b tagging in ATLAS and CMS

Many physics signals presently studied at the high energy collision experiments lead to final states with jets originating from heavy flavor quarks. This report reviews the algorithms for heavy flavor jets identification developed by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations in view of the Run2 data taking period at the Large Hadron Collider. The improvements of the algorithms used in 2015 and 2016 data analyses with respect to previous data taking periods are discussed, as well as the ongoing developments in view of the next years of data taking. The measurements of the performance of the algorithms on data as well as the dedicated techniques for the identification of heavy flavor jets in events with boosted topologies are also presented. Finally, the effectiveness of heavy flavor jet identification in the complex environment expected during the high luminosity LHC phase is discussed.Comment: 6 pages, Proceeding for the Fifth Annual Large Hadron Collider Physics (LHCP2017) conferenc

Evacuation Shelter Scheduling Problem

Evacuation shelters, which are urgently required during natural disasters, are designed to minimize the burden of evacuation on human survivors. However, the larger the scale of the disaster, the more costly it becomes to operate shelters. When the number of evacuees decreases, the operation costs can be reduced by moving the remaining evacuees to other shelters and closing shelters as quickly as possible. On the other hand, relocation between shelters imposes a huge emotional burden on evacuees. In this study, we formulate the ``Evacuation Shelter Scheduling Problem,'' which allocates evacuees to shelters in such a way to minimize the movement costs of the evacuees and the operation costs of the shelters. Since it is difficult to solve this quadratic programming problem directly, we show its transformation into a 0-1 integer programming problem. In addition, such a formulation struggles to calculate the burden of relocating them from historical data because no payments are actually made. To solve this issue, we propose a method that estimates movement costs based on the numbers of evacuees and shelters during an actual disaster. Simulation experiments with records from the Kobe earthquake (Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake) showed that our proposed method reduced operation costs by 33.7 million dollars: 32%

School Families: A New Formulation of School District Planning Problem

This paper makes a plan to introduce school families. School families refer to a hierarchical system where the junior high school district encompasses the elementary school district. School families have the advantage of promoting efficient cooperation between elementary and junior high schools. Therefore, we formulated a new school district planning problem to introduce school families and created an optimal plan under changing population situations. Our formulation achieves school families by exploiting the continuity constraints of the school district. We also compare two different methods of reorganizing school districts in the simulation experiments: changing school districts by transferring current students in a given year (school-year method) and switching new students' schools over a multi-year period (birth-year method). We examined the cost and computation time of plans obtained with both methods and showed that the method combining the two provides the most significant cost savings

Successful Treatment for Hepatic Encephalopathy Aggravated by Portal Vein Thrombosis with Balloon-Occluded Retrograde Transvenous Obliteration

This report presents the case of a 78-year-old female with hepatic encephalopathy due to an inferior mesenteric venous-inferior vena cava shunt. She developed hepatocellular carcinoma affected by hepatitis C virus-related cirrhosis and underwent posterior sectionectomy. Portal vein thrombosis developed and the portal trunk was narrowed after hepatectomy. Portal vein thrombosis resulted in high portal pressure and increased blood flow in an inferior mesenteric venous-inferior vena cava shunt, and hepatic encephalopathy with hyperammonemia was aggravated. The hepatic encephalopathy aggravated by portal vein thrombosis was successfully treated by balloon-occluded retrograde transvenous obliteration via a right transjugular venous approach without the development of other collateral vessels

Comparison of self‐expandable metallic stent placement followed by laparoscopic resection and elective laparoscopic surgery without stent placement for left‐sided colon cancer.

Aim:Self‐expandable metallic stent (SEMS) placement for obstructive colon cancer is widely performed as a bridge to surgery (BTS) procedure before resection. This study aimed to investigate the surgical and oncological results of laparoscopic elective surgery with or without SEMS placement to assess the efficacy of SEMS placement as a BTS.Methods:We retrospectively analyzed consecutive patients with stage II, III, and IV left‐sided colon cancer who underwent elective laparoscopic resection between 2013 and 2019. All patients were divided into two groups: with and without SEMS placement.Results:The SEMS group included 24 patients, whereas the non‐SEMS group included 86 patients. The serum hemoglobin and albumin levels were lower (P = .049, P = .03), and the serum leukocyte and C‐reactive protein levels were higher (P < .0001, P = .022) in the SEMS group. The tumor diameter and tumor circumferential rate were higher in the SEMS group (both P < .0001). No significant differences were observed in operation time, blood loss, postoperative complications, or postoperative hospital stay. After 1:1 propensity score matching, 15 patients in the SEMS group were compared with 15 patients in the non‐SEMS group. The 3‐year overall survival rates of the SEMS and non‐SEMS groups were 87.5% and 88.9%, respectively (P = .97). The 3‐year recurrence‐free survival rates of the SEMS and non‐SEMS groups were 58.2% and 81.7%, respectively (P = .233). No significant difference was found in the sites of recurrence.Conclusion:The perioperative and long‐term outcomes of SEMS placement as a BTS before laparoscopic resection could be acceptable compared with other elective laparoscopic operations without SEMS placement

Vimentin Expression in Tumor Microenvironment Predicts Survival in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: Heterogeneity in Fibroblast Population.

BACKGROUND:The tumor microenvironment, including cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), plays various clinical roles in cancer growth. CAFs are a heterogeneous population and express a variety of mesenchymal markers. However, the clinical roles for CAFs expressing different markers in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remain unknown.METHODS:We reviewed 67 resected PDAC patients who had not received preoperative therapy. Each primary tumor was analyzed for vimentin and α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) expression by immunohistochemical and dual immunofluorescence staining.RESULTS:There was no correlation between the percentage of cells expressing vimentin and α-SMA in the tumor stroma (Pearson\u27s correlation coefficient: r = 0.171). Higher vimentin expression (p = 0.018) was associated with significantly shorter overall survival in PDAC patients. Using dual immunofluorescence staining, vimentin-positive CAFs were divided into two subpopulations: co-expression of α-SMA, and no co-expression of α-SMA. In PDAC, the level of co-expression had no effect on survival using univariate analysis (median survival time, 33.3 months for low co-expression vs. 18.2 months for high co-expression; log-rank, p = 0.143). However, multivariate analysis clarified that CAFs expressing vimentin alone was an independent predictor of poor survival (p = 0.014; hazard ratio, 2.305; 95% confidence interval, 1.181-4.497).CONCLUSIONS:Vimentin-positive CAFs without co-expression of α-SMA were associated with poor survival in PDAC, and CAFs possessed molecular and functional heterogeneity in this disease

Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor Activates Hypoxia-Inducible Factor in a p53-Dependent Manner

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