History of the \u3cem\u3eMilwaukee Sentinel\u3c/em\u3e, 1901 to 1936

The purpose of this thesis is to present a history of the Milwaukee Sentinel. Inasmuch as this newspaper is nearing its hundredth birthday, the history will be traced only from 1901, at which time it was purchased by Charles F. Pfister, to the end of 1936. An attempt will be made to present the general changes effected from time to time in the content, appearance, ownership and management of the Sentinel and its policies, particularly those in the political field

Varying constants, Gravitation and Cosmology

Fundamental constants are a cornerstone of our physical laws. Any constant varying in space and/or time would reflect the existence of an almost massless field that couples to matter. This will induce a violation of the universality of free fall. It is thus of utmost importance for our understanding of gravity and of the domain of validity of general relativity to test for their constancy. We thus detail the relations between the constants, the tests of the local position invariance and of the universality of free fall. We then review the main experimental and observational constraints that have been obtained from atomic clocks, the Oklo phenomenon, Solar system observations, meteorites dating, quasar absorption spectra, stellar physics, pulsar timing, the cosmic microwave background and big bang nucleosynthesis. At each step we describe the basics of each system, its dependence with respect to the constants, the known systematic effects and the most recent constraints that have been obtained. We then describe the main theoretical frameworks in which the low-energy constants may actually be varying and we focus on the unification mechanisms and the relations between the variation of different constants. To finish, we discuss the more speculative possibility of understanding their numerical values and the apparent fine-tuning that they confront us with.Comment: 145 pages, 10 figures, Review for Living Reviews in Relativit

Food for pollinators: quantifying the nectar and pollen resources of urban flower meadows

Planted meadows are increasingly used to improve the biodiversity and aesthetic amenity value of urban areas. Although many ‘pollinator-friendly’ seed mixes are available, the floral resources these provide to flower-visiting insects, and how these change through time, are largely unknown. Such data are necessary to compare the resources provided by alternative meadow seed mixes to each other and to other flowering habitats. We used quantitative surveys of over 2 million flowers to estimate the nectar and pollen resources offered by two exemplar commercial seed mixes (one annual, one perennial) and associated weeds grown as 300m2 meadows across four UK cities, sampled at six time points between May and September 2013. Nectar sugar and pollen rewards per flower varied widely across 65 species surveyed, with native British weed species (including dandelion, Taraxacum agg.) contributing the top five nectar producers and two of the top ten pollen producers. Seed mix species yielding the highest rewards per flower included Leontodon hispidus, Centaurea cyanus and C. nigra for nectar, and Papaver rhoeas, Eschscholzia californica and Malva moschata for pollen. Perennial meadows produced up to 20x more nectar and up to 6x more pollen than annual meadows, which in turn produced far more than amenity grassland controls. Perennial meadows produced resources earlier in the year than annual meadows, but both seed mixes delivered very low resource levels early in the year and these were provided almost entirely by native weeds. Pollen volume per flower is well predicted statistically by floral morphology, and nectar sugar mass and pollen volume per unit area are correlated with flower counts, raising the possibility that resource levels can be estimated for species or habitats where they cannot be measured directly. Our approach does not incorporate resource quality information (for example, pollen protein or essential amino acid content), but can easily do so when suitable data exist. Our approach should inform the design of new seed mixes to ensure continuity in floral resource availability throughout the year, and to identify suitable species to fill resource gaps in established mixes

The neutron and its role in cosmology and particle physics

Experiments with cold and ultracold neutrons have reached a level of precision such that problems far beyond the scale of the present Standard Model of particle physics become accessible to experimental investigation. Due to the close links between particle physics and cosmology, these studies also permit a deep look into the very first instances of our universe. First addressed in this article, both in theory and experiment, is the problem of baryogenesis ... The question how baryogenesis could have happened is open to experimental tests, and it turns out that this problem can be curbed by the very stringent limits on an electric dipole moment of the neutron, a quantity that also has deep implications for particle physics. Then we discuss the recent spectacular observation of neutron quantization in the earth's gravitational field and of resonance transitions between such gravitational energy states. These measurements, together with new evaluations of neutron scattering data, set new constraints on deviations from Newton's gravitational law at the picometer scale. Such deviations are predicted in modern theories with extra-dimensions that propose unification of the Planck scale with the scale of the Standard Model ... Another main topic is the weak-interaction parameters in various fields of physics and astrophysics that must all be derived from measured neutron decay data. Up to now, about 10 different neutron decay observables have been measured, much more than needed in the electroweak Standard Model. This allows various precise tests for new physics beyond the Standard Model, competing with or surpassing similar tests at high-energy. The review ends with a discussion of neutron and nuclear data required in the synthesis of the elements during the "first three minutes" and later on in stellar nucleosynthesis.Comment: 91 pages, 30 figures, accepted by Reviews of Modern Physic

Search for B⁺c decays to the pp‾π⁺ final state

A search for the decays of the B + c meson to pp-π + is performed for the first time using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 fb -1 collected by the LHCb experiment in pp collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. No signal is found and an upper limit, at 95% confidence level, is set, fcfu×B(B + c →ppπ + ) < 3.6×10-8 in the kinematic region m(pp) < 2.85 GeV/c2, p T (B) < 20 GeV/c and 2.0 < y(B) < 4.5, where B is the branching fraction and f c (f u ) is the fragmentation fraction of the b quark into a B c + (B + ) meson

Precise measurements of the properties of the B-1(5721)(0,+) and B-2*(5747)(0,+) states and observation of B-+,B-0 pi(-,+) mass structures

Invariant mass distributions of B+pi- and B0pi+ combinations are investigated in order to study excited B mesons. The analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to 3.0 fb-1 of pp collision data, recorded by the LHCb detector at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. Precise measurements of the masses and widths of the B_1(5721)^(0,+) and B_2*(5747)^(0,+) states are reported. Clear enhancements, particularly prominent at high pion transverse momentum, are seen over background in the mass range 5850--6000 MeV in both B+pi- and B0pi+ combinations. The structures are consistent with the presence of four excited B mesons, labelled B_J(5840)^(0,+) and B_J(5960)^(0,+), whose masses and widths are obtained under different hypotheses for their quantum numbers.Comment: 29 pages, 5 Figures, 8 Table

Study of eta-eta ' mixing from measurement of B-(s)(0) -&gt; J/psi eta((')) decay rates

A study of B and Bs meson decays into J/ψ η and J/ψ η′ final states is performed using a data set of proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, collected by the LCHb experiment and corresponding to 3.0 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. The decay B0 → J/ψ η′ is observed for the first time. The following ratios of branching fractions are measured: B(B0→J/ψη′)B(B0s→ J/ψη′)=(2.28±0.65 (stat)±0.10 (syst)±0.13 (fs/fd))×10−2,B(B0→ J/ψη)B(B0s→ J/ψη)=(1.85±0.61 (stat)±0.09 (syst)±0.11 (fs/fd))×10−2, where the third uncertainty is related to the present knowledge of fs/fd, the ratio between the probabilities for a b quark to form a Bs or a B0 meson. The branching fraction ratios are used to determine the parameters of η − η′ meson mixing. In addition, the first evidence for the decay Bs → ψ(2S)η′ is reported, and the relative branching fraction is measured, B(B0s→ ψ(2S)η′)B(B0s→ J/ψη′)=(38.7±9.0 (stat)±1.3 (syst)±0.9(B))×10−2, where the third uncertainty is due to the limited knowledge of the branching fractions of J/ψ and ψ(2S) mesons

Search for the lepton flavour violating decay τ − → μ − μ + μ −

A search for the lepton flavour violating decay $\tau^-\to \mu^-\mu^+\mu^-$ is performed with the LHCb experiment. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of $1.0\mathrm{\,fb}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of $7\mathrm{\,Te\kern -0.1em V}$ and $2.0\mathrm{\,fb}^{-1}$ at $8\mathrm{\,Te\kern -0.1em V}$. No evidence is found for a signal, and a limit is set at $90\%$ confidence level on the branching fraction, $\mathcal{B}(\tau^-\to \mu^-\mu^+\mu^-) < 4.6 \times 10^{-8}$.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, published as JHEP 02 (2015) 12

Measurement of the inelastic pp cross-section at a centre-of-mass energy of root s=7 TeV

The cross-section for inelastic proton-proton collisions, with at least one prompt long-lived charged particle of transverse momentum $p_{\rm T}>0.2$ GeV/$c$ in the pseudorapidity range $2.0<\eta<4.5$, is measured by the LHCb experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV. The cross-section in this kinematic range is determined to be $\sigma_{\rm inel}^{\rm acc} = 55.0 \pm 2.4$ mb within the spectrometer acceptance with an experimental uncertainty that is dominated by systematic contributions. Extrapolation to the full phase space, using PYTHIA 6, yields $\sigma_{\rm inel} = 66.9 \pm 2.9 \pm 4.4$ mb, where the first uncertainty is experimental and the second is due to the extrapolation.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure