Measurement of the Ratio of b Quark Production Cross Sections in Antiproton-Proton Collisions at 630 GeV and 1800 GeV

We report a measurement of the ratio of the bottom quark production cross section in antiproton-proton collisions at 630 GeV to 1800 GeV using bottom quarks with transverse momenta greater than 10.75 GeV identified through their semileptonic decays and long lifetimes. The measured ratio sigma(630)/sigma(1800) = 0.171 +/- .024 +/- .012 is in good agreement with next-to-leading order (NLO) quantum chromodynamics (QCD)

Study of urinary acidification in patients with idiopathic hypocitraturia

Hypocitraturia (HCit) is one of the most remarkable features of renal tubular acidosis, but an acidification defect is not seen in the majority of hypocitraturic patients, whose disease is denoted idiopathic hypocitraturia. In order to assess the integrity of urinary acidification mechanisms in hypocitraturic idiopathic calcium stone formers, we studied two groups of patients, hypocitraturic (HCit, N = 21, 39.5 ± 11.5 years, 11 females and 10 males) and normocitraturic (NCit, N = 23, 40.2 ± 11.7 years, 16 females and 7 males) subjects, during a short ammonium chloride loading test lasting 8 h. During the baseline period HCit patients showed significantly higher levels of titratable acid (TA). After the administration of ammonium chloride, mean urinary pH (3rd to 8th hour) and TA and ammonium excretion did not differ significantly between groups. Conversely, during the first hour mean urinary pH was lower and TA and ammonium excretion was higher in HCit. The enhanced TA excretion by HCit during the baseline period and during the first hour suggests that the phosphate buffer mechanism is activated. The earlier response in ammonium excretion by HCit further supports other evidence that acidification mechanisms react promptly. The present results suggest that in the course of lithiasic disease, hypocitraturia coexists with subtle changes in the excretion of hydrogen ions in basal situations

The CDF II eXtremely Fast Tracker upgrade

The CDF II eXtremely Fast Tracker is the trigger track processor which reconstructs charged particle tracks in the transverse plane of the CDF II central outer tracking chamber. The system is now being upgraded to perform a three dimensional track reconstruction. A review of the upgrade is presented here. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

eXtremely Fast Tracker trigger upgrade at CDF

The CIDF II eXtremely Fast Tracker (XFT) is a trigger processor which reconstructs charged particle tracks in the transverse plane of the central tracking chamber. The XFT tracks are also extrapolated to the electromagnetic calorimeter and muon chambers to generate trigger electron and muon candidates. The XFT is crucial for the entire CDF II physics program: it detects high P(t) lepton from WIZ and heavy flavors decay and, in conjunction with the level 2 processor, it identifies secondary vertices from beauty decay. The XFT has thus been crucial for the recent measurement of the B(5)(0) oscillation and Sigma(b). The increase of the Tevatron instantaneous luminosity demanded an upgrade of the system to cope with the higher occupancy of the chamber. In the upgraded XFT three-dimensional tracking reduces the level of fake tracks and measures the longitudinal track parameters, which strongly reinforce the trigger selection. This allows to maintain the trigger perfectly efficient at the record luminosities 2-3 x 10(32) cm(-2) s(-1) and to maintain intact the CDF II high luminosity physics program, which includes the Higgs search. In this paper we review the architecture, the used technology, the performance and the impact of the upgraded XFT on the entire CDF II trigger strategy. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

The CDF II level 1 track trigger upgrade

The CDF II detector uses dedicated hardware to identify charged tracks that are used in an important class of level 1 trigger decisions. Until now, this hardware identified track segments based on patterns of hits on only the axial sense wires in the tracking chamber and determined the transverse momentum of track candidates from patterns of track segments. This identification is efficient but produces trigger rates that grow rapidly with increasing instantaneous luminosity. High trigger rates are a consequence of the large numbers of low momentum tracks produced in inelastic pp collisions which generate overlapping patterns of hits that match those expected for high-momentum tracks. A recently completed upgrade to the level 1 track trigger system makes use of information from stereo wires in the tracking chamber to reduce the rate of false triggers while maintaining high efficiency for real high momentum particles. We describe the new electronics used to instrument the additional sense wires, identify track segments and correlate these with the track candidates found by the original track trigger system. The performance of this system is characterized in terms of the efficiency for identifying charged particles and the improved rejection of axial track candidates that do not correspond to real particles