113 research outputs found

    Solidification/stabilisation of soil contaminated with metal: a review

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    Solidification/stabilisation (S/S) is generically defined as a chemical and physical alteration technique of reducing the mobility as well as solubility of contaminants in wastes in order to convert them into chemically inert form. The technique is specifically developed to confine the movement of contaminants in wastes so that their concentrations in the surrounding environment (e.g. subsurface soil matrices and groundwater) will not exceed stipulated environmental regulatory levels. This technique necessitates application of cementitious materials such as cement which also provides a favorable solidification effect on the stabilised wastes so that the end product can be easily transported to disposal sites or reused as construction materials. This paper reviews the S/S technology as applied to contaminated soil treatment with emphasis on its chemical binder systems, mechanisms, interferences and post-treatment leaching tests. S/S is an important soil contamination remediation technology as evident by its simplicity, technical and cost-effectiveness

    Estimating mangrove tree biomass and carbon content: A comparison of forest inventory techniques and drone imagery

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    Published: 22 January 2020Mangroves provide many ecosystem services including a considerable capacity to sequester and store large amounts of carbon, both in the sediment and in the above-ground biomass. Assessment of mangrove above-ground carbon stock relies on accurate measurement of tree biomass, which traditionally involves collecting direct measurements from trees and relating these to biomass using allometric relationships. We investigated the potential to predict tree biomass using measurements derived from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, imagery. This approach has the potential to dramatically reduce time-consuming fieldwork, providing greater spatial survey coverage and return for effort, and may enable data to be collected in otherwise hazardous or inaccessible areas. We imaged an Avicennia marina (grey mangrove) stand using an RGB camera mounted on a UAV. The imaged trees were subsequently felled, enabling physical measurements to be taken for traditional biomass estimation techniques, as well as direct measurements of biomass and tissue carbon content. UAV image-based tree height measurements were highly accurate (R2 = 0.98). However, the variables that could be measured from the UAV imagery (tree height and canopy area) were poor predictors of tree biomass. Using the physical measurement data, we identified that trunk diameter is a key predictor of A. marina biomass. Unfortunately, trunk diameter cannot be directly measured from the UAV imagery, but it can be predicted (with some error) using models that incorporate other UAV image-based measurements, such as tree height and canopy area. However, reliance on second-order estimates of trunk diameter leads to increased uncertainty in the subsequent predictions of A. marina biomass, compared to using physical measurements of trunk diameter taken directly from the trees. Our study demonstrates that there is potential to use UAV-based imagery to measure mangrove A. marina tree structural characteristics and biomass. Further refinement of the relationship between UAV image-based measurements and tree diameter is needed to reduce error in biomass predictions. UAV image-based estimates can be made far more quickly and over extensive areas when compared to traditional data collection techniques and, with improved accuracy through further model-calibration, have the potential to be a powerful tool for mangrove biomass and carbon storage estimation.Alice R. Jones, Ramesh Raja Segaran, Kenneth D. Clarke, Michelle Waycott, William S. H. Goh and Bronwyn M. Gillander

    Search for the associated production of the Higgs boson with a top-quark pair

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    A search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a top-quark pair t t ¯ H (tt¯H) is presented, using data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 5.1 fb −1 and 19.7 fb −1 collected in pp collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 TeV and 8 TeV respectively. The search is based on the following signatures of the Higgs boson decay: H → hadrons, H → photons, and H → leptons. The results are characterized by an observed t t ¯ H tt¯H signal strength relative to the standard model cross section, μ = σ/σ SM ,under the assumption that the Higgs boson decays as expected in the standard model. The best fit value is μ = 2.8 ± 1.0 for a Higgs boson mass of 125.6 GeV

    Measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of Y(1S) and Y(2S) mesons in PbPb collisions at √S^{S}NN = 5.02 TeV

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    The second-order Fourier coefficients (υ2_{2}) characterizing the azimuthal distributions of Υ(1S) and Υ(2S) mesons produced in PbPb collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV are studied. The Υmesons are reconstructed in their dimuon decay channel, as measured by the CMS detector. The collected data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 1.7 nb1^{-1}. The scalar product method is used to extract the υ2_{2} coefficients of the azimuthal distributions. Results are reported for the rapidity range |y| < 2.4, in the transverse momentum interval 0 < pT_{T} < 50 GeV/c, and in three centrality ranges of 10–30%, 30–50% and 50–90%. In contrast to the J/ψ mesons, the measured υ2_{2} values for the Υ mesons are found to be consistent with zero

    Measurement of prompt D0^{0} and D\overline{D}0^{0} meson azimuthal anisotropy and search for strong electric fields in PbPb collisions at root SNN\sqrt{S_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV

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    The strong Coulomb field created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is expected to produce a rapiditydependent difference (Av2) in the second Fourier coefficient of the azimuthal distribution (elliptic flow, v2) between D0 (uc) and D0 (uc) mesons. Motivated by the search for evidence of this field, the CMS detector at the LHC is used to perform the first measurement of Av2. The rapidity-averaged value is found to be (Av2) = 0.001 ? 0.001 (stat)? 0.003 (syst) in PbPb collisions at ?sNN = 5.02 TeV. In addition, the influence of the collision geometry is explored by measuring the D0 and D0mesons v2 and triangular flow coefficient (v3) as functions of rapidity, transverse momentum (pT), and event centrality (a measure of the overlap of the two Pb nuclei). A clear centrality dependence of prompt D0 meson v2 values is observed, while the v3 is largely independent of centrality. These trends are consistent with expectations of flow driven by the initial-state geometry. ? 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY licens

    Performance of reconstruction and identification of τ leptons decaying to hadrons and vτ in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV

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    The algorithm developed by the CMS Collaboration to reconstruct and identify τ leptons produced in proton-proton collisions at √s=7 and 8 TeV, via their decays to hadrons and a neutrino, has been significantly improved. The changes include a revised reconstruction of π⁰ candidates, and improvements in multivariate discriminants to separate τ leptons from jets and electrons. The algorithm is extended to reconstruct τ leptons in highly Lorentz-boosted pair production, and in the high-level trigger. The performance of the algorithm is studied using proton-proton collisions recorded during 2016 at √s=13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb¯¹. The performance is evaluated in terms of the efficiency for a genuine τ lepton to pass the identification criteria and of the probabilities for jets, electrons, and muons to be misidentified as τ leptons. The results are found to be very close to those expected from Monte Carlo simulation

    Performance of the CMS Level-1 trigger in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

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    At the start of Run 2 in 2015, the LHC delivered proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13\TeV. During Run 2 (years 2015–2018) the LHC eventually reached a luminosity of 2.1× 1034^{34} cm2^{-2}s1^{-1}, almost three times that reached during Run 1 (2009–2013) and a factor of two larger than the LHC design value, leading to events with up to a mean of about 50 simultaneous inelastic proton-proton collisions per bunch crossing (pileup). The CMS Level-1 trigger was upgraded prior to 2016 to improve the selection of physics events in the challenging conditions posed by the second run of the LHC. This paper describes the performance of the CMS Level-1 trigger upgrade during the data taking period of 2016–2018. The upgraded trigger implements pattern recognition and boosted decision tree regression techniques for muon reconstruction, includes pileup subtraction for jets and energy sums, and incorporates pileup-dependent isolation requirements for electrons and tau leptons. In addition, the new trigger calculates high-level quantities such as the invariant mass of pairs of reconstructed particles. The upgrade reduces the trigger rate from background processes and improves the trigger efficiency for a wide variety of physics signals

    Studies of charm and beauty hadron long-range correlations in pp and pPb collisions at LHC energies

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    Measurement of the Y(1S) pair production cross section and search for resonances decaying to Y(1S)μ⁺μ⁻ in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

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    The fiducial cross section for Y(1S)pair production in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeVin the region where both Y(1S)mesons have an absolute rapidity below 2.0 is measured to be 79 ± 11 (stat) ±6 (syst) ±3 (B)pbassuming the mesons are produced unpolarized. The last uncertainty corresponds to the uncertainty in the Y(1S)meson dimuon branching fraction. The measurement is performed in the final state with four muons using proton-proton collision data collected in 2016 by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9fb1^{-1}. This process serves as a standard model reference in a search for narrow resonances decaying to Y(1S)μ+^{+}μ^{-} in the same final state. Such a resonance could indicate the existence of a tetraquark that is a bound state of two bquarks and two b̅ antiquarks. The tetraquark search is performed for masses in the vicinity of four times the bottom quark mass, between 17.5 and 19.5GeV, while a generic search for other resonances is performed for masses between 16.5 and 27GeV. No significant excess of events compatible with a narrow resonance is observed in the data. Limits on the production cross section times branching fraction to four muons via an intermediate Y(1S)resonance are set as a function of the resonance mass

    Measurement of prompt Jψ\psi pair production in pp collisions at \sqrt s = 7 Tev

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    Production of prompt J/ &#968; meson pairs in proton-proton collisions at s s&#8730; = 7 TeV is measured with the CMS experiment at the LHC in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 4.7 fb &#8722;1 . The two J/ &#968; mesons are fully reconstructed via their decays into &#956; + &#956; &#8722; pairs. This observation provides for the first time access to the high-transverse-momentum region of J/ &#968; pair production where model predictions are not yet established. The total and differential cross sections are measured in a phase space defined by the individual J/ &#968; transverse momentum ( p T J/ &#968; ) and rapidity (| y J/ &#968; |): | y J/ &#968; | 6.5 GeV/ c ; 1.2 4.5 GeV/ c . The total cross section, assuming unpolarized prompt J/ &#968; pair production is 1.49 ± 0.07 (stat) ±0.13 (syst) nb. Different assumptions about the J/ &#968; polarization imply modifications to the cross section ranging from &#8722;31% to +27%
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