Application of the ATLAS DAQ and Monitoring System for MDT and RPC Commissioning

The ATLAS DAQ and monitoring software are currently commonly used to test detectors during the commissioning phase. In this paper, their usage in MDT and RPC commissioning is described, both at the surface pre-commissioning and commissioning stations and in the ATLAS pit. Two main components are heavily used for detector tests. The ROD Crate DAQ software is based on the ATLAS Readout application. Based on the plug-in mechanism, it provides a complete environment to interface any kind of detector or trigger electronics to the ATLAS DAQ system. All the possible flavours of this application are used to test and run the MDT and RPC detectors at the pre-commissioning and commissioning sites. Ad-hoc plug-ins have been developed to implement data readout via VME, both with ROD prototypes and emulating final electronics to read out data with temporary solutions, and to provide trigger distribution and busy management in a multi-crate environment. Data driven event building functionality is also used to combine data from different detector technologies. Monitoring software provides a framework for on-line analysis during detector test. Monitoring applications have been developed for noise and cosmic tests and for pulse runs. The PERSINT event display has been interfaced to the monitoring system to provide an on-line event display for cosmic runs in the ATLAS pit

Fractal-like Distributions over the Rational Numbers in High-throughput Biological and Clinical Data

Recent developments in extracting and processing biological and clinical data are allowing quantitative approaches to studying living systems. High-throughput sequencing, expression profiles, proteomics, and electronic health records are some examples of such technologies. Extracting meaningful information from those technologies requires careful analysis of the large volumes of data they produce. In this note, we present a set of distributions that commonly appear in the analysis of such data. These distributions present some interesting features: they are discontinuous in the rational numbers, but continuous in the irrational numbers, and possess a certain self-similar (fractal-like) structure. The first set of examples which we present here are drawn from a high-throughput sequencing experiment. Here, the self-similar distributions appear as part of the evaluation of the error rate of the sequencing technology and the identification of tumorogenic genomic alterations. The other examples are obtained from risk factor evaluation and analysis of relative disease prevalence and co-mordbidity as these appear in electronic clinical data. The distributions are also relevant to identification of subclonal populations in tumors and the study of the evolution of infectious diseases, and more precisely the study of quasi-species and intrahost diversity of viral populations

The ansamycin antibiotic, rifamycin SV, inhibits BCL6 transcriptional repression and forms a complex with the BCL6-BTB/POZ domain

BCL6 is a transcriptional repressor that is over-expressed due to chromosomal translocations, or other abnormalities, in ~40% of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. BCL6 interacts with co-repressor, SMRT, and this is essential for its role in lymphomas. Peptide or small molecule inhibitors, which prevent the association of SMRT with BCL6, inhibit transcriptional repression and cause apoptosis of lymphoma cells in vitro and in vivo. In order to discover compounds, which have the potential to be developed into BCL6 inhibitors, we screened a natural product library. The ansamycin antibiotic, rifamycin SV, inhibited BCL6 transcriptional repression and NMR spectroscopy confirmed a direct interaction between rifamycin SV and BCL6. To further determine the characteristics of compounds binding to BCL6-POZ we analyzed four other members of this family and showed that rifabutin, bound most strongly. An X-ray crystal structure of the rifabutin-BCL6 complex revealed that rifabutin occupies a partly non-polar pocket making interactions with tyrosine58, asparagine21 and arginine24 of the BCL6-POZ domain. Importantly these residues are also important for the interaction of BLC6 with SMRT. This work demonstrates a unique approach to developing a structure activity relationship for a compound that will form the basis of a therapeutically useful BCL6 inhibitor

The ATLAS MDT remote calibration centers

The precision chambers of the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer are built with Monitored Drift Tubes (MDT). The requirement of high accuracy and low systematic error, to achieve a transverse momentum resolution of 10% at 1 TeV, can only be accomplished if the calibrations are known with an accuracy of 20 μm. The relation between the drift path and the measured time (the socalled r-t relation) depends on many parameters (temperature T, hit rate, gas composition, thresholds,...) subject to time variations. The r-t relation has to be measured from the data without the use of an external detector, using the autocalibration technique. This method relies on an iterative procedure applied to the same data sample, starting from a preliminary set of constants. The required precision can be achieved using a large (few thousand) number of non-parallel tracks crossing a region, called calibration region, i.e. the region of the MDT chamber sharing the same r-t relation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/85421/1/jpconf10_219_022028.pd

Study of the a_0(980) meson via the radiative decay phi->eta pi^0 gamma with the KLOE detector

We have studied the phi->a_0(980) gamma process with the KLOE detector at the Frascati phi-factory DAPhNE by detecting the phi->eta pi^0 gamma decays in the final states with eta->gamma gamma and eta->pi^+ pi^- pi^0. We have measured the branching ratios for both final states: Br(phi->eta pi^0 gamma)=(7.01 +/- 0.10 +/- 0.20)x10^-5 and (7.12 +/- 0.13 +/- 0.22)x10^-5 respectively. We have also extracted the a_0(980) mass and its couplings to eta pi^0, K^+ K^-, and to the phi meson from the fit of the eta pi^0 invariant mass distributions using different phenomenological models.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Physics Letters B. Corrected typos in eq.

Charged kaon lifetime at KLOE

Preliminary result on the charged kaon lifetime, obtained by the KLOE experiment operating at DA$\Phi$NE, the Frascati $\phi$-factory, is presentedComment: 3 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of 42nd Rencontres de Moriond on Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories, La Thuile, Aosta Valley, Italy, 10-17 Mar 200

A global fit to determine the pseudoscalar mixing angle and the gluonium content of the eta' meson

We update the values of the eta-eta' mixing angle and of the eta' gluonium content by fitting our measurement R_phi = BR(phi to eta' gamma)/ BR(phi to eta gamma) together with several vector meson radiative decays to pseudoscalars (V to P gamma), pseudoscalar mesons radiative decays to vectors (P to V gamma) and the eta' to gamma gamma, pi^0 to gamma gamma widths. From the fit we extract a gluonium fraction of Z^2_G = 0.12 +- 0.04, the pseudoscalar mixing angle psi_P = (40.4 +- 0.6) degree and the phi-omega mixing angle psi_V = (3.32 +- 0.09) degree. Z^2_G and psi_P are fairly consistent with those previously published. We also evaluate the impact on the eta' gluonium content determination of future experimental improvements of the eta' branching ratios and decay width.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures to submit to JHE