Additive sustainability footprint: Rationale and pilot evaluation of a tool for assessing the sustainable use of PVC additives

© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Vinyl and Additive Technology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Plastics Engineers. PVC compounds contain additives necessary for processing and stability, and to modify the plastic's properties. The Europe-wide VinylPlus® voluntary commitment includes a challenge to make progress toward sustainable use of additives. Additive Sustainability Footprint (ASF) was developed to assess sustainable use of additives across the whole societal life cycles of finished PVC articles, taking a risk-based approach rather than simplistic hazard assessment. ASF addresses impacts across six life cycle assessment (LCA) stages established by ISO Standard 14040, using the four System Conditions (sustainability principles) developed by The Natural Step (TNS) covering social as well as environmental factors. For each LCA stage/System Condition combination, seven generically similar questions cover negative impacts (many covered by existing tools and regulations) but also the additive's positive contributions to the sustainability of finished articles. Positive contributions include ethical sourcing, longevity of service life, low maintenance inputs, and recyclability. Answers to questions determine a score, which can be combined across the life cycle and with other additives. Testing on a generic EU PVC window profile supported ASF development and demonstrated applicability and potential benefits including use for sensitivity analysis of alternative additives from different geopolitical regions or from recycled as opposed to virgin sources. J. VINYL ADDIT. TECHNOL., 2019. © 2019 The Authors. Journal of Vinyl and Additive Technology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Plastics Engineers

Nuclear Skins and Halos in the Mean-Field Theory

Nuclei with large neutron-to-proton ratios have neutron skins, which manifest themselves in an excess of neutrons at distances greater than the radius of the proton distribution. In addition, some drip-line nuclei develop very extended halo structures. The neutron halo is a threshold effect; it appears when the valence neutrons occupy weakly bound orbits. In this study, nuclear skins and halos are analyzed within the self-consistent Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov and relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov theories for spherical shapes. It is demonstrated that skins, halos, and surface thickness can be analyzed in a model-independent way in terms of nucleonic density form factors. Such an analysis allows for defining a quantitative measure of the halo size. The systematic behavior of skins, halos, and surface thickness in even-even nuclei is discussed.Comment: 22 RevTeX pages, 22 EPS figures included, submitted to Physical Review

Effect of tensor couplings in a relativistic Hartree approach for finite nuclei

The relativistic Hartree approach describing the bound states of both nucleons and anti-nucleons in finite nuclei has been extended to include tensor couplings for the $\omega$- and $\rho$-meson. After readjusting the parameters of the model to the properties of spherical nuclei, the effect of tensor-coupling terms rises the spin-orbit force by a factor of 2, while a large effective nucleon mass $m^{*}/M_{N} \approx 0.8$ sustains. The overall nucleon spectra of shell-model states are improved evidently. The predicted anti-nucleon spectra in the vacuum are deepened about 20 -- 30 MeV.Comment: 31 pages, 4 postscript figures include

Gyrospun antimicrobial nanoparticle loaded fibrous polymeric filters

© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).A one step approach to prepare hybrid nanoparticle embedded polymer fibres using pressurised gyration is presented. Two types of novel antimicrobial nanoparticles and poly (methylmethacrylate) polymer were used in this work. X-ray diffraction analysis of the nanoparticles revealed Ag, Cu and W are the main elements present in them. The concentration of the polymer solution and the nanoparticle concentration had a significant influence on the fibre diameter, pore size and morphology. Fibres with a diameter in the range of 6-20 ìm were spun using 20 wt% polymer solutions containing 0.1, 0.25 and 0.5 w% nanoparticles under 0.3 MPa working pressure and a rotational speed of 36000 rpm. Continuous, bead-free fibre morphologies were obtained for each case. The pore size in the fibres varied between 36-300 nm. Successful incorporation of the nanoparticles in polymer fibres was confirmed by energy dispersive x-ray analysis. The fibres were also gyrospun on to metallic disks to prepare filters which were tested for their antibacterial activity on a suspension of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Nanoparticle loaded fibres showed higher antibacterial efficacy than pure poly(methylmethacrylate) fibres.8pÍuPeer reviewedFinal Published versio

Young and Intermediate-age Distance Indicators

Distance measurements beyond geometrical and semi-geometrical methods, rely mainly on standard candles. As the name suggests, these objects have known luminosities by virtue of their intrinsic proprieties and play a major role in our understanding of modern cosmology. The main caveats associated with standard candles are their absolute calibration, contamination of the sample from other sources and systematic uncertainties. The absolute calibration mainly depends on their chemical composition and age. To understand the impact of these effects on the distance scale, it is essential to develop methods based on different sample of standard candles. Here we review the fundamental properties of young and intermediate-age distance indicators such as Cepheids, Mira variables and Red Clump stars and the recent developments in their application as distance indicators.Comment: Review article, 63 pages (28 figures), Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews (Chapter 3 of a special collection resulting from the May 2016 ISSI-BJ workshop on Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Age

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector during 2011 data taking

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector at the LHC during the 2011 data taking period is described. During 2011 the LHC provided proton–proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and heavy ion collisions with a 2.76 TeV per nucleon–nucleon collision energy. The ATLAS trigger is a three level system designed to reduce the rate of events from the 40 MHz nominal maximum bunch crossing rate to the approximate 400 Hz which can be written to offline storage. The ATLAS jet trigger is the primary means for the online selection of events containing jets. Events are accepted by the trigger if they contain one or more jets above some transverse energy threshold. During 2011 data taking the jet trigger was fully efficient for jets with transverse energy above 25 GeV for triggers seeded randomly at Level 1. For triggers which require a jet to be identified at each of the three trigger levels, full efficiency is reached for offline jets with transverse energy above 60 GeV. Jets reconstructed in the final trigger level and corresponding to offline jets with transverse energy greater than 60 GeV, are reconstructed with a resolution in transverse energy with respect to offline jets, of better than 4 % in the central region and better than 2.5 % in the forward direction

Operation and performance of the ATLAS semiconductor tracker

The semiconductor tracker is a silicon microstrip detector forming part of the inner tracking system of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The operation and performance of the semiconductor tracker during the first years of LHC running are described. More than 99% of the detector modules were operational during this period, with an average intrinsic hit efficiency of (99.74±0.04)%. The evolution of the noise occupancy is discussed, and measurements of the Lorentz angle, δ-ray production and energy loss presented. The alignment of the detector is found to be stable at the few-micron level over long periods of time. Radiation damage measurements, which include the evolution of detector leakage currents, are found to be consistent with predictions and are used in the verification of radiation background simulations

Fine-mapping of prostate cancer susceptibility loci in a large meta-analysis identifies candidate causal variants

Prostate cancer is a polygenic disease with a large heritable component. A number of common, low-penetrance prostate cancer risk loci have been identified through GWAS. Here we apply the Bayesian multivariate variable selection algorithm JAM to fine-map 84 prostate cancer susceptibility loci, using summary data from a large European ancestry meta-analysis. We observe evidence for multiple independent signals at 12 regions and 99 risk signals overall. Only 15 original GWAS tag SNPs remain among the catalogue of candidate variants identified; the remainder are replaced by more likely candidates. Biological annotation of our credible set of variants indicates significant enrichment within promoter and enhancer elements, and transcription factor-binding sites, including AR, ERG and FOXA1. In 40 regions at least one variant is colocalised with an eQTL in prostate cancer tissue. The refined set of candidate variants substantially increase the proportion of familial relative risk explained by these known susceptibility regions, which highlights the importance of fine-mapping studies and has implications for clinical risk profiling. © 2018 The Author(s).Prostate cancer is a polygenic disease with a large heritable component. A number of common, low-penetrance prostate cancer risk loci have been identified through GWAS. Here we apply the Bayesian multivariate variable selection algorithm JAM to fine-map 84 prostate cancer susceptibility loci, using summary data from a large European ancestry meta-analysis. We observe evidence for multiple independent signals at 12 regions and 99 risk signals overall. Only 15 original GWAS tag SNPs remain among the catalogue of candidate variants identified; the remainder are replaced by more likely candidates. Biological annotation of our credible set of variants indicates significant enrichment within promoter and enhancer elements, and transcription factor-binding sites, including AR, ERG and FOXA1. In 40 regions at least one variant is colocalised with an eQTL in prostate cancer tissue. The refined set of candidate variants substantially increase the proportion of familial relative risk explained by these known susceptibility regions, which highlights the importance of fine-mapping studies and has implications for clinical risk profiling. © 2018 The Author(s).Peer reviewe