New records of Decapod Crustaceans (Decapoda: Pontoniinae and Inachidae) associated with sea anemones in Turkish waters

Three anemone-associated decapod crustaceans, two shrimp species, Periclimenes amethysteus and P. aegylios (Caridea: Palaemonidae: Pontoniinae), and the crab Inachus phalangium (Brachyura: Inachidae), all collected from the Dardanelles, are reported for the first time from Turkish coasts. Another inachid crab, Macropodia czernjawskii is also reported for the first time to occur in association with the sea anemone, Anemonia viridis. Periclimenes scriptus was the fifth decapod species recorded associated with sea anemones within the present study, and while this species has already been reported from Turkish waters, this is the first time it is recorded from the Dardanelles (the Turkish Straits System)

Comparative assessment of in vitro and in silico methods for aerodynamic characterization of powders for inhalation

In vitro assessment of dry powders for inhalation (DPIs) aerodynamic performance is an inevitable test in DPI development. However, contemporary trends in drug development also implicate the use of in silico methods, e.g., computational fluid dynamics (CFD) coupled with discrete phase modeling (DPM). The aim of this study was to compare the designed CFD-DPM outcomes with the results of three in vitro methods for aerodynamic assessment of solid lipid microparticle DPIs. The model was able to simulate particle-to-wall sticking and estimate fractions of particles that stick or bounce off the inhaler’s wall; however, we observed notable differences between the in silico and in vitro results. The predicted emitted fractions (EFs) were comparable to the in vitro determined EFs, whereas the predicted fine particle fractions (FPFs) were generally lower than the corresponding in vitro values. In addition, CFD-DPM predicted higher mass median aerodynamic diameter (MMAD) in comparison to the in vitro values. The outcomes of different in vitro methods also diverged, implying that these methods are not interchangeable. Overall, our results support the utility of CFD-DPM in the DPI development, but highlight the need for additional improvements in these models to capture all the key processes influencing aerodynamic performance of specific DPIs

Energy performance of diaphragm walls used as heat exchangers

The possibility of equipping diaphragm walls as ground heat exchangers to meet the full or partial heating and cooling demands of overlying or adjacent buildings has been explored in recent years. In this paper, the factors affecting the energy performance of diaphragm walls equipped as heat exchangers are investigated through finite element modelling. The numerical approach employed is first validated using available experimental data and then applied to perform parametric analyses. Parameters considered in the analysis include panel width, the ratio between the wall and excavation depths, heat transfer pipe spacing, concrete cover, heat-carrier fluid velocity, concrete thermal properties and the temperature difference between the air within the excavation and the soil behind the wall. The results indicate that increasing the number of pipes by reducing their spacing is the primary route to increasing energy efficiency in the short term. However, the thermal properties of the wall concrete and the temperature excess within the excavation space are also important, with the latter becoming the most significant in the medium to long term. This confirms the benefits of exploiting the retaining walls installed for railway tunnels and metro stations where additional sources of heat are available

DEvIANT: Discovering Significant Exceptional (Dis-)Agreement Within Groups

We strive to find contexts (i.e., subgroups of entities) under which exceptional (dis-)agreement occurs among a group of individuals , in any type of data featuring individuals (e.g., parliamentarians , customers) performing observable actions (e.g., votes, ratings) on entities (e.g., legislative procedures, movies). To this end, we introduce the problem of discovering statistically significant exceptional contextual intra-group agreement patterns. To handle the sparsity inherent to voting and rating data, we use Krippendorff's Alpha measure for assessing the agreement among individuals. We devise a branch-and-bound algorithm , named DEvIANT, to discover such patterns. DEvIANT exploits both closure operators and tight optimistic estimates. We derive analytic approximations for the confidence intervals (CIs) associated with patterns for a computationally efficient significance assessment. We prove that these approximate CIs are nested along specialization of patterns. This allows to incorporate pruning properties in DEvIANT to quickly discard non-significant patterns. Empirical study on several datasets demonstrates the efficiency and the usefulness of DEvIANT. Technical Report Associated with the ECML/PKDD 2019 Paper entitled: "DEvIANT: Discovering Significant Exceptional (Dis-)Agreement Within Groups"

Search for anomalous t t-bar production in the highly-boosted all-hadronic final state

A search is presented for a massive particle, generically referred to as a Z', decaying into a t t-bar pair. The search focuses on Z' resonances that are sufficiently massive to produce highly Lorentz-boosted top quarks, which yield collimated decay products that are partially or fully merged into single jets. The analysis uses new methods to analyze jet substructure, providing suppression of the non-top multijet backgrounds. The analysis is based on a data sample of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 inverse femtobarns. Upper limits in the range of 1 pb are set on the product of the production cross section and branching fraction for a topcolor Z' modeled for several widths, as well as for a Randall--Sundrum Kaluza--Klein gluon. In addition, the results constrain any enhancement in t t-bar production beyond expectations of the standard model for t t-bar invariant masses larger than 1 TeV.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics; this version includes a minor typo correction that will be submitted as an erratu

Search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu decay channel, where l = e or mu, in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The data were collected at the LHC, with the CMS detector, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 inverse femtobarns. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation, and upper limits are set on the Higgs boson production cross section. The presence of the standard model Higgs boson with a mass in the 270-440 GeV range is excluded at 95% confidence level.Comment: Submitted to JHE

Measurement of the t t-bar production cross section in the dilepton channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The t t-bar production cross section (sigma[t t-bar]) is measured in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV in data collected by the CMS experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.3 inverse femtobarns. The measurement is performed in events with two leptons (electrons or muons) in the final state, at least two jets identified as jets originating from b quarks, and the presence of an imbalance in transverse momentum. The measured value of sigma[t t-bar] for a top-quark mass of 172.5 GeV is 161.9 +/- 2.5 (stat.) +5.1/-5.0 (syst.) +/- 3.6(lumi.) pb, consistent with the prediction of the standard model.Comment: Replaced with published version. Included journal reference and DO

Combined search for the quarks of a sequential fourth generation

Results are presented from a search for a fourth generation of quarks produced singly or in pairs in a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 inverse femtobarns recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011. A novel strategy has been developed for a combined search for quarks of the up and down type in decay channels with at least one isolated muon or electron. Limits on the mass of the fourth-generation quarks and the relevant Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements are derived in the context of a simple extension of the standard model with a sequential fourth generation of fermions. The existence of mass-degenerate fourth-generation quarks with masses below 685 GeV is excluded at 95% confidence level for minimal off-diagonal mixing between the third- and the fourth-generation quarks. With a mass difference of 25 GeV between the quark masses, the obtained limit on the masses of the fourth-generation quarks shifts by about +/- 20 GeV. These results significantly reduce the allowed parameter space for a fourth generation of fermions.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO