| 1. |
- Schael, S, et al.
(författare)
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Precision electroweak measurements on the Z resonance
- 2006
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Ingår i: Physics Reports. - : Elsevier BV. - 0370-1573 .- 1873-6270. ; 427:5-6, s. 257-454
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report on the final electroweak measurements performed with data taken at the Z resonance by the experiments operating at the electron-positron colliders SLC and LEP. The data consist of 17 million Z decays accumulated by the ALEPH, DELPHI, L3 and OPAL experiments at LEP, and 600 thousand Z decays by the SLID experiment using a polarised beam at SLC. The measurements include cross-sections, forward-backward asymmetries and polarised asymmetries. The mass and width of the Z boson, m(Z) and Gamma(Z), and its couplings to fermions, for example the p parameter and the effective electroweak mixing angle for leptons, are precisely measured: m(Z) = 91.1875 +/- 0.0021 GeV, Gamma(Z) = 2.4952 +/- 0.0023 GeV, rho(l) = 1.0050 +/- 0.0010, sin(2)theta(eff)(lept) = 0.23153 +/- 0.00016. The number of light neutrino species is determined to be 2.9840 +/- 0.0082, in agreement with the three observed generations of fundamental fermions. The results are compared to the predictions of the Standard Model (SM). At the Z-pole, electroweak radiative corrections beyond the running of the QED and QCD coupling constants are observed with a significance of five standard deviations, and in agreement with the Standard Model. Of the many Z-pole measurements, the forward-backward asymmetry in b-quark production shows the largest difference with respect to its SM expectation, at the level of 2.8 standard deviations. Through radiative corrections evaluated in the framework of the Standard Model, the Z-pole data are also used to predict the mass of the top quark, m(t) = 173(+10)(+13) GeV, and the mass of the W boson, m(W) = 80.363 +/- 0.032 GeV. These indirect constraints are compared to the direct measurements, providing a stringent test of the SM. Using in addition the direct measurements of m(t) and m(W), the mass of the as yet unobserved SM Higgs boson is predicted with a relative uncertainty of about 50% and found to be less than 285 GeV at 95% confidence level. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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| 2. |
- Gilbert, Benjamin, et al.
(författare)
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A bioenergetic framework for the temperature dependence of trophic interactions
- 2014
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 17:8, s. 902-914
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Changing temperature can substantially shift ecological communities by altering the strength and stability of trophic interactions. Because many ecological rates are constrained by temperature, new approaches are required to understand how simultaneous changes in multiple rates alter the relative performance of species and their trophic interactions. We develop an energetic approach to identify the relationship between biomass fluxes and standing biomass across trophic levels. Our approach links ecological rates and trophic dynamics to measure temperature-dependent changes to the strength of trophic interactions and determine how these changes alter food web stability. It accomplishes this by using biomass as a common energetic currency and isolating three temperature-dependent processes that are common to all consumer-resource interactions: biomass accumulation of the resource, resource consumption and consumer mortality. Using this framework, we clarify when and how temperature alters consumer to resource biomass ratios, equilibrium resilience, consumer variability, extinction risk and transient vs. equilibrium dynamics. Finally, we characterise key asymmetries in species responses to temperature that produce these distinct dynamic behaviours and identify when they are likely to emerge. Overall, our framework provides a mechanistic and more unified understanding of the temperature dependence of trophic dynamics in terms of ecological rates, biomass ratios and stability.
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| 3. |
- Ripa, Jörgen, et al.
(författare)
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Interaction assessments in correlated and autocorrelated environments
- 2007
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Ingår i: The impact of environmental variability on ecological systems. The Peter Yodzis Fundamental Ecology Series Vol. 2. - 9781402058509 ; 2, s. 111-131
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Natural food webs are embedded in a variable environment, which causes population densities to fluctuate, despite a potential stable equilibrium. Population interactions as well as the characteristics of the environmental fluctuations determine the resulting population dynamics. Populations sensitive to the same kind of environmental disturbances will show correlated responses in their respective growth rates. Such 'environmental correlation' between species can have profound effects on the populations' dynamics, e.g. generating a positive correlation between the abundances of two competitors, which makes a direct correlation a highly inappropriate measure of population interactions. However, multivariate time series analysis will still identify and quantify population interactions correctly. The picture is more complicated if the environmental fluctuations are correlated over time – environmental autocorrelation causes biases in interaction assessments and possibly falsely identified delayed interactions. We present approximate expressions for the estimation bias, which show that the bias is the weakest when food web dynamics are close to unstable. In the absence of close to unstable dynamics the only way avoid this estimation error is to incorporate the most important environmental drivers as covariates in the time series analysis.
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