ALICE is the heavy-ion experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The experiment continuously took data during the first physics campaign of the machine from fall 2009 until early 2013, using proton and lead-ion beams. In this paper we describe the running environment and the data handling procedures, and discuss the performance of the ALICE detectors and analysis methods for various physics observables.

A search for neutral Higgs bosons has been performed using the full sample of Z 0 decays collected by the OPAL detector at LEP up to 1995. The data were taken at centre-of-mass energies between 88 GeV and 95 GeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of approximately 160 pb 1. The present search addresses the processes Z 0 !H 0 Z and h 0 Z , where H 0 is the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model and h 0 the lightest neutral scalar Higgs boson predicted in the framework of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. For the virtual Z 0 boson, Z , the following decay c hannels are considered: Z ! , e + e and +. One candidate event

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The production of charged pions in minimum bias p+C interactions is studied using a sample of 377 000 inelastic events obtained with the NA49 detector at the CERN SPS at 158 GeV/c beam momentum. The data cover a phase space area ranging from 0 to 1.8 GeV/c in transverse momentum and from -0.1 to 0.5 in Feynman x. Inclusive invariant cross sections are given on a grid of 270 bins per charge thus offering for the first time a dense coverage of the projectile hemisphere and of the cross-over region into the target fragmentation zone.

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