Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI

Search for stop and higgsino production using diphoton Higgs boson decays

Results are presented of a search for a "natural" supersymmetry scenario with gauge mediated symmetry breaking. It is assumed that only the supersymmetric partners of the top-quark (stop) and the Higgs boson (higgsino) are accessible. Events are examined in which there are two photons forming a Higgs boson candidate, and at least two b-quark jets. In 19.7 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded in the CMS experiment, no evidence of a signal is found and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are set, excluding the stop mass below 360 to 410 GeV, depending on the higgsino mass

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Search for heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs bosons in final states containing four b quarks

A search is presented for narrow heavy resonances X decaying into pairs of Higgs bosons (H) in proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at root s = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1). The search considers HH resonances with masses between 1 and 3 TeV, having final states of two b quark pairs. Each Higgs boson is produced with large momentum, and the hadronization products of the pair of b quarks can usually be reconstructed as single large jets. The background from multijet and t (t) over bar events is significantly reduced by applying requirements related to the flavor of the jet, its mass, and its substructure. The signal would be identified as a peak on top of the dijet invariant mass spectrum of the remaining background events. No evidence is observed for such a signal. Upper limits obtained at 95 confidence level for the product of the production cross section and branching fraction sigma(gg -> X) B(X -> HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar) range from 10 to 1.5 fb for the mass of X from 1.15 to 2.0 TeV, significantly extending previous searches. For a warped extra dimension theory with amass scale Lambda(R) = 1 TeV, the data exclude radion scalar masses between 1.15 and 1.55 TeV

Search for anomalous production of events with three or more leptons in pp collisions at √s = 8TeV

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.A search for physics beyond the standard model in events with at least three leptons is presented. The data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5fb-1 of proton-proton collisions with center-of-mass energy s=8TeV, was collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC during 2012. The data are divided into exclusive categories based on the number of leptons and their flavor, the presence or absence of an opposite-sign, same-flavor lepton pair (OSSF), the invariant mass of the OSSF pair, the presence or absence of a tagged bottom-quark jet, the number of identified hadronically decaying τ leptons, and the magnitude of the missing transverse energy and of the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta. The numbers of observed events are found to be consistent with the expected numbers from standard model processes, and limits are placed on new-physics scenarios that yield multilepton final states. In particular, scenarios that predict Higgs boson production in the context of supersymmetric decay chains are examined. We also place a 95% confidence level upper limit of 1.3% on the branching fraction for the decay of a top quark to a charm quark and a Higgs boson (t→cH), which translates to a bound on the left- and right-handed top-charm flavor-violating Higgs Yukawa couplings, λtcH and λctH, respectively, of |λtcH|2+|λctH|2<0.21

The Impact of University Collaborative Learning on Student Academic Achievement: A Wiki for Political and Management Science

El objetivo del proyecto es llevar a la práctica una acción formativa basada en la web 2.0 con la participación de profesores y alumnos pertenecientes a distintos grados, facultades y universidades. En concreto, esta iniciativa pretende continuar con la wiki, www.dcpa.wikidot.com, que comenzó a realizarse en 2015 en virtud de la convocatoria de PIMCD. La wiki contribuye a que los estudiantes, de manera colaborativa, diseñen un proyecto educativo de integración curricular a partir de unos supuestos establecidos previamente por el profesor. Por lo tanto, este tipo de experiencia permite crear una base documental de gran utilidad para otros alumnos que estudian este tipo de asignaturas o para cualquier persona que muestren una inquietud o necesidad de buscar, encontrar o ampliar el conocimiento sobre determinadas cuestiones relacionadas con la Ciencia Política y la Ciencia de la Administración. Además, este año vamos a incorporar al proyecto de innovación la creación de un blog, como una experiencia piloto, en una de las asignaturas de los profesores del equipo. De esta manera, se continúa avanzando en el aprendizaje colaborativo, así como en la interacción entre el profesor y el alumno. El blog, al igual que la wiki, permite difundir de lo que ocurre en el aula al resto de la sociedad, contribuyendo a la transferencia del conocimiento. La razón principal de haber elegido estas herramientas es que este tipo de aplicaciones, bajo la estructura de un procesador de texto en línea, permite que cualquier persona pueda escribir, publicar fotografías o vídeos, archivos o links, sin ninguna complejidad. Además, contribuye a renovar las metodologías de enseñanza, ya que favorece el aprendizaje colaborativo (el conocimiento se comparte) y refuerza la relación de confianza entre profesor-alumno, ya que el estudiante adquiere un rol activo en el proceso de recopilación, análisis y difusión de conocimiento. De este modo, el estudiante adquiere competencias y habilidades de una manera dinámica. No obstante, para que las tecnologías generen valor en los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje es necesario que los profesores nos centremos en diseñar unas experiencias de aprendizaje adaptadas a ellas. Solo de esta manera, la wiki y el blog pueden contribuir a la construcción del conocimiento y a la resolución de problemas de manera progresiva y evolutiva, de fomento de la capacidad crítica, evaluación de la información y el cuestionamiento de la realidad, y compromiso por un análisis equilibrado del trabajo de otros y contra los prejuicios. Por tal motivo, se presentará a los estudiantes una serie de pautas que deberán seguir para su buen desarrollo. En cuanto a la wiki, en primer lugar, se explicará el programa de la asignatura y se les indicarán que podrán desarrollar analíticamente cualquier concepto o acontecimiento que guarde relación con la misma, y en segundo lugar, se les señalara que deberán formar un grupo de 4 personas para poder llevar a cabo tal tarea, y que, una vez que determinen el tema a trabajar, deberá concretarlo con la profesora para evitar duplicidades y recibir los fundamentos sobre las cuales deberán vertebrar sus trabajos. En cuanto al blog, se expondrá a los alumnos de la asignatura de “Sistema político español”, que se creará una bitácora común para toda la clase en la que los mismos grupos de la wiki publicar una noticia, un video, una nota de prensa, etc relacionada con cada tema de la asignatura, y además deberán comentar esta aportación y vincularla con la parte teórica. Así, la innovación docente que se pretende conseguir es fomentar el trabajo colaborativo dentro y fuera del aula. En la actualidad, la wiki cuenta con 308 conceptos, por lo que esta iniciativa contribuirá a ampliar la información y el conocimiento sobre la Ciencia Política y la Ciencia de la Administración, incrementado, así, su repercusión, al igual que el blog. Con ello, los alumnos aprenderán a trabajar en grupo y de forma ordenada y continuada, además de adquirir una serie de herramientas que podrán ser empleadas en otras asignaturas y aspectos de su vida personal y profesional. Además, se medirá y evaluará su rendimiento académico para conocer si esta nueva metodología de aprendizaje permite mejorar los resultados de los estudiantes. Gracias a ello, los profesores podrán proponer nuevas herramientas docentes que tiendan a dirigir a los estudiantes hacia aquél enfoque de aprendizaje que proporcione mejor rendimiento.The aim of the project is to implement a training action based on web 2.0 with the participation of teachers and students belonging to different degrees, faculties and universities. Specifically, this initiative aims to continue with the wiki, www.dcpa.wikidot.com, which began to be carried out in 2015 under the PIMCD call for proposals. The wiki helps students, in a collaborative manner, to design an educational project of curricular integration based on assumptions previously established by the teacher. Therefore, this type of experience makes it possible to create a very useful documentary base for other students studying this type of subject or for anyone who shows an interest or need to search for, find or expand knowledge on certain issues related to Political Science and Management Science. In addition, this year we are going to incorporate into the innovation project the creation of a blog, as a pilot experience, in one of the subjects taught by the team's lecturers. In this way, we continue to make progress in collaborative learning, as well as in the interaction between teacher and student. The blog, like the wiki, allows the dissemination of what happens in the classroom to the rest of society, contributing to the transfer of knowledge. The main reason for choosing these tools is that this type of application, under the structure of an online word processor, allows anyone to write, publish photographs or videos, files or links, without any complexity. Moreover, it contributes to renew teaching methodologies, as it favours collaborative learning (knowledge is shared) and reinforces the relationship of trust between teacher-student, as the student acquires an active role in the process of gathering, analysing and disseminating knowledge. In this way, the student acquires competences and skills in a dynamic way. However, for technologies to generate value in the teaching-learning process, it is necessary for teachers to focus on designing learning experiences adapted to them. Only in this way can the wiki and the blog contribute to the construction of knowledge and problem solving in a progressive and evolutionary way, fostering critical capacity, evaluation of information and questioning of reality, and commitment to a balanced analysis of the work of others and against prejudices. For this reason, students will be presented with a series of guidelines to follow for its proper development. As for the wiki, firstly, the syllabus of the subject will be explained and they will be told that they will be able to analytically develop any concept or event related to it, and secondly, they will be told that they will have to form a group of 4 people to carry out this task, and that, once they have determined the topic to work on, they should discuss it with the teacher to avoid duplication and to receive the foundations on which they should base their work. As for the blog, it will be explained to the students of the subject "Spanish political system" that a common blog will be created for the whole class in which the same wiki groups will publish a news item, a video, a press release, etc. related to each subject of the course, and they will also have to comment on this contribution and link it to the theoretical part. In this way, the teaching innovation that is intended to be achieved is to encourage collaborative work inside and outside the classroom. At present, the wiki has 218 concepts, so this initiative will contribute to expanding information and knowledge about Political Science and Administration Science, thus increasing its impact, just like the blog. In this way, students will learn to work in groups and in an orderly and continuous manner, as well as acquiring a series of tools that can be used in other subjects and aspects of their personal and professional lives. In addition, their academic performance will be measured and evaluated to find out whether this new learning methodology improves students' results. As a result, teachers will be able to propose new teaching tools that tend to direct students towards the learning approach that provides the best performance.Depto. de Ciencia Política y de la AdministraciónFac. de Ciencias Políticas y SociologíaFALSEUCMsubmitte

Measurement of the tt¯ production cross section in the dilepton channel in pp collisions at s√ = 8 TeV

The top-antitop quark ( tt¯ ) production cross section is measured in proton-proton collisions at s√ = 8 TeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC, using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.3 fb−1. The measurement is performed by analysing events with a pair of electrons or muons, or one electron and one muon, and at least two jets, one of which is identified as originating from hadronisation of a bottom quark. The measured cross section is 239 ± 2 (stat.) ± 11 (syst.) ± 6 (lum.) pb, for an assumed top-quark mass of 172.5 GeV, in agreement with the prediction of the standard model