700 research outputs found
Determining the 56Ni distribution of type Ia supernovae from observations within days of explosion
A new direction for tackling phosphorus inefficiency in the UK food system
Publication history: Accepted - 3 April 2022; Published online - 25 April 2022The UK food system is reliant on imported phosphorus (P) to meet food production demand, though inefficient use and poor stewardship means P is currently accumulating in agricultural soils, wasted or lost with detrimental impacts on aquatic environments. This study presents the results of a detailed P Substance Flow Analysis for the UK food system in 2018, developed in collaboration with industry and government, with the key objective of highlighting priority areas for system interventions to improve the sustainability and resilience of P use in the UK food system. In 2018 the UK food system imported 174.6 Gg P, producing food and exportable commodities containing 74.3 Gg P, a P efficiency of only 43%. Three key system hotspots for P inefficiency were identified: Agricultural soil surplus and accumulation (89.2 Gg P), loss to aquatic environments (26.2 Gg P), and waste disposal to landfill and construction (21.8 Gg P). Greatest soil P accumulation occurred in grassland agriculture (85% of total accumulation), driven by loadings of livestock manures. Waste water treatment (12.5 Gg P) and agriculture (8.38 Gg P) account for most P lost to water, and incineration ashes from food system waste (20.3 Gg P) accounted for nearly all P lost to landfill and construction. New strategies and policy to improve the handling and recovery of P from manures, biosolids and food system waste are therefore necessary to improve system P efficiency and reduce P accumulation and losses, though critically, only if they effectively replace imported mineral P fertilisers.This paper was produced as part of the RePhoKUs project (The role of phosphorus in the sustainability and resilience of the UK food system) funded by BBSRC, ESRC, NERC, and the Scottish Government under the UK Global Food Security research programme (Grant No. BB/R005842/1)
Measurements of long-range near-side angular correlations in TeV proton-lead collisions in the forward region
Two-particle angular correlations are studied in proton-lead collisions at a
nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of TeV, collected
with the LHCb detector at the LHC. The analysis is based on data recorded in
two beam configurations, in which either the direction of the proton or that of
the lead ion is analysed. The correlations are measured in the laboratory
system as a function of relative pseudorapidity, , and relative
azimuthal angle, , for events in different classes of event
activity and for different bins of particle transverse momentum. In
high-activity events a long-range correlation on the near side, , is observed in the pseudorapidity range . This
measurement of long-range correlations on the near side in proton-lead
collisions extends previous observations into the forward region up to
. The correlation increases with growing event activity and is found
to be more pronounced in the direction of the lead beam. However, the
correlation in the direction of the lead and proton beams are found to be
compatible when comparing events with similar absolute activity in the
direction analysed.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and
additional information, are available at
https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2015-040.htm
Study of the production of and hadrons in collisions and first measurement of the branching fraction
The product of the () differential production
cross-section and the branching fraction of the decay () is
measured as a function of the beauty hadron transverse momentum, ,
and rapidity, . The kinematic region of the measurements is and . The measurements use a data sample
corresponding to an integrated luminosity of collected by the
LHCb detector in collisions at centre-of-mass energies in 2011 and in 2012. Based on previous LHCb
results of the fragmentation fraction ratio, , the
branching fraction of the decay is
measured to be \begin{equation*} \mathcal{B}(\Lambda_b^0\rightarrow J/\psi
pK^-)= (3.17\pm0.04\pm0.07\pm0.34^{+0.45}_{-0.28})\times10^{-4},
\end{equation*} where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is
systematic, the third is due to the uncertainty on the branching fraction of
the decay , and the
fourth is due to the knowledge of . The sum of the
asymmetries in the production and decay between and
is also measured as a function of and .
The previously published branching fraction of , relative to that of , is updated.
The branching fractions of are determined.Comment: 29 pages, 19figures. All figures and tables, along with any
supplementary material and additional information, are available at
https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2015-032.htm
Evidence for the strangeness-changing weak decay
Using a collision data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity
of 3.0~fb, collected by the LHCb detector, we present the first search
for the strangeness-changing weak decay . No
hadron decay of this type has been seen before. A signal for this decay,
corresponding to a significance of 3.2 standard deviations, is reported. The
relative rate is measured to be
, where and
are the and fragmentation
fractions, and is the branching
fraction. Assuming is bounded between 0.1 and
0.3, the branching fraction would lie
in the range from to .Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, All figures and tables, along with any
supplementary material and additional information, are available at
https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2015-047.htm
flavour tagging using charm decays at the LHCb experiment
An algorithm is described for tagging the flavour content at production of
neutral mesons in the LHCb experiment. The algorithm exploits the
correlation of the flavour of a meson with the charge of a reconstructed
secondary charm hadron from the decay of the other hadron produced in the
proton-proton collision. Charm hadron candidates are identified in a number of
fully or partially reconstructed Cabibbo-favoured decay modes. The algorithm is
calibrated on the self-tagged decay modes and using of data collected by the LHCb
experiment at centre-of-mass energies of and
. Its tagging power on these samples of
decays is .Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and
additional information, are available at
http://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2015-027.htm
Voiceless but empowered farmers in corporate supply chains: contradictory imagery and instrumental approach to empowerment
There have been calls for a shift of focus towards the political and power-laden aspects of transitioning towards socially equitable global supply chains. This paper offers an empirically grounded response to these calls from a critical realist stance in the context of global food supply chains. We examine how an imaginary for sustainable farming structured around an instrumental construction of empowerment limits what is viewed as permissible, desirable and possible in global food supply chains. We adopt a multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the sustainable farming imaginary for smallholder farmers constructed by one large organization, Unilever, in a series of videos produced and disseminated on YouTube. We expose the underlying mechanisms of power and marginalization at work within the sustainability imaginary and show how “empowerment” has the potential to create of new dependencies for these farmers. We recontextualize the representations to show that while the imaginary may be commercially feasible, it is less achievable in terms of empowering smallholder farmers
Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset
corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected
during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV.
The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the
couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and
right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary
mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b,
leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing
transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W'
boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to
the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for
masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC
data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed
coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant
improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe
Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV
A search for a Higgs boson decaying into two photons is described. The
analysis is performed using a dataset recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC
from pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, which corresponds to an
integrated luminosity of 4.8 inverse femtobarns. Limits are set on the cross
section of the standard model Higgs boson decaying to two photons. The expected
exclusion limit at 95% confidence level is between 1.4 and 2.4 times the
standard model cross section in the mass range between 110 and 150 GeV. The
analysis of the data excludes, at 95% confidence level, the standard model
Higgs boson decaying into two photons in the mass range 128 to 132 GeV. The
largest excess of events above the expected standard model background is
observed for a Higgs boson mass hypothesis of 124 GeV with a local significance
of 3.1 sigma. The global significance of observing an excess with a local
significance greater than 3.1 sigma anywhere in the search range 110-150 GeV is
estimated to be 1.8 sigma. More data are required to ascertain the origin of
this excess.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters
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