High Level Trigger Using ALICE ITS Detector

The high $P_T$ trigger capabilities of the ALICE inner tracking system (ITS) as a standalone detector have been investigated. Since the high $P_T$ charged particles mostly lead to the linear trajectories within this ITS sector, it is possible to select tracks of $P_T$ of the order of 2 GeV and above by confining to a narrow search window in the ($\theta,\phi$) space. Also shown that by performing a principal component transformation, it is possible to rotate from a 12 dimensional ($\theta$-$\phi$) space (in this space, a good ITS track has 6 pairs of hit co-ordinates) into a parametric space characterized by only two independent components when the track momentum exceeds a particular limit. This independent component analysis (ICA) has been uitilised further to reduce the false track contribution to an acceptable level particularly when the charged multiplicity is large. Finally, it is shown that with a narrow bin width of $\Delta \theta = \Delta \phi \sim 0.008$ radian and with PCA or ICA cut, the ITS can be used to trigger the jet particles with $P_T \ge 2$ GeV. Apart from triggering these high $P_T$ particles, this method can also be used to estimate the initial momentum of the high $P_T$ tracks for seeding which can be further prolonged into the TPC detector both for offline and online Kalman tracking or even to detect those high $P_T$ tracks of rare events which might get lost in the TPC-TRD dead zone.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure

Unequal Access: Immigrants and U.S. Health Care

Despite the important role that immigrants play in the U.S. economy, they disproportionately lack health insurance and receive fewer health services than native-born Americans. Some policymakers have called for limits on immigrants' access to health insurance, particularly Medicaid, which are even more stringent than those already in place. However, policies that restrict immigrants' access to some health care services lead to the inefficient and costly use of other services (such as emergency room care) and negatively impact public health

Neutrino and astroparticle physics : Working group report

The contributions made to the Working Group activities on neutrino and astroparticle physics are summarised in this article. The topics discussed were leptogenesis in Left-Right symmetric model, inflationary models in Raman-Sundrum scenarios, ultra high energy cosmic rays and neutrino oscillations in 4 flavour and decaying neutrino models.Comment: 11 pages; arXiv copy of contribution to WHEPP-6 proceeding