To characterize bacterial populations and their activities within a microbial fuel cell (MFC), using cultivation-independent and cultivation approaches. Electron microscopic observations showed that ...the fuel cell electrode had a microbial biofilm attached to its surface with loosely associated microbial clumps. Bacterial 16S rRNA gene libraries were constructed and analysed from each of four compartments within the fuel cell: the planktonic community; the membrane biofilm; bacterial clumps (BC) and the anode biofilm. Results showed that the bacterial community structure varied significantly between these compartments. It was observed that Gammaproteobacteria phylotypes were present at higher numbers within libraries from the BC and electrode biofilm compared with other parts of the fuel cell. Community structure of the MFC determined by analyses of bacterial 16S rRNA gene libraries and anaerobic cultivation showed excellent agreement with community profiles from denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis. Members of the family Enterobacteriaceae, such as Klebsiella sp. and Enterobacter sp. and other Gammaproteobacteria with Fe(III)-reducing and electrochemical activity had a significant potential for energy generation in this system. This study has shown that electrochemically active bacteria can be enriched using an electrochemical fuel cell.
The standard model of particle physics contains parameters-such as particle masses-whose origins are still unknown and which cannot be predicted, but whose values are constrained through their ...interactions. In particular, the masses of the top quark (Mt) and W boson (MW) constrain the mass of the long-hypothesized, but thus far not observed, Higgs boson. A precise measurement of Mt can therefore indicate where to look for the Higgs, and indeed whether the hypothesis of a standard model Higgs is consistent with experimental data. As top quarks are produced in pairs and decay in only about 10-24 s into various final states, reconstructing their masses from their decay products is very challenging. Here we report a technique that extracts more information from each top-quark event and yields a greatly improved precision (of ± 5.3 GeV/c2) when compared to previous measurements. When our new result is combined with our published measurement in a complementary decay mode and with the only other measurements available, the new world average for Mt becomes 178.0 ± 4.3 GeV/c2. As a result, the most likely Higgs mass increases from the experimentally excluded value of 96 to 117 GeV/c2, which is beyond current experimental sensitivity. The upper limit on the Higgs mass at the 95% confidence level is raised from 219 to 251 GeV/c2.
b-Jet identification in the D0 experiment Adams, M.; Alton, A.; Askew, A. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
2010, Letnik:
620, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Algorithms distinguishing jets originating from b quarks from other jet flavors are important tools in the physics program of the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron
p
p
¯
collider. This article ...describes the methods that have been used to identify b-quark jets, exploiting in particular the long lifetimes of b-flavored hadrons, and the calibration of the performance of these algorithms based on collider data.
We present a search for the production of a heavy gauge boson, W′, that decays to third-generation quarks, by D0 Collaboration in pp¯ collisions at s=1.96 TeV. We set 95% confidence level upper ...limits on the production cross section times branching fraction. For the first time, we set limits for arbitrary combinations of left- and right-handed couplings of the W′ boson to fermions. For couplings with the same strength as for the standard model W boson, we set the following limits, assuming that there are right-handed neutrinos νR for all three generations with M(W′)>m(νR): M(W′)>863 GeV for purely left-handed couplings, M(W′)>885 GeV for purely right-handed couplings, and M(W′)>916 GeV if both left- and right-handed couplings are present. The limit for right-handed couplings improves for M(W′)<m(νR) to M(W′)>890 GeV.
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