A Measurement of the Branching Ratio of KL→e+e−γγK_L \to e^+e^-\gamma\gamma

We report on a study of the decay $K_L \to e^+e^-\gamma\gamma$ carried out as a part of the KTeV/E799 experiment at Fermilab. The 1997 data yielded a sample of 1543 events, including an expected background of $56 \pm 8$ events. An effective form factor was determined from the observed distribution of the $e^+e^-$ invariant mass. Using this form factor in the calculation of the detector acceptance, the branching ratio was measured to be ${\mathcal B}(K_L \to e^+ e^- \gamma \gamma, E^*_\gamma > 5 {MeV}) = (5.84 \pm 0.15 {\rm ~(stat)} \pm 0.32 {\rm ~(sys)})\times 10^{-7}$.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Reproducibility in the absence of selective reporting : An illustration from large-scale brain asymmetry research

Altres ajuts: Max Planck Society (Germany).The problem of poor reproducibility of scientific findings has received much attention over recent years, in a variety of fields including psychology and neuroscience. The problem has been partly attributed to publication bias and unwanted practices such as p-hacking. Low statistical power in individual studies is also understood to be an important factor. In a recent multisite collaborative study, we mapped brain anatomical left-right asymmetries for regional measures of surface area and cortical thickness, in 99 MRI datasets from around the world, for a total of over 17,000 participants. In the present study, we revisited these hemispheric effects from the perspective of reproducibility. Within each dataset, we considered that an effect had been reproduced when it matched the meta-analytic effect from the 98 other datasets, in terms of effect direction and significance threshold. In this sense, the results within each dataset were viewed as coming from separate studies in an "ideal publishing environment," that is, free from selective reporting and p hacking. We found an average reproducibility rate of 63.2% (SD = 22.9%, min = 22.2%, max = 97.0%). As expected, reproducibility was higher for larger effects and in larger datasets. Reproducibility was not obviously related to the age of participants, scanner field strength, FreeSurfer software version, cortical regional measurement reliability, or regional size. These findings constitute an empirical illustration of reproducibility in the absence of publication bias or p hacking, when assessing realistic biological effects in heterogeneous neuroscience data, and given typically-used sample sizes

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

An indirect evidence of piezonuclear fission reactions: Geomechanical and geochemical evolution in the Earth's Crust

Piezonuclear reactions, which occur in inert and nonradioactive elements, are induced by high pressure and, in particular, by brittle fracture phenomena in solids under compression. These low energy reactions generally take place in nuclei with an atomic weight that is lower or equal to that of iron (Fe). The experimental evidence, obtained from repeatable measurements of neutron emissions, can be also recognized considering the anomalous chemical balances of the major events that have affected the Earth's crust, oceans and atmosphere, over the last four billion years. These anomalies include: (i) the abrupt variations in the most abundant elements in correspondence to the formation of tectonic plates; (ii) the Great Oxidation Event (2.7 to 2.4 billion years ago), with a sharp increase in atmospheric oxygen and the subsequent origin of life; (iii) the increase of carbon and nytrogen concentrations in the primordial atmospher