An exploration of ebook selection behavior in academic library collections

Academic libraries have offered ebooks for some time, however little is known about how readers interact with them while making relevance decisions. In this paper we seek to address that gap by analyzing ebook transaction logs for books in a university library

Competing risks and deposit insurance governance convergence

Why do policies often seem to converge across countries at the same time? This question has been studied extensively in the diffusion literature. However, past research has not examined complex choice environments, especially where there are many alternatives. This article fills this gap in the literature. I show how Fine and Gray's Competing Risks Event History Analysis can be used to tease apart the causes of policy convergence. I apply the method to an examination of the reasons why, from the mid-1990s to 2007, many countries created independent deposit insurers. I find an interaction between international recommendations and regional peers' choices, particularly in the European Union. However, convergence appears to slow under the particular conditions of a banking crisis, regardless of how well independence is promoted. Possibly due to electoral incentives, democracies seem to have been more likely to create independent insurers. Ultimately, I demonstrate how competing risks analysis can help enable future research on policy choices, complementing methods previously applied in political economy. © The Author(s) 2013

Scintillation Counters for the D0 Muon Upgrade

We present the results of an upgrade to the D0 muon system. Scintillating counters have been added to the existing central D0 muon system to provide rejection for cosmic ray muons and out-of-time background, and to provide additional fast timing information for muons in an upgraded Tevatron. Performance and results from the 1994-1996 Tevatron run are presented.Comment: 30 pages, 25 postscript figure

Critical Dynamics of Magnets

We review our current understanding of the critical dynamics of magnets above and below the transition temperature with focus on the effects due to the dipole--dipole interaction present in all real magnets. Significant progress in our understanding of real ferromagnets in the vicinity of the critical point has been made in the last decade through improved experimental techniques and theoretical advances in taking into account realistic spin-spin interactions. We start our review with a discussion of the theoretical results for the critical dynamics based on recent renormalization group, mode coupling and spin wave theories. A detailed comparison is made of the theory with experimental results obtained by different measuring techniques, such as neutron scattering, hyperfine interaction, muon--spin--resonance, electron--spin--resonance, and magnetic relaxation, in various materials. Furthermore we discuss the effects of dipolar interaction on the critical dynamics of three--dimensional isotropic antiferromagnets and uniaxial ferromagnets. Special attention is also paid to a discussion of the consequences of dipolar anisotropies on the existence of magnetic order and the spin--wave spectrum in two--dimensional ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. We close our review with a formulation of critical dynamics in terms of nonlinear Langevin equations.Comment: Review article (154 pages, figures included

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

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

Measurement of D*+/- meson production in jets from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper reports a measurement of D*+/- meson production in jets from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement is based on a data sample recorded with the ATLAS detector with an integrated luminosity of 0.30 pb^-1 for jets with transverse momentum between 25 and 70 GeV in the pseudorapidity range |eta| < 2.5. D*+/- mesons found in jets are fully reconstructed in the decay chain: D*+ -> D0pi+, D0 -> K-pi+, and its charge conjugate. The production rate is found to be N(D*+/-)/N(jet) = 0.025 +/- 0.001(stat.) +/- 0.004(syst.) for D*+/- mesons that carry a fraction z of the jet momentum in the range 0.3 < z < 1. Monte Carlo predictions fail to describe the data at small values of z, and this is most marked at low jet transverse momentum.Comment: 10 pages plus author list (22 pages total), 5 figures, 1 table, matches published version in Physical Review

Active Galactic Nuclei at the Crossroads of Astrophysics

Over the last five decades, AGN studies have produced a number of spectacular examples of synergies and multifaceted approaches in astrophysics. The field of AGN research now spans the entire spectral range and covers more than twelve orders of magnitude in the spatial and temporal domains. The next generation of astrophysical facilities will open up new possibilities for AGN studies, especially in the areas of high-resolution and high-fidelity imaging and spectroscopy of nuclear regions in the X-ray, optical, and radio bands. These studies will address in detail a number of critical issues in AGN research such as processes in the immediate vicinity of supermassive black holes, physical conditions of broad-line and narrow-line regions, formation and evolution of accretion disks and relativistic outflows, and the connection between nuclear activity and galaxy evolution.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures; review contribution; "Exploring the Cosmic Frontier: Astrophysical Instruments for the 21st Century", ESO Astrophysical Symposia Serie

Toward an internally consistent astronomical distance scale

Accurate astronomical distance determination is crucial for all fields in astrophysics, from Galactic to cosmological scales. Despite, or perhaps because of, significant efforts to determine accurate distances, using a wide range of methods, tracers, and techniques, an internally consistent astronomical distance framework has not yet been established. We review current efforts to homogenize the Local Group's distance framework, with particular emphasis on the potential of RR Lyrae stars as distance indicators, and attempt to extend this in an internally consistent manner to cosmological distances. Calibration based on Type Ia supernovae and distance determinations based on gravitational lensing represent particularly promising approaches. We provide a positive outlook to improvements to the status quo expected from future surveys, missions, and facilities. Astronomical distance determination has clearly reached maturity and near-consistency.Comment: Review article, 59 pages (4 figures); Space Science Reviews, in press (chapter 8 of a special collection resulting from the May 2016 ISSI-BJ workshop on Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Age

Search for supersymmetry in final states with jets, missing transverse momentum and one isolated lepton in sqrt{s} = 7 TeV pp collisions using 1 fb-1 of ATLAS data

We present an update of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing jets, missing transverse momentum, and one isolated electron or muon, using 1.04 fb^-1 of proton-proton collision data at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in the first half of 2011. The analysis is carried out in four distinct signal regions with either three or four jets and variations on the (missing) transverse momentum cuts, resulting in optimized limits for various supersymmetry models. No excess above the standard model background expectation is observed. Limits are set on the visible cross-section of new physics within the kinematic requirements of the search. The results are interpreted as limits on the parameters of the minimal supergravity framework, limits on cross-sections of simplified models with specific squark and gluino decay modes, and limits on parameters of a model with bilinear R-parity violation.Comment: 18 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 9 figures, 4 tables, final version to appear in Physical Review