HepData and JetWeb: HEP data archiving and model validation

The CEDAR collaboration is extending and combining the JetWeb and HepData systems to provide a single service for tuning and validating models of high-energy physics processes. The centrepiece of this activity is the fitting by JetWeb of observables computed from Monte Carlo event generator events against their experimentally determined distributions, as stored in HepData. Caching the results of the JetWeb simulation and comparison stages provides a single cumulative database of event generator tunings, fitted against a wide range of experimental quantities. An important feature of this integration is a family of XML data formats, called HepML.Comment: 4 pages, 0 figures. To be published in proceedings of CHEP0

Transverse nucleon structure and diagnostics of hard parton-parton processes at LHC

We propose a new method to determine at what transverse momenta particle production in high-energy pp collisions is governed by hard parton-parton processes. Using information on the transverse spatial distribution of partons obtained from hard exclusive processes in ep/gamma p scattering, we evaluate the impact parameter distribution of pp collisions with a hard parton-parton process as a function of p_T of the produced parton (jet). We find that the average pp impact parameters in such events depend very weakly on p_T in the range 2 < p_T < few 100 GeV, while they are much smaller than those in minimum-bias inelastic collisions. The impact parameters in turn govern the observable transverse multiplicity in such events (in the direction perpendicular to the trigger particle or jet). Measuring the transverse multiplicity as a function of p_T thus provides an effective tool for determining the minimum p_T for which a given trigger particle originates from a hard parton-parton process. Additional tests of the proposed geometric correlations are possible by measuring the dependence on the trigger rapidity. Various strategies for implementing this method are outlined.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

HepForge: A lightweight development environment for HEP software

Setting up the infrastructure to manage a software project can become a task as significant writing the software itself. A variety of useful open source tools are available, such as Web-based viewers for version control systems, "wikis" for collaborative discussions and bug-tracking systems, but their use in high-energy physics, outside large collaborations, is insubstantial. Understandably, physicists would rather do physics than configure project management tools. We introduce the CEDAR HepForge system, which provides a lightweight development environment for HEP software. Services available as part of HepForge include the above-mentioned tools as well as mailing lists, shell accounts, archiving of releases and low-maintenance Web space. HepForge also exists to promote best-practice software development methods and to provide a central repository for re-usable HEP software and phenomenology codes.Comment: 3 pages, 0 figures. To be published in proceedings of CHEP06. Refers to the HepForge facility at http://hepforge.cedar.ac.u

Planting date effects on the germinability and seedling vigour of Abutilon theophrasti (Malvaceae) seeds

Abutilon theophrasti (Malvaceae) is a troublesome annual weed in many maize and soybean cropping systems of Canada and the United States. Seeds of A. theophrasti exhibit physical dormancy. Differences in the growing environment of parent plants may influence the germinability of seeds and vigour of seedlings produced by this species because of variation in resource allocation to seed development. Thus, the germinability of seeds and subsequent seedling vigour were examined for A. theophrasti plants grown in monoculture at a density of 4.2 plants m-2 under varying natural photoperiods in central New York State. Treatments were established by transplanting A. theophrasti seedlings on three dates: 15 May, 4 June, and 30 June 2000, which correspond to peak photoperiods of 15, 14, and 13 hours, respectively. Seeds produced under the shorter photoperiod (13 h) weighed, on average, 1.5 mg less than seeds produced under the longer photoperiod (15 h). Contrary to expectations, seeds of A. theophrasti that matured under shorter photoperiods had lower germinability (80%) than seeds produced under longer photoperiods (98%). Early radicle growth, a measure of seedling vigour, did not differ between the photoperiod treatments. Environmental conditions other than photoperiod (i.e. water availability) prevailing during the 2000-growing season may have influenced seed coat thickness and consequently affected the germinability of seeds.L’Abutilon theophrasti (Malvaceae) est une mauvaise herbe annuelle qui gêne la production du maïs et du soja dans plusieurs systèmes de culture du Canada et des États-Unis. Les graines de l’A. theophrasti possèdent une dormance physique. Des différences de l’environnement dans lequel croissent les plantes mères peuvent influencer la germination des graines et la vitalité des plantules de cette espèce à cause de variations dans l’affectation des ressources avant que les graines soient pleinement développées. Ainsi, la germination des graines et la vitalité des plantules qui en sont issues ont été étudiées pour l’A. theophrasti en monoculture à une densité de 4,2 plantes m-2 sous diverses photopériodes naturelles du centre de l’État de New York. Les traitements ont débuté par la plantation de plantules de l’A. theophrasti à trois dates, 15 mai, 6 juin et 30 juin 2000, qui correspondent respectivement à des photopériodes maximales de 15, 14 et 13 heures. Les graines produites avec la photopériode la plus courte (13 h) pesaient en moyenne 1,5 mg de moins que les graines produites avec les plus longues photopériodes (15 h). Contrairement à ce qui était prévu, les graines de l’A. theophrasti qui se sont formées lors des photopériodes les plus courtes avaient une germination plus faible (80 %) que les graines formées lors des photopériodes les plus longues (98 %). La croissance précoce de la radicule, une mesure de la vitalité des plantules, est restée la même pour les différentes photopériodes. Les conditions environnementales autres que la photopériode (c.-à-d. la disponibilité en eau) qui régnaient au cours de la saison de croissance de 2000 peuvent avoir influencé l’épaisseur du tégument et avoir ainsi eu un effet sur la germination des graines

When object color is a red herring: extraneous perceptual information hinders word learning via referent selection

Learning words from ambiguous naming events is difficult. In such situations, children struggle with not attending to task irrelevant information when learning object names. The current study reduces the problem space of learning names for object categories by holding color constant between the target and other extraneous objects. We examine how this influences two types of word learning (retention and generalization) in both 30-month-old children (Experiment 1) and the iCub humanoid robot (Experiment 2). Overall, all children and iCub performed well on the retention trials, but they were only able to generalize the novel names to new exemplars of the target categories if the objects were originally encountered in sets with objects of the same colors, not if the objects were originally encountered in sets with objects of different colors. These data demonstrate that less information presented during the learning phase narrows the problem space and leads to better word learning success for both children and iCub. Findings are discussed in terms of cognitive load and desirable difficulties

Green criminology: shining a critical lens on environmental harm

Green criminology provides for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary engagement with environmental crimes and wider environmental harms. Green criminology applies a broad ‘‘green’’ perspective to environmental harms, ecological justice, and the study of environmental laws and criminality, which includes crimes affecting the environment and non-human nature. Within the ecological justice and species justice perspectives of green criminology there is a contention that justice systems need to do more than just consider anthropocentric notions of criminal justice, they should also consider how justice systems can provide protection and redress for the environment and other species. Green criminological scholarship has, thus, paid direct attention to theoretical questions of whether and how justice systems deal with crimes against animals and the environment; it has begun to conceptualize policy perspectives that can provide contemporary ecological justice alongside mainstream criminal justice. Moving beyond mainstream criminology’s focus on individual offenders, green criminology also explores state failure in environmental protection and corporate offending and environmentally harmful business practices. A central discussion within green criminology is that of whether environmental harm rather than environmental crime should be its focus, and whether green ‘‘crimes’’ should be seen as the focus of mainstream criminal justice and dealt with by core criminal justice agencies such as the police, or whether they should be considered as being beyond the mainstream. This article provides an introductory overview that complements a multi- and inter-disciplinary article collection dedicated to green criminological thinking and research

The Value of Information for Populations in Varying Environments

The notion of information pervades informal descriptions of biological systems, but formal treatments face the problem of defining a quantitative measure of information rooted in a concept of fitness, which is itself an elusive notion. Here, we present a model of population dynamics where this problem is amenable to a mathematical analysis. In the limit where any information about future environmental variations is common to the members of the population, our model is equivalent to known models of financial investment. In this case, the population can be interpreted as a portfolio of financial assets and previous analyses have shown that a key quantity of Shannon's communication theory, the mutual information, sets a fundamental limit on the value of information. We show that this bound can be violated when accounting for features that are irrelevant in finance but inherent to biological systems, such as the stochasticity present at the individual level. This leads us to generalize the measures of uncertainty and information usually encountered in information theory

From START to FINISH : the influence of osmotic stress on the cell cycle

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

W+jets Matrix Elements and the Dipole Cascade

We extend the algorithm for matching fixed-order tree-level matrix element generators with the Dipole Cascade Model in Ariadne to apply to processes with incoming hadrons. We test the algoritm on for the process W+n jets at the Tevatron, and find that the results are fairly insensitive to the cutoff used to regularize the soft and collinear divergencies in the tree-level matrix elements. We also investigate a few observables to check the sensitivity to the matrix element correction