Search for charged Higgs decays of the top quark using hadronic tau decays

We present the result of a search for charged Higgs decays of the top quark, produced in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\surd s =$ 1.8 TeV. When the charged Higgs is heavy and decays to a tau lepton, which subsequently decays hadronically, the resulting events have a unique signature: large missing transverse energy and the low-charged-multiplicity tau. Data collected in the period 1992-1993 at the Collider Detector at Fermilab, corresponding to 18.7$\pm$0.7~pb$^{-1}$, exclude new regions of combined top quark and charged Higgs mass, in extensions to the standard model with two Higgs doublets.Comment: uuencoded, gzipped tar file of LaTeX and 6 Postscript figures; 11 pp; submitted to Phys. Rev.

Inclusive jet cross section in pˉp{\bar p p} collisions at s=1.8\sqrt{s}=1.8 TeV

The inclusive jet differential cross section has been measured for jet transverse energies, $E_T$, from 15 to 440 GeV, in the pseudorapidity region 0.1$\leq | \eta| \leq$0.7. The results are based on 19.5 pb$^{-1}$ of data collected by the CDF collaboration at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The data are compared with QCD predictions for various sets of parton distribution functions. The cross section for jets with $E_T>200$ GeV is significantly higher than current predictions based on O($\alpha_s^3$) perturbative QCD calculations. Various possible explanations for the high-$E_T$ excess are discussed.Comment: 8 pages with 2 eps uu-encoded figures Submitted to Physical Review Letter

Measurement of Dijet Angular Distributions at CDF

We have used 106 pb^-1 of data collected in proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt(s)=1.8 TeV by the Collider Detector at Fermilab to measure jet angular distributions in events with two jets in the final state. The angular distributions agree with next to leading order (NLO) predictions of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in all dijet invariant mass regions. The data exclude at 95% confidence level (CL) a model of quark substructure in which only up and down quarks are composite and the contact interaction scale is Lambda_ud(+) < 1.6 TeV or Lambda_ud(-) < 1.4 TeV. For a model in which all quarks are composite the excluded regions are Lambda(+) < 1.8 TeV and Lambda(-) < 1. 6 TeV.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables, LaTex, using epsf.sty. Submitted to Physical Review Letters on September 17, 1996. Postscript file of full paper available at http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/physics/pub96/cdf3773_dijet_angle_prl.p

Contribution of soil bacteria to the atmosphere across biomes

This work was supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education and Yale-NUS College, grant number R-607-265-331-121

Genetics of migraine and pharmacogenomics: some considerations

Migraine is a complex disorder caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors

Multispectral tracing in densely labeled mouse brain with nTracer

Summary: This note describes nTracer, an ImageJ plug-in for user-guided, semi-automated tracing of multispectral fluorescent tissue samples. This approach allows for rapid and accurate reconstruction of whole cell morphology of large neuronal populations in densely labeled brains. Availability: nTracer was written as a plugin for the open source image processing software ImageJ. The software, instructional documentation, tutorial videos, sample image and sample tracing results are available at https://www.cai-lab.org/ntracer-tutorial. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Genetic complexity of miscanthus cell wall composition and biomass quality for biofuels

BACKGROUND: Miscanthus sinensis is a high yielding perennial grass species with great potential as a bioenergy feedstock. One of the challenges that currently impedes commercial cellulosic biofuel production is the technical difficulty to efficiently convert lignocellulosic biomass into biofuel. The development of feedstocks with better biomass quality will improve conversion efficiency and the sustainability of the value-chain. Progress in the genetic improvement of biomass quality may be substantially expedited by the development of genetic markers associated to quality traits, which can be used in a marker-assisted selection program. RESULTS: To this end, a mapping population was developed by crossing two parents of contrasting cell wall composition. The performance of 182 F1 offspring individuals along with the parents was evaluated in a field trial with a randomized block design with three replicates. Plants were phenotyped for cell wall composition and conversion efficiency characters in the second and third growth season after establishment. A new SNP-based genetic map for M. sinensis was built using a genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach, which resulted in 464 short-sequence uniparental markers that formed 16 linkage groups in the male map and 17 linkage groups in the female map. A total of 86 QTLs for a variety of biomass quality characteristics were identified, 20 of which were detected in both growth seasons. Twenty QTLs were directly associated to different conversion efficiency characters. Marker sequences were aligned to the sorghum reference genome to facilitate cross-species comparisons. Analyses revealed that for some traits previously identified QTLs in sorghum occurred in homologous regions on the same chromosome. CONCLUSION: In this work we report for the first time the genetic mapping of cell wall composition and bioconversion traits in the bioenergy crop miscanthus. These results are a first step towards the development of marker-assisted selection programs in miscanthus to improve biomass quality and facilitate its use as feedstock for biofuel production

Search for New Particles Decaying to Dijets in p-pbar Collisions at sqrt(s)=1.8 TeV

We have used 19 pb**-1 of data collected with the Collider Detector at Fermilab to search for new particles decaying to dijets. We exclude at 95% confidence level models containing the following new particles: axigluons with mass between 200 and 870 GeV, excited quarks with mass between 80 and 570 GeV, and color octet technirhos with mass between 320 and 480 GeV.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review Letters in December 199

Ratios of bottom meson branching fractions involving J/psi mesons and determination of b quark fragmentation fractions

We report a measurement of the ratios of the decay rates of the B^+, B^0 and B^0_s mesons into exclusive final states containing a J/psi meson. The final states were selected from 19.6 pb^{-1} of p-pbar collisions recorded by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. These data are interpreted to determine the bquark fragmentation fractions f_u, f_d and f_s. We also determine the branching fractions for the decay modes B^+ --> J/psi K^+, B^+ --> J/psi K^*(892)^+, B^0 --> J/psi K^0, B^0 --> J/psi K^*(892)^0 and B_s^0 --> J/psi phi(1020). We discuss the implications of these measurements to B meson decay models.Comment: 40 pages with 5 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D. PostScript also available at http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/physics/pub96/cdf3609_bfrag_br_prd.p

Measurement of σ⋅B(W→eν)\sigma \cdot B (W \to e \nu) and σ⋅B(Z0→e+e−)\sigma \cdot B(Z^0 \to e^+e^-) in ppˉp {\bar p} collisions at s=1.8\sqrt{s}=1.8 TeV

We present a measurement of $\sigma \cdot B(W \to e \nu)$ and $\sigma \cdot B(Z^0 \to e^+e^-)$ in proton - antiproton collisions at $\sqrt{s} =1.8$ TeV using a significantly improved understanding of the integrated luminosity. The data represent an integrated luminosity of 19.7 pb$^{-1}$ from the 1992-1993 run with the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). We find $\sigma \cdot B(W \to e \nu) = 2.49 \pm 0.12$~nb and $\sigma \cdot B(Z^0 \to e^+e^-) = 0.231 \pm 0.012$~nb.Comment: Uses Latex, Article 12 point, figure appended as uuencoded file The full PostScript available via WWW at http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/physics/pub95/cdf3312_sigma_1a_prl_v3.p