs or Y-RNAs, are processed into small RNAs (~24–34 nt) referred to as small-RNYs (s-RNYs), including s-RNY1-5p processed from RNY1. A significant upregulation of s-RNY expression was found in aortic arches and blood plasma from ApoE −/− and Ldlr −/− mice and in serum from CAD patients (P <0.001). Biostatistical analysis revealed a positive association of s-RNY1-5p with hs-CRP and ApoB levels; however, no statistical interaction was found between either of these two markers and s-RNY1-5p in relation to the CAD status. Levels of s-RNY1-5p were also independent from statin and fibrate therapies.ConclusionOur results position the s-RNY1-5p as a relevant novel independent diagnostic biomarker for atherosclerosis-related diseases. Measurement of circulating s-RNY expression would be a valuable companion diagnostic to monitor foam cell apoptosis during atherosclerosis pathogenesis and to evaluate patient’s responsiveness to future therapeutic strategies aiming to attenuate apoptosis in foam cells in advanced atherosclerotic lesions