Abstract: Purpose This work aims to simulate clustered DNA damage from ionizing radiation and estimate the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) for radionuclide (rBT)- and electronic (eBT)-based surface brachytherapy through a hybrid Monte Carlo (MC) approach, using realistic models of the sources and applicators. Methods Damage from ionizing radiation has been studied using the Monte Carlo Damage Simulation algorithm using as input the primary electron fluence simulated using a state-of-the-art MC code, PENELOPE-2018. Two Ir-192 rBT applicators, Valencia and Leipzig, one Co-60 source with a Freiburg Flap applicator (reference source), and two eBT systems, Esteya and INTRABEAM, have been included in this study implementing full realizations of their geometries as disclosed by the manufacturer. The role played by filtration and tube kilovoltage has also been addressed. Results For rBT, an RBE value of about 1.01 has been found for the applicators and phantoms considered. In the case of eBT, RBE values for the Esteya system show an almost constant RBE value of about 1.06 for all depths and materials. For INTRABEAM, variations in the range of 1.12-1.06 are reported depending on phantom composition and depth. Modifications in the Esteya system, filtration, and tube kilovoltage give rise to variations in the same range. Conclusions Current clinical practice does not incorporate biological effects in surface brachytherapy. Therefore, the same absorbed dose is administered to the patients independently on the particularities of the rBT or eBT system considered. The almost constant RBE values reported for rBT support that assumption regardless of the details of the patient geometry, the presence of a flattening filter in the applicator design, or even significant modifications in the photon energy spectra above 300 keV. That is not the case for eBT, where a clear dependence on the eBT system and the characteristics of the patient geometry are reported. A complete study specific for each eBT system, including detailed applicator characteristics (size, shape, filtering, among others) and common anatomical locations, should be performed before adopting an existing RBE value.

Abstract: Conventional, hadronic matter consists of baryons and mesons made of three quarks and a quark-antiquark pair, respectively(1,2). Here, we report the observation of a hadronic state containing four quarks in the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment. This so-called tetraquark contains two charm quarks, a (u) over bar and a (d) over tilde quark. This exotic state has a mass of approximately 3,875 MeV and manifests as a narrow peak in the mass spectrum of (DD0)-D-0 pi(+) mesons just below the D*D-+(0) mass threshold. The near-threshold mass together with the narrow width reveals the resonance nature of the state.

Abstract: Heavy-flavour hadron production provides information about the transport properties and microscopic structure of the quark-gluon plasma created in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. A measurement of the muons from semileptonic decays of charm and bottom hadrons produced in Pb+Pb and pp collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is presented. The Pb+Pb data were collected in 2015 and 2018 with sampled integrated luminosities of 208 μb(-1) and 38 μb(-1), respectively, and pp data with a sampled integrated luminosity of 1.17 pb(-1) were collected in 2017. Muons from heavy-flavour semileptonic decays are separated from the light-flavour hadronic background using the momentum imbalance between the inner detector and muon spectrometer measurements, and muons originating from charm and bottom decays are further separated via the muon track's transverse impact parameter. Differential yields in Pb+Pb collisions and differential cross sections in pp collisions for such muons are measured as a function of muon transverse momentum from 4 GeV to 30 GeV in the absolute pseudorapidity interval vertical bar eta vertical bar < 2. Nuclear modification factors for charm and bottom muons are presented as a function of muon transverse momentum in intervals of Pb+Pb collision centrality. The bottom muon results are the most precise measurement of b quark nuclear modification at low transverse momentum where reconstruction of B hadrons is challenging. The measured nuclear modification factors quantify a significant suppression of the yields of muons from decays of charm and bottom hadrons, with stronger effects for muons from charm hadron decays.

Abstract: Since the upsilon(tau) ((upsilon) over bar (tau))A(Z) -> tau(-/+) X reaction is notoriously difficult to be directly measured, the information on the dynamics of this nuclear process should be extracted from the analysis of the energy and angular distributions of the tau decay visible products. These distributions depend, in addition to d(2)sigma / (dE(tau)d cos theta(tau)), on the components of the tau-polarization vector. We give, for the first time, the general expression for the outgoing hadron (pion or rho meson) energy and angular differential cross section for the sequential upsilon(tau) A(Z) -> tau(-) (pi(-)upsilon(tau,) rho(-)upsilon(tau))X and (upsilon) over bar (tau)A(Z) -> tau(+) (pi(+)(upsilon) over bar (tau), rho(+)(upsilon) over bar (tau)) X reactions. Though all possible nuclear reaction mechanisms contribute to the distribution, it may be possible to isolate/enhance one of them by implementing appropriate selection criteria. For the case of the quasi-elastic reaction off oxygen and neutrino energies below 6 GeV, we show that the pion distributions are quite sensitive to the details of the tau-polarization components. We find significant differences between the full calculation, where the longitudinal and transverse components of the tau polarization vector vary with the energy and the scattering angle of the produced tau, and the simplified scheme in which the polarizations are set to one and zero, being the latter their respective asymptotic values reached in the high energy regime. In addition to its potential impact on neutrino oscillation analyses, this result can be used to further test different nuclear models, since these observables provide complementary information to that obtained by means of the inclusive nuclear weak charged-current differential cross section. We also study the effects on the cross section of the W-4 and W-5 nuclear structure functions, which contributions are proportional to the charged lepton mass, and therefore difficult to constrain in muon and electron neutrino experiments.

Abstract: Aims. With the ever-increasing survey speed of optical wide-field telescopes and the importance of discovering transients when they are still young, rapid and reliable source localization is paramount. We present AutoSourceID-Light (ASID-L), an innovative framework that uses computer vision techniques that can naturally deal with large amounts of data and rapidly localize sources in optical images. Methods. We show that the ASID-L algorithm based on U-shaped networks and enhanced with a Laplacian of Gaussian filter provides outstanding performance in the localization of sources. A U-Net network discerns the sources in the images from many different artifacts and passes the result to a Laplacian of Gaussian filter that then estimates the exact location. Results. Using ASID-L on the optical images of the MeerLICHT telescope demonstrates the great speed and localization power of the method. We compare the results with SExtractor and show that our method outperforms this more widely used method. ASID-L rapidly detects more sources not only in low- and mid-density fields, but particularly in areas with more than 150 sources per square arcminute. The training set and code used in this paper are publicly available.