411 research outputs found
Coupled virus - bacteria interactions and ecosystem function in an engineered microbial system
Viruses are thought to control bacterial abundance, affect community composition and influence ecosystem function in natural environments. Yet their dynamics have seldom been studied in engineered systems, or indeed in any system, for long periods of time. We measured virus abundance in a full-scale activated sludge plant every week for two years. Total bacteria and ammonia oxidising bacteria (AOB) abundances, bacterial community profiles, and a suite of environmental and operational parameters were also monitored. Mixed liquor virus abundance fluctuated over an order of magnitude (3.18 × 108 – 3.41 × 109 virus’s mL-1) and that variation was statistically significantly associated with total bacterial and AOB abundance, community composition, and effluent concentrations of COD and NH4+- N and thus system function. This suggests viruses play a far more important role in the dynamics of activated sludge systems than previously realised and could be one of the key factors controlling bacterial abundance, community structure and functional stability and may cause reactors to fail. These finding are based on statistical associations, not mechanistic models. Nevertheless, viral associations with abiotic factors, such as pH, make physical sense giving credence to these findings and highlighting the role that physical factors play in virus ecology. Further work is needed to identify and quantify specific bacteriophage and their hosts to enable us to develop mechanistic models of the ecology of viruses in wastewater treatment systems. However, since we have shown that viruses can be related to effluent quality and virus quantification is simple and cheap, practitioners would probably benefit from quantifying viruses now
Search for and Using Genetic Programming Event Selection
We apply a genetic programming technique to search for the double Cabibbo
suppressed decays and .
We normalize these decays to their Cabibbo favored partners and find
\Lambda_c^+ \to p K^+ \pi^-\Lambda_c^+ \to p K^-
\pi^+ and D_s^+ \to K^+ K^+
\pi^-D_s^+ \to K^+ K^- \pi^+ where
the first errors are statistical and the second are systematic. Expressed as
90% confidence levels (CL), we find and respectively.
This is the first successful use of genetic programming in a high energy
physics data analysis.Comment: 10 page
Measurement of the D+ and Ds+ decays into K+K-K+
We present the first clear observation of the doubly Cabibbo suppressed decay
D+ --> K-K+K+ and the first observation of the singly Cabibbo suppressed decay
Ds+ --> K-K+K+. These signals have been obtained by analyzing the high
statistics sample of photoproduced charm particles of the FOCUS(E831)
experiment at Fermilab. We measure the following relative branching ratios:
Gamma(D+ --> K-K+K+)/Gamma(D+ --> K-pi+pi+) = (9.49 +/- 2.17(statistical) +/-
0.22(systematic))x10^-4 and Gamma(Ds+ --> K-K+K+)/Gamma(Ds+ --> K-K+pi+) =
(8.95 +/- 2.12(statistical) +2.24(syst.) -2.31(syst.))x10^-3.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure
A Non-parametric Approach to the D+ to K*0bar mu+ nu Form Factors
Using a large sample of D+ -> K- pi+ mu+ nu decays collected by the FOCUS
photoproduction experiment at Fermilab, we present the first measurements of
the helicity basis form factors free from the assumption of spectroscopic pole
dominance. We also present the first information on the form factor that
controls the s-wave interference discussed in a previous paper by the FOCUS
collaboration. We find reasonable agreement with the usual assumption of
spectroscopic pole dominance and measured form factor ratios.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, and 2 tables. We updated the previous version by
changing some words, removing one plot, and adding two tables. These changes
are mostly stylisti
Exploring play and creativity in pre-schoolers’ use of apps:A report for early years practitioners
Measurements of Branching Ratios
Using data collected by the fixed target Fermilab experiment FOCUS, we
measure the branching ratios of the Cabibbo favored decays , , and relative to to be
, , and ,
respectively. We report the first observation of the Cabibbo suppressed decay
and we measure the branching ratio relative to
to be . We also set 90%
confidence level upper limits for and relative to to
be 0.12 and 0.05, respectively. We find an indication of the decays and and set
90% confidence level upper limits for the branching ratios with respect to
to be 0.12 and 1.72, respectively. Finally, we
determine the 90% C.L. upper limit for the resonant contribution relative to to be 0.10.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure
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