Interaction of climate change with effects of conspecific and heterospecific density on reproduction

We studied the relationship between temperature and the coexistence of great titParus majorand blue titCyanistes caeruleus, breeding in 75 study plots across Europe and North Africa. We expected an advance in laying date and a reduction in clutch size during warmer springs as a general response to climate warming and a delay in laying date and a reduction in clutch size during warmer winters due to density-dependent effects. As expected, as spring temperature increases laying date advances and as winter temperature increases clutch size is reduced in both species. Density of great tit affected the relationship between winter temperature and laying date in great and blue tit. Specifically, as density of great tit increased and temperature in winter increased both species started to reproduce later. Density of blue tit affected the relationship between spring temperature and blue and great tit laying date. Thus, both species start to reproduce earlier with increasing spring temperature as density of blue tit increases, which was not an expected outcome, since we expected that increasing spring temperature should advance laying date, while increasing density should delay it cancelling each other out. Climate warming and its interaction with density affects clutch size of great tits but not of blue tits. As predicted, great tit clutch size is reduced more with density of blue tits as temperature in winter increases. The relationship between spring temperature and density on clutch size of great tits depends on whether the increase is in density of great tit or blue tit. Therefore, an increase in temperature negatively affected the coexistence of blue and great tits differently in both species. Thus, blue tit clutch size was unaffected by the interaction effect of density with temperature, while great tit clutch size was affected in multiple ways by these interactions terms.Peer reviewe

Search for three-jet resonances in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

This is a Pre-Print version of the Article - Copyright @ 2011 APSA model-independent search for three-jet hadronic resonance production in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV has been conducted by the CMS Collaboration at the LHC, using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35 inverse picobarns. Events with high jet multiplicity and a large scalar sum of jet transverse momenta are analyzed. The number of expected standard model background events is found to be in good agreement with the observed events. Limits are set on a model describing the production of R-parity-violating supersymmetric gluino pairs, and gluino masses in the range of 200 to 280 GeV/c^2 are excluded at a 95% confidence level for the first time.This work is supported by the FMSR (Austria); FNRS and FWO (Belgium); CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ, and FAPESP (Brazil); MES (Bulgaria); CERN; CAS, MoST, and NSFC (China); COLCIENCIAS (Colombia); MSES (Croatia); RPF (Cyprus); Academy of Sciences and NICPB (Estonia); Academy of Finland, ME, and HIP (Finland); CEA and CNRS/IN2P3 (France); BMBF, DFG, and HGF (Germany); GSRT (Greece); OTKA and NKTH (Hungary); DAE and DST (India); IPM (Iran); SFI (Ireland); INFN (Italy); NRF andWCU (Korea); LAS (Lithuania); CINVESTAV, CONACYT, SEP, and UASLP-FAI (Mexico); PAEC (Pakistan); SCSR (Poland); FCT (Portugal); JINR (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan); MST and MAE (Russia); MSTD (Serbia); MICINN and CPAN (Spain); Swiss Funding Agencies (Switzerland); NSC (Taipei); TUBITAK and TAEK (Turkey); STFC (United Kingdom); DOE and NSF (USA)

Search for jet extinction in the inclusive jet-pT spectrum from proton-proton collisions at s=8 TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.The first search at the LHC for the extinction of QCD jet production is presented, using data collected with the CMS detector corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 10.7  fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The extinction model studied in this analysis is motivated by the search for signatures of strong gravity at the TeV scale (terascale gravity) and assumes the existence of string couplings in the strong-coupling limit. In this limit, the string model predicts the suppression of all high-transverse-momentum standard model processes, including jet production, beyond a certain energy scale. To test this prediction, the measured transverse-momentum spectrum is compared to the theoretical prediction of the standard model. No significant deficit of events is found at high transverse momentum. A 95% confidence level lower limit of 3.3 TeV is set on the extinction mass scale

Constraints on the Higgs boson width from off-shell production and decay to Z-boson pairs

Constraints are presented on the total width of the recently discovered Higgs boson, GH, using its relative on-shell and off-shell production and decay rates to a pair of Z bosons, where one Z boson decays to an electron or muon pair, and the other to an electron, muon, or neutrino pair. The analysis is based on the data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011 and 2012, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 5.1fb-1 at a center-of-mass energy vs=7 TeV and 19.7fb-1at vs=8 TeV. A simultaneous maximum likelihood fit to the measured kinematic distributions near the resonance peak and above the Z-boson pair production threshold leads to an upper limit on the Higgs boson width of GH<22 MeV at a 95% confidence level, which is 5.4 times the expected value in the standard model at the measured mass of mH=125.6 GeV

Differential host utilisation by different life history stages of the fish ectoparasite Argulus foliaceus (Crustacea: Branchiura)

Contains fulltext : 72168.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Searches for electroweak neutralino and chargino production in channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons in pp collisions at 8 TeV

Searches for supersymmetry (SUSY) are presented based on the electroweak pair production of neutralinos and charginos, leading to decay channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons and undetected lightest SUSY particles (LSPs). The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of about 19.5 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV collected in 2012 with the CMS detector at the LHC. The main emphasis is neutralino pair production in which each neutralino decays either to a Higgs boson (h) and an LSP or to a Z boson and an LSP, leading to hh, hZ, and ZZ states with missing transverse energy (E-T(miss)). A second aspect is chargino-neutralino pair production, leading to hW states with E-T(miss). The decays of a Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair, to a photon pair, and to final states with leptons are considered in conjunction with hadronic and leptonic decay modes of the Z and W bosons. No evidence is found for supersymmetric particles, and 95% confidence level upper limits are evaluated for the respective pair production cross sections and for neutralino and chargino mass values

e-Trust: Building trust for quality assurance in emerging markets for food chains

The vision of the e-Trust project is to provide consumers with high quality food they do trust and can afford. The combination of trust and affordability can be reached through improvements in trade processes and in the communication of trustworthiness between trading partners along the chain. The project delivers concepts for trade relationships that combine actual e-commerce developments with trust mediating functionalities. It will support both, improvements in consumers\u2019 food supply situation and the competitiveness of the European food sector. This project is highly relevant to the Food Quality and Safety Priority as it contributes to the well-being of European citizens through high quality, safe to eat, affordable food. The project creates consumer confidence through transparent, trustworthy food chains able to deliver guarantees to consumers and ensures the affordability of high quality food by exploiting the efficiency power of e-commerce for food chains. The project bridges the gap between the innovative ICT potentials for costefficient processes in the European food chain and the trust between companies in the food chain. The project will setup a network of European experts in the fields of food chain management, food quality and trust in food chains from different European countries, Turkey, Brazil, and the US to cover food import to the EU. Business representatives from the European food sector will act as intermediaries and multipliers to SMEs in the European food sector and will organize the participation of SMEs in the project in order to reach the largest possible number of SMEs in the European food sector and the dissemination of the project\u2019s results to SMEs in different European countries by organizing workshops, conferences and brochures to SMEs

e-Trust: Building trust for quality assurance in emerging markets for food chains

The vision of the e-Trust project is to provide consumers with high quality food they do trust and can afford. The combination of trust and affordability can be reached through improvements in trade processes and in the communication of trustworthiness between trading partners along the chain. The project delivers concepts for trade relationships that combine actual e-commerce developments with trust mediating functionalities. It will support both, improvements in consumers\u2019 food supply situation and the competitiveness of the European food sector. This project is highly relevant to the Food Quality and Safety Priority as it contributes to the well-being of European citizens through high quality, safe to eat, affordable food. The project creates consumer confidence through transparent, trustworthy food chains able to deliver guarantees to consumers and ensures the affordability of high quality food by exploiting the efficiency power of e-commerce for food chains. The project bridges the gap between the innovative ICT potentials for costefficient processes in the European food chain and the trust between companies in the food chain. The project will setup a network of European experts in the fields of food chain management, food quality and trust in food chains from different European countries, Turkey, Brazil, and the US to cover food import to the EU. Business representatives from the European food sector will act as intermediaries and multipliers to SMEs in the European food sector and will organize the participation of SMEs in the project in order to reach the largest possible number of SMEs in the European food sector and the dissemination of the project\u2019s results to SMEs in different European countries by organizing workshops, conferences and brochures to SMEs