The meaning of maxima and minima in first order reversal curves: Determining the interaction between species in a sample

First-order reversal curves (FORCs) are a characterization technique for magnetic materials used in a wide range of research fields. Since their first application in the Earth Sciences two decades ago, their importance in science has been continuously growing and new experimental techniques have been subsequently designed based on the original idea of FORCs. Nonetheless, very recent experimental works on very well designed and simple magnetic structures demonstrate that even for the most simple cases the interpretation of FORC data lacks understanding. In this work, we address this problem analytically, explaining the meaning of maxima, minima and noisy tails and set a strategy to extract the interaction field between magnetic structures. The origin of this interaction field is often the magnetostatic energy, however, we propose that this strategy could be applied for estimating exchange interactions too

Fast phonetic similarity search over large repositories

Analysis of unstructured data may be inefficient in the presence of spelling errors. Existing approaches use string similarity methods to search for valid words within a text, with a supporting dictionary. However, they are not rich enough to encode phonetic information to assist the search. In this paper, we present a novel approach for efficiently perform phonetic similarity search over large data sources, that uses a data structure called PhoneticMap to encode language-specific phonetic information. We validate our approach through an experiment over a data set using a Portuguese variant of a well-known repository, to automatically correct words with spelling errors

Measurement of the Bs0→J/ψKS0B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0 branching fraction

The $B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0$ branching fraction is measured in a data sample corresponding to 0.41$fb^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity collected with the LHCb detector at the LHC. This channel is sensitive to the penguin contributions affecting the sin2$\beta$ measurement from $B^0\to J/\psi K_S^0$ The time-integrated branching fraction is measured to be $BF(B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0)=(1.83\pm0.28)\times10^{-5}$. This is the most precise measurement to date

Measurement of the CP-violating phase \phi s in Bs->J/\psi\pi+\pi- decays

Measurement of the mixing-induced CP-violating phase phi_s in Bs decays is of prime importance in probing new physics. Here 7421 +/- 105 signal events from the dominantly CP-odd final state J/\psi pi+ pi- are selected in 1/fb of pp collision data collected at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV with the LHCb detector. A time-dependent fit to the data yields a value of phi_s=-0.019^{+0.173+0.004}_{-0.174-0.003} rad, consistent with the Standard Model expectation. No evidence of direct CP violation is found.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures; minor revisions on May 23, 201

First observation of the decay Bˉs0→D0K∗0\bar{B}^0_s \to D^0 K^{*0} and a measurement of the ratio of branching fractions B(Bˉs0→D0K∗0)B(Bˉ0→D0ρ0)\frac{{\cal B}(\bar{B}^0_s \to D^0 K^{*0})}{{\cal B}(\bar{B}^0 \to D^0 \rho^0)}

The first observation of the decay $\bar{B}^0_s \to D^0 K^{*0}$ using $pp$ data collected by the LHCb detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb$^{-1}$, is reported. A signal of $34.4 \pm 6.8$ events is obtained and the absence of signal is rejected with a statistical significance of more than nine standard deviations. The $\bar{B}^0_s \to D^0 K^{*0}$ branching fraction is measured relative to that of $\bar{B}^0 \to D^0 \rho^0$: $\frac{{\cal B}(\bar{B}^0_s \to D^0 K^{*0})}{{\cal B}(\bar{B}^0 \to D^0 \rho^0)} = 1.48 \pm 0.34 \pm 0.15 \pm 0.12$, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic and the third is due to the uncertainty on the ratio of the $B^0$ and $B^0_s$ hadronisation fractions.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett. B; ISSN 0370-269

A global database of lake surface temperatures collected by in situ and satellite methods from 1985–2009

Peer reviewe

Observation of CP violation in B+ to DK+ decays

An analysis of B+ to DK+ and B+ to Dpi+ decays is presented where the D meson is reconstructed in the two-body final states: K+pi-, K+K-, pi+pi- and pi+K-. Using 1.0 fb-1 of LHCb data, measurements of several observables are made including the first observation of the suppressed mode B+ to DK+, D to pi+K-. CP violation in B+ to DK+ decays is observed with 5.8 sigma significance

Geographical and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades in the WHO European Region, January to June 2020

We show the distribution of SARS-CoV-2 genetic clades over time and between countries and outline potential genomic surveillance objectives. We applied three available genomic nomenclature systems for SARS-CoV-2 to all sequence data from the WHO European Region available during the COVID-19 pandemic until 10 July 2020. We highlight the importance of real-time sequencing and data dissemination in a pandemic situation. We provide a comparison of the nomenclatures and lay a foundation for future European genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2.Peer reviewe

Measurement of the Ds+ - Ds- production asymmetry in 7 TeV pp collisions

Heavy quark production in 7 TeV centre-of-mass energy pp collisions at the LHC is not necessarily flavour symmetric. The production asymmetry, A_P, between Ds+ and Ds- mesons is studied using the \phi\pi(+/-) decay mode in a data sample of 1.0/fb collected with the LHCb detector. The difference between \pi+ and \pi- detection efficiencies is determined using the ratios of fully reconstructed to partially reconstructed D*(+/-) decays. The overall production asymmetry in the Ds rapidity region 2.0 to 4.5 with transverse momentum larger than 2 GeV is measured to be A_P=(-0.33 +/- 0.22 +/- 0.10)%. This result can constrain models of heavy flavour production.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, updated to published versio