888 research outputs found
Fine-scale analysis of biomineralized mollusc teeth using FIB and TEM
When it comes to mineral synthesis, there is a lot we can learn from nature. Although we can synthesize a range of materials in the laboratory, the experimental conditions are often constrained to particular ranges of temperature, pH, etc. Biological systems, on the other hand, seem to be able to produce individual minerals and complex composite mineral structures under a variety of conditions, many of which are far from those applied to create their synthetic counterparts. Understanding how nature does this could provide a means to produce novel biomimetic materials with potential applications in a diverse range of fields from medicine to materials engineering
Using Subsystem MT2 for Complete Mass Determinations in Decay Chains with Missing Energy at Hadron Colliders
We propose to use the MT2 concept to measure the masses of all particles in
SUSY-like events with two unobservable, identical particles. To this end we
generalize the usual notion of MT2 and define a new MT2(n,p,c) variable, which
can be applied to various subsystem topologies, as well as the full event
topology. We derive analytic formulas for its endpoint MT2{max}(n,p,c) as a
function of the unknown test mass Mc of the final particle in the subchain and
the transverse momentum pT due to radiation from the initial state. We show
that the endpoint functions MT2{max}(n,p,c)(Mc,pT) may exhibit three different
types of kinks and discuss the origin of each type. We prove that the subsystem
MT2(n,p,c) variables by themselves already yield a sufficient number of
measurements for a complete determination of the mass spectrum (including the
overall mass scale). As an illustration, we consider the simple case of a decay
chain with up to three heavy particles, X2 -> X1 -> X0, which is rather
problematic for all other mass measurement methods. We propose three different
MT2-based methods, each of which allows a complete determination of the masses
of particles X0, X1 and X2. The first method only uses MT2(n,p,c) endpoint
measurements at a single fixed value of the test mass Mc. In the second method
the unknown mass spectrum is fitted to one or more endpoint functions
MT2{max}(n,p,c)(Mc,pT) exhibiting a kink. The third method is hybrid, combining
MT2 endpoints with measurements of kinematic edges in invariant mass
distributions. As a practical application of our methods, we show that the
dilepton W+W- and tt-bar samples at the Tevatron can be used for an independent
determination of the masses of the top quark, the W boson and the neutrino,
without any prior assumptions.Comment: 47 pages, 9 figures. revised version, published in JHEP. Major
addition: a new appendix with the complete set of formulas for the MT2
endpoints as functions of the upstream transverse momentum pT and test mass
M
Extreme Electron-Phonon Coupling in Boron-based Layered Superconductors
The phonon-mode decomposition of the electron-phonon coupling in the
MgB2-like system Li_{1-x}BC is explored using first principles calculations. It
is found that the high temperature superconductivity of such systems results
from extremely strong coupling to only ~2% of the phonon modes. Novel
characteristics of E_2g branches include (1) ``mode lambda'' values of 25 and
greater compared to a mean of for other modes, (2) a precipitous
Kohn anomaly, and (3) E_2g phonon linewidths within a factor of ~2 of the
frequency itself, indicating impending breakdown of linear electron-phonon
theory. This behavior in borne out by recent inelastic x-ray scattering studies
of MgB2 by Shukla et al.Comment: 4 two-column pages, 4 figures. Equations simplified. Figure 4
changed. Comparison with new data include
Dynamics in online social networks
An increasing number of today's social interactions occurs using online
social media as communication channels. Some online social networks have become
extremely popular in the last decade. They differ among themselves in the
character of the service they provide to online users. For instance, Facebook
can be seen mainly as a platform for keeping in touch with close friends and
relatives, Twitter is used to propagate and receive news, LinkedIn facilitates
the maintenance of professional contacts, Flickr gathers amateurs and
professionals of photography, etc. Albeit different, all these online platforms
share an ingredient that pervades all their applications. There exists an
underlying social network that allows their users to keep in touch with each
other and helps to engage them in common activities or interactions leading to
a better fulfillment of the service's purposes. This is the reason why these
platforms share a good number of functionalities, e.g., personal communication
channels, broadcasted status updates, easy one-step information sharing, news
feeds exposing broadcasted content, etc. As a result, online social networks
are an interesting field to study an online social behavior that seems to be
generic among the different online services. Since at the bottom of these
services lays a network of declared relations and the basic interactions in
these platforms tend to be pairwise, a natural methodology for studying these
systems is provided by network science. In this chapter we describe some of the
results of research studies on the structure, dynamics and social activity in
online social networks. We present them in the interdisciplinary context of
network science, sociological studies and computer science.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, book chapte
Effect of Weld Schedule on the Residual Stress Distribution of Boron Steel Spot Welds
Press-hardened boron steel has been utilized in anti-intrusion systems in automobiles, providing high strength and weight-saving potential through gage reduction. Boron steel spot welds exhibit a soft heat-affected zone which is surrounded by a hard nugget and outlying base material. This soft zone reduces the strength of the weld and makes it susceptible to failure. Additionally, different welding regimes lead to significantly different hardness distributions, making failure prediction difficult. Boron steel sheets, welded with fixed and adaptive schedules, were characterized. These are the first experimentally determined residual stress distributions for boron steel resistance spot welds which have been reported. Residual strains were measured using neutron diffraction, and the hardness distributions were measured on the same welds. Additionally, similar measurements were performed on spot welded DP600 steel as a reference material. A correspondence between residual stress and hardness profiles was observed for all welds. A significant difference in material properties was observed between the fixed schedule and adaptively welded boron steel samples, which could potentially lead to a difference in failure loads between the two boron steel welds
Comparative analysis of the genes UL1 through UL7 of the duck enteritis virus and other herpesviruses of the subfamily Alphaherpesvirinae
The nucleotide sequences of eight open reading frames (ORFs) located at the 5' end of the unique long region of the duck enteritis virus (DEV) Clone-03 strain were determined. The genes identified were designated UL1, UL2, UL3, UL4, UL5, UL6 and UL7 homologues of the herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). The DEV UL3.5 located between UL3 and UL4 had no homologue in the HSV-1. The arrangement and transcription orientation of the eight genes were collinear with their homologues in the HSV-1. Phylogenetic trees were constructed based on the alignments of the deduced amino acids of eight proteins with their homologues in 12 alpha-herpesviruses. In the UL1, UL3, UL3.5, UL5 and UL7 proteins trees, the branches were more closely related to the genus Mardivirus. However, the UL2, UL4, and UL6 proteins phylogenetic trees indicated a large distance from Mardivirus, indicating that the DEV evolved differently from other viruses in the subfamily Alphaherpesvirinae and formed a single branch within this subfamily
Shrinking a large dataset to identify variables associated with increased risk of Plasmodium falciparum infection in Western Kenya
Large datasets are often not amenable to analysis using traditional single-step approaches. Here, our general objective was to apply imputation techniques, principal component analysis (PCA), elastic net and generalized linear models to a large dataset in a systematic approach to extract the most meaningful predictors for a health outcome. We extracted predictors for Plasmodium falciparum infection, from a large covariate dataset while facing limited numbers of observations, using data from the People, Animals, and their Zoonoses (PAZ) project to demonstrate these techniques: data collected from 415 homesteads in western Kenya, contained over 1500 variables that describe the health, environment, and social factors of the humans, livestock, and the homesteads in which they reside. The wide, sparse dataset was simplified to 42 predictors of P. falciparum malaria infection and wealth rankings were produced for all homesteads. The 42 predictors make biological sense and are supported by previous studies. This systematic data-mining approach we used would make many large datasets more manageable and informative for decision-making processes and health policy prioritization
Fitting the integrated Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies
Fitting the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies is an almost
universally used technique that has matured significantly in the last decade.
Model predictions and fitting procedures have improved significantly over this
time, attempting to keep up with the vastly increased volume and quality of
available data. We review here the field of SED fitting, describing the
modelling of ultraviolet to infrared galaxy SEDs, the creation of
multiwavelength data sets, and the methods used to fit model SEDs to observed
galaxy data sets. We touch upon the achievements and challenges in the major
ingredients of SED fitting, with a special emphasis on describing the interplay
between the quality of the available data, the quality of the available models,
and the best fitting technique to use in order to obtain a realistic
measurement as well as realistic uncertainties. We conclude that SED fitting
can be used effectively to derive a range of physical properties of galaxies,
such as redshift, stellar masses, star formation rates, dust masses, and
metallicities, with care taken not to over-interpret the available data. Yet
there still exist many issues such as estimating the age of the oldest stars in
a galaxy, finer details ofdust properties and dust-star geometry, and the
influences of poorly understood, luminous stellar types and phases. The
challenge for the coming years will be to improve both the models and the
observational data sets to resolve these uncertainties. The present review will
be made available on an interactive, moderated web page (sedfitting.org), where
the community can access and change the text. The intention is to expand the
text and keep it up to date over the coming years.Comment: 54 pages, 26 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysics &
Space Scienc
Global Search for New Physics with 2.0/fb at CDF
Data collected in Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron are searched for
indications of new electroweak-scale physics. Rather than focusing on
particular new physics scenarios, CDF data are analyzed for discrepancies with
the standard model prediction. A model-independent approach (Vista) considers
gross features of the data, and is sensitive to new large cross-section
physics. Further sensitivity to new physics is provided by two additional
algorithms: a Bump Hunter searches invariant mass distributions for "bumps"
that could indicate resonant production of new particles; and the Sleuth
procedure scans for data excesses at large summed transverse momentum. This
combined global search for new physics in 2.0/fb of ppbar collisions at
sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV reveals no indication of physics beyond the standard model.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Final version which appeared in Physical Review D
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