JetWeb: A WWW Interface and Database for Monte Carlo Tuning and Validation

A World Wide Web interface to a Monte Carlo validation and tuning facility is described. The aim of the package is to allow rapid and reproducible comparisons to be made between detailed measurements at high-energy physics colliders and general physics simulation packages. The package includes a relational database, a Java servlet query and display facility, and clean interfaces to simulation packages and their parameters.Comment: See http://jetweb.hep.ucl.ac.uk for further informatio

Satellite communications experiment for the Ontario air ambulance service

A satellite communications experiment was conducted to develop a reliable voice communications system between paramedics and doctors at certain larger medical centers. The experiment used INMARSAT's Atlantic Ocean Region satellite which provides coverage to the western border of Ontario. Forward downlink power from the satellite is in great demand, so two highly power-efficient modulation schemes were chosen for evaluation during the experiment. These were amplitude-companded single-sideband (ACSSB) and linear predictive coding in conjunction with DMSK modulation. Good performance with a signal to noise ratio of about 10 dB was demonstrated from many parts of the province with the evevation angle to the satellite ranging from five to twenty degrees and with the aircraft both in-flight and on the runway

The CEDAR Project

We describe the plans and objectives of the CEDAR project (Combined e-Science Data Analysis Resource for High Energy Physics) newly funded by the PPARC e-Science programme in the UK. CEDAR will combine the strengths of the well established and widely used HEPDATA database of HEP data and the innovative JetWeb data/Monte Carlo comparison facility, built on the HZTOOL package, and will exploit developing grid technology. The current status and future plans of both of these individual sub-projects within the CEDAR framework are described, showing how they will cohesively provide (a) an extensive archive of Reaction Data, (b) validation and tuning of Monte Carlo programs against these reaction data sets, and (c) a validated code repository for a wide range of HEP code such as parton distribution functions and other calculation codes used by particle physicists. Once established it is envisaged CEDAR will become an important Grid tool used by LHC experimentalists in their analyses and may well serve as a model in other branches of science where there is a need to compare data and complex simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 postscript figures, uses CHEP2004.cls. Presented at Computing in High-Energy Physics (CHEP'04), Interlaken, Switzerland, 27th September - 1st October 200

A new jet algorithm based on the k-means clustering for the reconstruction of heavy states from jets

A jet algorithm based on the k-means clustering procedure is proposed which can be used for the invariant-mass reconstruction of heavy states decaying to hadronic jets. The proposed algorithm was tested by reconstructing E+ E- to ttbar to 6 jets and E+ E- to W+W- to 4 jets processes at \sqrt{s}=500 GeV using a Monte Carlo simulation. It was shown that the algorithm has a reconstruction efficiency similar to traditional jet-finding algorithms, and leads to 25% and 40% reduction of reconstruction width for top quarks and W bosons, respectively, compared to the kT (Durham) algorithm. In addition, it is expected that the peak positions measured with the new algorithm have smaller systematical uncertainty.Comment: 11 pages, 3 eps figures (Eur. Phys. J. C, in press

Terrorist Attacks On Public Bus Transportation: A Preliminary Empirical Analysis, MTI Report WP 09-01

This report provides data on terrorist attacks against public bus transportation targets and serious crimes committed against such targets throughout the world. The data are drawn from the MTI database of attacks on public surface transportation, which is expanded and updated as information becomes available. This analysis is based on the database as of December 17, 2009. Data include the frequency and lethality with which buses, bus stations, and bus stops are attacked; the relationship between fatalities and attacks against bus targets and the relationship between injuries and attacks against those targets; how often, relative to other surface transportation targets, buses are attacked, first with all weapons and then with only explosive and incendiary devices; the relative lethality of attacks; and the distribution of attacks. It then presents some preliminary observations drawn from those data that can help stakeholders governments, transit managers, and employees to focus on the ways the most frequent and/or most lethal attacks are carried out as they consider measures to prevent or mitigate attacks that may be considered likely to happen in the United States

RunMC - an object-oriented analysis framework for Monte Carlo simulation of high-energy particle collisions

RunMC is an object-oriented framework aimed to generate and to analyse high-energy collisions of elementary particles using Monte Carlo simulations. This package, being based on C++ adopted by CERN as the main programming language for the LHC experiments, provides a common interface to different Monte Carlo models using modern physics libraries. Physics calculations (projects) can easily be loaded and saved as external modules. This simplifies the development of complicated calculations for high energy physics in large collaborations.This desktop program is open-source licensed and is available on the LINUX and Windows/Cygwin platforms.Comment: 15 pages, 1 eps figure, accepted by Comp. Phys. Commu

Infertility problems and mental health symptoms in a community-based sample: depressive symptoms among infertile men, but not women

Most researchers agree that men’s and women’s experiences of infertility are fundamentally different, and impacts upon the nature of psychological distress encountered. However, design flaws, including non-random samples unrepresentative of the general population, compromise many existing studies. Data derived from a random general community sample provides prevalence of current infertility, and permits examination of longitudinal associations between mental health symptoms and infertility among 1,978 participants aged 28-32 years. In the previous 12-months, infertility was experienced by 2.1% and 5.4% partnered men and women. Infertility independently predicted depressive symptomatology in men, and anxiety symptoms among women. Gender differences were sustained, even controlling for prior depression and anxiety. Health professionals are encouraged to proactively enquire about affective symptoms experienced by both women and men with infertility problems

Five key issues with implications for draft WCRL FCPs

The following are amongst the major issues raised the draft FCPs and associated deadlines put forward by WWF/SASSI. There are various inter-relationships amongst these issues. The intent of this document is to summarise these so that the current draft FCP deadlines can be re-assessed in this context

Clarification regarding population growth rate parameters used for Southern Hemisphere humpback whales analyses

Papers on the dynamics of Southern Hemisphere humpback whales have described their growth rates in different ways. To attempt a simple summary, the following have been used (sometimes with different symbols to denote them or different forms of words to describe them): d : instantaneous growth rate (units yr–1) (sometimes indicated as r) l : annual growth rate (units yr–1) r : intrinsic growth rate (units yr–1) (sometimes indicated as rmax