Marine chemical contaminants – support to the harmonization of MSFD D8 methodological standards: Matrices and threshold values/reference levels for relevant substances

According to the Article 17(2) of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), Member States have to review and update their marine strategies every six years. This requires updates of the MSFD Articles 8, 9 and 10 by 2018. The current report provides an overview of the substances, matrices and threshold values that Member States intend to use for the assessment of the Descriptor 8 in this MSFD reporting cycle. This compilation aims at evaluating gaps and discrepancies between Member States and identifying aspects that need further harmonization. It also helps understand which issues should be addressed to achieve consistency with the new MSFD Commission Decision (EU 2017/848). The information has been gathered from the contributions of the MSFD Expert Network on Contaminants, an informal network established to support MSFD implementation. This work is part of a process to help regulators to assess relevant contaminants in their jurisdictional area, thus aiming at EU national authorities but also at Regional Sea Conventions in the shared marine basins.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements