Determining physiological reaction probabilities to noise events during sleep

Some of the activations that occur during sleep, e.g. awakening reactions, can be considered adverse effects of noise events (e.g., airplane overflights or train passings) during the night. The occurrence of such reactions is an important indicator of the sleep disturbing potential of the particular noise stimulus and it is often desired to exactly quantify that potential in terms of a probability. Awakenings are considered the strongest form of reaction to noise stimuli during sleep and are one of the most often adopted criteria in night time noise protection concepts. However, the correct determination of noise induced awakening probability has given rise to debate in the scientific community in recent years. Because during every night's sleep, spontaneous awakenings can occur at any time, it remains unknown in principle, whether a particular awakening observed during the presence of a noise stimulus was induced by that stimulus or emerged spontaneously. Nevertheless, correctly determining the awakening probability in question is key when it comes to forecasting noise effects during the night. This article introduces two definitions of reaction probability, discusses their advantages and disadvantages, and develops a model of the influence of the time window duration in which reactions of sleepers are screened on the calculated reaction probabilit

Toxicity of lunar dust

The formation, composition and physical properties of lunar dust are incompletely characterised with regard to human health. While the physical and chemical determinants of dust toxicity for materials such as asbestos, quartz, volcanic ashes and urban particulate matter have been the focus of substantial research efforts, lunar dust properties, and therefore lunar dust toxicity may differ substantially. In this contribution, past and ongoing work on dust toxicity is reviewed, and major knowledge gaps that prevent an accurate assessment of lunar dust toxicity are identified. Finally, a range of studies using ground-based, low-gravity, and in situ measurements is recommended to address the identified knowledge gaps. Because none of the curated lunar samples exist in a pristine state that preserves the surface reactive chemical aspects thought to be present on the lunar surface, studies using this material carry with them considerable uncertainty in terms of fidelity. As a consequence, in situ data on lunar dust properties will be required to provide ground truth for ground-based studies quantifying the toxicity of dust exposure and the associated health risks during future manned lunar missions.Comment: 62 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in Planetary and Space Scienc

Integrating institutional and behavioural measures of bribery

Bribery involves individuals exchanging material benefits for a service of a public institution. To understand the process of bribery we need to integrate measures of individual behaviour and institutional attributes rather than rely exclusively on surveys of individual perceptions and experience or macro-level corruption indexes national institutions. This paper integrates institutional and behavioural measures to show that where you live and who you are have independent influence on whether a person pays a bribe. The analysis of 76 nationwide Global Corruption Barometer surveys from six continents provides a date set in which both institutional and individual differences vary greatly. Multi-level multivariate logit analysis is used to test hypotheses about the influence of institutional context and individual contact with public services, socio-economic inequalities and roles, and conflicting behavioural and ethical norms. It finds that path-determined histories of early bureaucratization or colonialism have a major impact after controlling for individual differences. At the individual level, people who frequently make use of public services and perceive government as corrupt are more likely to pay bribes, while socio-economic inequality has no significant influence. While institutional history cannot be changed, changing the design of public services offers is something that contemporary governors could do to reduce the vulnerability of their citizens to bribery

The power of protest in the media: examining portrayals of climate activism in UK news

Over the last several years, the United Kingdom has seen a wave of environmental movements demanding action on the climate crisis. While aligned in their goals, the groups undertaking this activism often diverge on the question of tactics. One such divergence occurred in January 2023, when Extinction Rebellion (XR) declared “We Quit”, ending actions that were disruptive to the general public. Peer groups Just Stop Oil and Animal Rising continued disruptive actions, viewing them as the best way to gain media coverage for their causes. Despite the urgency of addressing climate change and the growing prominence of direct action in British life, little research has examined how the news media covers and reacts to different climate actions. News media plays a vital role in influencing the public’s perception of the climate crisis and “appropriate” responses. We assembled a unique dataset of British news coverage of climate actions over a 7 month period, covering both before and after XR’s “We Quit” statement. Our results reveal that conservative publications cover climate actions more unfavorably and more inaccurately than other publications. Legal actions are generally covered more favorably than illegal ones in both conservative and non-conservative outlets and receive more coverage. Actions that target industry attract more coverage than those that target other actors, while actions that target the public are covered more favorably than those that do not. These results contribute to the scholarly debates surrounding the interaction between social movements and news media, especially on how different strategies potentially influence the extent and affective nature of coverage. They have implications for strategies adopted by climate advocates, depending on whether their goal is merely to draw attention to an issue or if it is to generate positive coverage

Search for light bosons in decays of the 125 GeV Higgs boson in proton-proton collisions at root s=8 TeV

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Search for heavy gauge W ' bosons in events with an energetic lepton and large missing transverse momentum at root s=13TeV

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Search for narrow resonances in dilepton mass spectra in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV and combination with 8 TeV data

A search for narrow resonances in dielectron and dimuon invariant mass spectra has been performed using data obtained from proton–proton collisions at View the MathML sources=13 TeV collected with the CMS detector. The integrated luminosity for the dielectron sample is 2.7 fb−1 and for the dimuon sample 2.9 fb−1. The sensitivity of the search is increased by combining these data with a previously analyzed set of data obtained at View the MathML sources=8 TeV and corresponding to a luminosity of 20 fb−1. No evidence for non-standard-model physics is found, either in the 13 TeV data set alone, or in the combined data set. Upper limits on the product of production cross section and branching fraction have also been calculated in a model-independent manner to enable interpretation in models predicting a narrow dielectron or dimuon resonance structure. Limits are set on the masses of hypothetical particles that could appear in new-physics scenarios. For the View the MathML sourceZSSM′ particle, which arises in the sequential standard model, and for the superstring inspired View the MathML sourceZψ′ particle, 95% confidence level lower mass limits for the combined data sets and combined channels are found to be 3.37 and 2.82 TeV, respectively. The corresponding limits for the lightest Kaluza–Klein graviton arising in the Randall–Sundrum model of extra dimensions with coupling parameters 0.01 and 0.10 are 1.46 and 3.11 TeV, respectively. These results significantly exceed the limits based on the 8 TeV LHC data

Search for massive resonances decaying in to WW,WZ or ZZ bosons in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

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Measurement of differential cross sections for Higgs boson production in the diphoton decay channel in pp collisions at √s = 8 TeV

Artículo escrito por un elevado número de autores, solo se referencian el que aparece en primer lugar, el nombre del grupo de colaboración, si le hubiere, y los autores pertenecientes a la UAMA measurement is presented of differential cross sections for Higgs boson (H) production in pp collisions at √s = 8TeV. The analysis exploits the H→γγ decay in data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7fb-1 collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The cross section is measured as a function of the kinematic properties of the diphoton system and of the associated jets. Results corrected for detector effects are compared with predictions at next-to-leading order and next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics, as well as with predictions beyond the standard model. For isolated photons with pseudorapidities |η|1/3 and >1/4, the total fiducial cross section is 32±10fbWe acknowledge the enduring support for the construction and operation of the LHC and the CMS detector provided by the following funding agencies: the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy and the Austrian Science Fund; the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, and Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek; the Brazilian Funding Agencies (CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ, and FAPESP); the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science; CERN; the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ministry of Science and Technology, and National Natural Science Foundation of China; the Colombian Funding Agency (COLCIENCIAS); the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport, and the Croatian Science Foundation; the Research Promotion Foundation, Cyprus; the Ministry of Education and Research, Estonian Research Council via IUT23-4 and IUT23- 6 and European Regional Development Fund, Estonia; the Academy of Finland, Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and Helsinki Institute of Physics; the Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules/CNRS, and Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives/CEA, France; the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren, Germany; the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, Greece; the National Scientific Research Foundation, and National Innovation Office, Hungary; the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology, India; the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Iran; the Science Foundation, Ireland; the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Italy; the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, and National Research Foundation (NRF), Republic of Korea; the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; the Ministry of Education, and University of Malaya (Malaysia); the Mexican Funding Agencies (CINVESTAV, CONACYT, SEP, and UASLP-FAI); the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, New Zealand; the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission; the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the National Science Centre, Poland; the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal; JINR, Dubna; the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Federal Agency of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation, Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Serbia; the Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain; the Swiss Funding Agencies (ETH Board, ETH Zurich, PSI, SNF, UniZH, Canton Zurich, and SER); the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taipei; the Thailand Center of Excellence in Physics, the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology of Thailand, Special Task Force for Activating Research and the National Science and Technology Development Agency of Thailand; the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey, and Turkish Atomic Energy Authority; the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and State Fund for Fundamental Researches, Ukraine; the Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK; the US Department of Energy, and the US National Science Foundation. Individuals have received support from the Marie-Curie program and the European Research Council and EPLANET(European Union); the Leventis Foundation; the A. P. Sloan Foundation; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office; the Fonds pour la Formation à la Recherche dans l’Industrie et dans l’Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium); the Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWT-Belgium); the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) of the Czech Republic; the Council of Science and Industrial Research, India; the HOMING PLUS program of the Foun-dation for Polish Science, cofinanced from European Union, Regional Development Fund; the OPUS program of the National Science Center (Poland); the Compagnia di San Paolo (Torino); the Consorzio per la Fisica (Trieste); MIUR project 20108T4XTM (Italy); the Thalis and Aristeia programs cofinanced by EU-ESF and the Greek NSRF; the National PrioritiesResearch Program by QatarNationalResearch Fund; the Rachadapisek Sompot Fund for Postdoctoral Fellowship, Chulalongkorn University (Thailand); and the Welch Foundation, contract C-184

Mechanical stability of the CMS strip tracker measured with a laser alignment system

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