This paper deals with multi-class classification of skin pre-cancerous stages based on bimodal spectroscopic features combining spatially resolved AutoFluorescence (AF) and Diffuse Reflectance (DR) measurements. A new hybrid method to extract and select features is presented. It is based on Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) applied to AF spectra and on Mutual Information (MI) applied to DR spectr...

A history of the commissioning and the very successful early operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is described. The accident that interrupted the first commissioning, its repair and the enhanced protection system put in place are fully described. The LHC beam commissioning and operational performance are reviewed for the period from 2010 to mid-2011. Preliminary plans for operation and ...

The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) was completed, on budget, in November 2005, in just under 6 years, and is currently in the middle of its commissioning and performance verification phase, expected to be concluded by early 2007. SALT partners have already been obtaining observations during this shake-down period, and night time hours devoted to science time has slowly risen to 65-75%....

In TeV-scale gravity scenarios with large extra dimensions, black holes may be produced at future colliders. Good arguments have been made for why general relativistic black holes may be just out of reach of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). However, in weaklycoupled string theory, highly excited string states – string balls – could be produced at the LHC with high rates and decay thermally, not...

We analyze the potential of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to search for excited spin-12 electrons and neutrinos. Assuming a SU(2)L⊗U(1)Y invariant model, we study in detail the single production of excited electrons and neutrinos and respective backgrounds through the reactions pp → e+e−V and e±νV with V = γ, W , or Z. We show that the LHC will be able to tighten considerably the direct ...

The large rapidity interval available at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) offers an arena in which the QCD aspects of diffraction may be explored in an environment free of gap survival complications using events with multiple rapidity gaps. Presented at DIS-2005, XIIIth International Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scallering, April 27 May 1 2005, Madison, WI, U.S.A.

Results are presented on the discovery potential for MSSM neutral Higgs bosons in the mh −max scenario. The region of large tanβ, between 15 and 50, and mass between ≈ 95 and 130 GeV is considered in the framework of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), for a centre-of-mass energy √ s = 14 TeV. This parameter region is not fully covered by the present data either from LEP or...

We point out that interesting signals of the non-strongly interacting sector of the supersymmetric standard model arise from the production of charginos and neutralinos via vector boson fusion (VBF) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In particular, if R-parity is violated, the hadronically quiet signals of charginos and neutralinos through direct production get considerably suppressed. We show...