Allen: A High-Level Trigger on GPUs for LHCb.

We describe a fully GPU-based implementation of the first level trigger for the upgrade of the LHCb detector, due to start data taking in 2021. We demonstrate that our implementation, named Allen, can process the 40 Tbit/s data rate of the upgraded LHCb detector and perform a wide variety of pattern recognition tasks. These include finding the trajectories of charged particles, finding proton-proton collision points, identifying particles as hadrons or muons, and finding the displaced decay vertices of long-lived particles. We further demonstrate that Allen can be implemented in around 500 scientific or consumer GPU cards, that it is not I/O bound, and can be operated at the full LHC collision rate of 30 MHz. Allen is the first complete high-throughput GPU trigger proposed for a HEP experiment.

Prospective analysis of the long-term effect of teaching breast self-examination and breast awareness.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the industrialized world and a leading cause of death. Breast self-examination (BSE) is one of the methods for an early detection of breast cancer. In the present study the effectiveness of a campaign promoting BSE and breast awareness was analysed. Seminars were conducted in 2003 in Lower Saxony, Germany by a female gynaecologist and a social pedagogue and included a lecture, an individual training in BSE in a separate room and a talk about the importance of regular BSEs. Questionnaires were handed out immediately after the seminar and were sent by post 1 year later. Attendance of the seminar resulted in a significantly higher percentage of monthly BSEs (21.4% before vs. 61.9% after the teaching). Furthermore, 92.1% of the women who did not perform a monthly BSE stated that at least they examined their breasts more frequently after attending the seminar. The data demonstrate that the seminars in BSE had profound effects on the compliance of women in carrying out BSE regularly and correctly, without influence of age or education.

Study of long term radon transport by measuring the difference of the 210Pb and 226Ra activity in soil as a function of the depth.

Long term radon transport has been studied by measuring the activity difference of 210Pb and 226Ra in soil as a function of the depth. The results are from test pits of 1-2 m depth made at a dam of a tailings pond and at the plateau of a waste rock pile. Soil samples of about 1 kg were taken at a successive distances of 5 cm and analyzed by means of gamma-ray spectroscopy using low background germanium n-type detectors. It is shown that by this method nearly model independent information about the radon transport over a period of several decades can be inferred from the data.