The OASIS Mission

The Orbiting Astrophysical Observatory in Space (OASIS) is a mission to investigate Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs), a major feature of our galaxy. OASIS will use measurements of GCRs to determine the cosmic ray source, where they are accelerated, to investigate local accelerators and to learn what they can tell us about the interstellar medium and the processes that occur in it. OASIS will determine the astrophysical sources of both the material and acceleration of GCRs by measuring the abundances of the rare actinide nuclei and make direct measurements of the spectrum and anisotropy of electrons at energies up to approx.10 TeV, well beyond the range of the Fermi and AMS missions. OASIS has two instruments. The Energetic Trans-Iron Composition Experiment (ENTICE) instrument measures elemental composition. It resolves individual elements with atomic number (Z) from 10 to 130 and has a collecting power of 60m2.str.yrs, >20 times larger than previous instruments, and with improved resolution. The sample of 10(exp 10) GCRs collected by ENTICE will include .100 well-resolved actinides. The High Energy Particle Calorimeter Telescope (HEPCaT) is an ionization calorimeter that will extend the electron spectrum into the TeV region for the first time. It has 7.5 sq m.str.yrs of collecting power. This talk will describe the scientific objectives of the OASIS mission and its discovery potential. The mission and its two instruments which have been designed to accomplish this investigation will also be described

Genomic investigations of unexplained acute hepatitis in children

Since its first identification in Scotland, over 1,000 cases of unexplained paediatric hepatitis in children have been reported worldwide, including 278 cases in the UK1. Here we report an investigation of 38 cases, 66 age-matched immunocompetent controls and 21 immunocompromised comparator participants, using a combination of genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and immunohistochemical methods. We detected high levels of adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2) DNA in the liver, blood, plasma or stool from 27 of 28 cases. We found low levels of adenovirus (HAdV) and human herpesvirus 6B (HHV-6B) in 23 of 31 and 16 of 23, respectively, of the cases tested. By contrast, AAV2 was infrequently detected and at low titre in the blood or the liver from control children with HAdV, even when profoundly immunosuppressed. AAV2, HAdV and HHV-6 phylogeny excluded the emergence of novel strains in cases. Histological analyses of explanted livers showed enrichment for T cells and B lineage cells. Proteomic comparison of liver tissue from cases and healthy controls identified increased expression of HLA class 2, immunoglobulin variable regions and complement proteins. HAdV and AAV2 proteins were not detected in the livers. Instead, we identified AAV2 DNA complexes reflecting both HAdV-mediated and HHV-6B-mediated replication. We hypothesize that high levels of abnormal AAV2 replication products aided by HAdV and, in severe cases, HHV-6B may have triggered immune-mediated hepatic disease in genetically and immunologically predisposed children

One- and two- dimensional analysis of the factorial moments in 200 GeV/nucleon p, 16^{16}O and 32^{32}S interactions with Ag/Br nuclei

Scaled factorial moments, corrected for the shape of the single-particle pseudorapidity distribution, are analyzed in pseudorapidity and in two-dimensional (pseudorapidity and azimuth angle) space. An intermittent, power-law growth of the moments with decreasing bin size is found, with two-dimensional analysis revealing a much stronger effect than for one-dimensional for nucleus-nucleus data. The intermittent patterns are more evident for proton-nucleus than for nucleus-nucleus collisions, with the heaviest nucleus, S32, showing the weakest effect. © 1989 The American Physical Society

Evidence for a nuclear phase transition in target nuclei after relativistic nuclear interactions

The degree of excitation of the emulsion target nuclei due to nuclear interactions of oxygen and sulfur projectiles at 200 GeV/nucleon incident energy has been investigated. Using the plausible assumption that the number Nb of slow particles emitted from the struck target nucleus can be interpreted as a measure of the temperature T of the residual nucleus, we have found that there exists a critical temperature Tc of the excited target nucleus. For Ag and Br target nuclei this temperature corresponds to {all equal to}12 and it is attained when the impact parameters are less than about 4 fm. © 1993 Springer-Verlag

Particle production in interactions of 200 GeV/nucleon oxygen and sulfur nuclei in nuclear emulsion

Oxygen and sulfur nuclei with energies of 200 GeV/nucleon have been allowed to interact in nuclear emulsions exposed at CERN. These emulsions have been scanned with a minimum bias so that essentially all the interactions occurring were detected. Nearly 1000 interactions of each projectile have been analyzed. We present results on the multiplicity distributions, the pseudorapidity distributions, and the fragmentation of the projectile and target nuclei. It is shown that the mean number of intranuclear collisions in each interaction, calculated from a superposition model, provides a useful parameter for organizing the data. We conclude that there are no significant deviations even at these energies from models, such as the venus model, describing the interactions as being the superposition of individual nucleon-nucleon collisions. © 1993 The American Physical Society

Multiplicities and angular distributions of nucleus-nucleus interactions at SPS energies: protons to lead

Charged particle multiplicities from high multiplicity interactions of 158 GeV/n Pb ions on Pb targets were measured in nuclear emulsion chambers. These measurements are compared to measurements of central interactions of 200 GeV/n p, O, and S beams on silver or bromine and to simulations from the FRITIOF 7.02 and Venus 4.12 Monte Carlo event generators. Multiplicities in the central region are significantly lower than either simulation predicts. Venus, the only one of the two which attempts to incorporate reinteraction phenomena, predicts a significant narrowing of the pseudorapidity distribution for the highest multiplicity events, which is not observed in the data. However, we do find evidence for unexpectedly high spectator proton transverse momenta. (6 refs)