Top Physics at the Startup of the LHC

In 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will provide first proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 14 TeV. The LHC will be a "top factory" since about 8 million top-antitop events will be produced in one year already at low luminosity. After the discovery and first measurements of the top quark at Tevatron, the LHC will open a new opportunity for precision measurements of top quark properties. Prior to data taking, the ATLAS and CMS detectors will have to be commissioned and precisely calibrated. Further improvements will be achieved with first collisions. Due to the large amount of events produced and the clean signal, early top signals will play an important role in commissioning the detectors. Moreover some of the early LHC physics results could come from top physics, leading to a major improvement of top quark understanding and eventually opening a window for physics beyond the Standard Model

On Mathon's construction of maximal arcs in Desarguesian planes. II

In a recent paper [M], Mathon gives a new construction of maximal arcs which generalizes the construction of Denniston. In relation to this construction, Mathon asks the question of determining the largest degree of a non-Denniston maximal arc arising from his new construction. In this paper, we give a nearly complete answer to this problem. Specifically, we prove that when $m\geq 5$ and $m\neq 9$, the largest $d$ of a non-Denniston maximal arc of degree $2^d$ in PG(2,2^m) generated by a {p,1}-map is (\floor {m/2} +1). This confirms our conjecture in [FLX]. For {p,q}-maps, we prove that if $m\geq 7$ and $m\neq 9$, then the largest $d$ of a non-Denniston maximal arc of degree $2^d$ in PG(2,2^m) generated by a {p,q}-map is either \floor {m/2} +1 or \floor{m/2} +2.Comment: 21 page

A high-density 256-channel cap for dry electroencephalography

High-density electroencephalography (HD-EEG) is currently limited to laboratory environments since state-of-the-art electrode caps require skilled staff and extensive preparation. We propose and evaluate a 256-channel cap with dry multipin electrodes for HD-EEG. We describe the designs of the dry electrodes made from polyurethane and coated with Ag/AgCl. We compare in a study with 30 volunteers the novel dry HD-EEG cap to a conventional gel-based cap for electrode-skin impedances, resting state EEG, and visual evoked potentials (VEP). We perform wearing tests with eight electrodes mimicking cap applications on real human and artificial skin. Average impedances below 900 k[Ohm] for 252 out of 256 dry electrodes enables recording with state-of-the-art EEG amplifiers. For the dry EEG cap, we obtained a channel reliability of 84% and a reduction of the preparation time of 69%. After exclusion of an average of 16% (dry) and 3% (gel-based) bad channels, resting state EEG, alpha activity, and pattern reversal VEP can be recorded with less than 5% significant differences in all compared signal characteristics metrics. Volunteers reported wearing comfort of 3.6 ± 1.5 and 4.0 ± 1.8 for the dry and 2.5 ± 1.0 and 3.0 ± 1.1 for the gel-based cap prior and after the EEG recordings, respectively (scale 1-10). Wearing tests indicated that up to 3,200 applications are possible for the dry electrodes. The 256-channel HD-EEG dry electrode cap overcomes the principal limitations of HD-EEG regarding preparation complexity and allows rapid application by not medically trained persons, enabling new use cases for HD-EEG

On the class of Dk-symmetrizable matrices

AbstractIt is known that for every real square matrix A there exists a nonsingular real symmetric matrix S such thatSA=A′S,where A′ denotes the transpose of A.Using the notion of an M-matrix we derive a criterion for A to satisfy the above equality with a diagonal S of signature k. Such a matrix A will be called Dk-symmetrizable and the paper presents some results on this concept. In particular we show that a Dk-symmetrizable matrix shares many properties with a real symmetric matrix and that any real matrix A, up to an orthogonal similarity, is Dk-symmetrizable for some k

Climate Prosperity: A Greenprint For Southwest Florida

Southwest Florida has been chosen as one of the 8 pilot regions for the Climate Prosperity project.  One of the main goals in Southwest Florida is to create and attract jobs to help energize the Southwest Florida economy now as well as future generations.  Climate change has edged its way to the top of federal, state, and local agendas. Scientists and leaders across the nation are taking numerous steps to prepare for the positive and negative consequences of a new weather era so that ecosystems, human life, and infrastructure can adapt and survive