Tracking the tempo of a continental margin arc: Insights from a forearc succession in West Antarctica

The Fossil Bluff Group of eastern Alexander Island records the exceptional preservation of more than 8 km of Mesozoic sedimentary rocks deposited into an accretionary forearc basin that developed unconformably above a late Paleozoic accretionary complex, and in proximity to a continental margin arc during a prolonged phase of enhanced magmatism. Through the Mesozoic, the Fossil Bluff Group evolved from a trench-slope environment to a forearc basin sourced from the continental margin arc. During this period, the Antarctic Peninsula’s convergent margin was characterized by episodes of magmatic flare-ups that developed during tectonic compression, crustal thickening, extension, and uplift. U-Pb and Lu-Hf detrital zircon data are used to determine the provenance of the forearc succession and as a monitor of arc magmatic tempos during the late Mesozoic. The magmatic record in the adjacent arc is poorly preserved or partially absent, but the sedimentary record of the forearc basin preserves a largely uninterrupted record of arc magmatism that can be studied with detrital zircon geochronology and geochemistry. The basal succession of the Fossil Bluff Group is sourced from the adjacent accretionary complex, but thereafter it is strongly controlled by the proximal arc in western Palmer Land and is characterized by a mixed arc/recycled signature during episodes of renewed sedimentation. However, the main phases of deposition during the Early Jurassic (ca. 180 Ma), Early Cretaceous (141−131 Ma), and mid-Cretaceous (125−102 Ma) are dominated by arc-only sources. The Lu-Hf isotopic record supports a transition from convergence to extension and a return to convergence during the Mesozoic, which is consistent with accretionary orogens from elsewhere along the West Gondwanan margin. The provenance record during the depositional history of the basin points overwhelmingly to an autochthonous origin; as such, models for parts of the western province of the Antarctic Peninsula being allochthonous are unsupported

Calibrating ensemble reliability whilst preserving spatial structure

Ensemble forecasts aim to improve decision-making by predicting a set of possible outcomes. Ideally, these would provide probabilities which are both sharp and reliable. In practice, the models, data assimilation and ensemble perturbation systems are all imperfect, leading to deficiencies in the predicted probabilities. This paper presents an ensemble post-processing scheme which directly targets local reliability, calibrating both climatology and ensemble dispersion in one coherent operation. It makes minimal assumptions about the underlying statistical distributions, aiming to extract as much information as possible from the original dynamic forecasts and support statistically awkward variables such as precipitation. The output is a set of ensemble members preserving the spatial, temporal and inter-variable structure from the raw forecasts, which should be beneficial to downstream applications such as hydrological models. The calibration is tested on three leading 15-d ensemble systems, and their aggregation into a simple multimodel ensemble. Results are presented for 12 h, 1° scale over Europe for a range of surface variables, including precipitation. The scheme is very effective at removing unreliability from the raw forecasts, whilst generally preserving or improving statistical resolution. In most cases, these benefits extend to the rarest events at each location within the 2-yr verification period. The reliability and resolution are generally equivalent or superior to those achieved using a Local Quantile-Quantile Transform, an established calibration method which generalises bias correction. The value of preserving spatial structure is demonstrated by the fact that 3×3 averages derived from grid-scale precipitation calibration perform almost as well as direct calibration at 3×3 scale, and much better than a similar test neglecting the spatial relationships. Some remaining issues are discussed regarding the finite size of the output ensemble, variables such as sea-level pressure which are very reliable to start with, and the best way to handle derived variables such as dewpoint depression

Fertility, Living Arrangements, Care and Mobility

There are four main interconnecting themes around which the contributions in this book are based. This introductory chapter aims to establish the broad context for the chapters that follow by discussing each of the themes. It does so by setting these themes within the overarching demographic challenge of the twenty-first century – demographic ageing. Each chapter is introduced in the context of the specific theme to which it primarily relates and there is a summary of the data sets used by the contributors to illustrate the wide range of cross-sectional and longitudinal data analysed

Monitoring international migration flows in Europe. Towards a statistical data base combining data from different sources

The paper reviews techniques developed in demography, geography and statistics that are useful for bridging the gap between available data on international migration flows and the information required for policy making and research. The basic idea of the paper is as follows: to establish a coherent and consistent data base that contains sufficiently detailed, up-to-date and accurate information, data from several sources should be combined. That raises issues of definition and measurement, and of how to combine data from different origins properly. The issues may be tackled more easily if the statistics that are being compiled are viewed as different outcomes or manifestations of underlying stochastic processes governing migration. The link between the processes and their outcomes is described by models, the parameters of which must be estimated from the available data. That may be done within the context of socio-demographic accounting. The paper discusses the experience of the U.S. Bureau of the Census in combining migration data from several sources. It also summarizes the many efforts in Europe to establish a coherent and consistent data base on international migration. The paper was written at IIASA. It is part of the Migration Estimation Study, which is a collaborative IIASA-University of Groningen project, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The project aims at developing techniques to obtain improved estimates of international migration flows by country of origin and country of destination

Search for squarks and gluinos in events with isolated leptons, jets and missing transverse momentum at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing at least one isolated lepton (electron or muon), jets and large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are reported. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8 TeV collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20 fb−1. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed. Limits are set on supersymmetric particle masses for various supersymmetric models. Depending on the model, the search excludes gluino masses up to 1.32 TeV and squark masses up to 840 GeV. Limits are also set on the parameters of a minimal universal extra dimension model, excluding a compactification radius of 1/R c = 950 GeV for a cut-off scale times radius (ΛR c) of approximately 30

Measurements of fiducial and differential cross sections for Higgs boson production in the diphoton decay channel at s√=8 TeV with ATLAS

Measurements of fiducial and differential cross sections are presented for Higgs boson production in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of s√=8 TeV. The analysis is performed in the H → γγ decay channel using 20.3 fb−1 of data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The signal is extracted using a fit to the diphoton invariant mass spectrum assuming that the width of the resonance is much smaller than the experimental resolution. The signal yields are corrected for the effects of detector inefficiency and resolution. The pp → H → γγ fiducial cross section is measured to be 43.2 ±9.4(stat.) − 2.9 + 3.2 (syst.) ±1.2(lumi)fb for a Higgs boson of mass 125.4GeV decaying to two isolated photons that have transverse momentum greater than 35% and 25% of the diphoton invariant mass and each with absolute pseudorapidity less than 2.37. Four additional fiducial cross sections and two cross-section limits are presented in phase space regions that test the theoretical modelling of different Higgs boson production mechanisms, or are sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model. Differential cross sections are also presented, as a function of variables related to the diphoton kinematics and the jet activity produced in the Higgs boson events. The observed spectra are statistically limited but broadly in line with the theoretical expectations

Evidence for the Higgs-boson Yukawa coupling to tau leptons with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for H → τ τ decays are presented, based on the full set of proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC during 2011 and 2012. The data correspond to integrated luminosities of 4.5 fb−1 and 20.3 fb−1 at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV respectively. All combinations of leptonic (τ → `νν¯ with ` = e, µ) and hadronic (τ → hadrons ν) tau decays are considered. An excess of events over the expected background from other Standard Model processes is found with an observed (expected) significance of 4.5 (3.4) standard deviations. This excess provides evidence for the direct coupling of the recently discovered Higgs boson to fermions. The measured signal strength, normalised to the Standard Model expectation, of µ = 1.43 +0.43 −0.37 is consistent with the predicted Yukawa coupling strength in the Standard Model

Measurement of the top pair production cross section in 8 TeV proton-proton collisions using kinematic information in the lepton plus jets final state with ATLAS

A measurement is presented of the $t\bar{t}$ inclusive production cross-section in $pp$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV using data collected by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement was performed in the lepton+jets final state using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb$^{-1}$. The cross-section was obtained using a likelihood discriminant fit and $b$-jet identification was used to improve the signal-to-background ratio. The inclusive $t\bar{t}$ production cross-section was measured to be $260\pm 1{\textrm{(stat.)}} ^{+22}_{-23} {\textrm{(syst.)}}\pm 8{\textrm{(lumi.)}}\pm 4{\mathrm{(beam)}}$ pb assuming a top-quark mass of 172.5 GeV, in good agreement with the theoretical prediction of $253^{+13}_{-15}$ pb. The $t\bar{t}\to (e,\mu)+{\mathrm{jets}}$ production cross-section in the fiducial region determined by the detector acceptance is also reported.Comment: Published version, 19 pages plus author list (35 pages total), 3 figures, 2 tables, all figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/TOPQ-2013-06