A green-gray path to global water security and sustainable infrastructure

Sustainable development demands reliable water resources, yet traditional water management has broadly failed to avoid environmental degradation and contain infrastructure costs. We explore the global-scale feasibility of combining natural capital with engineering-based (green-gray) approaches to meet water security threats over the 21st century. Threats to water resource systems are projected to rise throughout this period, together with a significant expansion in engineering deployments and progressive loss of natural capital. In many parts of the world, strong path dependencies are projected to arise from the legacy of prior environmental degradation that constrains future water management to a heavy reliance on engineering-based approaches. Elsewhere, retaining existing stocks of natural capital creates opportunities to employ blended green-gray water infrastructure. By 2050, annual engineering expenditures are projected to triple to $2.3 trillion, invested mainly in developing economies. In contrast, preserving natural capital for threat suppression represents a potential$3.0 trillion in avoided replacement costs by mid-century. Society pays a premium whenever these nature-based assets are lost, as the engineering costs necessary to achieve an equivalent level of threat management are, on average, twice as expensive. Countries projected to rapidly expand their engineering investments while losing natural capital will be most constrained in realizing green-gray water management. The situation is expected to be most restrictive across the developing world, where the economic, technical, and governance capacities to overcome such challenges remain limited. Our results demonstrate that policies that support blended green-gray approaches offer a pathway to future global water security but will require a strategic commitment to preserving natural capital. Absent such stewardship, the costs of water resource infrastructure and services will likely rise substantially and frustrate efforts to attain universal and sustainable water security

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV

A search for a Higgs boson decaying into two photons is described. The analysis is performed using a dataset recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC from pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, which corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.8 inverse femtobarns. Limits are set on the cross section of the standard model Higgs boson decaying to two photons. The expected exclusion limit at 95% confidence level is between 1.4 and 2.4 times the standard model cross section in the mass range between 110 and 150 GeV. The analysis of the data excludes, at 95% confidence level, the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in the mass range 128 to 132 GeV. The largest excess of events above the expected standard model background is observed for a Higgs boson mass hypothesis of 124 GeV with a local significance of 3.1 sigma. The global significance of observing an excess with a local significance greater than 3.1 sigma anywhere in the search range 110-150 GeV is estimated to be 1.8 sigma. More data are required to ascertain the origin of this excess.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Measurement of isolated photon production in pp and PbPb collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 2.76 TeV

Isolated photon production is measured in proton-proton and lead-lead collisions at nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energies of 2.76 TeV in the pseudorapidity range |eta|<1.44 and transverse energies ET between 20 and 80 GeV with the CMS detector at the LHC. The measured ET spectra are found to be in good agreement with next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD predictions. The ratio of PbPb to pp isolated photon ET-differential yields, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions, is consistent with unity for all PbPb reaction centralities.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Massive Star Formation

This chapter reviews progress in the field of massive star formation. It focuses on evidence for accretion and current models that invoke high accretion rates. In particular it is noted that high accretion rates will cause the massive young stellar object to have a radius much larger than its eventual main sequence radius throughout much of the accretion phase. This results in low effective temperatures which may provide the explanation as to why luminous young stellar objects do not ionized their surroundings to form ultra-compact H II regions. The transition to the ultra-compact H II region phase would then be associated with the termination of the high accretion rate phase. Objects thought to be in a transition phase are discussed and diagnostic diagrams to distinguish between massive young stellar objects and ultra-compact H II regions in terms of line widths and radio luminosity are presented.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, chapter in Diffuse Matter from Star Forming Regions to Active Galaxies - A Volume Honouring John Dyson, Edited by T.W. Hartquist, J. M. Pittard, and S. A. E. G. Falle. Series: Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings. Springer Dordrecht, 2007, p.6

Search for leptophobic Z ' bosons decaying into four-lepton final states in proton-proton collisions at root s=8 TeV

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Search for black holes and other new phenomena in high-multiplicity final states in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

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Measurements of differential production cross sections for a Z boson in association with jets in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

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Measurement of the mass difference between top quark and antiquark in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

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