Upgrading the backend of the pipeline readout system for Belle II
The Belle II experiment at KEK will be a successor to the Belle experiment. Belle II will start operation from 2015, searching for subatomic particles beyond the standard model. The pipeline readout system for the Belle experiment will be unable to satisfy the requirements of Belle II, because the luminosity of the SuperKEKB accelerator will be about 40 times higher than that of KEKB. We have moved the digitizer to front-end electronics and upgraded the back-end part, as well as replacing the processor on the readout module. We report here the upgrade plan and the throughput of the back-end part.
Performance of the AMT-3 based TDC system at Belle
The KEKB storage ring for a B-factory experiment at KEK, Japan, has been breaking the luminosity record of e+e- colliders. Now the luminosity reaches 1.6 times larger than the designed luminosity. The Belle detector at KEKB uses a traditional readout method based on the trigger and delay: almost all of the digitizer is the same FASTBUS TDC whose intrinsic deadtime is not negligible in a recent high luminosity condition. To accommodate more higher luminosity, we developed new pipelined TDC module and its intrinsic deadtime is smaller than 10% of the current TDC. We report the performance of this TDC module.
The Impact of EU Unfair Contract Terms Law on U.S. Business-to-Consumer Internet Merchants
When the Court of Appeals for Versailles issued its decision in AOL France v. UFC Que Choisir2 in September 2005, it sent the message to U.S. Internet businesses that even contractual boilerplate localized for European markets may be invalid in European consumer transactions. In that case, a French consumer advocacy group challenged the terms AOL offered its French customers after AOL had made extensive revisions to its standard form contracts to respond to the concerns regarding those terms expressed in an advisory opinion by a French consumer protection agency. In 2004, a trial court invalidated nearly every term in the revised agreement; the appeals court affirmed on all counts. Subsequently, in July 2006 following concerns raised by the Office of Fair Trading (“OFT”), a United Kingdom government agency charged with “making sure markets work well for consumers,”3 Dell Corporation Limited changed its online terms and conditions to make them fairer to consumers.4 European consumer contract law had an impact in both cases. At issue for AOL France and Dell Corporation Limited was the application of France’s and the UK’s consumer contract law which is based on the Unfair Contract Terms Directive of 19945 and calls into question the validity of many of the terms that U.S. courts routinely enforce in transactions involving American consumers and merchants.