A pilot study of nurse-led, home monitoring for patients with chronic respiratory failure and with mechanical ventilation assistance.

We assessed the feasibility of telemedicine for home monitoring of 45 patients with chronic respiratory failure (CRF) discharged from hospital. The patients transmitted pulsed arterial saturation (pSat) data via a telephone modem to a receiving station where a nurse was available for a teleconsultation. A respiratory physician was also available. Scheduled and ad hoc appointments were conducted. Thirty-five patients were on home mechanical ventilation, 13 with invasive and 22 with non-invasive devices. The main diagnosis was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The follow-up period was 176 days (SD 69). In all, 376 calls for scheduled consultations were received and 83 ad hoc consultations were requested by the patients. The actions taken were: 55 therapy modifications, 19 hospitalizations in a respiratory department for decompensated CRF, three hospitalizations in an intensive care unit (ICU), 22 requests for further investigations, 25 contacts with the general practitioner (GP), 66 demands for respiratory consultations and 10 calls for the emergency department. The mean time recorded for the 459 calls was 16 min/patient/week. In 82% of calls, a pSat recording was received successfully. The nurse time required to train the users in the operation of the pSat instrument was high (mean time 30 min). However, the results showed that home monitoring was feasible, and useful for titration of oxygen, mechanical ventilation setting and stabilization of relapse

Conditional Variational Autoencoder for Learned Image Reconstruction

Learned image reconstruction techniques using deep neural networks have recently gained popularity and have delivered promising empirical results. However, most approaches focus on one single recovery for each observation, and thus neglect information uncertainty. In this work, we develop a novel computational framework that approximates the posterior distribution of the unknown image at each query observation. The proposed framework is very flexible: it handles implicit noise models and priors, it incorporates the data formation process (i.e., the forward operator), and the learned reconstructive properties are transferable between different datasets. Once the network is trained using the conditional variational autoencoder loss, it provides a computationally efficient sampler for the approximate posterior distribution via feed-forward propagation, and the summarizing statistics of the generated samples are used for both point-estimation and uncertainty quantification. We illustrate the proposed framework with extensive numerical experiments on positron emission tomography (with both moderate and low-count levels) showing that the framework generates high-quality samples when compared with state-of-the-art methods

Efficient propagation of systematic uncertainties from calibration to analysis with the SnowStorm method in IceCube

Efficient treatment of systematic uncertainties that depend on a large number of nuisance parameters is a persistent difficulty in particle physics and astrophysics experiments. Where low-level effects are not amenable to simple parameterization or re-weighting, analyses often rely on discrete simulation sets to quantify the effects of nuisance parameters on key analysis observables. Such methods may become computationally untenable for analyses requiring high statistics Monte Carlo with a large number of nuisance degrees of freedom, especially in cases where these degrees of freedom parameterize the shape of a continuous distribution. In this paper we present a method for treating systematic uncertainties in a computationally efficient and comprehensive manner using a single simulation set with multiple and continuously varied nuisance parameters. This method is demonstrated for the case of the depth-dependent effective dust distribution within the IceCube Neutrino Telescope

Design and performance of the first IceAct demonstrator at the South Pole

In this paper we describe the first results of IceAct, a compact imaging air-Cherenkov telescope operating in coincidence with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory (IceCube) at the geographic South Pole. An array of IceAct telescopes (referred to as the IceAct project) is under consideration as part of the IceCube-Gen2 extension to IceCube. Surface detectors in general will be a powerful tool in IceCube-Gen2 for distinguishing astrophysical neutrinos from the dominant backgrounds of cosmic-ray induced atmospheric muons and neutrinos: the IceTop array is already in place as part of IceCube, but has a high energy threshold. Although the duty cycle will be lower for the IceAct telescopes than the present IceTop tanks, the IceAct telescopes may prove to be more effective at lowering the detection threshold for air showers. Additionally, small imaging air-Cherenkov telescopes in combination with IceTop, the deep IceCube detector or other future detector systems might improve measurements of the composition of the cosmic ray energy spectrum. In this paper we present measurements of a first 7-pixel imaging air Cherenkov telescope demonstrator, proving the capability of this technology to measure air showers at the South Pole in coincidence with IceTop and the deep IceCube detector

Time-Integrated Neutrino Source Searches with 10 Years of IceCube Data.

This Letter presents the results from pointlike neutrino source searches using ten years of IceCube data collected between April 6, 2008 and July 10, 2018. We evaluate the significance of an astrophysical signal from a pointlike source looking for an excess of clustered neutrino events with energies typically above ∼1  TeV among the background of atmospheric muons and neutrinos. We perform a full-sky scan, a search within a selected source catalog, a catalog population study, and three stacked Galactic catalog searches. The most significant point in the northern hemisphere from scanning the sky is coincident with the Seyfert II galaxy NGC 1068, which was included in the source catalog search. The excess at the coordinates of NGC 1068 is inconsistent with background expectations at the level of 2.9σ after accounting for statistical trials from the entire catalog. The combination of this result along with excesses observed at the coordinates of three other sources, including TXS 0506+056, suggests that, collectively, correlations with sources in the northern catalog are inconsistent with background at 3.3σ significance. The southern catalog is consistent with background. These results, all based on searches for a cumulative neutrino signal integrated over the 10 years of available data, motivate further study of these and similar sources, including time-dependent analyses, multimessenger correlations, and the possibility of stronger evidence with coming upgrades to the detector

Combined sensitivity to the neutrino mass ordering with JUNO, the IceCube Upgrade, and PINGU

The ordering of the neutrino mass eigenstates is one of the fundamental open questions in neutrino physics. While current-generation neutrino oscillation experiments are able to produce moderate indications on this ordering, upcoming experiments of the next generation aim to provide conclusive evidence. In this paper we study the combined performance of the two future multi-purpose neutrino oscillation experiments JUNO and the IceCube Upgrade, which employ two very distinct and complementary routes toward the neutrino mass ordering. The approach pursued by the 20 kt medium-baseline reactor neutrino experiment JUNO consists of a careful investigation of the energy spectrum of oscillated νe produced by ten nuclear reactor cores. The IceCube Upgrade, on the other hand, which consists of seven additional densely instrumented strings deployed in the center of IceCube DeepCore, will observe large numbers of atmospheric neutrinos that have undergone oscillations affected by Earth matter. In a joint fit with both approaches, tension occurs between their preferred mass-squared differences Δm312=m32-m12 within the wrong mass ordering. In the case of JUNO and the IceCube Upgrade, this allows to exclude the wrong ordering at >5σ on a timescale of 3-7 years - even under circumstances that are unfavorable to the experiments' individual sensitivities. For PINGU, a 26-string detector array designed as a potential low-energy extension to IceCube, the inverted ordering could be excluded within 1.5 years (3 years for the normal ordering) in a joint analysis

Search for sources of astrophysical neutrinos using seven years of icecube cascade events

Low-background searches for astrophysical neutrino sources anywhere in the sky can be performed using cascade events induced by neutrinos of all flavors interacting in IceCube with energies as low as ∼1 TeV. Previously we showed that, even with just two years of data, the resulting sensitivity to sources in the southern sky is competitive with IceCube and ANTARES analyses using muon tracks induced by charge current muon neutrino interactions - especially if the neutrino emission follows a soft energy spectrum or originates from an extended angular region. Here, we extend that work by adding five more years of data, significantly improving the cascade angular resolution, and including tests for point-like or diffuse Galactic emission to which this data set is particularly well suited. For many of the signal candidates considered, this analysis is the most sensitive of any experiment to date. No significant clustering was observed, and thus many of the resulting constraints are the most stringent to date. In this paper we will describe the improvements introduced in this analysis and discuss our results in the context of other recent work in neutrino astronomy

Detection of the temporal variation of the sun's cosmic ray shadow with the IceCube detector

We report on the observation of a deficit in the cosmic ray flux from the directions of the Moon and Sun with five years of data taken by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Between 2010 May and 2011 May the IceCube detector operated with 79 strings deployed in the glacial ice at the South Pole, and with 86 strings between 2011 May and 2015 May. A binned analysis is used to measure the relative deficit and significance of the cosmic ray shadows. Both the cosmic ray Moon and Sun shadows are detected with high statistical significance (> 10 sigma) for each year. The results for the Moon shadow are consistent with previous analyses and verify the stability of the IceCube detector over time. This work represents the first observation of the Sun shadow with the IceCube detector. We show that the cosmic ray shadow of the Sun varies with time. These results make it possible to study cosmic ray transport near the Sun with future data from IceCube

INFN What Next: Ultra-relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

This document was prepared by the community that is active in Italy, within INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), in the field of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The experimental study of the phase diagram of strongly-interacting matter and of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) deconfined state will proceed, in the next 10-15 years, along two directions: the high-energy regime at RHIC and at the LHC, and the low-energy regime at FAIR, NICA, SPS and RHIC. The Italian community is strongly involved in the present and future programme of the ALICE experiment, the upgrade of which will open, in the 2020s, a new phase of high-precision characterisation of the QGP properties at the LHC. As a complement of this main activity, there is a growing interest in a possible future experiment at the SPS, which would target the search for the onset of deconfinement using dimuon measurements. On a longer timescale, the community looks with interest at the ongoing studies and discussions on a possible fixed-target programme using the LHC ion beams and on the Future Circular Collider.Comment: 99 pages, 56 figure