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- Abgrall, N., et al.
(author)
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The large enriched germanium experiment for neutrinoless double beta decay (LEGEND)
- 2017
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In: AIP Conference Proceedings. - : Author(s). - 1551-7616 .- 0094-243X. ; 1894
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The observation of neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) would show that lepton number is violated, reveal that neu-trinos are Majorana particles, and provide information on neutrino mass. A discovery-capable experiment covering the inverted ordering region, with effective Majorana neutrino masses of 15 - 50 meV, will require a tonne-scale experiment with excellent energy resolution and extremely low backgrounds, at the level of ∼0.1 count /(FWHM·t·yr) in the region of the signal. The current generation 76Ge experiments GERDA and the Majorana Demonstrator, utilizing high purity Germanium detectors with an intrinsic energy resolution of 0.12%, have achieved the lowest backgrounds by over an order of magnitude in the 0νββ signal region of all 0νββ experiments. Building on this success, the LEGEND collaboration has been formed to pursue a tonne-scale 76Ge experiment. The collaboration aims to develop a phased 0νββ experimental program with discovery potential at a half-life approaching or at 1028 years, using existing resources as appropriate to expedite physics results.
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- Saunois, M., et al.
(author)
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The global methane budget 2000–2012
- 2016
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In: Earth System Science Data. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1866-3508 .- 1866-3516. ; 8:2, s. 697-751
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The global methane (CH4) budget is becoming an increasingly important component for managing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. This relevance, due to a shorter atmospheric lifetime and a stronger warming potential than carbon dioxide, is challenged by the still unexplained changes of atmospheric CH4 over the past decade. Emissions and concentrations of CH4 are continuing to increase, making CH4 the second most important human-induced greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. Two major difficulties in reducing uncertainties come from the large variety of diffusive CH4 sources that overlap geographically, and from the destruction of CH4 by the very short-lived hydroxyl radical (OH). To address these difficulties, we have established a consortium of multi-disciplinary scientists under the umbrella of the Global Carbon Project to synthesize and stimulate research on the methane cycle, and producing regular (∼ biennial) updates of the global methane budget. This consortium includes atmospheric physicists and chemists, biogeochemists of surface and marine emissions, and socio-economists who study anthropogenic emissions. Following Kirschke et al. (2013), we propose here the first version of a living review paper that integrates results of top-down studies (exploiting atmospheric observations within an atmospheric inverse-modelling framework) and bottom-up models, inventories and data-driven approaches (including process-based models for estimating land surface emissions and atmospheric chemistry, and inventories for anthropogenic emissions, data-driven extrapolations). For the 2003–2012 decade, global methane emissions are estimated by top-down inversions at 558 Tg CH4 yr−1, range 540–568. About 60 % of global emissions are anthropogenic (range 50–65 %). Since 2010, the bottom-up global emission inventories have been closer to methane emissions in the most carbon-intensive Representative Concentrations Pathway (RCP8.5) and higher than all other RCP scenarios. Bottom-up approaches suggest larger global emissions (736 Tg CH4 yr−1, range 596–884) mostly because of larger natural emissions from individual sources such as inland waters, natural wetlands and geological sources. Considering the atmospheric constraints on the top-down budget, it is likely that some of the individual emissions reported by the bottom-up approaches are overestimated, leading to too large global emissions. Latitudinal data from top-down emissions indicate a predominance of tropical emissions (∼ 64 % of the global budget, < 30° N) as compared to mid (∼ 32 %, 30–60° N) and high northern latitudes (∼ 4 %, 60–90° N). Top-down inversions consistently infer lower emissions in China (∼ 58 Tg CH4 yr−1, range 51–72, −14 %) and higher emissions in Africa (86 Tg CH4 yr−1, range 73–108, +19 %) than bottom-up values used as prior estimates. Overall, uncertainties for anthropogenic emissions appear smaller than those from natural sources, and the uncertainties on source categories appear larger for top-down inversions than for bottom-up inventories and models. The most important source of uncertainty on the methane budget is attributable to emissions from wetland and other inland waters. We show that the wetland extent could contribute 30–40 % on the estimated range for wetland emissions. Other priorities for improving the methane budget include the following: (i) the development of process-based models for inland-water emissions, (ii) the intensification of methane observations at local scale (flux measurements) to constrain bottom-up land surface models, and at regional scale (surface networks and satellites) to constrain top-down inversions, (iii) improvements in the estimation of atmospheric loss by OH, and (iv) improvements of the transport models integrated in top-down inversions. The data presented here can be downloaded from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (http://doi.org/10.3334/CDIAC/GLOBAL_METHANE_BUDGET_2016_V1.1) and the Global Carbon Project.
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- Saunois, M., et al.
(author)
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Variability and quasi-decadal changes in the methane budget over the period 2000–2012
- 2017
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In: Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1680-7316 .- 1680-7324. ; 17:18, s. 11135-11161
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Following the recent Global Carbon Project (GCP) synthesis of the decadal methane (CH4) budget over 2000–2012 (Saunois et al., 2016), we analyse here the same dataset with a focus on quasi-decadal and inter-annual variability in CH4 emissions. The GCP dataset integrates results from top-down studies (exploiting atmospheric observations within an atmospheric inverse-modelling framework) and bottom-up models (including process-based models for estimating land surface emissions and atmospheric chemistry), inventories of anthropogenic emissions, and data-driven approaches. The annual global methane emissions from top-down studies, which by construction match the observed methane growth rate within their uncertainties, all show an increase in total methane emissions over the period 2000–2012, but this increase is not linear over the 13 years. Despite differences between individual studies, the mean emission anomaly of the top-down ensemble shows no significant trend in total methane emissions over the period 2000–2006, during the plateau of atmospheric methane mole fractions, and also over the period 2008–2012, during the renewed atmospheric methane increase. However, the top-down ensemble mean produces an emission shift between 2006 and 2008, leading to 22 [16–32] Tg CH4 yr−1 higher methane emissions over the period 2008–2012 compared to 2002–2006. This emission increase mostly originated from the tropics, with a smaller contribution from mid-latitudes and no significant change from boreal regions. The regional contributions remain uncertain in top-down studies. Tropical South America and South and East Asia seem to contribute the most to the emission increase in the tropics. However, these two regions have only limited atmospheric measurements and remain therefore poorly constrained. The sectorial partitioning of this emission increase between the periods 2002–2006 and 2008–2012 differs from one atmospheric inversion study to another. However, all top-down studies suggest smaller changes in fossil fuel emissions (from oil, gas, and coal industries) compared to the mean of the bottom-up inventories included in this study. This difference is partly driven by a smaller emission change in China from the top-down studies compared to the estimate in the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGARv4.2) inventory, which should be revised to smaller values in a near future. We apply isotopic signatures to the emission changes estimated for individual studies based on five emission sectors and find that for six individual top-down studies (out of eight) the average isotopic signature of the emission changes is not consistent with the observed change in atmospheric 13CH4. However, the partitioning in emission change derived from the ensemble mean is consistent with this isotopic constraint. At the global scale, the top-down ensemble mean suggests that the dominant contribution to the resumed atmospheric CH4 growth after 2006 comes from microbial sources (more from agriculture and waste sectors than from natural wetlands), with an uncertain but smaller contribution from fossil CH4 emissions. In addition, a decrease in biomass burning emissions (in agreement with the biomass burning emission databases) makes the balance of sources consistent with atmospheric 13CH4 observations. In most of the top-down studies included here, OH concentrations are considered constant over the years (seasonal variations but without any inter-annual variability). As a result, the methane loss (in particular through OH oxidation) varies mainly through the change in methane concentrations and not its oxidants. For these reasons, changes in the methane loss could not be properly investigated in this study, although it may play a significant role in the recent atmospheric methane changes as briefly discussed at the end of the paper.
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- Chatzikonstantinou, T, et al.
(author)
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COVID-19 severity and mortality in patients with CLL: an update of the international ERIC and Campus CLL study
- 2021
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In: Leukemia. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1476-5551 .- 0887-6924. ; 35:12, s. 3444-3454
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) may be more susceptible to Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) due to age, disease, and treatment-related immunosuppression. We aimed to assess risk factors of outcome and elucidate the impact of CLL-directed treatments on the course of COVID-19. We conducted a retrospective, international study, collectively including 941 patients with CLL and confirmed COVID-19. Data from the beginning of the pandemic until March 16, 2021, were collected from 91 centers. The risk factors of case fatality rate (CFR), disease severity, and overall survival (OS) were investigated. OS analysis was restricted to patients with severe COVID-19 (definition: hospitalization with need of oxygen or admission into an intensive care unit). CFR in patients with severe COVID-19 was 38.4%. OS was inferior for patients in all treatment categories compared to untreated (p < 0.001). Untreated patients had a lower risk of death (HR = 0.54, 95% CI:0.41–0.72). The risk of death was higher for older patients and those suffering from cardiac failure (HR = 1.03, 95% CI:1.02–1.04; HR = 1.79, 95% CI:1.04–3.07, respectively). Age, CLL-directed treatment, and cardiac failure were significant risk factors of OS. Untreated patients had a better chance of survival than those on treatment or recently treated.
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| 8. |
- Ideguchi, E., et al.
(author)
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Orbifold projection in supersymmetric QCD at N(f) ≤ N(c)
- 2000
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In: Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics. - 0370-2693. ; 492:3-4, s. 369-375
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Supersymmetric orbifold projection of N = 1 SQCD with relatively small number of flavors (N(f) ≤ N(c)) is considered. The purpose is to check whether orbifolding commutes with the infrared limit. On the one hand, one considers the orbifold projection of SQCD and obtains the low-energy description of the resulting theory. On the other hand, one starts with the low-energy effective theory of the original SQCD, and only then performs orbifolding. It is shown that at finite N(c) the two low-energy theories obtained in these ways are different. However, in the case of stabilized run-away vacuum these two theories are shown to coincide in the large N(c) limit. In the case of quantum modified moduli space, topological solitons carrying baryonic charges are present in the orbifolded low-energy theory. These solitons may restore the correspondence between the two theories provided that the soliton mass tends to zero in the large N(c) limit. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V.
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| 9. |
- Yarza, P., et al.
(author)
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Sequencing orphan species initiative (SOS): Filling the gaps in the 16S rRNA gene sequence database for all species with validly published names
- 2013
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In: Systematic and Applied Microbiology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0723-2020. ; 36:1, s. 69-73
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- High quality 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequences from the type strains of all species with validly published names, as defined by the International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria, are a prerequisite for their accurate affiliations within the global genealogical classification and for the recognition of potential new taxa. During the last few years, the Living Tree Project (LTP) has taken care to create a high quality, aligned 16S and 23S rRNA gene sequence database of all type strains. However, the manual curation of the sequence dataset and type strain information revealed that a total of 552 “orphan” species (about 5.7% of the currently classified species) had to be excluded from the reference trees. Among them, 322 type strains were not represented by an SSU entry in the public sequence repositories. The remaining 230 type strains had to be discarded due to bad sequence quality. Since 2010, the LTP team has coordinated a network of researchers and culture collections in order to improve the situation by (re)-sequencing the type strains of these “orphan” species. As a result, we can now report 351 16S rRNA gene sequences of type strains. Nevertheless, 201 species could not be sequenced because cultivable type strains were not available (121), the cultures had either been lost or were never deposited in the first place (66), or it was not possible due to other constraints (14). The International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria provides a number of mechanisms to deal with the problem of missing type strains and we recommend that due consideration be given to the appropriate mechanisms in order to help solve some of these issues.
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| 10. |
- Riley, M A, et al.
(author)
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Beyond band termination in Er-157 and the search for wobbling excitations in strongly deformed Hf-174
- 2005
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In: Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics. - : IOP Publishing. - 0954-3899 .- 1361-6471. ; 31:10, s. 1735-1740
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- High-spin terminating bands in heavy nuclei were first identified in nuclei around Er-158(90). While examples of special terminating states have been identified in a number of erbium isotopes, almost nothing is known about the states lying beyond band termination. In the present work the high-spin structure of Er-157 has been studied using the Gammasphere spectrometer. The subject of triaxial superdeformation and 'wobbling' modes in Lu nuclei has rightly attracted a great deal of attention. Very recently, four strongly or superdeformed (SD) sequences have been observed in Hf-174 and ultimate cranker calculations predict, such structures may have significant triaxial deformation. We have performed two experiments in an attempt to verify the possible triaxial nature of these bands. A lifetime measurement was performed to confirm the large (and similar) deformation of the bands. In addition, a high-statistics, thin-target experiment was run to search for linking transitions between the SD bands and possible wobbling modes.
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