Population ecology of Psammobates oculifer in a semi-arid environment

We studied the ecology of Psammobates oculifer over 13 months near Kimberley, South Africa, to ascertain if the population’s life history traits conform to chelonian patterns in arid environments. Capture rates were highest in spring and lowest in winter when environmental conditions were respectively most and least favourable for tortoise activity. Body condition did not change from autumn to spring, but reached lower values during the summer drought. Capture effort averaged 5 hours/tortoise, which corresponds closely to that of species with low population densities in arid regions. Population size structure was skewed towards adults, indicative of low recruitment and/or low juvenile survivorship. Females were larger and heavier than males, confirming sexual dimorphism in this species. Body size of cohorts scaled to annuli counts, indicating a close correspondence between body size and age. Telemetered adults deposited one or no growth ring in the year of study; consequently, annuli counts could underestimate adult age. Regression analyses showed that male and female growth rates did not differ, but males matured at a smaller size and younger age than females. The smallest male showing reproductive behaviour had 12 annuli and a shell volume of 157 cm3, while similar measures for females were 14 annuli and 185 cm3. The sex ratio of the population did not differ from 1:1 but the bias towards males in spring, and towards females in autumn, indicates that studies limited to particular seasons can misrepresent life history traits of populations. We concluded that the life history of P. oculifer conforms to chelonian patterns in arid regions.Web of Scienc

European association for the study of obesity position statement on the global COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19, the infectious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 12, 2020. The European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO), as a scientific and medical society dedicated to the promotion of health and well-being, is greatly concerned about this global health challenge and its significant impacts on individuals, families, communities, health systems, nations, and wider society

A long in situ section of the lower ocean crust: results of {ODP} Leg 176 drilling at the Southwest Indian Ridge

Ocean Drilling Program Leg 176 deepened Hole 735B in gabbroic lower ocean crust by 1 km to 1.5 km. The section has the physical properties of seismic layer 3, and a total magnetization sufficient by itself to account for the overlying lineated sea-surface magnetic anomaly. The rocks from Hole 735B are principally olivine gabbro, with evidence for two principal and many secondary intrusive events. There are innumerable late small ferrogabbro intrusions, often associated with shear zones that cross-cut the olivine gabbros. The ferrogabbros dramatically increase upward in the section. Whereas there are many small patches of ferrogabbro representing late iron- and titanium-rich melt trapped intragranularly in olivine gabbro, most late melt was redistributed prior to complete solidification by compaction and deformation. This, rather than in situ upward differentiation of a large magma body, produced the principal igneous stratigraphy. The computed bulk composition of the hole is too evolved to mass balance mid-ocean ridge basalt back to a primary magma, and there must be a significant mass of missing primitive cumulates. These could lie either below the hole or out of the section. Possibly the gabbros were emplaced by along-axis intrusion of moderately differentiated melts into the near-transform environment. Alteration occurred in three stages. High-temperature granulite- to amphibolite-facies alteration is most important, coinciding with brittle-ductile deformation beneath the ridge. Minor greenschist-facies alteration occurred under largely static conditions, likely during block uplift at the ridge transform intersection. Late post-uplift low-temperature alteration produced locally abundant smectite, often in previously unaltered areas. The most important features of the high- and low-temperature alteration are their respective associations with ductile and cataclastic deformation, and an overall decrease downhole with hydrothermal alteration generally =<5% in the bottom kilometer. Hole 735B provides evidence for a strongly heterogeneous lower ocean crust, and for the inherent interplay of deformation, alteration and igneous processes at slow-spreading ridges. It is strikingly different from gabbros sampled from fast-spreading ridges and at most well-described ophiolite complexes. We attribute this to the remarkable diversity of tectonic environments where crustal accretion occurs in the oceans and to the low probability of a section of old slow-spread crust formed near a major large-offset transform being emplaced on-land compared to sections of young crust from small ocean basins

Observation of Events with an Energetic Forward Neutron in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

In deep inelastic neutral current scattering of positrons and protons at the center of mass energy of 300 GeV, we observe, with the ZEUS detector, events with a high energy neutron produced at very small scattering angles with respect to the proton direction. The events constitute a fixed fraction of the deep inelastic, neutral current event sample independent of Bjorken x and Q2 in the range 3 · 10-4 \u3c xBJ \u3c 6 · 10-3 and 10 \u3c Q2 \u3c 100 GeV2

Novel Loci for Adiponectin Levels and Their Influence on Type 2 Diabetes and Metabolic Traits : A Multi-Ethnic Meta-Analysis of 45,891 Individuals

J. Kaprio, S. Ripatti ja M.-L. Lokki työryhmien jäseniä.Peer reviewe

Simultaneous energy and mass calibration of large-radius jets with the ATLAS detector using a deep neural network

The energy and mass measurements of jets are crucial tasks for the Large Hadron Collider experiments. This paper presents a new calibration method to simultaneously calibrate these quantities for large-radius jets measured with the ATLAS detector using a deep neural network (DNN). To address the specificities of the calibration problem, special loss functions and training procedures are employed, and a complex network architecture, which includes feature annotation and residual connection layers, is used. The DNN-based calibration is compared to the standard numerical approach in an extensive series of tests. The DNN approach is found to perform significantly better in almost all of the tests and over most of the relevant kinematic phase space. In particular, it consistently improves the energy and mass resolutions, with a 30% better energy resolution obtained for transverse momenta pT > 500 GeV

The ATLAS trigger system for LHC Run 3 and trigger performance in 2022

The ATLAS trigger system is a crucial component of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. It is responsible for selecting events in line with the ATLAS physics programme. This paper presents an overview of the changes to the trigger and data acquisition system during the second long shutdown of the LHC, and shows the performance of the trigger system and its components in the proton-proton collisions during the 2022 commissioning period as well as its expected performance in proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions for the remainder of the third LHC data-taking period (2022–2025)

Search for the Zγ decay mode of new high-mass resonances in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This letter presents a search for narrow, high-mass resonances in the Zγ final state with the Z boson decaying into a pair of electrons or muons. The √s = 13 TeV pp collision data were recorded by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider and have an integrated luminosity of 140 fb−1. The data are found to be in agreement with the Standard Model background expectation. Upper limits are set on the resonance production cross section times the decay branching ratio into Zγ. For spin-0 resonances produced via gluon–gluon fusion, the observed limits at 95% confidence level vary between 65.5 fb and 0.6 fb, while for spin-2 resonances produced via gluon–gluon fusion (or quark–antiquark initial states) limits vary between 77.4 (76.1) fb and 0.6 (0.5) fb, for the mass range from 220 GeV to 3400 GeV

Search for lepton-favour violation in high-mass dilepton final states using 139 fb−1 of pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search is performed for a heavy particle decaying into different-flavour, dilepton final states, using 139 fb−1 of proton-proton collision data at √s = 13 TeV collected in 2015–2018 by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Final states with electrons, muons and hadronically decaying tau leptons are considered (eμ, eτ or μτ). No significant excess over the Standard Model predictions is observed. Upper limits on the production cross-section are set as a function of the mass of a Z′ boson, a supersymmetric τ-sneutrino, and a quantum black-hole. The observed 95% CL lower mass limits obtained on a typical benchmark model Z′ boson are 5.0 TeV (eμ), 4.0 TeV (eτ), and 3.9 TeV (μτ), respectively

Search for single production of vector-like T quarks decaying into Ht or Zt in pp collisions at s√ = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper describes a search for the single production of an up-type vector-like quark (T) decaying as T → Ht or T → Zt. The search utilises a dataset of pp collisions at s√ = 13 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector during the 2015–2018 data-taking period of the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. Data are analysed in final states containing a single lepton with multiple jets and b-jets. The presence of boosted heavy resonances in the event is exploited to discriminate the signal from the Standard Model background. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed, and 95% CL upper limits are set on the production cross section of T quarks in different decay channels. The results are interpreted in several benchmark scenarios to set limits on the mass and universal coupling strength (κ) of the vector-like quark. For singlet T quarks, κ values above 0.53 are excluded for all masses below 2.3 TeV. At a mass of 1.6 TeV, κ values as low as 0.35 are excluded. For T quarks in the doublet scenario, where the production cross section is much lower, κ values above 0.72 are excluded for all masses below 1.7 TeV, and this exclusion is extended to κ above 0.55 for low masses around 1.0 TeV