Predicting neutron production from cosmic-ray muons
Fast neutrons from cosmic-ray muons are an important background to underground low-energy experiments. The estimate of such a background is often hampered by the difficulty of measuring and calculating neutron production with sufficient accuracy. Indeed substantial disagreement exists between the different analytical calculations performed so far, while data reported by different experiments are not always consistent. We discuss a new unified approach to estimate the neutron yield, the energy spectrum, the multiplicity, and the angular distribution from cosmic muons using the Monte Carlo simulation package FLUKA and show that it gives a good description of most of the existing measurements once the appropriate corrections have been applied.

title: Inclusive J production in Z0 decays
abstract: Inclusive J production in Z0 decays is observed via the leptonic decay mode J → l+l− (l = e,μ). We measure the branching ratio Br(Z0 → J + X) = (4.1 ± 0.7 (stat.) ± 0.3 (sys.)) × 10−3. We have calculated the fraction of the J mesons from b-hadron decay and find a branching ratio of Br(b → J + X)= (1.3±0.2(stat.)±0.2(sys.)) × 10−2. We determine the average fractional energy of bottom hadrons 〈XE > = 0.70±0.03 (stat.)+0.02−0.01 (sys.) using the momentum spectrum of the J mesons. From a study of the angle between the J and the most energetic jet, we set an upper limit on the branching ratio Br ( Z 0 → q q g ∗ ; g ∗ → J + X ) −4 at 90% confidence level.

title: TUBE CHAMBERS FOR THE MUON FILTER OF THE L3 DETECTOR

title: Physics of tau and charm
abstract: The physics of tau and charm started in early 70's after J/$\psi$ and $\tau$ were discovered. Since then several dedicated accelerators and experiments were built with increasing luminosities and studies on light hadron spectroscopy, charmonium, electroweak and QCD were never interupted. New interests and surprises are not rare in this area. With the newly built BEPCII/BESIII, an even brighter future is foreseen.

title: The mass production and quality control of RPCs for the Daya Bay experiment
abstract: Resistive plate chambers will be used in the Daya Bay reactor neutrino experiment to help veto backgrounds created by cosmic-ray muons. The mass production of RPCs began in 2008 and by the end of 2009, 1600 RPCs (3500 m 2 ) had been produced and tested. This paper describes the production and quality control procedures, and quality assurance using cosmic-ray testing.

title: A water Cherenkov calorimeter for long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments
abstract: We propose a water-based large homogeneous calorimeter as the next generation neutrino detector for ν factories and/or conventional ν beams. The Cherenkov light produced in water is sufficient to have good energy resolution, and the pattern recognition is realized by a modular water tank structure. Monte Carlo simulations show that the detector performance is excellent for identifying neutrino CC events while rejecting backgrounds.

title: Transverse momentum spectra of charged particles in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 900 GeV with ALICE at the LHC
abstract: The inclusive charged particle transverse momentum distribution is measured in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 900$~GeV at the LHC using the ALICE detector. The measurement is performed in the central pseudorapidity region $(|\eta|_{\rm INEL}=0.483\pm0.001$~(stat.)~$\pm0.007$~(syst.)~GeV/$c$ and $\left_{\rm NSD}=0.489\pm0.001$~(stat.)~$\pm0.007$~(syst.)~GeV/$c$, respectively. The data exhibit a slightly larger $\left$ than measurements in wider pseudorapidity intervals. The results are compared to simulations with the Monte Carlo event generators PYTHIA and PHOJET

title: Testing quantum gravity effects with latest CMB observations
abstract: Inspired by quantum gravitational physics, the approach of non-commutative (NC) phase space leads to a modified dispersion relation of gravitational waves. This feature, if applied to the very early universe, gives rise to a modified power spectrum of primordial tensor perturbations with a suppression of power on large scales. We confront this phenomenon with the BICEP2 and Planck experiments, and show that inflation with the modified dispersion relation can simultaneously fit the observations better than the standard inflationary paradigm. In particular, the numerical result implies that with the latest cosmological microwave background (CMB) observations, a quantum gravity modified power spectrum of primordial tensor modes is preferred at a statistical significance of more than 3 σ compared with the minimal model. Our study indicates that the potential tension between the BICEP2 and Planck data may be resolved by quantum gravity effects.

title: Different evolutionary stages in the massive star-forming region S255 complex
abstract: Massive stars form in clusters, and they are often found in different evolutionary stages located close to each other. To understand evolutionary and environmental effects during the formation of high-mass stars, we observed three regions of massive star formation at different evolutionary stages, and all are found that in the same natal molecular cloud.  The three regions, S255IR, S255N, and S255S, were observed at 1.3 mm with the submillimeter array (SMA), and follow-up short spacing information was obtained with the IRAM 30 m telescope. Near infrared (NIR) H + K-band spectra and continuum observations were taken for S255IR with VLT-SINFONI to study the different stellar populations in this region.  This combination of millimeter (mm) and near infrared data allow us to characterize different stellar populations within the young forming cluster in detail. While we find multiple mm continuum sources toward all regions, their outflow, disk, and chemical properties vary considerably. The most evolved source S255IR exhibits a collimated bipolar outflow visible in CO and H 2 emission, and the outflows from the youngest region S255S are still small and fairly confined in the regions of the mm continuum peaks. Also the chemistry toward S255IR is the most evolved, exhibiting strong emission from complex molecules, while much fewer molecular lines are detected in S255N, and in S255S we detect only CO isotopologues and SO lines. Also, rotational structures are found toward S255N and S255IR. Furthermore, a comparison of the NIR SINFONI and mm data from S255IR clearly reveal two different (proto) stellar populations with an estimated age difference of approximately 1 Myr.  A multiwavelength spectroscopy and mapping study reveals different evolutionary phases of the star formation regions. We propose the triggered outside-in collapse star formation scenario for the bigger picture and the fragmentation scenario for S255IR.

title: A possible mechanism for the mass ratio limitation in early type galaxies
abstract: There is an interesting correlation between the central objects and their host galaxies in recent high resolution HST photometry of early type galaxies and Near-IR images of nearby quasar hosts. It has been shown that a) the hosts of these very luminous quasars are likely to be early type galaxies and that b) the mass ratio of central black holes (BHs) and their host spheroidal components (M-bh/M-spheroid) is similar to 0.002 within a factor of three. Using the hierarchical galaxy evolution scheme for the formation of early-type galaxies, we present here a general viscous accretion disk model to trace the star formation and central engine evolution before and after mergers. In our model, starbursts and AGN coexist; these two activities compete for the gas supply, interact with each other, probably feed back on each other and lock into a final status. They thus constrain the ratio of central black hole mass and its host spheroidal mass to a universal value of order 10(-3).

title: The jet-disk symbiosis model for gamma ray bursts: cosmic ray and neutrino background contribution
abstract: The relation between the cosmological evolution of the jet-disk symbiosis model for GRBs and the cosmic rays energy distribution is presented. We used two different Star Formation Rates (SFR) as a function of redshift and a Luminosity Function (LF) distribution to obtain the distribution in fluence of GRBs in our model and compare it with the data. We show a good agreement between the fluence distribution we obtain and the corrected data for the 4B BATSE catalogue. The results we obtain are generally valid for models that use jet physics to explain GRB properties.