Composition of Primary Cosmic-Ray Nuclei at High Energies

The TRACER instrument (``Transition Radiation Array for Cosmic Energetic Radiation'') has been developed for direct measurements of the heavier primary cosmic-ray nuclei at high energies. The instrument had a successful long-duration balloon flight in Antarctica in 2003. The detector system and measurement process are described, details of the data analysis are discussed, and the individual energy spectra of the elements O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca, and Fe (nuclear charge Z=8 to 26) are presented. The large geometric factor of TRACER and the use of a transition radiation detector make it possible to determine the spectra up to energies in excess of 10$^{14}$ eV per particle. A power-law fit to the individual energy spectra above 20 GeV per amu exhibits nearly the same spectral index ($\sim$ 2.65 $\pm$ 0.05) for all elements, without noticeable dependence on the elemental charge Z.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (3-Jan-08), 37 pages, 15 figure

A new urban freight distribution scheme and an optimization methodology for reducing its overall cost

The paper refers to an innovative urban freight distribution scheme, aimed at reducing the externalities connected with the freight delivery process. Both packages destined to commercial activities and to end consumers (e-commerce) are taken into account. Each package is characterized by an address and dimensions. In the proposed transport system, freight is firstly delivered to the UDC on the border of urban areas through trucks or trains which perform the long distance transport. After, freight is reorganized and consolidated into load units, i.e. the FURBOT boxes, according to packages dimensions and to the addresses of receivers. Each box is addressed to a temporary unloading bay and it is delivered there by a FURBOT vehicle. The receivers are in charge of collecting their packages in the related unloading bays where they have been delivered. The paper concerns a methodology for optimizing this freight transport system's performances. The overall methodology receives in input the actual freight demand and the road network, and finds the transport system parameters (number of required FURBOT boxes, their temporary unloading bay, the FURBOT fleet dimension and the FURBOT vehicle routing) that minimize the system overall cost. The overall cost is a sum of the users' cost, which depends on the distance they have to walk for collecting their packages in the FURBOT box, and of the operator's cost, which depends on the number of required boxes, the total distance travelled by the FURBOT vehicles and the required number of FURBOT vehicles. The overall procedure has been applied to the case study of Barreiro old town, a suburb of Lisbon, Portugal

The MACHO Project 9 Million Star Color-Magnitude Diagram of the Large Magellanic Cloud

We present a 9 million star color-magnitude diagram (9M CMD) of the LMC bar. The 9M CMD reveals a complex superposition of different age and metallicity stellar populations, with important stellar evolutionary phases occurring over 3 orders of magnitude in number density. First, we count the non-variable supergiants, the associated Cepheids, and measure the effective temperatures defining the instability strip. Lifetime predictions of stellar evolution theory are tested, with implications for the origin of low-luminosity Cepheids. The highly-evolved AGB stars have a bimodal distribution in brightness, which we interpret as discrete old populations (>1 Gyr). The faint AGB may be metal-poor and very old. We identify the clusters NGC 411 and M3 as templates for the admixture of old stellar populations. However, there are indications that the old and metal-poor field population has a red HB morphology: the RR Lyraes lie on the red edge of the instability strip, the AGB-bump is very red, and the ratio of AGB-bump stars to RR Lyraes is quite large. If the HB second parameter is age, the old and metal-poor field population likely formed after the oldest clusters. Lifetime predictions of stellar evolution theory lead us to associate a significant fraction of the red HB clump giants with the same old and metal-poor population producing the RR Lyraes and the AGB-bump. In this case, compared to the age-dependent luminosity predictions of stellar evolution theory, the red HB clump is too bright relative to the RR Lyraes and AGB-bump. Last, the surface density profile of RR Lyraes is fit by an exponential, favoring a disk-like rather than spheroidal distribution. We conclude that the age of the LMC disk is probably similar to the age of the Galactic disk. (ABRIDGED)Comment: to appear in the Astronomical Journal, 49 pages, 12 figures, aaspp4.st

Observation of a J^PC = 1-+ exotic resonance in diffractive dissociation of 190 GeV/c pi- into pi- pi- pi+

The COMPASS experiment at the CERN SPS has studied the diffractive dissociation of negative pions into the pi- pi- pi+ final state using a 190 GeV/c pion beam hitting a lead target. A partial wave analysis has been performed on a sample of 420000 events taken at values of the squared 4-momentum transfer t' between 0.1 and 1 GeV^2/c^2. The well-known resonances a1(1260), a2(1320), and pi2(1670) are clearly observed. In addition, the data show a significant natural parity exchange production of a resonance with spin-exotic quantum numbers J^PC = 1-+ at 1.66 GeV/c^2 decaying to rho pi. The resonant nature of this wave is evident from the mass-dependent phase differences to the J^PC = 2-+ and 1++ waves. From a mass-dependent fit a resonance mass of 1660 +- 10+0-64 MeV/c^2 and a width of 269+-21+42-64 MeV/c^2 is deduced.Comment: 7 page, 3 figures; version 2 gives some more details, data unchanged; version 3 updated authors, text shortened, data unchange

Jitter-correction for IR/UV-XUV pump-probe experiments at the FLASH free-electron laser

Citation: Savelyev, E., Boll, R., Bomme, C., Schirmel, N., Redlin, H., Erk, B., . . . Rolles, D. (2017). Jitter-correction for IR/UV-XUV pump-probe experiments at the FLASH free-electron laser. New Journal of Physics, 19, 13. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/aa652dIn pump-probe experiments employing a free-electron laser (FEL) in combination with a synchronized optical femtosecond laser, the arrival-time jitter between the FEL pulse and the optical laser pulse often severely limits the temporal resolution that can be achieved. Here, we present a pump-probe experiment on the UV-induced dissociation of 2,6-difluoroiodobenzene (C6H3F2I) molecules performed at the FLASH FEL that takes advantage of recent upgrades of the FLASH timing and synchronization system to obtain high-quality data that are not limited by the FEL arrival-time jitter. Wediscuss in detail the necessary data analysis steps and describe the origin of the timedependent effects in the yields and kinetic energies of the fragment ions that we observe in the experiment

Energy Flow in the Hadronic Final State of Diffractive and Non-Diffractive Deep-Inelastic Scattering at HERA

An investigation of the hadronic final state in diffractive and non--diffractive deep--inelastic electron--proton scattering at HERA is presented, where diffractive data are selected experimentally by demanding a large gap in pseudo --rapidity around the proton remnant direction. The transverse energy flow in the hadronic final state is evaluated using a set of estimators which quantify topological properties. Using available Monte Carlo QCD calculations, it is demonstrated that the final state in diffractive DIS exhibits the features expected if the interaction is interpreted as the scattering of an electron off a current quark with associated effects of perturbative QCD. A model in which deep--inelastic diffraction is taken to be the exchange of a pomeron with partonic structure is found to reproduce the measurements well. Models for deep--inelastic $ep$ scattering, in which a sizeable diffractive contribution is present because of non--perturbative effects in the production of the hadronic final state, reproduce the general tendencies of the data but in all give a worse description.Comment: 22 pages, latex, 6 Figures appended as uuencoded fil

Placebo Response of Non-Pharmacological and Pharmacological Trials in Major Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: Although meta-analyses have shown that placebo responses are large in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) trials; the placebo response of devices such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has not been systematically assessed. We proposed to assess placebo responses in two categories of MDD trials: pharmacological (antidepressant drugs) and non-pharmacological (device- rTMS) trials. Methodology/Principal Findings: We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature from April 2002 to April 2008, searching MEDLINE, Cochrane, Scielo and CRISP electronic databases and reference lists from retrieved studies and conference abstracts. We used the keywords placebo and depression and escitalopram for pharmacological studies; and transcranial magnetic stimulation and depression and sham for non-pharmacological studies. All randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, parallel articles on major depressive disorder were included. Forty-one studies met our inclusion criteria - 29 in the rTMS arm and 12 in the escitalopram arm. We extracted the mean and standard values of depression scores in the placebo group of each study. Then, we calculated the pooled effect size for escitalopram and rTMS arm separately, using Cohen's d as the measure of effect size. We found that placebo response are large for both escitalopram (Cohen's d - random-effects model - 1.48; 95%C.I. 1.26 to 1.6) and rTMS studies (0.82; 95%C.I. 0.63 to 1). Exploratory analyses show that sham response is associated with refractoriness and with the use of rTMS as an add-on therapy, but not with age, gender and sham method utilized. Conclusions/Significance: We confirmed that placebo response in MDD is large regardless of the intervention and is associated with depression refractoriness and treatment combination (add-on rTMS studies). The magnitude of the placebo response seems to be related with study population and study design rather than the intervention itself

Jets and energy flow in photon-proton collisions at HERA

Properties of the hadronic final state in photoproduction events with large transverse energy are studied at the electron-proton collider HERA. Distributions of the transverse energy, jets and underlying event energy are compared to \overline{p}p data and QCD calculations. The comparisons show that the \gamma p events can be consistently described by QCD models including -- in addition to the primary hard scattering process -- interactions between the two beam remnants. The differential jet cross sections d\sigma/dE_T^{jet} and d\sigma/d\eta^{jet} are measured

Разработка интерактивной моделирующей системы технологии низкотемпературной сепарации газа

We present a study of J ψ meson production in collisions of 26.7 GeV electrons with 820 GeV protons, performed with the H1-detector at the HERA collider at DESY. The J ψ mesons are detected via their leptonic decays both to electrons and muons. Requiring exactly two particles in the detector, a cross section of σ(ep → J ψ X) = (8.8±2.0±2.2) nb is determined for 30 GeV ≤ W γp ≤ 180 GeV and Q 2 ≲ 4 GeV 2 . Using the flux of quasi-real photons with Q 2 ≲ 4 GeV 2 , a total production cross section of σ ( γp → J / ψX ) = (56±13±14) nb is derived at an average W γp =90 GeV. The distribution of the squared momentum transfer t from the proton to the J ψ can be fitted using an exponential exp(− b ∥ t ∥) below a ∥ t ∥ of 0.75 GeV 2 yielding a slope parameter of b = (4.7±1.9) GeV −2

An Anomalous Type IV Secretion System in Rickettsia Is Evolutionarily Conserved

Bacterial type IV secretion systems (T4SSs) comprise a diverse transporter family functioning in conjugation, competence, and effector molecule (DNA and/or protein) translocation. Thirteen genome sequences from Rickettsia, obligate intracellular symbionts/pathogens of a wide range of eukaryotes, have revealed a reduced T4SS relative to the Agrobacterium tumefaciens archetype (vir). However, the Rickettsia T4SS has not been functionally characterized for its role in symbiosis/virulence, and none of its substrates are known.Superimposition of T4SS structural/functional information over previously identified Rickettsia components implicate a functional Rickettsia T4SS. virB4, virB8 and virB9 are duplicated, yet only one copy of each has the conserved features of similar genes in other T4SSs. An extraordinarily duplicated VirB6 gene encodes five hydrophobic proteins conserved only in a short region known to be involved in DNA transfer in A. tumefaciens. virB1, virB2 and virB7 are newly identified, revealing a Rickettsia T4SS lacking only virB5 relative to the vir archetype. Phylogeny estimation suggests vertical inheritance of all components, despite gene rearrangements into an archipelago of five islets. Similarities of Rickettsia VirB7/VirB9 to ComB7/ComB9 proteins of epsilon-proteobacteria, as well as phylogenetic affinities to the Legionella lvh T4SS, imply the Rickettsiales ancestor acquired a vir-like locus from distantly related bacteria, perhaps while residing in a protozoan host. Modern modifications of these systems likely reflect diversification with various eukaryotic host cells.We present the rvh (Rickettsiales vir homolog) T4SS, an evolutionary conserved transporter with an unknown role in rickettsial biology. This work lays the foundation for future laboratory characterization of this system, and also identifies the Legionella lvh T4SS as a suitable genetic model