Report of the Higgs Working Group of the Tevatron Run 2 SUSY/Higgs Workshop

This report presents the theoretical analysis relevant for Higgs physics at the upgraded Tevatron collider and documents the Higgs Working Group simulations to estimate the discovery reach in Run 2 for the Standard Model and MSSM Higgs bosons. Based on a simple detector simulation, we have determined the integrated luminosity necessary to discover the SM Higgs in the mass range 100-190 GeV. The first phase of the Run 2 Higgs search, with a total integrated luminosity of 2 fb-1 per detector, will provide a 95% CL exclusion sensitivity comparable to that expected at the end of the LEP2 run. With 10 fb-1 per detector, this exclusion will extend up to Higgs masses of 180 GeV, and a tantalizing 3 sigma effect will be visible if the Higgs mass lies below 125 GeV. With 25 fb-1 of integrated luminosity per detector, evidence for SM Higgs production at the 3 sigma level is possible for Higgs masses up to 180 GeV. However, the discovery reach is much less impressive for achieving a 5 sigma Higgs boson signal. Even with 30 fb-1 per detector, only Higgs bosons with masses up to about 130 GeV can be detected with 5 sigma significance. These results can also be re-interpreted in the MSSM framework and yield the required luminosities to discover at least one Higgs boson of the MSSM Higgs sector. With 5-10 fb-1 of data per detector, it will be possible to exclude at 95% CL nearly the entire MSSM Higgs parameter space, whereas 20-30 fb-1 is required to obtain a 5 sigma Higgs discovery over a significant portion of the parameter space. Moreover, in one interesting region of the MSSM parameter space (at large tan(beta)), the associated production of a Higgs boson and a b b-bar pair is significantly enhanced and provides potential for discovering a non-SM-like Higgs boson in Run 2.Comment: 185 pages, 124 figures, 55 table

Detecting Pulsars with Interstellar Scintillation in Variance Images

Pulsars are the only cosmic radio sources known to be sufficiently compact to show diffractive interstellar scintillations. Images of the variance of radio signals in both time and frequency can be used to detect pulsars in large-scale continuum surveys using the next generation of synthesis radio telescopes. This technique allows a search over the full field of view while avoiding the need for expensive pixel-by-pixel high time resolution searches. We investigate the sensitivity of detecting pulsars in variance images. We show that variance images are most sensitive to pulsars whose scintillation time-scales and bandwidths are close to the subintegration time and channel bandwidth. Therefore, in order to maximise the detection of pulsars for a given radio continuum survey, it is essential to retain a high time and frequency resolution, allowing us to make variance images sensitive to pulsars with different scintillation properties. We demonstrate the technique with Murchision Widefield Array data and show that variance images can indeed lead to the detection of pulsars by distinguishing them from other radio sources.Comment: 8 papes, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Measurement of thermal conductance of multilayer and other insulation materials Final report

Thermal conductance measurements of multilayer, aluminumized polymeric films for space suit insulation material

On-Farm Food Safety and Environmental Farm Plans: A Conceptual Framework for Identifying and Classifying Benefits and Costs

This series of six reports entitled: "On-Farm Food Safety and Environmental Farm Plans: Identifying and Classifying Benefits and Costs" was initiated soon after the launch of the Agricultural Policy Framework (APF) in 2002. The APF recognized the importance of food safety and environmental concerns for the future growth of the agriculture and Agri-food sector. For this reason, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) commissioned this series of reports to develop a conceptual framework to strengthen our understanding of the potential benefit and cost implications of On-farm Food Safety (OFFS) and Environmental Farm Plans (EFP) that were key components of the APF. The reports were prepared by a group of academics with extensive knowledge of the agriculture and Agri-food sector and issues related to food safety, traceability and the environment. The first report presents a summary of the findings in the five main reports in the series. The second report presents the conceptual framework that was developed to help identify qualitatively the potential benefits and costs that the various players in the agriculture and agri-food supply chain would face in implementing OFFS and EFP programs. The third report applies this framework to pork, the fourth, to beef, the fifth, to grains and the sixth, to dairy. In general, benefits and costs are divided into both demand and supply side effects. In addition, both public and private costs and benefits are considered, especially since they help indicate where a role for government might be required and where markets are not working as well as they might. Based on these preliminary qualitative assessments, the beef and pork sector have more to gain from HACCP-based OFFS and EFP initiatives, due to their ability to gain market share from marketing their products internationally, while the grains sector already benefits internationally from its high quality reputation and the dairy sector is restricted to produce only for the domestic market. However, more work is required in these areas to validate and quantify costs and benefits.Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Production Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

A Bayesian parameter estimation approach to pulsar time-of-arrival analysis

The increasing sensitivities of pulsar timing arrays to ultra-low frequency (nHz) gravitational waves promises to achieve direct gravitational wave detection within the next 5-10 years. While there are many parallel efforts being made in the improvement of telescope sensitivity, the detection of stable millisecond pulsars and the improvement of the timing software, there are reasons to believe that the methods used to accurately determine the time-of-arrival (TOA) of pulses from radio pulsars can be improved upon. More specifically, the determination of the uncertainties on these TOAs, which strongly affect the ability to detect GWs through pulsar timing, may be unreliable. We propose two Bayesian methods for the generation of pulsar TOAs starting from pulsar "search-mode" data and pre-folded data. These methods are applied to simulated toy-model examples and in this initial work we focus on the issue of uncertainties in the folding period. The final results of our analysis are expressed in the form of posterior probability distributions on the signal parameters (including the TOA) from a single observation.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure

A Qualitative Assessment of the Benefits and Costs of On-Farm Food Safety and Environmental Farm Plans in the Dairy Sector

This series of six reports entitled: "On-Farm Food Safety and Environmental Farm Plans: Identifying and Classifying Benefits and Costs" was initiated soon after the launch of the Agricultural Policy Framework (APF) in 2002. The APF recognized the importance of food safety and environmental concerns for the future growth of the agriculture and Agri-food sector. For this reason, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) commissioned this series of reports to develop a conceptual framework to strengthen our understanding of the potential benefit and cost implications of On-farm Food Safety (OFFS) and Environmental Farm Plans (EFP) that were key components of the APF. The reports were prepared by a group of academics with extensive knowledge of the agriculture and Agri-food sector and issues related to food safety, traceability and the environment. The first report presents a summary of the findings in the five main reports in the series. The second report presents the conceptual framework that was developed to help identify qualitatively the potential benefits and costs that the various players in the agriculture and agri-food supply chain would face in implementing OFFS and EFP programs. The third report applies this framework to pork, the fourth, to beef, the fifth, to grains and the sixth, to dairy. In general, benefits and costs are divided into both demand and supply side effects. In addition, both public and private costs and benefits are considered, especially since they help indicate where a role for government might be required and where markets are not working as well as they might. Based on these preliminary qualitative assessments, the beef and pork sector have more to gain from HACCP-based OFFS and EFP initiatives, due to their ability to gain market share from marketing their products internationally, while the grains sector already benefits internationally from its high quality reputation and the dairy sector is restricted to produce only for the domestic market. However, more work is required in these areas to validate and quantify costs and benefits.Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing, Production Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Techniques development for whale migration tracking

Effort leading to the completion of development and fabrication of expansible whale harnesses and whale-carried instrument pods is described, along with details of the gear. Early preparative effort for a January-February 1974 field expedition is reported

Introducing a Calculus of Effects and Handlers for Natural Language Semantics

In compositional model-theoretic semantics, researchers assemble truth-conditions or other kinds of denotations using the lambda calculus. It was previously observed that the lambda terms and/or the denotations studied tend to follow the same pattern: they are instances of a monad. In this paper, we present an extension of the simply-typed lambda calculus that exploits this uniformity using the recently discovered technique of effect handlers. We prove that our calculus exhibits some of the key formal properties of the lambda calculus and we use it to construct a modular semantics for a small fragment that involves multiple distinct semantic phenomena

Overview of the Development and Applications of a Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Benefits and Costs of On-Farm Food Safety and Environmental Farm Plans

This series of six reports entitled: "On-Farm Food Safety and Environmental Farm Plans: Identifying and Classifying Benefits and Costs" was initiated soon after the launch of the Agricultural Policy Framework (APF) in 2002. The APF recognized the importance of food safety and environmental concerns for the future growth of the agriculture and Agri-food sector. For this reason, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) commissioned this series of reports to develop a conceptual framework to strengthen our understanding of the potential benefit and cost implications of On-farm Food Safety (OFFS) and Environmental Farm Plans (EFP) that were key components of the APF. The reports were prepared by a group of academics with extensive knowledge of the agriculture and Agri-food sector and issues related to food safety, traceability and the environment. The first report presents a summary of the findings in the five main reports in the series. The second report presents the conceptual framework that was developed to help identify qualitatively the potential benefits and costs that the various players in the agriculture and agri-food supply chain would face in implementing OFFS and EFP programs. The third report applies this framework to pork, the fourth, to beef, the fifth, to grains and the sixth, to dairy. In general, benefits and costs are divided into both demand and supply side effects. In addition, both public and private costs and benefits are considered, especially since they help indicate where a role for government might be required and where markets are not working as well as they might. Based on these preliminary qualitative assessments, the beef and pork sector have more to gain from HACCP-based OFFS and EFP initiatives, due to their ability to gain market share from marketing their products internationally, while the grains sector already benefits internationally from its high quality reputation and the dairy sector is restricted to produce only for the domestic market. However, more work is required in these areas to validate and quantify costs and benefits.Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Production Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The X-ray emission of Lyman break galaxies

We present an analysis of the X-ray emission of a large sample of z∼3 Lyman break galaxies (LBGs), based on Chandra/ACIS observations of several LBG survey fields. A total of 24 LBGs are directly detected in the X-ray, approximately doubling the number of known detections. Thirteen of the LBGs have optical spectroscopic signatures of active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity, but almost all the other X-ray detections are also likely to host an accreting black hole based on their X-ray properties. The AGN exhibit a wide range in X-ray luminosity, from weak Seyferts to bright quasi-stellar objects (QSOs). An optical spectroscopy identified approximately one-third of the X-ray-detected sources as broad-line QSOs, one-third as narrow-line AGN (NLAGN) and one-third as normal star-forming LBGs. The fraction of X-ray-detected LBGs is 3 per cent, much lower than that which has been found for submillimetre-selected galaxies. Two galaxies have X-ray luminosities, spectra and fX/fopt values that are consistent with emission from star formation processes and are identified as candidate X-ray bright, pure starburst galaxies at z∼ 3. If powered solely by star formation, the sources would have star formation rates (SFRs) of 300–500 M⊙ yr−1. X-ray spectral analysis of the LBGs shows a mean photon index of Γ= 1.96 , similar to local AGN. There is evidence for absorption in at least 40 per cent of the objects. Significantly more absorption is evident in the NLAGN, which is consistent with AGN unification schemes. After correction for absorption, the narrow- and broad-line objects show the same average luminosity. X-ray-detected LBGs, spectroscopically classified as normal galaxies, however, are less luminous in both soft and hard X-ray bands, indicating that the host galaxy is outshining any optical AGN signature. Turning to the X-ray emission from LBGs without direct detections, stacking the X-ray flux in the two deepest Chandra fields under consideration [the Hubble Deep Field-North (HDF-N) and Groth–Westphal Strip (GWS)] produced significant detections in each, although the GWS result was marginal. The detection in the HDF-N gives an X-ray-derived SFR of 42.4 ± 7.8 M⊙ yr^−1 per LBG and, by comparing with the ultraviolet (UV) SFR, the implied UV extinction correction is 4.1 ± 0.8. The LBG sample was split into three bins based on UV magnitude to examine the correlation between UV and X-ray emission: for the limited statistics available, there was no evidence of any correlation