Ultrafine ash aerosols from coal combustion: Characterization and health effects ☆
Ultrafine coal fly-ash particles, defined here as those with diameters less than 0.5 μm, typically comprise less than 1% of the total fly-ash mass. These particles are formed primarily through ash vaporization, nucleation, and coagulation/condensation mechanisms, which lead to compositions notably different compared to other fine or coarse particle fractions formed by fragmentation. Whereas previous studies have focused on health effects of particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters less than 2.5 μm (PM 2.5 ) (including both vaporization and fragmentation modes), this paper reports results of interdisciplinary research focused on both characterization and health effects of primary ultrafine coal ash aerosols alone. Ultrafine, fine, and coarse ash particles were segregated and collected from a coal burned in a 20 kW laboratory combustor and two additional coals burned in an externally heated drop tube furnace. Extracted samples from both combustors were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WD-XRF) spectroscopy, Mossbauer spectroscopy, and X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) spectroscopy. Pulmonary inflammation was characterized by albumin concentrations in mouse lung lavage fluid after instillation of collected particles in saline solutions and a single direct inhalation exposure. Results indicate that coal ultrafine ash sometimes, but not always, contains significant amounts of carbon, probably soot originating from coal tar volatiles, depending on coal type and combustion device. Surprisingly, XAFS results revealed the presence of chromium and thiophenic sulfur in the ultrafine ash particles. Although the single direct inhalation study failed to reveal significant health effects, the instillation results suggested potential lung injury, the severity of which could be correlated with the carbon (soot) content of the ultrafines. Further, this increased toxicity is consistent with theories in which the presence of carbon mediates transition metal (i.e., Fe) complexes, as revealed in this work by TEM and XAFS spectroscopy, promoting reactive oxygen species, oxidation–reduction cycling, and oxidative stress.

title: Radio pulses and the detection of large air showers

title: ABC Effect in Basic Double-Pionic Fusion --- Observation of a new resonance?
abstract: P. Adlarson, C. Adolph, W. Augustyniak, V. Baru, 5 M. Bashkanov, F.S. Bergmann, M. Berłowski, H. Bhatt, K.–T. Brinkmann, M. Büscher, 11 H. Calén, H. Clement, D. Coderre, 11, 12 E. Czerwiński, ∗ E. Doroshkevich, C. Ekström, R. Engels, 11 W. Erven, 11 W. Eyrich, P. Fedorets, 5 K. Föhl, K. Fransson, F. Goldenbaum, 11 P. Goslawski, K. Grigoryev, 11, 17 V. Grishina, C.–O. Gullström, J. Hampe, 11, 18 C. Hanhart, 11, 19 L. Heijkenskjöld, V. Hejny, 11 F. Hinterberger, M. Hodana, 11, 13 B. Höistad, M. Jacewicz, M. Janusz, A. Jany, B.R. Jany, L. Jarczyk, J. Jaus, T. Johansson, B. Kamys, G. Kemmerling, 11 O. Khakimova, A. Khoukaz, S. Kistryn, J. Klaja, 11, 13 H. Kleines, 11 B. Kłos, F. Kren, W. Krzemień, P. Kulessa, S. Kullander, A. Kupść, K. Lalwani, B. Lorentz, 11 A. Magiera, R. Maier, 11 P. Marciniewski, B. Mariański, M. Mikirtychiants, 11, 17 P. Moskal, H.–P. Morsch, B.K. Nandi, H. Ohm, 11 A. Passfeld, C. Pauly, 11, † E. Perez del Rio, Y. Petukhov, N. Piskunov, P. Pluciński, P. Podkopał, A. Povtoreyko, D. Prasuhn, 11 A. Pricking, 10 K. Pysz, T. Rausmann, C.F. Redmer, J. Ritman, 11, 12 A. Roy, R.J.M.Y. Ruber, Z. Rudy, S. Schadmand, 11 A. Schmidt, W. Schroeder, T. Sefzick, 11 V. Serdyuk, 11, 24 N. Shah, M. Siemaszko, R. Siudak, T. Skorodko, M. Skurzok, J. Smyrski, V. Sopov, R. Stassen, 11 J. Stepaniak, G. Sterzenbach, 11 H. Stockhorst, 11 H. Ströher, 11 A. Szczurek, A. Täschner, T. Tolba, 11 A. Trzciński, R. Varma, P. Vlasov, G.J. Wagner, W. Węglorz, A. Winnemöller, A. Wirzba, 11, 19 M. Wolke, A. Wrońska, P. Wüstner, 11 P. Wurm, 11 L. Yurev, 11, 24 J. Zabierowski, M.J. Zieliński, W. Zipper, J. Złomańczuk, and P. Żuprański

title: Elliptic flow of non-photonic electrons in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = $ 200, 62.4 and 39 GeV
abstract: We present the measurements of elliptic flow ($v_2$) of non-photonic electrons (NPE) by the STAR experiment using 2- and 4-particle correlations, $v_2${2} and $v_2${4}, and the event plane method in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV, and $v_2${2} at 62.4 and 39 GeV. $v_2${2} and $v_2${4} are non-zero at low and intermediate transverse momentum ($p_T$) at 200 GeV, and $v_2${2} is consistent with zero at low $p_T$ at other energies. For Au+Au collisions at $p_T<1$ GeV/c, there is a statistically significant difference between $v_2${2} at 200 GeV and $v_2${2} at the two lower beam energies.

title: Precision Measurement of the Longitudinal Double-Spin Asymmetry for Inclusive Jet Production in Polarized Proton Collisions at sqrt[s]=200  GeV.
abstract: We report a new measurement of the midrapidity inclusive jet longitudinal double-spin asymmetry, A_{LL}, in polarized pp collisions at center-of-mass energy sqrt[s]=200  GeV. The STAR data place stringent constraints on polarized parton distribution functions extracted at next-to-leading order from global analyses of inclusive deep-inelastic scattering (DIS), semi-inclusive DIS, and RHIC pp data. The measured asymmetries provide evidence at the 3σ level for positive gluon polarization in the Bjorken-x region x>0.05.

title: Study of hyperon-hyperon correlations and search for $H$-dibaryon using STAR detector at RHIC
abstract: High yield of strange particle production per central collision in nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC and high statistics data set from STAR experiment allow us to measure \Lambda\Lambda correlations. The \Lambda\Lambda correlation measurement is also closely related to a possible six-quark state H-dibaryon, which is yet to be observed experimentally. The first measurement of \Lambda\Lambda correlations in Au+Au collisions for \sqrt{s_{NN}}= 39, 62.4 and 200 GeV and search for H-dibaryon with its weak decay \Lambda p\pi in Au+Au collisions for \sqrt{s_{NN}}= 200 GeV using the STAR experiment at RHIC are presented here.

title: Light Dark Matter and the Electroweak Phase Transition in the NMSSM
abstract: We analyze the stability of the vacuum and the electroweak phase transition in the NMSSM close to the Peccei-Quinn symmetry limit. This limit contains light Dark Matter (DM) particles with a mass signicantly smaller than the weak scale and also light CP-even and CP-odd Higgs bosons. Such light particles lead to a consistent relic density and facilitate a large spin-independent direct DM detection cross section, that may accommodate the recently reported signatures at the DAMA and CoGeNT experiments. Studying the one-loop eective potential at nite temperature, we show that when the lightest CP-even Higgs mass is of the order of a few GeV, the electroweak phase transition tends to become rst order and strong. The inverse relationship between the direct-detection cross-section and the lightest CP-even Higgs mass implies that a cross-section of the order of 10 41 cm 2 is correlated with a strong rst order phase transition.

title: Collider phenomenology of gauge-Higgs unification scenarios in warped extra dimensions
abstract: We compute the couplings of the zero modes and first excited states of gluons, W's, Z gauge bosons, as well as the Higgs, to the zero modes and first excited states of the third generation quarks, in a Randall-Sundrum Gauge-Higgs unification scenario based on a bulk SO(5)xU(1){sub X} gauge symmetry, with gauge and fermion fields propagating in the bulk. Using the parameter space consistent with electroweak precision tests and radiative electroweak symmetry breaking, we study numerically the dependence of these couplings on the parameters of our model. Furthermore, after emphasizing the presence of light excited states of the top quark, which couple strongly to the Kaluza-Klein gauge bosons, the associated collider phenomenology is analyzed. In particular, we concentrate on the possible detection of the first excited state of the top, t{sup 1}, which tends to have a higher mass than the ones accessible via regular QCD production processes. We stress that the detection of these particles is still possible due to an increase in the pair production of t{sup 1} induced by the first excited state of the gluon, G{sup 1}.

title: Collision and Symmetry Breaking in the Transition to Strange Nonchaotic Attractors
abstract: Strange nonchaotic attractors (SNAs) can be created due to the collision of an invariant curve with itself. This novel "homoclinic" transition to SNAs occurs in quasiperiodically driven maps which derive from the discrete Schrodinger equation for a particle in a quasiperiodic potential. In the classical dynamics, there is a transition from torus attractors to SNAs, which, in the quantum system, is manifest as the localization transition. This equivalence provides new insight into a variety of properties of SNAs, including its fractal measure. Further, there is a symmetry breaking associated with the creation of SNAs which rigorously shows that the Lyapunov exponent is nonpositive. We show that these characteristics associated with the appearance of SNA are robust and occur in a large class of systems.

title: A Heavy Higgs and a Light Sneutrino NLSP in the MSSM with Enhanced SU(2) D-terms
abstract: The Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model provides a solution to the hierarchy problem and leads to the presence of a light Higgs. A Higgs boson with mass above the present experimental bound may only be obtained for relatively heavy third generation squarks, requiring a precise, somewhat unnatural balance between different contributions to the effective Higgs mass parameter. It was recently noticed that somewhat heavier Higgs bosons, which are naturally beyond the LEP bound, may be obtained by enhanced weak SU(2) Dterms. Such contributions appear in models with an enhanced electroweak gauge symmetry, provided the supersymmetry breaking masses associated with the scalars responsible for the breakdown of the enhanced gauge symmetry group to the Standard Model one, are larger than the enhanced symmetry breaking scale. In this article we emphasize that the enhanced SU(2) D-terms will not only raise the Higgs boson mass but also affect the spectrum of the nonstandard Higgs bosons, sleptons and squarks, which therefore provide a natural contribution to the T parameter, compensating for the negative one coming from the heavy Higgs boson. The sleptons and non-standard Higgs bosons of these models, in particular, may act in a way similar to the so-called inert Higgs doublet. The phenomenological properties of these models are emphasized and possible cosmological implications as well as collider signatures are described.

title: SUSY-Breaking Parameters from RG Invariants at the LHC
abstract: We study Renormalization Group invariant (RGI) quantities in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model and show that they are a powerful and simple instrument for testing high scale models of supersymmetry (SUSY)-breaking. For illustration, we analyze the frameworks of minimal and general gauge mediated (MGM and GGM) SUSY-breaking, with additional arbitrary soft Higgs mass parameters at the messenger scale. We show that if a gaugino and two first generation sfermion soft masses are determined at the LHC, the RGIs lead to MGM sum rules that yield accurate predictions for the other gaugino and first generation soft masses. RGIs can also be used to reconstruct the fundamental MGM parameters (including the messenger scale), calculate the hypercharge D-term, and find relationships among the third generation and Higgs soft masses. We then study the extent to which measurements of the full first generation spectrum at the LHC may distinguish different SUSY-breaking scenarios. In the case of MGM, although most deviations violate the sum rules by more than estimated experimental errors, we find a 1-parameter family of GGM models that satisfy the constraints and produce the same first generation spectrum. The GGM-MGM degeneracy is lifted by differences in the third generation masses and the messenger scales. ∗http://theory.fnal.gov ar X iv :1 01 1. 49 58 v2  1 0 M ar 2 01 1