Trigger and Aperture of the Surface Detector Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory consists of 1600 water-Cherenkov detectors, for the study of extensive air showers (EAS) generated by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. We describe the trigger hierarchy, from the identification of candidate showers at the level of a single detector, amongst a large background (mainly random single cosmic ray muons), up to the selection of real events and the rejection of random coincidences. Such trigger makes the surface detector array fully efficient for the detection of EAS with energy above $3\times 10^{18}$ eV, for all zenith angles between 0$^\circ$ and 60$^\circ$, independently of the position of the impact point and of the mass of the primary particle. In these range of energies and angles, the exposure of the surface array can be determined purely on the basis of the geometrical acceptance.Comment: 29 pages, 12 figure

Search for long-lived particles decaying to leptons with large impact parameter in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A search for new long-lived particles decaying to leptons using proton–proton collision data produced by the CERN LHC at s√=13TeV is presented. Events are selected with two leptons (an electron and a muon, two electrons, or two muons) that both have transverse impact parameter values between 0.01 and 10cm and are not required to form a common vertex. Data used for the analysis were collected with the CMS detector in 2016, 2017, and 2018, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 118 (113)fb−1 in the ee channel (eμ and μμ channels). The search is designed to be sensitive to a wide range of models with displaced eμ, ee, and μμ final states. The results constrain several well-motivated models involving new long-lived particles that decay to displaced leptons. For some areas of the available phase space, these are the most stringent constraints to date

Validation of a decision support tool for wastewater treatment selection

Wastewater treatment selection is a complex task usually addressed by applying separate tools for the correct assessment of multi-criteria evaluation. Novedar_EDSS integrates technical, environmental, economic and social assessment capabilities in one single platform. The aim of this work is to evaluate and demonstrate the capabilities of this environmental decision support system (EDSS). For that purpose, 4 case studies of real projects were selected to validate the results in the EDSS by comparing them with those from the study of alternatives performed by the decision makers. Moreover, 1 conceptual case study was applied to support the selection of the most properly strategy for plant retrofitting. Results have demonstrated that the EDSS provides key aspects when deciding the retrofitting process to apply and, when compared to real projects, it recommends analogue treatments as those applied in the projects, ranking them in the same order. Therefore, results in the validation process performed show that this tool provides a reliable basis to support decision makers to select properly treatment alternatives in wastewater treatment plant pre-design

Massive gene presence-absence variation shapes an open pan-genome in the Mediterranean mussel

Background: The Mediterranean mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis is an ecologically and economically relevant edible marine bivalve, highly invasive and resilient to biotic and abiotic stressors causing recurrent massive mortalities in other bivalves. Although these traits have been recently linked with the maintenance of a high genetic variation within natural populations, the factors underlying the evolutionary success of this species remain unclear. Results: Here, after the assembly of a 1.28-Gb reference genome and the resequencing of 14 individuals from two independent populations, we reveal a complex pan-genomic architecture in M. galloprovincialis, with a core set of 45,000 genes plus a strikingly high number of dispensable genes (20,000) subject to presence-absence variation, which may be entirely missing in several individuals. We show that dispensable genes are associated with hemizygous genomic regions affected by structural variants, which overall account for nearly 580 Mb of DNA sequence not included in the reference genome assembly. As such, this is the first study to report the widespread occurrence of gene presence-absence variation at a whole-genome scale in the animal kingdom. Conclusions: Dispensable genes usually belong to young and recently expanded gene families enriched in survival functions, which might be the key to explain the resilience and invasiveness of this species. This unique pan-genome architecture is characterized by dispensable genes in accessory genomic regions that exceed by orders of magnitude those observed in other metazoans, including humans, and closely mirror the open pan-genomes found in prokaryotes and in a few non-metazoan eukaryotes.This work was conducted with the support of the projects AGL2011-14507-E, AGL2015-65705-R, RTI2018-095997-B-I00 (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Spain) and INCITE 10PXIB402096PR, IN607B 2016/12 (Consellería de Economía, Emprego e Industria - GAIN, Xunta de Galicia). Antonio Figueras, Beatriz Novoa, Rebeca Moreira, Alberto Pallavicini, Marco Gerdol, Paola Venier, and Umberto Rosani are supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 678589. David Posada is supported by the European Research Council, the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and Xunta de Galicia. We acknowledge the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to the EMBL partnership, the Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa, the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, the Generalitat de Catalunya through Departament de Salut and Departament d’Empresa i Coneixement, and the Co-financing by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation with funds from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) corresponding to the 2014-2020 Smart Growth Operating Progra

The Gaia-ESO Survey: Calibrating the lithium-age relation with open clusters and associations. I. Cluster age range and initial membership selections

Previous studies of open clusters have shown that lithium depletion is not only strongly age dependent but also shows a complex pattern with other parameters that is not yet understood. For pre- and main-sequence late-type stars, these parameters include metallicity, mixing mechanisms, convection structure, rotation, and magnetic activity. We perform a thorough membership analysis for a large number of stars observed within the Gaia-ESO survey (GES) in the field of 20 open clusters, ranging in age from young clusters and associations, to intermediate-age and old open clusters. Based on the parameters derived from the GES spectroscopic observations, we obtained lists of candidate members for each of the clusters in the sample by deriving RV distributions and studying the position of the kinematic selections in the EW(Li) versus Teff plane to obtain lithium members. We used gravity indicators to discard field contaminants and studied [Fe/H] metallicity to further confirm the membership of the candidates. We also made use of studies using recent data from the Gaia DR1 and DR2 releases to assess our member selections. We identified likely member candidates for the sample of 20 clusters observed in GES (iDR4) with UVES and GIRAFFE, and conducted a comparative study that allowed us to characterize the properties of these members, as well as identify field contaminant stars, both lithium-rich giants and non-giant outliers. This work is the first step towards the calibration of the lithium-age relation and its dependence on other GES parameters. During this project we aim to use this relation to infer the ages of GES field stars, and identify their potential membership to young associations and stellar kinematic groups of different ages

Alpha-synuclein seeds in olfactory mucosa of patients with isolated REM sleep behaviour disorder

Isolated REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) is an early-stage alpha-synucleinopathy in most, if not all, affected subjects. Detection of pathological alpha-synuclein in peripheral tissues of patients with isolated RBD may identify those progressing to Parkinson's disease, dementia with Lewy bodies or multiple system atrophy, with the ultimate goal of testing preventive therapies. Real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) provided evidence of alpha-synuclein seeding activity in CSF and olfactory mucosa of patients with alpha-synucleinopathies. The aim of this study was to explore RT-QuIC detection of alpha-synuclein aggregates in olfactory mucosa of a large cohort of subjects with isolated RBD compared to patients with Parkinson's disease and control subjects. This cross-sectional case-control study was performed at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria, the Hospital Clinic de Barcelona, Spain, and the University of Verona, Italy. Olfactory mucosa samples obtained by nasal swab in 63 patients with isolated RBD, 41 matched Parkinson's disease patients and 59 matched control subjects were analysed by alpha-synuclein RT-QuIC in a blinded fashion at the University of Verona, Italy. Median age of patients with isolated RBD was 70 years, 85.7% were male. All participants were tested for smell, autonomic, cognitive and motor functions. Olfactory mucosa was alpha-synuclein RT-QuIC positive in 44.4% isolated RBD patients, 46.3% Parkinson's disease patients and 10.2% control subjects. While the sensitivity for isolated RBD plus Parkinson's disease versus controls was 45.2%, specificity was high (89.8%). Among isolated RBD patients with positive alpha-synuclein RT-QuIC, 78.6% had olfactory dysfunction compared to 21.4% with negative alpha-synuclein RT-QuIC (P<0.001). The extent of olfactory dysfunction was more severe in isolated RBD patients positive than negative for olfactory mucosa a-synuclein RT-QuIC (P<0.001). We provide evidence that the alpha-synuclein RT-QuIC assay enables the molecular detection of neuronal alpha-synuclein aggregates in olfactory mucosa of patients with isolated RBD and Parkinson's disease. Although the overall sensitivity was moderate in this study, nasal swabbing is attractive as a simple, non-invasive test and might be useful as part of a screening battery to identify subjects in the prodromal stages of alpha-synucleinopathies. Further studies are needed to enhance sensitivity, and better understand the temporal dynamics of alpha-synuclein seeding in the olfactory mucosa and spreading to other brain areas during the progression from isolated RBD to overt alpha-synucleinopathy, as well the impact of timing, disease subgroups and sampling technique on the overall sensitivity

Impacto del proyecto PERSECC en la productividad de las MYPES de calzado de la ciudad de Trujillo, 2017

RESUMEN La presente investigación tiene como propósito determinar el impacto del proyecto creado por la Oficina de Proyectos de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación de CITEccal Trujillo, el “Proyecto de Reactivación del Sector Cuero y Calzado” en la productividad de las MYPES del sector calzado en relación con la incidencia que tenga este con el comportamiento de las ventas, producción y demás indicadores de las empresas que aplicaron a PERSECC durante el año 2017, con la finalidad de demostrar la labor del Estado al tomar medidas orientadas a elevar los niveles de competitividad de las empresas en estudio en relación a la reactivación de dicho sector. Para el desarrollo del presente trabajo de investigación, se utilizaron fuentes de información primaria debido a que serán documentos directos que se obtendrán de la oficina de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación de CITEccal Trujillo. Para esto, se tuvo en cuenta el análisis de la documentación de los datos recopilados del registro anual y evolución trimestral de ventas, producción, capacidad instalada, capacidad productiva, inversión en I+D+i, recurso humano, plan de acción del programa PERSECC, los cuales fueron facilitados directamente del área de la oficina de proyectos I+D+i para la realización del proyecto. Luego, se recopilaron los datos a través del análisis documental para ser procesados en tablas y gráficos, en seguida se determinaron las medias usando la Prueba T - Student para datos relacionados (muestras dependientes). Finalmente para medir la relación entre las variables en estudio se calculó el valor de probabilidad estadístico por el cual se rechaza la hipótesis nula y se acepta la hipótesis alternativa. De esta manera, la investigación llega a la conclusión que existen diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre los valores trimestrales de todos los indicadores analizados de las MYPES de calzado de la ciudad de Trujillo anteriores y posteriores de la aplicación del proyecto PERSECC, lo que significa que el proyecto PERSECC incide de manera significativa en la evolución de los indicadores de la productividad de cada una de las empresas del sector Calzado que aplicaron al proyecto. La principal recomendación que se hace al área de Proyectos I+D+i, es que el jefe de Proyectos autorice la continuación de la aplicación anual del Proyecto PERSECC con la finalidad de ampliar la participación de más MYPES, manteniendo un continuo control del registro de la data con respecto a la evaluación y seguimiento de indicadores en la mejora de su productividad y de esta manera, definir mejor el apoyo de la labor que viene realizando el CITEccal Trujillo para el aumento de la competitividad de las empresas del sector calzado. Palabras clave: Proyecto, Soporte Productivo, I+D, Productividad, Mypes (Micro y Pequeñas Empresas), Sector Calzado, Producción Calzado, Comercio Calzado.ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of the project created by the Research, Development and Innovation Projects Office of CITEccal Trujillo, the "PERSECC" project in the productivity of the MSEs of the footwear sector in relation to the impact that this has with the behavior of sales, production and other indicators of the companies that applied to PERSECC during the year 2017, in order to demonstrate the work of the State to take measures aimed at raising the levels of competitiveness of companies under study in relation to the reactivation of this sector. For the development of this research work, primary information sources were used because they will be direct documents that will be obtained from the Research, Development and Innovation office of CITEccal Trujillo. For this, the analysis of the documentation of the annual record and quarterly evolution of sales, production, installed capacity, productive capacity, investment in R & D & I, human resources, action plan of the PERSECC program was taken account, which were provided directly from the area of the R + D + i project office for the realization of the project. Then, the data was collected through the documentary analysis to be processed in tables and graphs, consequently sample means were determined using the T - Student test for related data (dependent samples). Finally, to measure the relationship between the variables under study, it has been estimated the statistical probability value by which the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted. The main recommendation made to the area of R + D + i Projects, is that the Project Manager continues to authorize the application of the PERSECC Project in the coming years in order to expand the participation of more MYPES, maintaining a continuous control of the registry of the data with respect to the evaluation and monitoring of indicators to improve their productivity and, in this way, better define the support of the work that CITEccal Trujillo has been doing to increase the competitiveness of companies in the footwear sector

Search for a right-handed W boson and a heavy neutrino in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A search is presented for a right-handed W boson (WR) and a heavy neutrino (N), in a final state consisting of two same-flavor leptons (ee or μμ) and two quarks. The search is performed with the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC using a data sample of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1. The search covers two regions of phase space, one where the decay products of the heavy neutrino are merged into a single large-area jet, and one where the decay products are well separated. The expected signal is characterized by an excess in the invariant mass distribution of the final-state objects. No significant excess over the standard model background expectations is observed. The observations are interpreted as upper limits on the product of WR production cross sections and branching fractions assuming that couplings are identical to those of the standard model W boson. For N masses mN equal to half the WR mass mWR (mN = 0.2 TeV), mWR is excluded at 95% confidence level up to 4.7 (4.8) and 5.0 (5.4) TeV for the electron and muon channels, respectively. This analysis provides the most stringent limits on the WR mass to date

Study of quark and gluon jet substructure in Z plus jet and dijet events from pp collisions

Measurements of jet substructure describing the composition of quark- and gluon-initiated jets are presented. Proton-proton (pp) collision data at √ s = 13 TeV collected with the CMS detector are used, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1 . Generalized angularities are measured that characterize the jet substructure and distinguish quark- and gluon-initiated jets. These observables are sensitive to the distributions of transverse momenta and angular distances within a jet. The analysis is performed using a data sample of dijet events enriched in gluon-initiated jets, and, for the first time, a Z+jet event sample enriched in quark-initiated jets. The observables are measured in bins of jet transverse momentum, and as a function of the jet radius parameter. Each measurement is repeated applying a “soft drop” grooming procedure that removes soft and large angle radiation from the jet. Using these measurements, the ability of various models to describe jet substructure is assessed, showing a clear need for improvements in Monte Carlo generators