A Compact Beam Stop for a Rare Kaon Decay Experiment

We describe the development and testing of a novel beam stop for use in a rare kaon decay experiment at the Brookhaven AGS. The beam stop is located inside a dipole spectrometer magnet in close proximity to straw drift chambers and intercepts a high-intensity neutral hadron beam. The design process, involving both Monte Carlo simulations and beam tests of alternative beam-stop shielding arrangements, had the goal of minimizing the leakage of particles from the beam stop and the resulting hit rates in detectors, while preserving maximum acceptance for events of interest. The beam tests consisted of measurements of rates in drift chambers, scintilation counter hodoscopes, a gas threshold Cherenkov counter, and a lead glass array. Measurements were also made with a set of specialized detectors which were sensitive to low-energy neutrons, photons, and charged particles. Comparisons are made between these measurements and a detailed Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: 39 pages, 14 figures, submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Method

A straw drift chamber spectrometer for studies of rare kaon decays

We describe the design, construction, readout, tests, and performance of planar drift chambers, based on 5 mm diameter copperized Mylar and Kapton straws, used in an experimental search for rare kaon decays. The experiment took place in the high-intensity neutral beam at the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron of Brookhaven National Laboratory, using a neutral beam stop, two analyzing dipoles, and redundant particle identification to remove backgrounds

Detector Description and Performance for the First Coincidence Observations between LIGO and GEO

For 17 days in August and September 2002, the LIGO and GEO interferometer gravitational wave detectors were operated in coincidence to produce their first data for scientific analysis. Although the detectors were still far from their design sensitivity levels, the data can be used to place better upper limits on the flux of gravitational waves incident on the earth than previous direct measurements. This paper describes the instruments and the data in some detail, as a companion to analysis papers based on the first data.Comment: 41 pages, 9 figures 17 Sept 03: author list amended, minor editorial change

Exploring the effects of colouring graph diagrams on people of various backgrounds

Colour is one of the primary aesthetic elements of a visualization. It is often used successfully to encode information such as the importance of a particular part of the diagram or the relationship between two parts. Even so, there are few investigations into the human reading of colour coding on diagrams from the scientific community. In this paper we report on an experiment with graph diagrams comparing a black and white composition with two other colour treatments. We drew our subjects from engineering, art, visual design, physical education, tourism, psychology and social science disciplines. We found that colouring the nodes of interest reduced the time taken to find the shortest path between the two nodes for all subjects. Engineers, tourism and social scientists proved significantly faster with artist/designers just below the overall average speed. From this study, we contribute that adding particular colour treatments to diagrams increases legibility. In addition, preliminary work investigating colour treatments and schemes indicates potential for future gains. © 2014 Springer-Verlag

Global trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services from 1900 to 2050

Despite the scientific consensus on the extinction crisis and its anthropogenic origin, the quantification of historical trends and of future scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services has been limited, due to the lack of inter-model comparisons and harmonized scenarios. Here, we present a multi-model analysis to assess the impacts of land-use and climate change from 1900 to 2050. During the 20th century provisioning services increased, but biodiversity and regulating services decreased. Similar trade-offs are projected for the coming decades, but they may be attenuated in a sustainability scenario. Future biodiversity loss from land-use change is projected to keep up with historical rates or reduce slightly, whereas losses due to climate change are projected to increase greatly. Renewed efforts are needed by governments to meet the 2050 vision of the Convention on Biological Diversity

Lymphotoxin β receptor signaling promotes tertiary lymphoid organogenesis in the aorta adventitia of aged ApoE−/− mice

Atherosclerosis involves a macrophage-rich inflammation in the aortic intima. It is increasingly recognized that this intimal inflammation is paralleled over time by a distinct inflammatory reaction in adjacent adventitia. Though cross talk between the coordinated inflammatory foci in the intima and the adventitia seems implicit, the mechanism(s) underlying their communication is unclear. Here, using detailed imaging analysis, microarray analyses, laser-capture microdissection, adoptive lymphocyte transfers, and functional blocking studies, we undertook to identify this mechanism. We show that in aged apoE−/− mice, medial smooth muscle cells (SMCs) beneath intimal plaques in abdominal aortae become activated through lymphotoxin β receptor (LTβR) to express the lymphorganogenic chemokines CXCL13 and CCL21. These signals in turn trigger the development of elaborate bona fide adventitial aortic tertiary lymphoid organs (ATLOs) containing functional conduit meshworks, germinal centers within B cell follicles, clusters of plasma cells, high endothelial venules (HEVs) in T cell areas, and a high proportion of T regulatory cells. Treatment of apoE−/− mice with LTβR-Ig to interrupt LTβR signaling in SMCs strongly reduced HEV abundance, CXCL13, and CCL21 expression, and disrupted the structure and maintenance of ATLOs. Thus, the LTβR pathway has a major role in shaping the immunological characteristics and overall integrity of the arterial wall

Search for gravitational waves associated with the gamma ray burst GRB030329 using the LIGO detectors

We have performed a search for bursts of gravitational waves associated with the very bright gamma ray burst GRB030329, using the two detectors at the LIGO Hanford Observatory. Our search covered the most sensitive frequency range of the LIGO detectors (approximately 80 - 2048 Hz), and we specifically targeted signals shorter than 150ms. Our search algorithm looks for excess correlated power between the two interferometers and thus makes minimal assumptions about the gravitational waveform. We observed no candidates with gravitational-wave signal strength larger than a predetermined threshold. We report frequency-dependent upper limits on the strength of the gravitational waves associated with GRB030329. Near the most sensitive frequency region, around 250Hz, our root-sum-square (RSS) gravitational-wave strain sensitivity for optimally polarized bursts was better than hRSS 6×10-21Hz-1/2. Our result is comparable to the best published results searching for association between gravitational waves and gamma ray bursts. © 2005 The American Physical Society

Limits on gravitational-wave emission from selected pulsars using LIGO data

We place direct upper limits on the amplitude of gravitational waves from 28 isolated radio pulsars by a coherent multidetector analysis of the data collected during the second science run of the LIGO interferometric detectors. These are the first direct upper limits for 26 of the 28 pulsars. We use coordinated radio observations for the first time to build radio-guided phase templates for the expected gravitational-wave signals. The unprecedented sensitivity of the detectors allows us to set strain upper limits as low as a few times 10-24. These strain limits translate into limits on the equatorial ellipticities of the pulsars, which are smaller than 10-5 for the four closest pulsars. © 2005 The American Physical Society