Radiological dose reconstruction for birds reconciles outcomes of Fukushima with knowledge of dose-effect relationships

International audienceWe reconstructed the radiological dose for birds observed at 300 census sites in the 50-km northwest area affected by the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant over 2011-2014. Substituting the ambient dose rate measured at the census points (from 0.16 to 31μGy h-1) with the dose rate reconstructed for adult birds of each species (from 0.3 to 97μGy h-1), we confirmed that the overall bird abundance at Fukushima decreased with increasing total doses. This relationship was directly consistent with exposure levels found in the literature to induce physiological disturbances in birds. Among the 57 species constituting the observed bird community, we found that 90% were likely chronically exposed at a dose rate that could potentially affect their reproductive success. We quantified a loss of 22.6% of the total number of individuals per increment of one unit log10-tansformed total dose (in Gy), over the four-year post-accident period in the explored area. We estimated that a total dose of 0.55 Gy reduced by 50% the total number of birds in the study area over 2011-2014. The data also suggest a significant positive relationship between total dose and species diversity. © 2015, Nature Publishing Group. All rights reserved

Metadata standards and practical guidelines for specimen and DNA curation when building barcode reference libraries for aquatic life

DNA barcoding and metabarcoding is increasingly used to effectively and precisely assess and monitor biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems. As these methods rely on data availability and quality of barcode reference libraries, it is important to develop and follow best practices to ensure optimal quality and traceability of the metadata associated with the reference barcodes used for identification. Sufficient metadata, as well as vouchers, corresponding to each reference barcode must be available to ensure reliable barcode library curation and, thereby, provide trustworthy baselines for downstream molecular species identification. This document (1) specifies the data and metadata required to ensure the relevance, the accessibility and traceability of DNA barcodes and (2) specifies the recommendations for DNA harvesting and for the storage of both voucher specimens/samples and barcode data.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Quantum field theory and Hopf algebra cohomology

We exhibit a Hopf superalgebra structure of the algebra of field operators of quantum field theory (QFT) with the normal product. Based on this we construct the operator product and the time-ordered product as a twist deformation in the sense of Drinfeld. Our approach yields formulas for (perturbative) products and expectation values that allow for a significant enhancement in computational efficiency as compared to traditional methods. Employing Hopf algebra cohomology sheds new light on the structure of QFT and allows the extension to interacting (not necessarily perturbative) QFT. We give a reconstruction theorem for time-ordered products in the spirit of Streater and Wightman and recover the distinction between free and interacting theory from a property of the underlying cocycle. We also demonstrate how non-trivial vacua are described in our approach solving a problem in quantum chemistry.Comment: 39 pages, no figures, LaTeX + AMS macros; title changed, minor corrections, references update

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements