670 research outputs found

    Trace levels of sewage effluent are sufficient to increase class 1 integron prevalence in freshwater biofilms without changing the core community

    Get PDF
    Most river systems are impacted by sewage effluent. It remains unclear if there is a lower threshold to the concentration of sewage effluent that can significantly change the structure of the microbial community and its mobile genetic elements in a natural river biofilm. We used novel in situ mesocosms to conduct replicated experiments to study how the addition of low-level concentrations of sewage effluent (nominally 2.5 ppm) affects river biofilms in two contrasting Chalk river systems, the Rivers Kennet and Lambourn (high/low sewage impact, respectively). 16S sequencing and qPCR showed that community composition was not significantly changed by the sewage effluent addition, but class 1 integron prevalence (Lambourn control 0.07% (SE ± 0.01), Lambourn sewage effluent 0.11% (SE ± 0.006), Kennet control 0.56% (SE ± 0.01), Kennet sewage effluent 1.28% (SE ± 0.16)) was significantly greater in the communities exposed to sewage effluent than in the control flumes (ANOVA, F = 5.11, p = 0.045) in both rivers. Furthermore, the difference in integron prevalence between the Kennet control (no sewage effluent addition) and Kennet sewage-treated samples was proportionally greater than the difference in prevalence between the Lambourn control and sewage-treated samples (ANOVA (interaction between treatment and river), F = 6.42, p = 0.028). Mechanisms that lead to such differences could include macronutrient/biofilm or phage/bacteria interactions. Our findings highlight the role that low-level exposure to complex polluting mixtures such as sewage effluent can play in the spread of antibiotic resistance genes. The results also highlight that certain conditions, such as macronutrient load, might accelerate spread of antibiotic resistance genes

    Energetics and Possible Formation and Decay Mechanisms of Vortices in Helium Nanodroplets

    Full text link
    The energy and angular momentum of both straight and curved vortex states of a helium nanodroplet are examined as a function of droplet size. For droplets in the size range of many experiments, it is found that during the pickup of heavy solutes, a significant fraction of events deposit sufficient energy and angular momentum to form a straight vortex line. Curved vortex lines exist down to nearly zero angular momentum and energy, and thus could in principle form in almost any collision. Further, the coalescence of smaller droplets during the cooling by expansion could also deposit sufficient angular momentum to form vortex lines. Despite their high energy, most vortices are predicted to be stable at the final temperature (0.38 K) of helium nanodroplets due to lack of decay channels that conserve both energy and angular momentum.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, RevTex 4, submitted to Phys. Rev.

    Charge Transport Through Open, Driven Two-Level Systems with Dissipation

    Full text link
    We derive a Floquet-like formalism to calculate the stationary average current through an AC driven double quantum dot in presence of dissipation. The method allows us to take into account arbitrary coupling strengths both of a time-dependent field and a bosonic environment. We numerical evaluate a truncation scheme and compare with analytical, perturbative results such as the Tien-Gordon formula.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.

    Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

    Get PDF
    A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

    Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

    Get PDF
    Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

    Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

    Get PDF
    This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

    Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

    Get PDF
    The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter

    Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

    Get PDF
    We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters

    Measurement of the inclusive isolated prompt photon cross-section in pp collisions at sqrt(s)= 7 TeV using 35 pb-1 of ATLAS data

    Get PDF
    A measurement of the differential cross-section for the inclusive production of isolated prompt photons in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 7 TeV is presented. The measurement covers the pseudorapidity ranges |eta|<1.37 and 1.52<=|eta|<2.37 in the transverse energy range 45<=E_T<400GeV. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 35 pb-1, collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The yields of the signal photons are measured using a data-driven technique, based on the observed distribution of the hadronic energy in a narrow cone around the photon candidate and the photon selection criteria. The results are compared with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations and found to be in good agreement over four orders of magnitude in cross-section.Comment: 7 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 4 tables, final version published in Physics Letters
    corecore