Programmable active memories in real-time tasks: implementing data-driven triggers for LHC experiments

The future Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to be built at CERN, presents among other technological challenges a formidable problem of real-time data analysis. At a primary event rate of 40 MHz, a multi-stage trigger system has to analyze data to decide which is the fraction of events that should be preserved on permanent storage for further analysis. We report on implementations of local algorithms for feature extraction as part of triggering, using the detectors of the proposed ATLAS experiment as a model. The algorithms were implemented for a decision frequency of 100 kHz, on different data-driven programmable devices based on structures of field- programmable gate arrays and memories. The implementations were demonstrated at full speed with emulated input, and were also integrated into a prototype detector running in a test beam at CERN, in June 1994

The chemistry and biological activity of the Hyacinthaceae

Covering: 1914 to 2012The Hyacinthaceae (sensu APGII), with approximately 900 species in about 70 genera, can be divided into three main subfamilies, the Hyacinthoideae, the Urgineoideae and the Ornithogaloideae, with a small fourth subfamily the Oziroëoideae, restricted to South America. The plants included in this family have long been used in traditional medicine for a wide range of medicinal applications. This, together with some significant toxicity to livestock has led to the chemical composition of many of the species being investigated. The compounds found are, for the most part, subfamily-restricted, with homoisoflavanones and spirocyclic nortriterpenoids characterising the Hyacinthoideae, bufadienolides characterising the Urgineoideae, and cardenolides and steroidal glycosides characterising the Ornithogaloideae. The phytochemical profiles of 38 genera of the Hyacinthaceae will be discussed as well as any biological activity associated with both crude extracts and compounds isolated. The Hyacinthaceae of southern Africa were last reviewed in 2000 (T. S. Pohl, N. R. Crouch and D. A. Mulholland, Curr. Org. Chem., 2000, 4, 1287-1324; ); the current contribution considers the family at a global level

Pleiotropic effect of the proton pump inhibitor esomeprazole leading to suppression of lung inflammation and fibrosis

Background: The beneficial outcome associated with the use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) has been reported in retrospective studies. To date, no prospective study has been conducted to confirm these outcomes. In addition, the potential mechanism by which PPIs improve measures of lung function and/or transplant-free survival in IPF has not been elucidated. Methods: Here, we used biochemical, cell biological and preclinical studies to evaluate regulation of markers associated with inflammation and fibrosis. In our in vitro studies, we exposed primary lung fibroblasts, epithelial and endothelial cells to ionizing radiation or bleomycin; stimuli typically used to induce inflammation and fibrosis. In addition, we cultured lung fibroblasts from IPF patients and studied the effect of esomeprazole on collagen release. Our preclinical study tested efficacy of esomeprazole in a rat model of bleomycin-induced lung injury. Furthermore, we performed retrospective analysis of interstitial lung disease (ILD) databases to examine the effect of PPIs on transplant-free survival. Results: The cell culture studies revealed that esomeprazole controls inflammation by suppressing the expression of pro-inflammatory molecules including vascular cell adhesion molecule-1, inducible nitric oxide synthase, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) and interleukins (IL-1 beta and IL-6). The antioxidant effect is associated with strong induction of the stress-inducible cytoprotective protein heme oxygenase-1 (HO1) and the antifibrotic effect is associated with potent inhibition of fibroblast proliferation as well as downregulation of profibrotic proteins including receptors for transforming growth factor beta (TGF beta), fibronectin and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). Furthermore, esomeprazole showed robust effect in mitigating the inflammatory and fibrotic responses in a murine model of acute lung injury. Finally, retrospective analysis of two ILD databases was performed to assess the effect of PPIs on transplant-free survival in IPF patients. Intriguingly, this data demonstrated that IPF patients on PPIs had prolonged survival over controls (median survival of 3.4 vs 2 years). Conclusions: Overall, these data indicate the possibility that PPIs may have protective function in IPF by directly modulating the disease process and suggest that they may have other clinical utility in the treatment of extra-intestinal diseases characterized by inflammatory and/or fibrotic phases.Stanford School of Medicine [1049528-149- KAVFB]; Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program of the University of California [20FT-0090]; National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute [5K01HL118683, P01HL114470]; Houston Methodist Research Institute [25150001]; Stanford SPARK Translational Research ProgramSCI(E)[email protected]

The ENABLE Machine - A Systolic Second Level Trigger Processor for Track Finding

The Enable Machine is a systolic processor for 2nd level triggering for the TRD. It is under development within the EAST/RD-11 collaboration at CERN. The task of the processor is to identify electron tracks and to reject pion tracks in less than 10 s. Track are identified by direct template matching in a region-of-interest (RoI) of the TRD. This is done by histogramming the coincidences of the mask templates and the RoI data for each track. Tracks of the same slope are handled in parallel, tracks of different slope in a pipeline. e/p discrimination is done according to the EAST benchmark algorithm. At an operational speed of 40 MHz the trigger decision time will be 6.5 s and the latency 7.0 s. The Enable Machine will be set up with programmable gate arrays so that it can be adapted easily to different applications. It is scalable in the RoI size as well as in the number of tracks processed concurrently. A prototype is scheduled for spring 1993. 1. Introduction Systolic proce..

Implementation of a Parallel Hough Transform Processor

Systolic arrays belong to the class of pipelined array architectures where many identical processing elements (PEs) are interconnected locally so that data can be passed from all PEs to their respective neighbors synchronously and in parallel. In principle, all of them perform the same basic operation on their current operands in one clock cycle. At the University of Mannheim a systolic processor array is under development specialized to a specific pattern recognition task that has extreme high-speed requirements. The system is a systolic processor for the identification of circular particle tracks in a 2D projection. For each well defined track, the starting angle and the radius of curvature is computed in less than 5 µs. The system consists of a Hough transform processor that determines well defined tracks, and an Euler processor that counts their number by applying the Euler relation to the thresholded result of the Hough transform. A systolic processor consisting of 35×32 processin..