Background and Aims
Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) is an autoimmune cholestatic liver disease linked to symptoms including fatigue and altered mood/cognition, indicating that chronic liver ...inflammation associated with PBC can impact brain function. We employed near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), a noninvasive neuroimaging technique, to determine whether patients with PBC exhibit reduced cerebral oxygen saturation (StO2) and altered patterns of microvascular cerebral blood perfusion and whether these alterations were associated with clinical phenotype. This observational case–control study was conducted at a tertiary hospital clinic (University of Calgary Liver Unit).
Approach and Results
Thirteen female patients with noncirrhotic PBC, seven female patients with cirrhotic PBC, and 11 healthy female controls were recruited by physician referral and word of mouth, respectively. NIRS was used to measure cerebral hemoglobin and oxygen saturation. A wavelet phase coherence method was used to estimate the coherent frequency coupling of temporal changes in cerebral hemodynamics. The PBC group demonstrated significantly reduced cerebral StO2 (P = 0.01, d = 0.84), indicating cerebral hypoxia, significantly increased cerebral deoxygenated hemoglobin concentration (P < 0.01, d = 0.86), and significantly reduced hemodynamic coherence in the low‐frequency band (0.08‐0.15 Hz) for oxygenated hemoglobin concentration (P = 0.02, d = 0.99) and total hemoglobin (tHb) concentration (P = 0.02, d = 0.50), indicating alterations in cerebrovascular activity. Complete biochemical response to ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) therapy in early patients with PBC was associated with increased cerebral tHb concentration and decreased hemodynamic coherence.
Conclusions
Using NIRS, patients with PBC were found to have hypoxia, increased cerebral hemoglobin concentration, and altered cerebrovascular activity, which were reversed in part in UDCA responders. In addition, symptoms and quality‐of‐life measures did not correlate with brain hypoxia or cerebrovascular dysregulation in patients with PBC.
The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic unveiled a strong need for advanced and informative surveillance tools. The Centre for Health Informatics (CHI) at the University of Calgary took action to develop ...a surveillance dashboard, which would facilitate the education of the public, and answer critical questions posed by local and national government.
The objective of this study was to create an interactive method of surveillance, or a "COVID-19 Tracker" for Canadian use. The Tracker offers user-friendly graphics characterizing various aspects of the current pandemic (e.g. case count, testing, hospitalizations, and policy interventions).
Six publicly available data sources were used, and were selected based on the frequency of updates, accuracy and types of data, and data presentation. The datasets have different levels of granularity for different provinces, which limits the information that we are able to show. Additionally, some datasets have missing entries, for which the "last observation carried forward" method was used. The website was created and hosted online, with a backend server, which is updated on a daily basis. The Tracker development followed an iterative process, as new figures were added to meet the changing needs of policy-makers.
The resulting Tracker is a dashboard that visualizes real-time data, along with policy interventions from various countries, via user-friendly graphs with a hover option that reveals detailed information. The interactive features allow the user to customize the figures by jurisdiction, country/region, and the type of data shown. Data is displayed at the national and provincial level, as well as by health regions.
The COVID-19 Tracker offers real-time, detailed, and interactive visualizations that have the potential to shape crucial decision-making and inform Albertans and Canadians of the current pandemic.
Precise knowledge of the beam optics at the LHC is crucial to fulfill the physics goals of the TOTEM experiment, where the kinematics of the scattered protons is reconstructed with near-beam ...telescopes-so-called Roman pots (RP). Before being detected, the protons' trajectories are influenced by the magnetic fields of the accelerator lattice. Thus precise understanding of the proton transport is of key importance for the experiment. A novel method of optics evaluation is proposed which exploits kinematical distributions of elastically scattered protons observed in the RPs. Theoretical predictions, as well as Monte Carlo studies, show that the residual uncertainty of the optics estimation method is smaller than .
TOTEM Roman Pot (RP) microstrip edgeless silicon detectors, fabricated with standard planar technology, reach full sensitivity within 50
μm from the cut edge and can operate with high bias voltage at ...room temperature. These detectors use a newly developed terminating structure, which prevents breakdown and surface current injection at high bias, while simultaneously providing extremely reduced dead zones at the edges. Moreover, radiation hardness studies indicate that when operated under moderate cooling, the detectors remain fully efficient up to a fluence of about 1.5×10
14
p
cm
−2. The mass production of these detectors for the TOTEM Experiment is being completed and their installation in the Roman Pots is ongoing. When the installation is complete and the LHC will be operational, these detectors will allow the TOTEM Experiment to detect leading protons at distance of ∼1
mm from the beam centre at the LHC. This work presented here is a survey of this recently developed device and its most up-to-date characterisations.
The TOTEM collaboration at the CERN LHC has measured the differential cross-section of elastic proton-proton scattering at Formula omitted in the squared four-momentum transfer range Formula omitted. ...This interval includes the structure with a diffractive minimum ("dip") and a secondary maximum ("bump") that has also been observed at all other LHC energies, where measurements were made. A detailed characterisation of this structure for Formula omitted yields the positions, Formula omitted and Formula omitted, as well as the cross-section values, Formula omitted and Formula omitted, for the dip and the bump, respectively.
The TOTEM collaboration has measured the proton–proton total cross section at
s
=
13
TeV
with a luminosity-independent method. Using dedicated
β
∗
=
90
m
beam optics, the Roman Pots were inserted ...very close to the beam. The inelastic scattering rate has been measured by the T1 and T2 telescopes during the same LHC fill. After applying the optical theorem the total proton–proton cross section is
σ
tot
=
(
110.6
±
3.4
) mb, well in agreement with the extrapolation from lower energies. This method also allows one to derive the luminosity-independent elastic and inelastic cross sections:
σ
el
=
(
31.0
±
1.7
)
mb
and
σ
inel
=
(
79.5
±
1.8
)
mb
.
The TOTEM experiment at the LHC has performed the first measurement at
s
=
13
TeV
of the
ρ
parameter, the real to imaginary ratio of the nuclear elastic scattering amplitude at
t
=
0
, obtaining the ...following results:
ρ
=
0.09
±
0.01
and
ρ
=
0.10
±
0.01
, depending on different physics assumptions and mathematical modelling. The unprecedented precision of the
ρ
measurement, combined with the TOTEM total cross-section measurements in an energy range larger than
10
TeV
(from 2.76 to
13
TeV
), has implied the exclusion of all the models classified and published by COMPETE. The
ρ
results obtained by TOTEM are compatible with the predictions, from other theoretical models both in the Regge-like framework and in the QCD framework, of a crossing-odd colourless 3-gluon compound state exchange in the
t
-channel of the proton–proton elastic scattering. On the contrary, if shown that the crossing-odd 3-gluon compound state
t
-channel exchange is not of importance for the description of elastic scattering, the
ρ
value determined by TOTEM would represent a first evidence of a slowing down of the total cross-section growth at higher energies. The very low-|
t
| reach allowed also to determine the absolute normalisation using the Coulomb amplitude for the first time at the LHC and obtain a new total proton–proton cross-section measurement
σ
tot
=
(
110.3
±
3.5
)
mb
, completely independent from the previous TOTEM determination. Combining the two TOTEM results yields
σ
tot
=
(
110.5
±
2.4
)
mb
.
The TOTEM collaboration has measured the elastic proton-proton differential cross section
d
σ
/
d
t
at
s
=
13
TeV LHC energy using dedicated
β
∗
=
90
m beam optics. The Roman Pot detectors were ...inserted to 10
σ
distance from the LHC beam, which allowed the measurement of the range 0.04 GeV
2
; 4 GeV
2
in four-momentum transfer squared |
t
|. The efficient data acquisition allowed to collect about 10
9
elastic events to precisely measure the differential cross-section including the diffractive minimum (dip), the subsequent maximum (bump) and the large-|
t
| tail. The average nuclear slope has been found to be
B
=
(
20.40
±
0
.
002
stat
±
0
.
01
syst
)
GeV
-
2
in the |
t
|-range 0.04–0.2 GeV
2
. The dip position is
|
t
dip
|
=
(
0.47
±
0
.
004
stat
±
0
.
01
syst
)
GeV
2
. The differential cross section ratio at the bump vs. at the dip
R
=
1.77
±
0
.
01
stat
has been measured with high precision. The series of TOTEM elastic pp measurements show that the dip is a permanent feature of the pp differential cross-section at the TeV scale.
Multi-muon events have been recorded with the ALEPH-detector, located 140 m underground, in parallel with e
+e
− data taking. Benefiting from the high spatial resolution of the ALEPH tracking ...chambers narrowly spaced muons in high multiplicity bundles could be analysed. The bulk of the data can be successfully described by standard production phenomena. The multiplicity distribution favors, though not with very high significance, a chemical composition which changes from light to heavier elements with increasing energy around the “knee”. The five highest multiplicity events, with up to 150 muons within an area of ∼8 m
2, occur with a frequency which is almost an order of magnitude above the simulation. To establish a possible effect, more of these events should be recorded with a larger area detector.
The TOTEM experiment at the CERN LHC has measured elastic proton–proton scattering at the centre-of-mass energy
s
=
8
TeV and four-momentum transfers squared, |
t
|, from
6
×
10
-
4
to 0.2 GeV
2
. ...Near the lower end of the
t
-interval the differential cross-section is sensitive to the interference between the hadronic and the electromagnetic scattering amplitudes. This article presents the elastic cross-section measurement and the constraints it imposes on the functional forms of the modulus and phase of the hadronic elastic amplitude. The data exclude the traditional Simplified West and Yennie interference formula that requires a constant phase and a purely exponential modulus of the hadronic amplitude. For parametrisations of the hadronic modulus with second- or third-order polynomials in the exponent, the data are compatible with hadronic phase functions giving either central or peripheral behaviour in the impact parameter picture of elastic scattering. In both cases, the
ρ
-parameter is found to be
0.12
±
0.03
. The results for the total hadronic cross-section are
σ
tot
=
(
102.9
±
2.3
)
mb and
(
103.0
±
2.3
)
mb for central and peripheral phase formulations, respectively. Both are consistent with previous TOTEM measurements.
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