Daytime and nighttime aerosol optical depth implementation in CÆLIS

The University of Valladolid (UVa, Spain) has managed a calibration center of the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) since 2006. The CÆLIS software tool, developed by UVa, was created to manage the data generated by AERONET photometers for calibration, quality control and data processing purposes. This paper exploits the potential of this tool in order to obtain products like the aerosol optical depth (AOD) and Ångström exponent (AE), which are of high interest for atmospheric and climate studies, as well as to enhance the quality control of the instruments and data managed by CÆLIS. The AOD and cloud screening algorithms implemented in CÆLIS, both based on AERONET version 3, are described in detail. The obtained products are compared with the AERONET database. In general, the differences in daytime AOD between CÆLIS and AERONET are far below the expected uncertainty of the instrument, ranging in mean differences between −1.3×10−4 at 870 nm and 6.2×10−4 at 380 nm. The standard deviations of the differences range from 2.8×10−4 at 675 nm to 8.1×10−4 at 340 nm. The AOD and AE at nighttime calculated by CÆLIS from Moon observations are also presented, showing good continuity between day and nighttime for different locations, aerosol loads and Moon phase angles. Regarding cloud screening, around 99.9 % of the observations classified as cloud-free by CÆLIS are also assumed cloud-free by AERONET; this percentage is similar for the cases considered cloud-contaminated by both databases. The obtained results point out the capability of CÆLIS as a processing system. The AOD algorithm provides the opportunity to use this tool with other instrument types and to retrieve other aerosol products in the future. This research has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant no. RTI2018-097864-B-I00) and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant no. 871115).The authors gratefully thank AERONET and PHOTONS teams for the collaboration and support. The authors thank the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities for the support through the ePOLAAR project (RTI2018-097864-B-I00). This research has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant no. RTI2018-097864-B-I00) and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant no. 871115)

Study of chemical and optical properties of biomass burning aerosols during long-range transport events toward the arctic in Summer 2017

Producción CientíficaBiomass burning related aerosol episodes are becoming a serious threat to the radiative balance of the Arctic region. Since early July 2017 intense wildfires were recorded between August and September in Canada and Greenland, covering an area up to 4674 km2 in size. This paper describes the impact of these biomass burning (BB) events measured over Svalbard, using an ensemble of ground-based, columnar, and vertically-resolved techniques. BB influenced the aerosol chemistry via nitrates and oxalates, which exhibited an increase in their concentrations in all of size fractions, indicating the BB origin of particles. The absorption coefficient data (530 nm) at ground reached values up to 0.6 Mm–1, highlighting the impact of these BB events when compared to average Arctic background values, which do not exceed 0.05 Mm–1. The absorption behavior is fundamental as implies a subsequent atmospheric heating. At the same time, the AERONET Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) data showed high values at stations located close to or in Canada (AOD over 2.0). Similarly, increased values of AODs were then observed in Svalbard, e.g., in Hornsund (daily average AODs exceeded 0.14 and reached hourly values up to 0.5). Elevated values of AODs were then registered in Sodankylä and Andenes (daily average AODs exceeding 0.150) a few days after the Svalbard observation of the event highlighting the BB columnar magnitude, which is crucial for the radiative impact. All the reported data suggest to rank the summer 2017 plume of aerosols as one of the biggest atmosphere related environmental problems over Svalbard region in last 10 years

Column integrated water vapor and aerosol load characterization with the new ZEN-R52 radiometer

Producción CientíficaThe study shows the first results of the column-integrated water vapor retrieved by the new ZEN-R52 radiometer. This new radiometer has been specifically designed to monitor aerosols and atmospheric water vapor with a high degree of autonomy and robustness in order to allow the expansion of the observations of these parameters to remote desert areas from ground-based platforms. The ZEN-R52 device shows substantial improvements compared to the previous ZEN-R41 prototype: a smaller field of view, an increased signal-to-noise ratio, better stray light rejection, and an additional channel (940 nm) for precipitable water vapor (PWV) retrieval. PWV is inferred from the ZEN-R52 Zenith Sky Radiance (ZSR) measurements using a lookup table (LUT) methodology. The improvement of the new ZEN-R52 in terms of ZSR was verified by means of a comparison with the ZEN-R41, and with the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) Cimel CE318 (CE318-AERONET) at Izaña Observatory, a Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) high mountain station (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain), over a 10-month period (August 2017 to June 2018). ZEN-R52 aerosol optical depth (AOD) was extracted by means of the ZEN–AOD–LUT method with an uncertainty of ±0.01 ± 0.13*AOD. ZEN-R52 PWV extracted using a new LUT technique was compared with quasi-simultaneous (±30 s) Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectrometer measurements as reference. A good agreement was found between the two instruments (PWV means a relative difference of 9.1% and an uncertainty of ±0.089 cm or ±0.036 + 0.061*PWV for PWV <1 cm). This comparison analysis was extended using two PWV datasets from the same CE318 reference instrument at Izaña Observatory: one obtained from AERONET (CE318-AERONET), and another one using a specific calibration of the 940-nm channel performed in this work at Izaña Atmospheric Research Center Observatory (CE318-IARC), which improves the PWV product.European Community Research Infrastructure Action (grant 262254)Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (project RTI2018-097864-B-I00

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good

Search for stop and higgsino production using diphoton Higgs boson decays

Results are presented of a search for a "natural" supersymmetry scenario with gauge mediated symmetry breaking. It is assumed that only the supersymmetric partners of the top-quark (stop) and the Higgs boson (higgsino) are accessible. Events are examined in which there are two photons forming a Higgs boson candidate, and at least two b-quark jets. In 19.7 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded in the CMS experiment, no evidence of a signal is found and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are set, excluding the stop mass below 360 to 410 GeV, depending on the higgsino mass

Search for anomalous production of events with three or more leptons in pp collisions at √s = 8TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.A search for physics beyond the standard model in events with at least three leptons is presented. The data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5fb-1 of proton-proton collisions with center-of-mass energy s=8TeV, was collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC during 2012. The data are divided into exclusive categories based on the number of leptons and their flavor, the presence or absence of an opposite-sign, same-flavor lepton pair (OSSF), the invariant mass of the OSSF pair, the presence or absence of a tagged bottom-quark jet, the number of identified hadronically decaying τ leptons, and the magnitude of the missing transverse energy and of the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta. The numbers of observed events are found to be consistent with the expected numbers from standard model processes, and limits are placed on new-physics scenarios that yield multilepton final states. In particular, scenarios that predict Higgs boson production in the context of supersymmetric decay chains are examined. We also place a 95% confidence level upper limit of 1.3% on the branching fraction for the decay of a top quark to a charm quark and a Higgs boson (t→cH), which translates to a bound on the left- and right-handed top-charm flavor-violating Higgs Yukawa couplings, λtcH and λctH, respectively, of |λtcH|2+|λctH|2<0.21

Measurement of associated W plus charm production in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

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