Future Tense

Nature - Humans - Past - Future - Presence - Absence These familiar terms are the stepping stones of thought that went into my thesis work. While some may pair these words together as dichotomies, I concentrate on the balancing act that exists between them. Since the first Industrial Revolution beginning in the mid-18th century, human activities have significantly altered the rest of the natural world. Other species have evolved in reaction to circumstances produced by human actions. Through my own observations of nature and research into how humans have impacted nature’s evolution, speculation began to swell as to what does the future look like? My thesis work presents found objects from human life intermingled with my own ceramic pieces that are inspired by nature but have elements of peculiarity. The relics represent a human existence and the ceramic components act as a symbol of other forms of life. These familiar, yet odd growth forms imply futurity, a continued existence. This futurity is stemming from a human element that is clearly from the past, combined with this altered view of nature. Are humans of the past too? Are these growths something of the future? At a fundamental level, the work I make as an artist is intended to imply that life will continue in some form, with or without us. My work evokes a glimpse of how things may evolve in the future in order to stress the importance of mindful consideration of how the decisions we make impact the environment

Measurement of the single top quark and antiquark production cross sections in the tt channel and their ratio at 13 TeV

The electroweak production in the $t$ channel is the most dominant production mode of single top quarks at the LHC. The ratio of the cross sections of the top quark and antiquark production provides an insight into the inner structure of the proton and is therefore suitable to study different parton distribution function predictions. This process can also be used for a direct measurement of the absolute value of the CKM matrix element $V_\mathrm{tb}$ . The most recent measurement of the CMS Collaboration is presented with the 2016 data set of the LHC Run II at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. Events with one muon or one electron are considered in this analysis. Lepton-flavor dependent multivariate discriminators are applied to separate signal from background events.Comment: proceedings for talk and poster presented at the 11th International Workshop on Top Quark Physics, Bad Neuenahr, Germany, September 16-21, 201