Archiving Software Surrogates on the Web for Future Reference

Software has long been established as an essential aspect of the scientific process in mathematics and other disciplines. However, reliably referencing software in scientific publications is still challenging for various reasons. A crucial factor is that software dynamics with temporal versions or states are difficult to capture over time. We propose to archive and reference surrogates instead, which can be found on the Web and reflect the actual software to a remarkable extent. Our study shows that about a half of the webpages of software are already archived with almost all of them including some kind of documentation.Comment: TPDL 2016, Hannover, German

Probing Shadowed Nuclear Sea with Massive Gauge Bosons in the Future Heavy-Ion Collisions

The production of the massive bosons $Z^0$ and $W^{\pm}$ could provide an excellent tool to study cold nuclear matter effects and the modifications of nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) relative to parton distribution functions (PDFs) of a free proton in high energy nuclear reactions at the LHC as well as in heavy-ion collisions (HIC) with much higher center-of mass energies available in the future colliders. In this paper we calculate the rapidity and transverse momentum distributions of the vector boson and their nuclear modification factors in p+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=63$TeV and in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=39$TeV in the framework of perturbative QCD by utilizing three parametrization sets of nPDFs: EPS09, DSSZ and nCTEQ. It is found that in heavy-ion collisions at such high colliding energies, both the rapidity distribution and the transverse momentum spectrum of vector bosons are considerably suppressed in wide kinematic regions with respect to p+p reactions due to large nuclear shadowing effect. We demonstrate that in the massive vector boson productions processes with sea quarks in the initial-state may give more contributions than those with valence quarks in the initial-state, therefore in future heavy-ion collisions the isospin effect is less pronounced and the charge asymmetry of W boson will be reduced significantly as compared to that at the LHC. Large difference between results with nCTEQ and results with EPS09 and DSSZ is observed in nuclear modifications of both rapidity and $p_T$ distributions of $Z^0$ and $W$ in the future HIC.Comment: 13 pages, 21 figures, version accepted for publication in Eur. Phys. J.

Linking public health agencies and hospitals for improved emergency preparedness: North Carolina's public health epidemiologist program

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In 2003, 11 public health epidemiologists were placed in North Carolina's largest hospitals to enhance communication between public health agencies and healthcare systems for improved emergency preparedness. We describe the specific services public health epidemiologists provide to local health departments, the North Carolina Division of Public Health, and the hospitals in which they are based, and assess the value of these services to stakeholders.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We surveyed and/or interviewed public health epidemiologists, communicable disease nurses based at local health departments, North Carolina Division of Public Health staff, and public health epidemiologists' hospital supervisors to 1) elicit the services provided by public health epidemiologists in daily practice and during emergencies and 2) examine the value of these services. Interviews were transcribed and imported into ATLAS.ti for coding and analysis. Descriptive analyses were performed on quantitative survey data.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Public health epidemiologists conduct syndromic surveillance of community-acquired infections and potential bioterrorism events, assist local health departments and the North Carolina Division of Public Health with public health investigations, educate clinicians on diseases of public health importance, and enhance communication between hospitals and public health agencies. Stakeholders place on a high value on the unique services provided by public health epidemiologists.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Public health epidemiologists effectively link public health agencies and hospitals to enhance syndromic surveillance, communicable disease management, and public health emergency preparedness and response. This comprehensive description of the program and its value to stakeholders, both in routine daily practice and in responding to a major public health emergency, can inform other states that may wish to establish a similar program as part of their larger public health emergency preparedness and response system.</p

Resummed small-x and first-moment evolution of fragmentation functions in perturbative QCD

We study the splitting functions for the evolution of fragmentation distributions and the coefficient functions for single-hadron production in semi-inclusive electron-positron annihilation in massless perturbative QCD for small values of the momentum fraction and scaling variable x, where their fixed-order approximations are completely destabilized by huge double logarithms of the form alpha_s^n 1/x ln^(2n-a) x. Complete analytic all-order expressions in Mellin-N space are presented for the resummation of these terms at the next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. The poles for the first moments, related to the evolution of hadron multiplicities, and the small-x instabilities of the next-to-leading order splitting and coefficient functions are removed by this resummation, which leads to an oscillatory small-x behaviour and functions that can be used at N=1 and down to extremely small values of x. First steps are presented towards extending these results to the higher accuracy required for an all-x combination with the state-of-the-art next-to-next-to-leading order large-x results.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures (.eps). FORM file of main results included in sourc

Supersymmetric top and bottom squark production at hadron colliders

The scalar partners of top and bottom quarks are expected to be the lightest squarks in supersymmetric theories, with potentially large cross sections at hadron colliders. We present predictions for the production of top and bottom squarks at the Tevatron and the LHC, including next-to-leading order corrections in supersymmetric QCD and the resummation of soft gluon emission at next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy. We discuss the impact of the higher-order corrections on total cross sections and transverse-momentum distributions, and provide an estimate of the theoretical uncertainty due to scale variation and the parton distribution functions.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figure

Impact-parameter dependent nuclear parton distribution functions: EPS09s and EKS98s and their applications in nuclear hard processes

We determine the spatial (impact parameter) dependence of nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) using the $A$-dependence of the spatially independent (averaged) global fits EPS09 and EKS98. We work under the assumption that the spatial dependence can be formulated as a power series of the nuclear thickness functions $T_A$. To reproduce the $A$-dependence over the entire $x$ range we need terms up to $[T_A]^4$. As an outcome, we release two sets, EPS09s (LO, NLO, error sets) and EKS98s, of spatially dependent nPDFs for public use. We also discuss the implementation of these into the existing calculations. With our results, the centrality dependence of nuclear hard-process observables can be studied consistently with the globally fitted nPDFs for the first time. As an application, we first calculate the LO nuclear modification factor $R^{1jet}_{AA}$ for primary partonic-jet production in different centrality classes in Au+Au collisions at RHIC and Pb+Pb collisions at LHC. Also the corresponding central-to-peripheral ratios $R_{CP}^{1jet}$ are studied. We also calculate the LO and NLO nuclear modification factors for single inclusive neutral pion production, $R_{dAu}^{\pi^0}$, at mid- and forward rapidities in different centrality classes in d+Au collisions at RHIC. In particular, we show that our results are compatible with the PHENIX mid-rapidity data within the overall normalization uncertainties given by the experiment. Finally, we show our predictions for the corresponding modifications $R_{pPb}^{\pi^0}$ in the forthcoming p+Pb collisions at LHC.Comment: 36 page

Asteroseismology

Asteroseismology is the determination of the interior structures of stars by using their oscillations as seismic waves. Simple explanations of the astrophysical background and some basic theoretical considerations needed in this rapidly evolving field are followed by introductions to the most important concepts and methods on the basis of example. Previous and potential applications of asteroseismology are reviewed and future trends are attempted to be foreseen.Comment: 38 pages, 13 figures, to appear in: "Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems", eds. T. D. Oswalt et al., Springer Verla

Novel STAT1 Alleles in Otherwise Healthy Patients with Mycobacterial Disease

The transcription factor signal transducer and activator of transcription-1 (STAT1) plays a key role in immunity against mycobacterial and viral infections. Here, we characterize three human STAT1 germline alleles from otherwise healthy patients with mycobacterial disease. The previously reported L706S, like the novel Q463H and E320Q alleles, are intrinsically deleterious for both interferon gamma (IFNG)–induced gamma-activating factor–mediated immunity and interferon alpha (IFNA)–induced interferon-stimulated genes factor 3–mediated immunity, as shown in STAT1-deficient cells transfected with the corresponding alleles. Their phenotypic effects are however mediated by different molecular mechanisms, L706S affecting STAT1 phosphorylation and Q463H and E320Q affecting STAT1 DNA-binding activity. Heterozygous patients display specifically impaired IFNG-induced gamma-activating factor–mediated immunity, resulting in susceptibility to mycobacteria. Indeed, IFNA-induced interferon-stimulated genes factor 3–mediated immunity is not affected, and these patients are not particularly susceptible to viral disease, unlike patients homozygous for other, equally deleterious STAT1 mutations recessive for both phenotypes. The three STAT1 alleles are therefore dominant for IFNG-mediated antimycobacterial immunity but recessive for IFNA-mediated antiviral immunity at the cellular and clinical levels. These STAT1 alleles define two forms of dominant STAT1 deficiency, depending on whether the mutations impair STAT1 phosphorylation or DNA binding

Parton distributions with small-x resummation:evidence for BFKL dynamics in HERA data

We present a determination of the parton distribution functions of the proton in which NLO and NNLO fixed-order calculations are supplemented by NLLx small-x resummation. Deep inelastic structure functions are computed consistently at NLO+NLLx or NNLO+NLLx, while for hadronic processes small-x resummation is included only in the PDF evolution, with kinematic cuts introduced to ensure the fitted data lie in a region where the fixed-order calculation of the hard cross-sections is reliable. In all other respects, the fits use the same methodology and are based on the same global dataset as the recent NNPDF3.1 analysis. We demonstrate that the inclusion of small-x resummation leads to a quantitative improvement in the perturbative description of the HERA inclusive and charm-production reduced cross-sections in the small x region. The impact of the resummation in our fits is greater at NNLO than at NLO, because fixed-order calculations have a perturbative instability at small x due to large logarithms that can be cured by resummation. We explore the phenomenological implications of PDF sets with small-x resummation for the longitudinal structure function $F_L$ at HERA, for parton luminosities and LHC benchmark cross-sections, for ultra-high energy neutrino-nucleus cross-sections, and for future high-energy lepton-proton colliders such as the LHeC.Comment: 70 pages, many figures. Discussion on uncertainties due to subleading logarithmic contributions. Discussion on fits with pseudodata from future high-energy lepton-proton colliders. Updated references. Version to be published in EPJ