The growth, chemical, structural, mechanical, and optical properties of oxide thin films deposited by plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) are strongly influenced by the average-bias ...voltage applied during the reaction step of surface functional groups with oxygen plasma species. Here, this effect is investigated thoroughly for SiO
2
deposited in two different PEALD tools at average-bias voltages up to −300 V. Already at a very low average-bias voltage (< −10 V), the SiO
2
films have significantly lower water content than films grown without biasing together with the formation of denser films having a higher refractive index and nearly stoichiometric composition. Substrate biasing during PEALD also enables control of mechanical stress. The experimental findings are supported by density functional theory and atomistic simulations. They demonstrate that the application of an electric field during the plasma step results in an increased energy transfer between energetic ions and the surface, directly influencing relevant surface reactions. Applying an electric field during the PEALD process leads to SiO
2
thin films with significantly improved properties comparable to films grown by ion beam sputtering.
PEALD of thin SiO
2
films assisted by bias is a powerful technique to tailor their physical and chemical properties.
The compatibility of
W
-boson mass measurements performed by the ATLAS, LHCb, CDF, and D0 experiments is studied using a coherent framework with theory uncertainty correlations. The measurements are ...combined using a number of recent sets of parton distribution functions (PDF), and are further combined with the average value of measurements from the Large Electron–Positron collider. The considered PDF sets generally have a low compatibility with a suite of global rapidity-sensitive Drell–Yan measurements. The most compatible set is CT18 due to its larger uncertainties. A combination of all
m
W
measurements yields a value of
m
W
=
80
,
394.6
±
11.5
MeV with the CT18 set, but has a probability of compatibility of 0.5% and is therefore disfavoured. Combinations are performed removing each measurement individually, and a 91% probability of compatibility is obtained when the CDF measurement is removed. The corresponding value of the
W
boson mass is
80
,
369.2
±
13.3
MeV, which differs by
3.6
σ
from the CDF value determined using the same PDF set.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
ZFITTER is a Fortran program for the calculation of fermion pair production and radiative corrections at high energy
e
+
e
−
colliders; it is also suitable for other applications where electroweak ...radiative corrections appear.
ZFITTER is based on a semi-analytical approach to the calculation of radiative corrections in the Standard Model. We present a summary of new features of the
ZFITTER program version 6.42 compared to version 6.21. The most important additions are: (i) some higher-order QED corrections to fermion pair production, (ii) electroweak one-loop corrections to atomic parity violation, (iii) electroweak one-loop corrections to
ν
¯
e
ν
e
production, (iv) electroweak two-loop corrections to the
W boson mass and the effective weak mixing angle.
Title of program:
ZFITTER version 6.42 (18 May 2005)
Catalogue identifier:ADMJ_v2_0
Program summary URL:
http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/ADMJ_v2_0
Authors of original program: D. Bardin, P. Christova, M. Jack, L. Kalinovskaya, A. Olshevski, S. Riemann, T. Riemann
Program obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University of Belfast, N. Ireland
Reference for
ZFITTER version 6.21:
D. Bardin et al., Comput. Phys. Comm. 133 (2001) 229–395
Operating system:
UNIX/LINUX, program tested under, e.g.,
HP-UX and
PC/Linux
Programming language used:
FORTRAN 77
High speed storage required: <2 MB
No. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.:29 164
No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.:185 824
Distribution format:tar.gz
Does the new version supersede the previous version:Yes
Nature of the physical problem: Fermion pair production is an important reaction for precision tests of the Standard Model, at LEP/SLC and future linear colliders at higher energies. For this purpose, QED, electroweak and QCD radiative corrections have to be calculated with high precision, including higher order effects. Multi parameter fits used to extract model parameters from experimental measurements require a program of sufficient flexibility and high calculational speed.
ZFITTER combines these two aspects by employing analytical integrations of matrix elements and at most one-dimensional numerical integration, as well as a variety of flags defining the physics content used. The calculated predictions are typically at the per mille precision level, sometimes better.
Method of solution: Numerical integration of analytical formulae.
Reasons for new version:Addition of substantial material into the code: covering of more reactions; more accurate description of existing reactions.
Summary of revisions:New parts for predicting atomic parity violation and for neutrino pair production; more accurate higher order QED corrections for fermion pair production; two-loop corrections to the predictions of
W mass and of the weak mixing angle.
Restrictions on the complexity of the problem: Fermion pair production is described below the top quark pair production threshold. Photonic corrections are taken into account with simple cuts on photon energy, or the energies and acollinearity of the two fermions, and
one fermion production angle. The treatment of Bhabha scattering is less advanced.
Typical running time: On a Pentium IV PC installation (2.8 GHz) using g77 under Linux 2.4.21, approximately 23 s are needed to run the standard test of subroutine
ZFTEST. This result is for a
default/recommended setting of the input parameters, with
all corrections in the Standard Model switched
on.
ZFTEST computes 12 cross-sections and cross-section asymmetries for 8 energies with 5 interfaces, i.e. about 360 cross-sections in 23 s.
This biennial
Review summarizes much of particle physics. Using data from previous editions, plus 2778 new measurements from 645 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge ...bosons, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We also summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as Higgs bosons, heavy neutrinos, and supersymmetric particles. All the particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We also give numerous tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as the Standard Model, particle detectors, probability, and statistics. Among the 108 reviews are many that are new or heavily revised including those on CKM quark-mixing matrix,
V
ud
&
V
us
,
V
cb
&
V
ub
, top quark, muon anomalous magnetic moment, extra dimensions, particle detectors, cosmic background radiation, dark matter, cosmological parameters, and big bang cosmology.
A booklet is available containing the Summary Tables and abbreviated versions of some of the other sections of this full
Review. All tables, listings, and reviews (and errata) are also available on the Particle Data Group website:
http://pdg.lbl.gov.
The effect of grazers on the diversity, distribution, and composition of their principal food source has rarely been described for the high intertidal zone of rocky shores, a model system for ...studying the potential effects of climate change. Along rocky, wave-swept shores in central California, the microphytobenthos (MPB) supports diverse assemblages of limpets and littorine snails, which, at current benign temperatures, could potentially partition food resources in a complementary fashion, thereby enhancing secondary productivity. Two limpet species in particular, Lottia scabra and L. austrodigitalis, may partition components of the MPB, and are likely to affect the composition of the MPB on which they graze. In this study, we describe the composition, nutritional value (C:N ratio), and fluorescence (an index of chlorophyll density) of ungrazed, L. scabra grazed and L. austrodigitalis-grazed MPB, each as a function of temperature. Fluorescence decreased with increased average daily maximum temperature for ungrazed MPB, but temperature had no discernible effects on either fluorescence or the composition of the MPB of grazed assemblages. L. austrodigitalis and L. scabra did not partition the MPB, and did not exhibit complementarity. Both species exhibited an ordered grazing scheme, in which limpets grazed down certain components of the MPB before others, and grazing increased the C:N ratio of the MPB, decreasing its nutritional value. Taken together, these results suggest that L. austrodigitalis and L. scabra may experience increased competition as warming temperatures reduce the available MPB.
Sequence-based methods for phylogenetic reconstruction from (nucleic acid) sequence data are notoriously plagued by two effects: homoplasies and alignment errors. Large evolutionary distances imply a ...large number of homoplastic sites. As most protein-coding genes show dramatic variations in substitution rates that are not uncorrelated across the sequence, this often leads to a patchwork pattern of (i) phylogenetically informative and (ii) effectively randomized regions. In highly variable regions, furthermore, alignment errors accumulate resulting in sometimes misleading signals in phylogenetic reconstruction.
We present here a method that, based on assessing the distribution of character states along a cyclic ordering of the taxa, allows the identification of phylogenetically uninformative homoplastic sites in a multiple sequence alignment. Removal of these sites appears to improve the performance of phylogenetic reconstruction algorithms as measured by various indices of "tree quality". In particular, we obtain more stable trees due to the exclusion of phylogenetically incompatible sites that most likely represent strongly randomized characters.
The computer program noisy implements this approach. It can be employed to improving phylogenetic reconstruction capability with quite a considerable success rate whenever (1) the average bootstrap support obtained from the original alignment is low, and (2) there are sufficiently many taxa in the data set - at least, say, 12 to 15 taxa. The software can be obtained under the GNU Public License from http://www.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/Software/noisy/.
•Prescription opioid overdose is concentrated in economically disadvantaged areas.•Economic stress plays a larger role in heroin overdoses in urban than rural areas.•Alternative contextual factors ...may be driving heroin overdoses in rural areas.
Prescription opioid overdose (POD) and heroin overdose (HOD) rates have quadrupled since 1999. Community-level socioeconomic characteristics are associated with opioid overdoses, but whether this varies by urbanicity is unknown.
In this serial cross-sectional study of zip codes in 17 states, 2002–2014 (n = 145,241 space-time units), we used hierarchical Bayesian Poisson space-time models to analyze the association between zip code-level socioeconomic features (poverty, unemployment, educational attainment, and income) and counts of POD or HOD hospital discharges. We tested multiplicative interactions between each socioeconomic feature and zip code urbanicity measured with Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes.
Percent in poverty and of adults with ≤ high school education were associated with higher POD rates (Rate Ratio RR, 5% poverty: 1.07 95% credible interval: 1.06–1.07; 5% low education: 1.02 1.02–1.03), while median household income was associated with lower rates (RR, $10,000: 0.88 0.87–0.89). Urbanicity modified the association between socioeconomic features and HOD. Poverty and unemployment were associated with increased HOD in metropolitan areas (RR, 5% poverty: 1.12 1.11–1.13; 5% unemployment: 1.04 1.02–1.05), and median household income was associated with decreased HOD (RR, $10,000: 0.88 0.87–0.90). In rural areas, low educational attainment alone was associated with HOD (RR, 5%: 1.09 1.02–1.16).
Regardless of urbanicity, elevated rates of POD were found in more economically disadvantaged zip codes. Economic disadvantage played a larger role in HOD in urban than rural areas, suggesting rural HOD rates may have alternative drivers. Identifying social determinants of opioid overdoses is particularly important for creating effective population-level interventions.
This study examined whether perceived neighborhood cohesion (the extent to which neighbors trust and count on one another) buffers against the mental health effects of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
The ...XXX University National COVID-19 and Mental Health Study surveyed US adults (N = 3965; M age = 39 years), measuring depressive symptoms, staying home more during than before the 2020 pandemic, and perceived neighborhood cohesion.
A series of linear regressions indicated that perceiving one's neighborhood as more cohesive was not only associated with fewer depressive symptoms, but also attenuated the relationship between spending more time at home during the pandemic and depressive symptoms. These relationships persisted even after taking into account several individual-level sociodemographic characteristics as well as multiple contextual features, i.e., median household income, population density, and racial/ethnic diversity of the zip codes in which participants resided.
Neighborhood cohesion may be leveraged to mitigate pandemic impacts on depressive symptoms.
•Sheltering at home during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown linked to depressive symptoms.•Perceiving one's neighborhood as cohesive is related to fewer depressive symptoms.•Perceived neighborhood cohesion attenuated lockdown's impact on mental health.
Combined electroweak analysis Grünewald, M W
Journal of physics. Conference series,
05/2008, Letnik:
110, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Recent developments in the measurement of precision electroweak measurements are summarised, notably new results on the mass of the top quark and mass and width of the W boson. Predictions of the ...Standard Model are compared to the experimental results which are used to constrain the input parameters of the Standard Model, in particular the mass of the Higgs boson. The agreement between measurements and expectations from theory is discussed.
Recently, it was reported that nitric oxide (NO) directly controls intracellular iron metabolism by activating iron regulatory protein (IRP), a cytoplasmic protein that regulates ferritin ...translation. To determine whether intracellular iron levels themselves affect NO synthase (NOS), we studied the effect of iron on cytokine-inducible NOS activity and mRNA expression in the murine macrophage cell line J774A.1. We show here that NOS activity is decreased by about 50% in homogenates obtained from cells treated with interferon gamma plus lipopolysaccharide (IFN-gamma/LPS) in the presence of 50 microM ferric iron Fe(3+) as compared with extracts from cells treated with IFN-gamma/LPS alone. Conversely, addition of the iron chelator desferrioxamine (100 microM) at the time of stimulation with IFN-gamma/LPS increases NOS activity up to 2.5-fold in J774 cells. These effects of changing the cellular iron state cannot be attributed to a general alteration of the IFN-gamma/LPS signal, since IFN-gamma/LPS-mediated major histocompatibility complex class II antigen expression is unaffected. Furthermore, neither was the intracellular availability of the NOS cofactor tetrahydrobiopterin altered by treatment with Fe(3+) or desferrioxamine, nor do these compounds interfere with the activity of the hemoprotein NOS in vitro. We demonstrate that the mRNA levels for NOS are profoundly increased by treatment with desferrioxamine and reduced by Fe(3+). The half-life of NOS mRNA appeared not to be significantly altered by administration of ferric ion, and NOS mRNA stability was only slightly prolonged by desferrioxamine treatment. Nuclear run-off experiments demonstrate that nuclear transcription of cytokine-inducible NOS mRNA is strongly increased by desferrioxamine whereas it is decreased by Fe(3+). Thus, this transcriptional response appears to account quantitatively for the changes in enzyme activity. Our results suggest the existence of a regulatory loop between iron metabolism and the NO/NOS pathway.
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