Abstract: Particle therapy is a highly conformal radiotherapy technique which reduces the dose deposited to the surrounding normal tissues. In order to fully exploit its advantages, treatment monitoring is necessary to minimize uncertainties related to the dose delivery. Up to now, the only clinically feasible technique for the monitoring of therapeutic irradiation with particle beams is Positron Emission Tomography (PET). In this work we have compared a Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC)-based PET scanner with a scintillation-crystal-based PET scanner for this application. In general, the main advantages of the RPC-PET system are its excellent timing resolution, low cost, and the possibility of building large area systems. We simulated a partial-ring scannerbeam monitoring, which has an intrinsically low positron yield compared to diagnostic PET. In addition, for in-beam PET there is a further data loss due to the partial ring configuration. In order to improve the performance of the RPC-based scanner, an improved version of the RPC detector (modifying the thickness of the gas and glass layers), providing a larger sensitivity, has been simulated and compared with an axially extended version of the crystal-based device. The improved version of the RPC shows better performance than the prototype, but the extended version of the crystal-based PET outperforms all other options. based on an RPC prototype under construction within the Fondazione per Adroterapia Oncologica (TERA). For comparison with the crystal-based PET scanner we have chosen the geometry of a commercially available PET scanner, the Philips Gemini TF. The coincidence time resolution used in the simulations takes into account the current achievable values as well as expected improvements of both technologies. Several scenarios (including patient data) have been simulated to evaluate the performance of different scanners. Initial results have shown that the low sensitivity of the RPC hampers its application to hadron

Abstract: Using a pp collision data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 fb(-1), collected by the LHCb detector, we present the first search for the strangeness-changing weak decay Xi(-)(b) -> Delta(0)(b)pi(-). No b hadron decay of this type has been seen before. A signal for this decay, corresponding to a significance of 3.2 standard deviations, is reported. The relative rate is measured to be f Xi(-)(b)/f Lambda B-0(b)(Xi(-)(b) -> Lambda(0)(b)pi(-)) = (5.7 +/- 1.8(-0.9)(+0.8)) x 10(-4) where f Xi(-)(b) and f Lambda(0)(b) are the b -> Xi(-)(b) and b -> Lambda(0)(b) fragmentation fractions, and B(Xi(-)(b) -> Lambda(0)(b)pi(-)) is the branching fraction. Assuming f Xi(-)(b)/f Lambda(0)(b) is bounded between 0.1 and 0.3, the branching fraction B(Xi(-)(b) -> Lambda(0)(b)pi(-)) would lie in the range from (0.57 +/- 0.21)% to (0.19 +/- 0.07)%.

Abstract: Laboratory experiments searching for galactic dark matter particles scattering off nuclei have so far not been able to establish a discovery. We use data from the XENON100 experiment to search for dark matter interacting with electrons. With no evidence for a signal above the low background of our experiment, we exclude a variety of representative dark matter models that would induce electronic recoils. For axial-vector couplings to electrons, we exclude cross sections above 6 x 10(-35) cm(2) for particle masses of m(chi) = 2 GeV/c(2). Independent of the dark matter halo, we exclude leptophilic models as an explanation for the long-standing DAMA/LIBRA signal, such as couplings to electrons through axial-vector interactions at a 4.4 sigma confidence level, mirror dark matter at 3.6 sigma, and luminous dark matter at 4.6 sigma.