ATLAS Pixel Detector: Operational Experience and Run-1 to Run-2 Transition

The Pixel Detector of the ATLAS experiment has shown excellent performance during the whole Run-1 of LHC. Taking advantage of the long shutdown, the detector was extracted from the experiment and brought to surface, to equip it with new service quarter panels, to repair modules and to ease installation of a new innermost layer, the Insertable B-Layer (IBL). An overview of the operational experience, the refurbishing of the Pixel Detector and of the IBL project as well as the experience in its construction, integration and commissioning are described.Comment: presented at VERTEX 2014 - 23rd International Workshop on Vertex Detectors, Doksy, Czech Republic, 15 Sep 2014. PoS(Vertex2014)00

ATLAS IBL: a challenging first step for ATLAS Upgrade at the sLHC

With the LHC collecting data at 7 TeV, plans are already advancing for a series of upgrades leading eventually to about five times the LHC design luminosity some 10 years from now in the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) project. The upgrades for ATLAS detector will be staged in preparation for HL-LHC. The first upgrade for the Pixel Detector will be the construction of a new pixel layer, which will be installed during the first shutdown of the LHC machine foreseen in 2013-14. The new detector, called the Insertable B-Layer (IBL) will be installed between the existing Pixel Detector and a new, smaller radius beam-pipe at the radius of 3.2 cm. The IBL will require the development of several new technologies to cope with increased radiation and pixel occupancy and also to improve the physics performance through reduction of the pixel size and more stringent material budget. Two different and promising Silicon sensor technologies (planar n-in-n and 3D) are currently under investigation for the IBL. An overview of the IBL module design and the qualification for these sensor technologies are presented in this proceeding. This proceeding also summarizes the improvements expected to the ATLAS detector at the HL-LHC.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Proceeding of XXIst International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics (EPS-HEP 2011), Grenoble, 21-27 July 201

Pure spinor equations to lift gauged supergravity

We rewrite the equations for ten-dimensional supersymmetry in a way formally identical to a necessary and sufficient G-structure system in N=2 gauged supergravity, where all four-dimensional quantities are replaced by combinations of pure spinors and fluxes in the internal space. This provides a way to look for lifts of BPS solutions without having to reduce or even rewrite the ten-dimensional action. In particular this avoids the problem of consistent truncation, and the introduction of unphysical gravitino multiplets.Comment: 61 page

Construction of 3D in vitro models by bioprinting human pluripotent stem cells: Challenges and opportunities

Three-dimensional (3D) printing of biological material, or 3D bioprinting, is a rapidly expanding field with interesting applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Bioprinters use cells and biocompatible materials as an ink (bioink) to build 3D structures representative of organs and tissues, in a controlled manner and with micrometric resolution. Human embryonic (hESCs) and induced (hiPSCs) pluripotent stem cells are ideally able to provide all cell types found in the human body. A limited, but growing, number of recent reports suggest that cells derived by differentiation of hESCs and hiPSCs can be used as building blocks in bioprinted human 3D models, reproducing the cellular variety and cytoarchitecture of real tissues. In this review we will illustrate these examples, which include hepatic, cardiac, vascular, corneal and cartilage tissues, and discuss challenges and opportunities of bioprinting more demanding cell types, such as neurons, obtained from human pluripotent stem cells

Divergent lncRNAs take the lead on pluripotent cell differentiation

[No abstract available

All AdS_7 solutions of type II supergravity

In M-theory, the only AdS_7 supersymmetric solutions are AdS_7 x S^4 and its orbifolds. In this paper, we find and classify new supersymmetric solutions of the type AdS_7 x M_3 in type II supergravity. While in IIB none exist, in IIA with Romans mass (which does not lift to M-theory) there are many new ones. We use a pure spinor approach reminiscent of generalized complex geometry. Without the need for any Ansatz, the system determines uniquely the form of the metric and fluxes, up to solving a system of ODEs. Namely, the metric on M_3 is that of an S^2 fibered over an interval; this is consistent with the Sp(1) R-symmetry of the holographically dual (1,0) theory. By including D8 brane sources, one can numerically obtain regular solutions, where topologically M_3 = S^3.Comment: 45 pages, 4 figures. v2: solution with single D8 added; references added; minor correction