Arts practices in unreasonable doubt? Reflections on understandings of arts practices in healthcare contexts

This article suggests that the discourse on arts and health encompass contemporary arts practices as an active and engaged analytical activity. Distinctions between arts therapy and arts practice are made to suggest that clinical evidence-based evaluation, while appropriate for arts therapy, is not appropriate for arts practice and in effect cast them in unreasonable doubt. Themes in current discourse on “arts” and “health” are broadly sketched to provide a context for discussion of arts practices. Approaches to knowledge validation in relation to each domain are discussed. These discourses are applied to the Irish healthcare context, offering a reading of three different art projects; it suggests a multiplicity of analyses beyond causal positive health gains. It is suggested that the social turn in medicine and the social turn in arts practices share some similar pre-occupations that warrant further attention

Origins of the Ambient Solar Wind: Implications for Space Weather

The Sun's outer atmosphere is heated to temperatures of millions of degrees, and solar plasma flows out into interplanetary space at supersonic speeds. This paper reviews our current understanding of these interrelated problems: coronal heating and the acceleration of the ambient solar wind. We also discuss where the community stands in its ability to forecast how variations in the solar wind (i.e., fast and slow wind streams) impact the Earth. Although the last few decades have seen significant progress in observations and modeling, we still do not have a complete understanding of the relevant physical processes, nor do we have a quantitatively precise census of which coronal structures contribute to specific types of solar wind. Fast streams are known to be connected to the central regions of large coronal holes. Slow streams, however, appear to come from a wide range of sources, including streamers, pseudostreamers, coronal loops, active regions, and coronal hole boundaries. Complicating our understanding even more is the fact that processes such as turbulence, stream-stream interactions, and Coulomb collisions can make it difficult to unambiguously map a parcel measured at 1 AU back down to its coronal source. We also review recent progress -- in theoretical modeling, observational data analysis, and forecasting techniques that sit at the interface between data and theory -- that gives us hope that the above problems are indeed solvable.Comment: Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews. Special issue connected with a 2016 ISSI workshop on "The Scientific Foundations of Space Weather." 44 pages, 9 figure

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

Comparing algorithms for automated vessel segmentation in computed tomography scans of the lung: the VESSEL12 study

The VESSEL12 (VESsel SEgmentation in the Lung) challenge objectively compares the performance of different algorithms to identify vessels in thoracic computed tomography (CT) scans. Vessel segmentation is fundamental in computer aided processing of data generated by 3D imaging modalities. As manual vessel segmentation is prohibitively time consuming, any real world application requires some form of automation. Several approaches exist for automated vessel segmentation, but judging their relative merits is difficult due to a lack of standardized evaluation. We present an annotated reference dataset containing 20 CT scans and propose nine categories to perform a comprehensive evaluation of vessel segmentation algorithms from both academia and industry. Twenty algorithms participated in the VESSEL12 challenge, held at International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) 2012. All results have been published at the VESSEL12 website http://vessel12.grand-challenge.org. The challenge remains ongoing and open to new participants. Our three contributions are: (1) an annotated reference dataset available online for evaluation of new algorithms; (2) a quantitative scoring system for objective comparison of algorithms; and (3) performance analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the various vessel segmentation methods in the presence of various lung diseases.Rudyanto, RD.; Kerkstra, S.; Van Rikxoort, EM.; Fetita, C.; Brillet, P.; Lefevre, C.; Xue, W.... (2014). Comparing algorithms for automated vessel segmentation in computed tomography scans of the lung: the VESSEL12 study. Medical Image Analysis. 18(7):1217-1232. doi:10.1016/j.media.2014.07.003S1217123218

An Observational Overview of Solar Flares

We present an overview of solar flares and associated phenomena, drawing upon a wide range of observational data primarily from the RHESSI era. Following an introductory discussion and overview of the status of observational capabilities, the article is split into topical sections which deal with different areas of flare phenomena (footpoints and ribbons, coronal sources, relationship to coronal mass ejections) and their interconnections. We also discuss flare soft X-ray spectroscopy and the energetics of the process. The emphasis is to describe the observations from multiple points of view, while bearing in mind the models that link them to each other and to theory. The present theoretical and observational understanding of solar flares is far from complete, so we conclude with a brief discussion of models, and a list of missing but important observations.Comment: This is an article for a monograph on the physics of solar flares, inspired by RHESSI observations. The individual articles are to appear in Space Science Reviews (2011

Measurement of the View the tt production cross-section using eμ events with b-tagged jets in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper describes a measurement of the inclusive top quark pair production cross-section (σtt¯) with a data sample of 3.2 fb−1 of proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 13 TeV, collected in 2015 by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. This measurement uses events with an opposite-charge electron–muon pair in the final state. Jets containing b-quarks are tagged using an algorithm based on track impact parameters and reconstructed secondary vertices. The numbers of events with exactly one and exactly two b-tagged jets are counted and used to determine simultaneously σtt¯ and the efficiency to reconstruct and b-tag a jet from a top quark decay, thereby minimising the associated systematic uncertainties. The cross-section is measured to be: σtt¯ = 818 ± 8 (stat) ± 27 (syst) ± 19 (lumi) ± 12 (beam) pb, where the four uncertainties arise from data statistics, experimental and theoretical systematic effects, the integrated luminosity and the LHC beam energy, giving a total relative uncertainty of 4.4%. The result is consistent with theoretical QCD calculations at next-to-next-to-leading order. A fiducial measurement corresponding to the experimental acceptance of the leptons is also presented

Search for TeV-scale gravity signatures in high-mass final states with leptons and jets with the ATLAS detector at sqrt [ s ] = 13TeV

A search for physics beyond the Standard Model, in final states with at least one high transverse momentum charged lepton (electron or muon) and two additional high transverse momentum leptons or jets, is performed using 3.2 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2015 at √s = 13 TeV. The upper end of the distribution of the scalar sum of the transverse momenta of leptons and jets is sensitive to the production of high-mass objects. No excess of events beyond Standard Model predictions is observed. Exclusion limits are set for models of microscopic black holes with two to six extra dimensions

Operation and performance of the ATLAS semiconductor tracker

The semiconductor tracker is a silicon microstrip detector forming part of the inner tracking system of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The operation and performance of the semiconductor tracker during the first years of LHC running are described. More than 99% of the detector modules were operational during this period, with an average intrinsic hit efficiency of (99.74±0.04)%. The evolution of the noise occupancy is discussed, and measurements of the Lorentz angle, δ-ray production and energy loss presented. The alignment of the detector is found to be stable at the few-micron level over long periods of time. Radiation damage measurements, which include the evolution of detector leakage currents, are found to be consistent with predictions and are used in the verification of radiation background simulations