Ground Motion Model for the LHC

A ground motion model based on geo-physical arguments is presented. The purpose of this model is to predict possible beam separation in the interaction regions of the LHC due to ground motion developing in time spans in the order of seconds to hours. Although this model can also be used to predict statistical movement of accelerator objects on a larger time scale (yearly alignment) its usefulness for that part of the spectrum is questionable. This is simply due to the fact that other perturbations largely dominate basic ground motion effects

Above and belowground community strategies respond to different global change drivers

Environmental changes alter the diversity and structure of communities. By shifting the range of species traits that will be successful under new conditions, environmental drivers can also dramatically impact ecosystem functioning and resilience. Above and belowground communities jointly regulate whole-ecosystem processes and responses to change, yet they are frequently studied separately. To determine whether these communities respond similarly to environmental changes, we measured taxonomic and trait-based responses of plant and soil microbial communities to four years of experimental warming and nitrogen deposition in a temperate grassland. Plant diversity responded strongly to N addition, whereas soil microbial communities responded primarily to warming, likely via an associated decrease in soil moisture. These above and belowground changes were associated with selection for more resource-conservative plant and microbe growth strategies, which reduced community functional diversity. Functional characteristics of plant and soil microbial communities were weakly correlated (P = 0.07) under control conditions, but not when above or belowground communities were altered by either global change driver. These results highlight the potential for global change drivers operating simultaneously to have asynchronous impacts on above and belowground components of ecosystems. Assessment of a single ecosystem component may therefore greatly underestimate the whole-system impact of global environmental changes

3D cancer cell migration in collagen matrices

International audienceCell migration is a widely studied subject but often limited to 2D motion (Sheetz et al., 1999) on various substrates for it allows to simplify cell-substrate interactions. The important relevant parameters to 2D cell migration are substrate rigidity, adhesion, and the role of the cell cytoskeleton. More recently, new studies on 3D cell migration have been performed thanks to the development of new visualization tools such as reflectance confocal microscopy (Iordan et al. 2010, Wolf et al. 2013). In particular, it is possible to image cell and the extra-cellular matrix at the same time. This leads to interesting applications on cancer cell migration, and could possibly open new routes to the understanding of cancer development, like the mechanisms used by cancer cells to invade new tissues.Thus, the aim of this study is to study cancer migration in collagen matrices, as a model of soft tissue, to investigate their motility within the surrounding collagen matrix. Different collagen concentrations will be used and the ability of these cancer cells to move through such a complex structure will be addressed. To this aim, first results of cell migration velocity as well as the Mean Squared Displacement (MSD) will be analyzed

Correction of the Systematic b3 Error with the Resonance-Free Lattice in the LHC

The effect of the sextupole component b3 in the LHC dipoles on the resonance-free lattice has been investigated. It is shown that its dynamic aperture, without b3 spool piece correction, is close to that of the nominal LHC lattice version 6.0 with spool pice correction. A prerequisite is the addition of a few chromaticity sextupoles in the dispersion suppressors. Under this condition an increase of the b3 component by a factor of two can probably be accepted. Furthermore, a systematic relative gradient error up to one per mil can be tolerated without changing this result

Sound and light from fractures in scintillators

Prompted by intriguing events observed in certain particle-physics searches for rare events, we study light and acoustic emission simultaneously in some inorganic scintillators subject to mechanical stress. We observe mechanoluminescence in ${Bi}_4{Ge}_{3}{O}_{12}$, ${CdWO}_{4}$ and ${ZnWO}_{4}$, in various mechanical configurations at room temperature and ambient pressure. We analyze how the light emission is correlated to acoustic emission during fracture. For ${Bi}_4{Ge}_{3}{O}_{12}$, we set a lower bound on the energy of the emitted light, and deduce that the fraction of elastic energy converted to light is at least $3 \times 10^{-5}$

Abel-Jacobi maps for hypersurfaces and non commutative Calabi-Yau's

It is well known that the Fano scheme of lines on a cubic 4-fold is a symplectic variety. We generalize this fact by constructing a closed p-form with p=2n-4 on the Fano scheme of lines on a (2n-2)-dimensional hypersurface Y of degree n. We provide several definitions of this form - via the Abel-Jacobi map, via Hochschild homology, and via the linkage class, and compute it explicitly for n = 4. In the special case of a Pfaffian hypersurface Y we show that the Fano scheme is birational to a certain moduli space of sheaves on a p-dimensional Calabi--Yau variety X arising naturally in the context of homological projective duality, and that the constructed form is induced by the holomorphic volume form on X. This remains true for a general non Pfaffian hypersurface but the dual Calabi-Yau becomes non commutative.Comment: 34 pages; exposition of Hochschild homology expanded; references added; introduction re-written; some imrecisions, typos and the orbit diagram in the last section correcte

Derived categories of cubic fourfolds

We discuss the structure of the derived category of coherent sheaves on cubic fourfolds of three types: Pfaffian cubics, cubics containing a plane and singular cubics, and discuss its relation to the rationality of these cubics.Comment: 18 page