Search for jet extinction in the inclusive jet-pT spectrum from proton-proton collisions at s=8 TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.The first search at the LHC for the extinction of QCD jet production is presented, using data collected with the CMS detector corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 10.7  fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The extinction model studied in this analysis is motivated by the search for signatures of strong gravity at the TeV scale (terascale gravity) and assumes the existence of string couplings in the strong-coupling limit. In this limit, the string model predicts the suppression of all high-transverse-momentum standard model processes, including jet production, beyond a certain energy scale. To test this prediction, the measured transverse-momentum spectrum is compared to the theoretical prediction of the standard model. No significant deficit of events is found at high transverse momentum. A 95% confidence level lower limit of 3.3 TeV is set on the extinction mass scale

Searches for electroweak neutralino and chargino production in channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons in pp collisions at 8 TeV

Searches for supersymmetry (SUSY) are presented based on the electroweak pair production of neutralinos and charginos, leading to decay channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons and undetected lightest SUSY particles (LSPs). The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of about 19.5 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV collected in 2012 with the CMS detector at the LHC. The main emphasis is neutralino pair production in which each neutralino decays either to a Higgs boson (h) and an LSP or to a Z boson and an LSP, leading to hh, hZ, and ZZ states with missing transverse energy (E-T(miss)). A second aspect is chargino-neutralino pair production, leading to hW states with E-T(miss). The decays of a Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair, to a photon pair, and to final states with leptons are considered in conjunction with hadronic and leptonic decay modes of the Z and W bosons. No evidence is found for supersymmetric particles, and 95% confidence level upper limits are evaluated for the respective pair production cross sections and for neutralino and chargino mass values

Interdisciplinary knowledge modelling for free-form design - An educational experiment

The recent advances in digital design media and digital fabrication processes have introduced formal and procedural effects on the conception and production of architecture. In order to bridge the individual concepts and processes of multiple design disciplines, intensive cross-disciplinary communication and information exchange starting from the very early stages of design is necessary. A web-based database for design learning and design teaching named BLIP is introduced. In this framework, cross-disciplinary domain knowledge becomes explicit to be taught and transferred in Free-Form Design research and education. BLIP proposes a conceptual map through which the user can construct structured representations of concepts and their relationships. These concepts are high-level abstractions of formal, structural and production related concepts in Free-Form design development. BLIP is used for formalizing, organizing and representing conceptual maps of the three domains and facilitates information and knowledge sharing in collaborative conceptual design in context. The paper introduces the application together with its application in two educational design experiments

Design and implementation of a program quality assessment tool : three case studies of primary health services in developing countries

The total service quality paradigm has been slow in diffusing to the health service domain, and TQM techniques are even less widely used to govern primary health services in the developing world. This interdisciplinary work analyzes the design of a TQM-based quality assessment tool (PQAT) used to evaluate quality of care in family planning programmes in Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific. It shows how family planning service quality models have failed to keep pace with advances in management theory, introduces the process theory model to overcome the limitations of the variance model, and grounds the tool in the context of quality theory. The paper goes on to report results from field use of the PQAT in three widely varying sites in the Asia Pacific region, and to draw useful conclusions for primary health researchers and practitioners