In the COMET experiment, it is essential to establish the online monitor that enables to detect few residual protons between consecutive main proton bunches to search for the muon-to-electron(μ-e) ...conversion with a sensitivity below 10−16. A thin diamond based detector is proposed because of its ideal characteristics. To realise the diamond based residual proton monitor, a noise suppression is essential since the number of electron–hole pairs generated by a single proton is relatively small in a thin diamond (∼5000 e-h/100μm). The prototype detector based on a 0.5 mm thick diamond was developed to evaluate the proton counting capability. The beam test using a 30 GeV proton beam was performed with this prototype and the result is reported in this paper.
To cite this article: Takahagi S, Mihara S, Iwamoto K, Morioke S, Okabe T, Kameyoshi Y, Hide M. Coagulation/fibrinolysis and inflammation markers are associated with disease activity in patients with ...chronic urticaria. Allergy 2010; 65: 649–656.
Background: The evaluation of disease severity and activity of chronic urticaria (CU) is essential for the adequate treatment of patients. However, there is no reliable biomarker for such evaluations. Recently, markers of blood coagulation and fibrinolysis have been revealed to be elevated in severe cases of CU. In this article, we studied the coagulation/fibrinolysis and inflammation markers and their relationship to disease activity in patients with CU.
Methods: Plasma fibrin degradation products (FDP), d‐dimer and serum C‐reactive protein (CRP) were measured with the assessment of disease severity and skin reaction to autologous serum in 82 patients with CU and 37 patients with acute urticaria, idiopathic angioedema (AE) or inducible types of urticaria (IU).
Results: The levels of FDP in patients with CU were significantly higher than those in patients with IU, but no other differences in FDP, d‐dimer and CRP were observed among patients with different types of urticaria. These markers of patients with CU were well correlated with each other and significantly associated with disease severity of CU, but not with skin reactions to autologous serum. In 37 patients with CU, levels of all these parameters reduced as their disease condition improved, while they increased when the disease became aggravated. Regarding FDP, this relationship was observed even if FDP concentrations were within normal range throughout the study.
Conclusions: The measurement of plasma FDP, d‐dimer and serum CRP may be useful for the assessment of disease activity of CU.
According to their experiments, the rate of silanisation increased on removal of zinc white and stearic acid, as shown in Table 2, and it has been confirmed that both zinc white and stearic acid ...interact with the hydroxy groups on the silica surface, the results implying that zinc white and stearic acid constitute an interfering factor in silanisation. ...when silica-filled rubber is being mixed, great care must be taken with the timing of additions of zinc white, stearic acid and other substances that interfere with the silanisation reaction.
Prospects for CLFV experiments Mihara, S
Journal of physics. Conference series,
01/2013, Letnik:
408, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Understanding lepton-flavor violation in the charged lepton sector (Charged Lepton-Flavor Violation, CLFV) is a complementary approach to neutrino physics experiments in order to understand ...elementary partcile behavir at high energy scale above TeV. A number of experiments are recetnly being conducted based on this perspective. They are expected to explore the physics beyond the Standard Model in a cooperative way with future neutrino experiments.
Background
Chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) is a common skin disorder, but its clinical course reported so far is largely variable, probably due to the heterogeneity of the clinical background of ...patients and pathogenesis of this disease.
Methods
To reveal the prognosis of refractory CSU, we retrospectively studied the patients who suffered from spontaneous urticaria for six weeks or longer at their first visit to our outpatient clinic, who were insufficiently controlled by a standard dose of antihistamine, and revisited from 2003 to 2009.
Results
Among 223 patients with CSU, 117 patients fulfilled the criteria mentioned above. Mean disease duration at first visit and mean duration of follow‐up at our hospital were 27.4 ± 4.2 months and 18.7 ± 1.9 months, respectively. By using Kaplan–Meier methods, the estimated improved rates at 12 months, 24 months, and 60 months were 36.6%, 51.2%, and 66.1%, respectively. The overall improvement rate of childhood cases (<19 years) was significantly higher than that of adult cases (P = 0.007, log‐rank test). Moreover, the improvement rate of patients with short disease durations (<1 year at the first visit) was significantly (P = 0.003, log‐rank test) higher than that of patients with long disease durations (one year or more).
Conclusion
Our data indicate that the condition of patients with CSU can be gradually improved even in intractable cases. Information about the clinical course and prognostic factors of CSU in this study could help physicians predict the prognosis of patients and ensure medication adherence of patients with CSU.
COMET (Coherent Muon to Electron Transition, J-PARC, Japan) is one of the experiments that studies extensions of the Standard Model (SM) of elementary particle physics. The main purpose of the COMET ...experiment is to search for charged lepton flavor violating neutrinoless conversion of muons into electrons in the field of a nucleus (μ–e conversion, μ–N → e–N). The goal is to achieve a sensitivity to the branching ratio superior to 10−17, that four orders of magnitude smaller than the present limit. In the experiment a straw detector will be used to measure the momentum of the signal electrons from the μ–e conversion. In order to satisfy the requirements of the momentum measurements, we plan to develop a planar tracking device consisting of thin-wall straws made with an extremely light material to reduce multiple scattering and that is capable of operation in vacuum. Research the mechanical properties of straws will allow us to choose their optimal tension, to estimate the influence of the temperature and humidity, to assess the straws service life in the experiment, which we define as the tension relaxation time to the minimum working value.
The COMET experiment at J-PARC aims to search for a lepton-flavour violating process of muon to electron conversion in a muonic atom, μ-e conversion, with a branching-ratio sensitivity better than ...10−16, 4 orders of magnitude better than the present limit, in order to explore the parameter region predicted by most well-motivated theoretical models beyond the Standard Model. The need for such an excellent sensitivity places several stringent requirements on the detector; (i) good momentum resolution, <2%, for 100 MeV/c electron, which is primarily limited by multiple scattering effect for this momentum region; and (ii) high rate capability, up to 5×109μ−/s muon beam enabled by J-PARC. In order to fulfil such requirements a vacuum-compatible, ultra-thin-wall straw tracker has been designed, and a 20μm-thick Mylar straw with 70 nm Al cathode has been developed employing an ultrasonic-welding technique. The detector performances such as detection efficiency and intrinsic spatial resolutions were investigated with test-beam experiments and confirmed to be acceptable for the COMET experiment. The construction of the straw tracker for COMET Phase-I has been completed.
In parallel to the construction of present tracker a thinner 12μm-thick straw has been developed with joint collaboration among KEK, JINR and CERN. During this R&D, it was noticed that the current technology cannot achieve tubes much smaller than 5 mm in diameter or walls much thinner than 12μm. We also launched a brand-new project to realize the graphite-textile straw which has a potential to realize an extremely low material tracker.
In this article, a brief report on detector construction with a present 20μm-thick straw, R&D on a new 12μm-thick straw, and a brand-new graphite straw, is provided.
In general, it is accepted that ceramic materials outperform metallic materials at resisting solid-particle erosion. Ceramic materials also have the commercially beneficial quality of a long life ...span. Nevertheless, few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of the higher erosion resistance of ceramic materials as compared with industrial metallic materials. The impact-angle dependence of erosion damage typically shows ductile and brittle manners depending on the type of material. It is very important to understand the effects of impact parameters such as velocity and particle size on impact-angle dependence of erosion damage, in order to estimate the performance of ceramic materials under given impact conditions. In this paper, predictive equations for impact-angle dependence of normalized erosion, which have been applied and verified in cases of metallic materials, were used to estimate the erosion damage to ceramic materials. In addition, the effects of impact parameters on erosion damage were also investigated. Erosion tests were conducted using a sand blast type erosion test rig. As a result, the impact-angle dependence of erosion damage to ceramic materials such as alumina, magnesia and zirconia was well characterized using exponent numbers that differed from those of metallic materials in the equation. It was found that the impact-angle dependence of erosion damage to ceramic materials shifted depending on impact parameters such as the type and size of the solid particles. The mechanisms of erosion damage also varied with the removal of either primary or secondary ceramic grains.
The MEG II experiment, based at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, reports the result of a search for the decay
μ
+
→
e
+
γ
from data taken in the first physics run in 2021. No excess of ...events over the expected background is observed, yielding an upper limit on the branching ratio of
B
(
μ
+
→
e
+
γ
)
<
7.5
×
10
-
13
(90% CL). The combination of this result and the limit obtained by MEG gives
B
(
μ
+
→
e
+
γ
)
<
3.1
×
10
-
13
(90% CL), which is the most stringent limit to date. A ten-fold larger sample of data is being collected during the years 2022–2023, and data-taking will continue in the coming years.