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Thoughts on work and life from particle physicists from around the world.
About Quantum Diaries
Nathvani
2016.08.01 | Particles over Politics: The More the Merrier
2016.02.29 | The Four-Leafed Clovers of Subatomic Particles: Tetraquarks
2016.02.01 | Spun out of proportion: The Proton Spin Crisis
Felde
2015.04.16 | Building a Neutrino Detector
2014.11.06 | Cool Little Neutrinos
2014.08.05 | Super Fracking and Physics
USLHC
2015.02.04 | Physics + wine = plasma + fun
2014.12.07 | CERN appoints new Director-General
2014.08.29 | Coffee and Code (Part Deux)
Signori
Nikhef
2015.04.07 | AFTER@LHC: Going beyond the collider
2015.01.12 | United for peace
2014.12.19 | A transverse look into the proton
2014.07.29 | CERN through the eyes of a young scientist
2014.07.14 | Two anomalies worth noticing
2014.07.11 | Happy birthday, dear boson!
Randle-Conde
2016.04.01 | Lab news
2015.04.01 | LHC Run 2 cancelled, CERN closes doors
2015.03.02 | 30 reasons why you shouldn't be a particle physicist
2015.02.02 | Collision of Art & Science: A head above water
2014.05.01 | A fish out of water
2014.03.14 | Where have all the great ones gone?
2015.05.08 | Anti-Matters: The Latest and Greatest from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
2015.01.14 | A New Year's Resolution: Read More Papers!
2014.09.25 | Dark Skies II: Indirect Detection and The Quest for the Smoking Gun
2015.12.14 | New LUX Results on WIMP-Nucleon Scattering
2015.09.08 | About to start a Physics degree? Hold on tight…
2015.03.25 | Vote LUX, and give an underdog a chance
Univ. of Pittsburgh
2015.09.22 | Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay and the Quest for Majorana Neutrinos
2015.05.18 | Drell-Yan, Drell-Yan with Jets, Drell-Yan with all the Jets
2015.02.04 | Excited Quarks and Early Discoveries at LHC Run II
2015.04.17 | Life Underground: Anything Anyone Would Teach Me
2015.04.09 | CUORE-0 Results Tour Kicks Off
2015.02.07 | Sonic Copper Cleaning
Goldfarb
2016.02.10 | The Problem with B.o.B. – Science and the flat earth
2015.01.18 | The Ties That Bind
2016.03.21 | Live Blogging of the LHCb Bs pi result
2015.07.15 | Finding a five-leafed clover
2015.03.31 | CERN Had Dark Energy All Along; Uses It To Fuel Researchers
Fermilab
2015.10.12 | A measurement to watch
2015.08.27 | The Tesla experiment
2015.08.12 | MicroBooNE sees first cosmic muons
2015.10.29 | @CMSVoices
2015.07.16 | Nerds and Names
2015.04.07 | Choose as Many as You Like
2015.01.09 | Physics and outreach: my social media adventure
2014.06.19 | Physicists at Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference Look Forward
2014.03.04 | Particle Beam Cancer Therapy: The Promise and Challenges
2013.03.11 | Polarized Proton Data Flowing With RHIC Running
2015.02.04 | What BICEP2 Got Right
2014.12.30 | Announcing the launch of a way to 'crowdfund' physics!
2014.10.29 | Interstellar the movie is coming soon — and it's a biggie
2015.07.04 | Why Dark Matter Exists: Believing Without Seeing
2015.02.04 | Where Do I Come From?
2015.01.08 | How to build a universe
2015.12.21 | LHC 2015: what's different in four years?
2015.12.05 | What have we learned from the LHC in 2015?
2015.08.27 | Double time
CNRS-IN2P3
2015.08.18 | Pour une physique nucléaire accessible à tous
2015.02.26 | Twitter, Planck et les supernovae
2013.10.11 | Prix Nobel de physique 2013 : "le succès de toute une communauté"
Posts Tagged 'LHCb'
Live Blogging of the LHCb Bs pi result
Adam Davis
There has been a lot of press about the recent DØ result on the possible \(B_s \pi\) state. This was also covered on Ricky Nathvani's blog. At Moriond QCD, Jeroen Van Tilburg showed a few plots from LHCb which showed no signal in the same mass regions as explored by D∅. Tomorrow, there will be a special LHC seminar on the LHCb search for purported tetraquark, where we will get the full story from LHCb. I will be live blogging the seminar here! It kicks off at 11:50 CET, so tune in to this post for live updates.
Mar 22, 2016 -12:23. Final answer. LHCb does not confirm the tetraquark. Waiting for CMS, ATLAS, CDF.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:24. How did you get the result out so fast? A lot of work by the collaboration to get MC produced and to expedite the process.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:21. Is the \(p_T\) cut on the pion too tight? The fact that you haven't seen anything anywhere else gives you confidence that the cut is safe. Also, cut is not relative to \(B_s\).
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:18. Question: What are the fractions of multiple candidates which enter? Not larger than 1.2. If you go back to the cuts. What selection killed the combinatoric background the most? Requirement that the \(\pi\) comes from the PV, and the \(p_T\) cut on the pion kill the most. How strong the PV cut? \(\chi^2\) less than 3.5 for the pion at the PV, you force the \(B_s\) and the pion to come from the PV, and constrain the mass of \(B_s\) mass.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:17: Can you go above the threshold? Yes.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:16. Slide 9: Did you fit with a floating mass? Plan to do this for the paper.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:15. Wouldn't \(F_S\) be underestimated by 8%? Maybe maybe not.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:13. Question: Will LHCb publish? Most likely yes, but a bit of politics. Shape of the background in the \(B_s\pi\) is different in LHCb and DØ. At some level, you expect a peak from the turn over. Also CMS is looking.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:08-12:12. Question: did you try the cone cut to try to generate a peak? Answer: Afraid that the cut can give a biased estimate of the significance. From DØ seminar, seems like this is the case. For DØ to answer. Vincenzo Vagnoni says that DØ estimation of significance is incorrect. We also don't know if there's something that's different between \(pp\) and \(p \bar{p}\).
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:08. No evidence of \(X(5568)\) state, set upper limit. "We look forward to hearing from ATLAS, CMS and CDF about \(X(5568)\)"
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:07. What if the production of the X was the same at LHCb? Should have seen a very large signal. Also, in many other spectroscopy plots, e.g. \(B*\), look at "wrong sign" plots for B and meson. All results LHCb already searched for would have been sensitive to such a state.
Mar 22, 2016 -12:04. Redo the analysis in bins of rapidity. No significant signal seen in any result. Do for all pt ranges of the Bs.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:03. Look at \(B^0\pi^+\) as a sanity check. If X(5568) is similar to B**, then the we expect order 1000 events.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:02.Upper limits on production given.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:02. Check for systematics: changing mass and width of DØ range, and effect of efficiency dependence on signal shape are the dominant sources of systematics. All measurements dominated by statistics.
Mar 22, 2016 – 12:00. Result of the fits all consistent with zero. The relative production is also consistent with zero.
Mar 22, 2016 – 11:59. 2 fits with and without signal components, no difference in pulls. Do again with tighter cut on the transverse momentum of the \(B_s\). Same story, no significant signal seen.
Mar 22, 2016 – 11:58. Fit model: S-wave Breit-Wigner, mass and width fixed to DØ result. Backgrounds: 2 sources. True \(B_s^0\) with random track, and fake \(B_s\).
Mar 22, 2016 – 11:56. No "cone cut" applied because it is highly correlated with reconstructed mass.
Mar 22, 2016 – 11:55. LHCb strategy: Perform 3 independent searches, confirm a qualitative approach, move forward with single approach with Run 1 dataset. Cut based selection to match D∅ strategy. Take home point. Statistics is 20x larger and much cleaner.
Mar 22, 2016 – 11:52. Review of DØ result. What could it be? Molecular model is disfavored. Diquark-Antidiquark models are popular. But could not fit into any model. Could also be feed down of radiative decays. All predictions have large uncertainties
Mar 22, 2016 – 11:49. LHCb-CONF-2016-004 posted at cds.cern.ch/record/2140095/
Mar 22, 2016 – 11:47. The speaker is transitioning to Marco Pappagallo .
Mar 22, 2016 – 11:44. People have begun entering the auditorium for the talk, at the end of Basem Khanji's seminar on \(\Delta m_d\)
Tags: Bs pi, D0, LHC, LHCb, Tetraquark, Tevatron
Posted in Latest Posts | 2 Comments »
The Four-Leafed Clovers of Subatomic Particles: Tetraquarks
Ricky Nathvani
Hadrons, the particles made of quarks, are almost unanimously produced in the two or three quark varieties in particle colliders. However, in the last decade or so, a new frontier has opened up in subatomic physics. Four-quark particles have begun to be observed, the most recent being announced last Thursday by a collaboration at Fermilab. These rare, fleetingly lived particles have the potential to shed some light on the Strong nuclear force and how it shapes our world.
The discovery of a new subatomic particle was announced last Thursday by the DØ (DZero) collaboration at Fermilab in Chicago. DØ researchers analysed data from the Tevatron, a proton-antiproton collider based at Fermilab. The new found particle sports the catchy name "X(5568)" (It's labelled by the observed mass of 5,568 Megaelectron-volts or MeV. That's about six times heavier than a proton.) X(5568) is a form of "tetraquark", a rarer variety of the particles known as hadrons. Tetraquarks consist of two quarks and two antiquarks (rather than the usual three quarks or quark-antiquark pairs that make up hadrons particle physicists are familiar with). While similar tetraquark particles have been observed before, the new addition breaks the mould by consisting of four quarks of totally different flavours: bottom, strange, up and down.
[Regular readers and those familiar with the theory of QCD may wish to skip to the section marked ——]
a) An example of a quark-antiquark pair, known as Mesons. b) An example of a three-quark particle, known as Baryons. c) An example of a tetraquark (four quarks) Source: APS/Alan Stonebraker, via Physics Viewpoint, DOI: 10.1103/Physics.6.69
The particle's decay is best explained Strong force, aptly named since it's the strongest known force in the universe[1], which also acts to hold quarks together in more stable configurations such as inside the proton. The Strong force is described by a theory known as Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD for short), a crucial part of the Standard Model of particle physics. The properties of X(5568) will provide precision tests of the Standard Model, as well as improving our understanding of the nature of Confinement. This is a dimly understood process by which quarks are bound up together to form the particles (such as protons) that make up most of the visible matter in the universe.
Quarks are defined by the strong force, being the only particles known to physics that interact via QCD. They were originally conceived of in 1964 by two of the early pioneers of particle physics Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig, who posited the idea of "quarks" to explain the properties of a plethora of particles that were discovered in the mid-twentieth century. After a series of experiments in the late '60s and '70s, the evidence in favour of the quark hypothesis grew much stronger[2] and it was accepted that many of the particles that interacted and decayed very quickly (due to the magnitude of the strong force) in detectors were in fact made up of these quarks, which are now known to come in six different varieties known as "flavours". A more precise model of the strong force, which came to be known as QCD, was also verified in such experiments.
QCD is a very difficult theory to draw predictions from because unlike electromagnetism (the force responsible for holding atoms together and transmitting light between objects), the "force carriers" of QCD known as gluons are self-interacting. Whereas light, or photons, simply pass through one another, gluons pull on one another and quarks in complex ways that give rise to the phenomenon of confinement: quarks are never observed in isolation, only as part of a group of other quarks/antiquarks. These groups of quarks and anti-quarks are what we call Hadrons (hence the name Large Hadron Collider). This self interaction arises from the fact that, unlike light which simply couples to positive or negative charges, QCD has a more complicated structure based on three charges labelled as Red, Green and Blue (which confusingly, have nothing to do with real colours, but are instead based on a mathematical symmetry known as SU(3)).
The hadrons discovered in the twentieth century tended to come in pairs of three quarks or quark-antiquark pairs. Although we now know there is nothing in the theory of QCD that suggests you can't have particles consisting of four, or even five quarks/antiquarks, such particles were never observed, and in fact even some of the finest minds in theoretical physics (Edward Witten and Sidney Coleman) once thought that QCD would not permit such particles to exist. Like clovers, however, although the fourfold or even fivefold variety would be much rarer to come by it turns out such states did, in fact, exist and could be observed.
A visualisation of the production and decay of X(5568) to mesons in the Tevatron collider. Source: Fermilab http://news.fnal.gov/
The first hints of the existence of tetraquarks were at the Belle experiment, Japan in 2003, with the observation of a state called X(3872) (again, labelled by its mass of 3872 MeV). One of the most plausible explanations for this anomalous resonance[3] was a tetraquark model, which in 2013, an analysis by the LHCb experiment at CERN found to be a compatible explanation of the same resonance found in their detector. The same year, Belle and the BESIII experiment in China both found a resonance with the same characteristics, labelled Zc(3900), which is now believed to be the first independently, experimentally observed tetraquark. The most recent evidence for the existence of tetraquarks, prior to last Thursday's announcement, was found by the LHCb experiment in 2014, the Z(4430). This verified an earlier result from Belle in 2007, with an astonishingly high statistical significance of 13.9σ (for comparison, one typically claims a discovery with a significance of 5σ). LHCb would also go on, unexpectedly, to find a pentaquark (four quarks and an antiquark) state in 2015, which could provide a greater understanding of QCD and even a window into the study of neutron stars.
Z(4430) was discovered from the analysis of its decay into mesons (hadrons consisting of quark-antiquark pairs), specifically the ψ' and π– mesons from the decay B0 → K + ψ' π–. In the analysis of the B0 decay, it was found that the Z(4430) was needed as an intermediate particle state to explain the resonant behaviour of the ψ' and π–. The LHCb detector, whose asymmetric design and high resolution makes it particularly well suited for the job, reconstructs these mesons and looks at their kinematic properties to determine the shape and properties of the resonance, which were found to be consistent with a tetraquark model. The recent discovery of X(5568) by the DØ collaboration involved a similar reconstruction from Bs and π– mesons, which was used to infer its quark flavour structure (b, s, u, d, though which two are the particles and which two are the antiparticles remains to be determined).
X(5568) is found to have a large width (22 MeV) in the distribution of its decays, implying that it decays very quickly, best explained by QCD. Since quarks cannot change flavours in QCD interactions (while they can do so in weak nuclear interactions), this is what allowed DØ to determine its quark content. The other properties of this anomalous particle, such as its mass and its lack of spin (i.e. S = 0) are measured from the kinematics of the mesons it produces, and can help increase our understanding of how QCD combines the quarks in such an unfamiliar arrangement.
The two models for tetraquarks: Left, a single bound state of four quarks. Right, a pair of mesons bound to one another in orbit, resembing a four quark state. Source: Fermilab http://news.fnal.gov (Particle Physicists have a strange relationship with Comic Sans)
One of the long-standing controversies surrounding tetraquark states is whether the states are truly a joint four particle state or in fact a sort of molecule of two strongly bound mesons, which although they form a bound state of four particles in total, is actually analogous to two separate atoms in a molecule rather than a single, heavy atom. The analysis from DØ, based on X(5568)'s mass seems to imply that it's the former, a single particle of four quarks tightly bound in an exotic hadron, though the jury is still out on the matter.
DØ's discovery is based on an analysis of the historic data collected from the Tevatron from the 28 years it was operating, since the collider itself ceased operation 2011. Despite LHCb having found tetraquark candidates in the past and being suited to finding such a particle again, it has not yet independently verified the existence of X(5568). LHCb will now review their own data as well as future data that will recommence being collected later this year, to see if they too observe this unprecedented result and hopefully improve our understanding of its properties and whether they are consistent with the Standard Model. This is definitely a result to look out for later this year and should shed some light on one of the fundamental forces of nature and how it acts to create the particles, such as protons, that make up the world around us.
[1] That is, the dimensionless coupling of the force carrier particle interactions is greater than electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force, both of which in turn are stronger than gravity (consider how a tiny magnet can lift a paper clip against the gravity of the entire Earth). Many theories of Beyond the Standard Model physics predict new forces, and it may turn out that all the forces are unified into a single entity at high energies.
[2] For an excellent summary of the history of quarks and some of the motivations behind the quark model, check out this fantastic documentary featuring none other than the Nobel Prize wining physicists, Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann themselves.
[3] Particles are discovered by the bumps or resonances they leave in the statistical distributions of particle decays/scattering events. See for example, one of the excesses of events that led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson.
Tags: Exotic Hadrons, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, LHCb, QCD, Quarks, Tetraquark
Posted in Blogroll, Latest Posts | 4 Comments »
Finding a five-leafed clover
Photo Credit: Cathy Händel, Published on http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/olla12.html
Sometimes when you're looking for something else, you happen across an even more exciting result. That's what's happened at LHCb, illustrated in the paper "Observation of \(J/\psi p\) resonances consistent with pentaquark states in \(\Lambda_b^0\to J/\psi K^-p\) decays", released on the arXiv on the 14th of July.
I say this is lucky because the analysts found these states while they were busy looking at another channel; they were measuring the branching fraction of \(B^0\to J/\psi K^+ K^-\). As one of the analysts, Sheldon Stone, recalled to me, during the review of the \(B^0\) analysis, one reviewer asked if there could be a background from the decay \(\Lambda_b^0\to J/\psi K^- p\), where the proton was misidentified as a kaon. As this was a viable option, they looked at the PDG to see if the mode had been measured, and found that it had not. Without a certain knowledge of how large this contribution would be, the analysts looked. To their surprise, they found a rather large rate of the decay, allowing for a measurement of the lifetime of the \(\Lambda_b^0\). At the same time, they noticed a peak in the \(J/\psi p\) spectrum. After completing the above mentioned analysis of the \(B^0\), they returned to the channel.
It's nice to put yourself in the analysts shoes and see the result for yourself. Let's start by looking at the decay \(\Lambda_b^0\to J/\psi p K^-\). As this is a three body decay, we can look at the Dalitz Plots.
Dalitz plots from the decay \(\Lambda_b^0\to J/\psi K^- p\). Compiled from http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03414
The above Dalitz plots show all combinations of possible axes to test. In the one on the left, around \(m^2=2.3\) GeV\(^2\), running vertically, we see the \(\Lambda(1520)\) resonance, which decays into a proton and a kaon. Running horizontally is a band which does not seem to correspond to a known resonance, but which would decay into a \(J/\psi\) and a proton. If this is a strong decay, then the only option is to have a hadron whose minimum quark content is \(uud\bar{c}c\). The same band is seen on the middle plot as a vertical band, and on the far right as the sloping diagonal band. To know for sure, one must perform a complete amplitude analysis of the system.
You might be saying to yourself "Who ordered that?" and think that something with five quarks hadn't been postulated. This is not the case. Hadrons with quark content beyond the minimum were already thought about by Gell-Mann and Zweig in 1964 and quantitatively modeled by Jaffe in 1977 to 4 quarks and 5 quarks by Strottman in 1979. I urge you to go look at the articles if you haven't before.
It appears as though a resonance has been found, and in order to be sure, a full amplitude analysis of the decay was performed. The distribution is first modeled without any such state, shown in the figures below.
Projections of the fits of the\( \Lambda_b^0\to J/\psi K^- p\) spectrum without any additional components. Black is the data, and red is the fit. From http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03414
Try as you might, the models are unable to explain the invariant mass distribution of the \(J/\psi p\). Without going into too much jargon, they wrote down from a theoretical standpoint what type of effect a five quark particle would have on the Dalitz plot, then put this into their model. As it turns out, they were unable to successfully model the distribution without the addition of two such pentaquark states. By adding these states, the fits look much better, as shown below.
Mass projection onto the \(J/\psi p\) axis of the total fit to the Dalitz plot. Again, Black is data, red is the fit. The inset image is for the kinematic range \(m(K p)>2 GeV\).
From http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03414
The states are called the \(P_c\) states. Now, as this is a full amplitude analysis, the fit also covers all angular information. This allows for determination of the total angular momentum and parity of the states. These are defined by the quantity \(J^P\), with \(J\) being the total angular momentum and \(P\) being the parity. All values for both resonances are tried from 1/2 to 7/2, and the best fit values are found to be with one resonance having \(J=3/2\) and the other with \(J=5/2\), with each having the opposite parity as the other. No concrete distinction can be made between which state has which value.
Finally, the significance of the signal is described by under the assumption \(J^P=3/2^-,5/2^+\) for the lower and higher mass states; the significances are 9 and 12 standard deviations, respectively.
The masses and widths turn out to be
\(m(P_c^+(4380))=4380\pm 8\pm 29 MeV\)
\(m(P_c^+(4450))=4449.8\pm 1.7\pm 2.5 MeV\)
With corresponding widths
Width\((P_c^+(4380))=205\pm 18\pm 86 MeV\)
Width\((P_c^+(4450))=39\pm 5\pm 19 MeV\)
Finally, we'll look at the Argand Diagrams for the two resonances.
Argand diagrams for the two \(P_c\) states.
Now you may be saying "hold your horses, that Argand diagram on the right doesn't look so great", and you're right. I'm not going to defend the plot, but only point out that the phase motion is in the correct direction, indicated by the arrows.
As pointed out on the LHCb public page, one of the next steps will be to try to understand whether the states shown are tightly bound 5 quark objects or rather loosely bound meson baryon molecule. Even before that, though, we'll see if any of the other experiments have something to say about these states.
Tags: exotic, LHC, LHCb, Penta, Pentaquark, quark, Run I
Posted in Latest Posts | 12 Comments »
Looking Forward to 2015: Analysis Techniques
With 2015 a few weeks old, it seems like a fine time to review what happened in 2014 and to look forward to the new year and the restart of data taking. Along with many interesting physics results, just to name a few, LHCb saw its 200th publication, a test of lepton universality. With protons about to enter the LHC, and the ALICE and LHCb detectors recording muon data from transfer line tests between the SPS and LHC (see also here), the start of data-taking is almost upon us. For some implications, see Ken Bloom's post here. Will we find supersymmetry? Split Higgs? Nothing at all? I'm not going to speculate on that, but I would like to review two techniques which played a key role in two results from LHCb and a few analysis techniques which enabled them.
The first result I want to discuss is the \(Z(4430)^{-}\). The first evidence for this state came from the Belle Collaboration in 2007, with subsequent studies in 2009 and in 2013. BaBar also searched for the state, and while they did not see it, they did not rule it out.
The LHCb collaboration searched for this state, using the specific decay mode \(B^0\to \psi' K^{+} \pi^{-} \), with \(\psi'\) decaying to two muons. For more reading, see the nice writeup from earlier in 2014. As in the Belle analyses, which looked using muons or electrons in the final \(\psi'\) state, the trick here is to look for bumps in the \(\psi' \pi^{-}\) mass distribution. If a peak appears which is not described by the conventional 2 and 3 quark states, mesons and baryons, we know and love, it must be from a state involving a \(c \overline{c}d\overline{u}\) quark combination. The search is performed in two ways: a model-dependent search, which looks at the \(K\pi\) and \(\psi'\pi\) invariant mass and decay angle distributions, and a "model independent" search which looks for structure induced in the \(K\pi\) system induced by a resonance in the \(\psi'\pi\) system and does not invoke any exotic resonances.
At the end of the day, it is found in both cases that the data are not described without including a resonance for the \(Z(4430)^-\).
Now, it appears that we have a resonance on our hands, but how can we be sure? In the context of the aforementioned model dependent analysis, the amplitude for the \(Z(4430)^{-}\) is modeled as a Breit-Wigner amplitude, which is a complex number. If this amplitude is plotted in the imaginary plane as a function of the invariant mass of the resonance, a circular shape is traced out. This is characteristic of a resonance. Therefore, by fitting the real and imaginary parts of the amplitude in six bins of \(\psi'\pi\) invariant mass, the shape can be directly compared to that of an exected resonance. That's exactly what's done in the plot below:
The argand plane for the Z(4430)- search. Units are arbitrary.
What is seen is that the data (black points) roughly follow the outlined circular shape given by the Breit-Wigner resonance (red). The outliers are pulled due to detector effects. The shape quite clearly follows the circular characteristic of a resonance. This diagram is called an Argand Diagram.
Another analysis technique to identify resonances was used to find the two newest particles by LHCb:
Depiction of the two Xi_b resonances found by the LHCb Collaboration. Credit to Italic Pig
Or perhaps seen as
Xi_b resonances, depicted by Lison Bernet.
Any way that you draw them, the two new particles, the \(\Xi_b'^-\) and \(\Xi_b^{*-}\) were seen by the LHCb collaboration a few months ago. Notably, the paper was released almost 40 years to the day that the discovery of the \(J/\psi\) was announced, sparking the November Revolution, and the understanding that mesons and baryons are composed of quarks. The \(\Xi_b'^-\) and \(\Xi_b^{*-}\) baryons are yet another example of the quark model at work. The two particles are shown in \(\delta m \equiv m_{candidate}(\Xi_b^0\pi_s^-)-m_{candidate}(\Xi_b^0)-m(\pi)\) space below.
\(\Xi_b'^-\) and \(\Xi_b^{*-}\) mass peaks shown in \(\delta(m_{candidate})\) space.
Here, the search is performed by reconstructing \(\Xi_b^0 \pi^-_s\) decays, where the \(\Xi_b^0\) decays to \(\Xi_c^+\pi^-\), and \(\Xi_c^+\to p K^- \pi^+\). The terminology \(\pi_s\) is only used to distinguish between that pion and the other pions. The peaks are clearly visible. Now, we know that there are two resonances, but how do we determine whether or not the particles are the \(\Xi_b'^-\) and \(\Xi_b^{*-}\)? The answer is to fit what is called the helicity distributions of the two particles.
To understand the concept, let's consider a toy example. First, let's say that particle A decays to B and C, as \(A\to B C\). Now, let's let particle C also decay, to particles D and F, as \(C\to D F\). In the frame where A decays at rest, the decay looks something like the following picture.
Simple Model of \(A\to BC\), \(C\to DF\)
There should be no preferential direction for B and C to decay if A is at rest, and they will decay back to back from conservation of momentum. Likewise, the same would be true if we jump to the frame where C is at rest; D and F would have no preferential decay direction. Therefore, we can play a trick. Let's take the picture above, and exactly at the point where C decays, jump to its rest frame. We can then measure the directions of the outgoing particles. We can then define a helicity angle \(\theta_h\) as the angle between the C flight in A's rest frame and D's flight in C's rest frame. I've shown this in the picture below.
Helicity Angle Definition for a simple model
If there is no preferential direction of the decay, we would expect a flat distribution of \(\theta_h\). The important caveat here is that I'm not including anything about angular momentum, spin or otherwise, in this argument. We'll come back to that later. Now, we can identify A as the \(\Xi_b'\) or \(\Xi_b^*\) candidate, C as the \(\Xi_b^0\) and D as the \(\Xi_C\) candidates used in the analysis. The actual data are shown below.
Helicity angle distributions for the \(\Xi_b' \)and \(\Xi_b*\) candidates (upper and lower, respectively).
While it appears that the lower mass may have variations, it is statistically consistent with being a flat line. Now the extra power of such an analysis is that if we now consider angular momentum of the particles themselves, there are implied selection rules which will alter the distributions above, and which allow for exclusion or validation of particle spin hypotheses simply by the distribution shape. This is the rationale for having the extra fit in the plot above. As it turns out, both distributions being flat allows for the identification of the \(\Xi '_b^-\) and the \(\Xi_b^{*-}\), but do not allow for conclusive ruling out of other spins.
With the restart of data taking at the LHC almost upon us (go look on Twitter for #restartLHC), if you see a claim for a new resonance, keep an eye out for Argand Diagrams or Helicity Distributions.
Tags: Argand, Argand Diagram, Argand Plane, Helicity, Helicity Distribution, LHCb, RestartLHC, Xib, z4430
Let there be beam!
It's been a little while since I've posted anything, but I wanted to write a bit about some of the testbeam efforts at CERN right now. In the middle of July this year, the Proton Synchrotron, or PS, the second ring of boosters/colliders which are used to get protons up to speed to collide in the LHC, saw its first beam since the shutdown at the end Run I of the LHC. In addition to providing beam to experiments like CLOUD, the beam can also be used to create secondary particles of up to 15 GeV/c momentum, which are then used for studies of future detector technology. Such a beam is called a testbeam, and all I can say is WOOT, BEAM! I must say that being able to take accelerator data is amazing!
The next biggest milestone is the testbeams from the SPS, which started on the 6th of October. This is the last ring before the LHC. If you're unfamiliar with the process used to get protons up to the energies of the LHC, a great video can be found at the bottom of the page.
Just to be clear, test beams aren't limited to CERN. Keep your eyes out for a post by my friend Rebecca Carney in the near future.
I was lucky enough to be part of the test beam effort of LHCb, which was testing both new technology for the VELO and for the upgrade of the TT station, called the Upstream Tracker, or UT. I worked mainly with the UT group, testing a sensor technology which will be used in the 2019 upgraded detector. I won't go too much into the technology of the upgrade right now, but if you are interested in the nitty-gritty of it all, I will instead point you to the Technical Design Report itself.
I just wanted to take a bit to talk about my experience with the test beam in July, starting with walking into the experimental area itself. The first sight you see upon entering the building is a picture reminding you that you are entering a radiation zone.
The Entrance!!
Then, as you enter, you see a large wall of radioactive concrete.
Don't lick those!
This is where the beam is dumped. Following along here, you get to the control room, which is where all the data taking stuff is set up outside the experimental area itself. Lots of people are always working in the control room, focused and making sure to take as much data as possible. I didn't take their picture since they were working so hard.
Then there's the experimental area itself.
The Setup! To find the hardhat, look for the orange and green racks, then follow them towards the top right of the picture.
Ah, beautiful. 🙂
There are actually 4 setups here, but I think only three were being used at this time (click on the picture for a larger view). We occupied the area where the guy with the hardhat is.
Now the idea behind a tracker testbeam is pretty straight forward. A charged particle flies by, and many very sensitive detector planes record where the charged particle passed. These planes together form what's called a "telescope." The setup is completed when you add a detector to be tested either in the middle of the telescope or at one end.
Cartoon of a test beam setup. The blue indicates the "telescope", the orange is the detector under test, and the red is the trajectory of a charged particle.
From timing information and from signals from these detectors, a trajectory of the particle can be determined. Now, you compare the position which your telescope gives you to the position you record in the detector you want to test, and voila, you have a way to understand the resolution and abilities of your tested detector. After that, the game is statistics. Ideally, you want to be in the middle of the telescope, so you have the information on where the charged particle passed on either side of your detector as this information gives the best resolution, but it can work if you're on one side or the other, too.
This is the setup which we have been using for the testbeam at the PS. We'll be using a similar setup for the testbeam at the SPS next week! I'll try to write a follow up post on that when we finish!
And finally, here is the promised video.
Tags: beam, LHCb, test, test beam
Posted in Latest Posts | No Comments »
Major harvest of four-leaf clover
Wednesday, April 9th, 2014
The LHCb Collaboration at CERN has just confirmed the unambiguous observation of a very exotic state, something that looks strangely like a particle being made of four quarks. As exotic as it might be, this particle is sternly called Z(4430)–, which gives its mass at 4430 MeV, roughly four times heavier than a proton, and indicates it is has a negative electric charge. The letter Z shows that it belongs to a strange series of particles that are referred to as XYZ states.
So what's so special about this state? The conventional and simple quark model states that there are six different quarks, each quark coming with its antiparticle. All these particles form bound states by either combining two or three of them. Protons and neutrons for example are made of three quarks. All states made of three quarks are called baryons. Other particles like pions and kaons, which are often found in the decays of heavier particles, are made of one quark and one antiquark. These form the mesons category. Until 2003, the hundreds of particles observed were classified either as mesons or baryons.
And then came the big surprise: in 2003, the BELLE experiment found a state that looked like a bound state of four quarks. Many other exotic states have been observed since. These states often look like charmonium or bottomonium states, which contain a charm quark and a charm antiquark, or a bottom and antibottom quarks. Last spring, the BESIII collaboration from Beijing confirmed the observation of the Zc(3900)+ state also seen by BELLE.
On April 8, the LHCb collaboration reported having found the Z(4430)– with ten times more events than all other groups before. The data sample is so large that it enabled LHCb to measure some of its properties unambiguously. Determining the exact quantum numbers of a particle is like getting its fingerprints: it allows physicists to find out exactly what kind of particle it is. Hence, the Z(4430)– state appears to be made of a charm, an anti-charm, a down and an anti up quarks. Their measurement rules out several other possibilities.
The squared mass distribution for the 25,200 B meson decays to ψ' π– found by LHCb in their entire data set. The black points represent the data, the red curve the result of the simulation when including the presence of the Z(4430)– state. The dashed light brown curve below shows that the simulation fails to reproduce the data if no contribution from Z(4430)– is included, establishing the clear presence of this particle with 13.9σ (that is, the signal is 13.9 times stronger than all possible combined statistical fluctuations. These are the error bars represented by the small vertical line attached to each point).
Theorists are hard at work now trying to come up with a model to describe these new states. Is this a completely new tetraquark, a bound state of four quarks, or some strange combination of two charmed mesons (mesons containing at least one charm quark)? The question is still open.
Pauline Gagnon
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For more information, see the LHCb website
Tags: exotic, LHCb, Tetraquark
Grosse moisson de trèfles à quatre feuilles
CERN (Francais)
La collaboration LHCb du CERN vient de confirmer hors de tout doute l'existence d'un état très exotique, quelque chose qui ressemble étrangement à une particule formée de quatre quarks. Aussi exotique qu'elle puisse paraître, cette particule porte le nom très pragmatique de Z(4430)–. Ce nom indique sa masse à 4430 MeV, soit environ quatre fois celle d'un proton, et signale qu'elle a une charge électrique négative. La lettre Z montre qu'elle appartient à une étrange série de particules communément regroupées sous l'appellation d'états XYZ.
Mais qu'est-ce que cet état a donc de si spécial? Le modèle conventionnel des quark est tout simple: il existe six quarks différents, chacun venant avec son antiparticule. Ces douze particules peuvent se combiner pour former des états liés en regroupant deux ou trois d'entre eux. Par exemple, les protons et des neutrons sont composés de trois quarks. Tous les états faits de trois quarks sont appelés baryons. D'autres particules comme les pions et les kaons, qu'on retrouve souvent dans les désintégrations de particules plus lourdes, sont formées d'un quark et d'un antiquark. Elles appartiennent à la catégorie des mésons. Les centaines de particules observées jusqu'en 2003 étaient toutes classifiées soit comme mésons, soit comme baryons.
Puis vint la grande surprise: en 2003, l'expérience BELLE trouva le premier état lié fait en apparence de quatre quarks. Beaucoup d'autres états exotiques similaires ont été observés depuis. Ces états ressemblent souvent à des états de charmonium ou de bottomonium, des particules qui contiennent respectivement un quark charmé et un antiquark charmé, ou un quark bottom et un anti-bottom. Au printemps dernier, la collaboration BESIII de Beijing a confirmé l'observation du Zc(3900)+, un état aussi détecté par BELLE.
Le 8 avril, la collaboration LHCb a rapporté avoir trouvé l'état Z(4430)– avec dix fois plus d'événements que tous les autres groupes précédents. Leur échantillon de données est si grand qu'il a permis à LHCb de mesurer certaines de ses propriétés sans équivoque. La détermination des nombres quantiques exacts d'une particule équivaut à l'obtention de ses empreintes digitales: cela permet aux physicien-ne-s de cerner plus exactement à quelle particule on a affaire. Il en ressort que l'état Z(4430)– serait formé d'un quark charmé, d'un antiquark charmé, d'un quark d et un antiquark u. Leur mesure exclut toutes autres possibilités.
La distribution de la masse (au carré) des 25200 mésons B se désintégrant en paires de ψ' π– trouvés par LHCb dans l'ensemble de leurs données. Les points noirs représentent les données expérimentales et la courbe en rouge, le résultat de la simulation lorsqu'on inclut la présence du Z(4430)–. La courbe en pointillés juste en dessous en brun clair montre que la simulation ne peut reproduire les données si on supprime la contribution du Z(4430)–. Ceci établit clairement la présence de cette particule avec 13.9σ (c'est-à-dire le signal est 13.9 fois plus fort que toutes les fluctuations statistiques combinées possible. La fluctuation de chaque point est représentée par la petite ligne verticale qui lui est attachée).
Les théoricien-ne-s sont à pied d'oeuvre pour essayer d'imaginer un modèle pouvant décrire ces nouveaux états. S'agit-il d'états complètement nouveaux faits de quatre quarks liés ensemble, des tétraquarks, ou est-ce une étrange combinaison de deux mésons charmés (des mésons contenant au moins un quark charmé)? La question est toujours ouverte.
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Pour plus de détails (en anglais) voir le site de l'expérience LHCb
Tags: exotique, LHCb, Tetraquark
Posted in Latest Posts | 1 Comment »
Moriond 2014: New Results, New Explorations… but no New Physics
Even before my departure to La Thuile in Italy, results from the Rencontres de Moriond conference were already flooding the news feeds. This year's Electroweak session from 15 to 22 March, started with the first "world measurement" of the top quark mass, from a combination of the measurements published by the Tevatron and LHC experiments so far. The week went on to include a spectacular CMS result on the Higgs width.
Although nearing its 50th anniversary, Moriond has kept its edge. Despite the growing numbers of must-attend HEP conferences, Moriond retains a prime spot in the community. This is in part due to historic reasons: it's been around since 1966, making a name for itself as the place where theorists and experimentalists come to see and be seen. Let's take a look at what the LHC experiments had in store for us this year…
New Results
Stealing the show at this year's Moriond was, of course, the announcement of the best constraint yet of the Higgs width at < 17 MeV with 95% confidence reported in both Moriond sessions by the CMS experiment. Using a new analysis method based on Higgs decays into two Z particles, the new measurement is some 200 times better than previous results. Discussions surrounding the constraint focussed heavily on the new methodology used in the analysis. What assumptions were needed? Could the same technique be applied to Higgs to WW bosons? How would this new width influence theoretical models for New Physics? We'll be sure to find out at next year's Moriond…
The announcement of the first global combination of the top quark mass also generated a lot of buzz. Bringing together Tevatron and LHC data, the result is the world's best value yet at 173.34 ± 0.76 GeV/c2. Before the dust had settled, at the Moriond QCD session, CMS announced a new preliminary result based on the full data set collected at 7 and 8 TeV. The precision of this result alone rivals the world average, clearly demonstrating that we have yet to see the ultimate attainable precision on the top mass.
This graphic shows the four individual top quark mass measurements published by the ATLAS, CDF, CMS and DZero collaborations, together with the most precise measurement obtained in a joint analysis.
Other news of the top quark included new LHC precision measurements of its spin and polarisation, as well as new ATLAS results of the single top-quark cross section in the t-channel presented by Kate Shaw on Tuesday 25 March. Run II of the LHC is set to further improve our understanding of this
A fundamental and challenging measurement that probes the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking mediated by the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism is the scattering of two massive vector bosons against each other. Although rare, in the absence of the Higgs boson, the rate of this process would strongly rise with the collision energy, eventually breaking physical law. Evidence for electroweak vector boson scattering was detected for the first time by ATLAS in events with two leptons of the same charge and two jets exhibiting large difference in rapidity.
With the rise of statistics and increasing understanding of their data, the LHC experiments are attacking rare and difficult multi-body final states involving the Higgs boson. ATLAS presented a prime example of this, with a new result in the search for Higgs production in association with two top quarks, and decaying into a pair of b-quarks. With an expected limit of 2.6 times the Standard Model expectation in this channel alone, and an observed relative signal strength of 1.7 ± 1.4, the expectations are high for the forthcoming high-energy run of the LHC, where the rate of this process is enhanced.
Meanwhile, over in the heavy flavour world, the LHCb experiment presented further analyses of the unique exotic state X(3872). The experiment provided unambiguous confirmation of its quantum numbers JPC to be 1++, as well as evidence for its decay into ψ(2S)γ.
Explorations of the Quark-Gluon Plasma continue in the ALICE experiment, with results from the LHC's lead-proton (p-Pb) run dominating discussions. In particular, the newly observed "double-ridge" in p-Pb is being studied in depth, with explorations of its jet peak, mass distribution and charge dependence presented.
New explorations
Taking advantage of our new understanding of the Higgs boson, the era of precision Higgs physics is now in full swing at the LHC. As well as improving our knowledge of Higgs properties – for example, measuring its spin and width – precise measurements of the Higgs' interactions and decays are well underway. Results for searches for Beyond Standard Model (BSM) physics were also presented, as the LHC experiments continue to strongly invest in searches for Supersymmetry.
In the Higgs sector, many researchers hope to detect the supersymmetric cousins of the Higgs and electroweak bosons, so-called neutralinos and charginos, via electroweak processes. ATLAS presented two new papers summarising extensive searches for these particles. The absence of a significant signal was used to set limits excluding charginos and neutralinos up to a mass of 700 GeV – if they decay through intermediate supersymmetric partners of leptons – and up to a mass of 420 GeV – when decaying through Standard Model bosons only.
Furthermore, for the first time, a sensitive search for the most challenging electroweak mode producing pairs of charginos that decay through W bosons was conducted by ATLAS. Such a mode resembles that of Standard Model pair production of Ws, for which the currently measured rates appear a bit higher than expected.
In this context, CMS has presented new results on the search for the electroweak pair production of higgsinos through their decay into a Higgs (at 125 GeV) and a nearly massless gravitino. The final state sports a distinctive signature of 4 b-quark jets compatible with a double Higgs decay kinematics. A slight excess of candidate events means the experiment cannot exclude a higgsino signal. Upper limits on the signal strength at the level of twice the theoretical prediction are set for higgsino masses between 350 and 450 GeV.
In several Supersymmetry scenarios, charginos can be metastable and could potentially be detected as a long-lived particle. CMS has presented an innovative search for generic long-lived charged particles by mapping their detection efficiency in function of the particle kinematics and energy loss in the tracking system. This study not only allows to set stringent limits for a variety of Supersymmetric models predicting chargino proper lifetime (c*tau) greater than 50cm, but also gives a powerful tool to the theory community to independently test new models foreseeing long lived charged particles.
In the quest to be as general as possible in the search for Supersymmetry, CMS has also presented new results where a large subset of the Supersymmetry parameters, such as the gluino and squark masses, are tested for their statistical compatibility with different experimental measurements. The outcome is a probability map in a 19-dimension space. Notable observations in this map are that models predicting gluino masses below 1.2 TeV and sbottom and stop masses below 700 GeV are strongly disfavoured.
… but no New Physics
Despite careful searches, the most heard phrase at Moriond was unquestionably: "No excess observed – consistent with the Standard Model". Hope now lies with the next run of the LHC at 13 TeV. If you want to find out more about the possibilities of the LHC's second run, check out the CERN Bulletin article: "Life is good at 13 TeV".
In addition to the diverse LHC experiment results presented, Tevatron experiments, BICEP, RHIC and other experiments also reported their breaking news at Moriond. Visit the Moriond EW and Moriond QCD conference websites to find out more.
Katarina Anthony-Kittelsen
Tags: ALICE, ATLAS, CERN, CMS, Higgs boson, LHC, LHCb, Moriond, Tevatron, top quark
B Decays Get More Interesting
While flavor physics often offers a multitude of witty jokes (read as bad puns), I think I'll skip one just this time and let the analysis speak for itself. Just recently, at the Lake Louise Winter Institute, a new result was released for the analysis looking for \( b\to s\gamma\) transitions. Now this is a flavor changing neutral current, which cannot occur at tree level in the standard model. Therefore, the the lowest order diagram which this decay can proceed by is the one loop penguin shown below to the right.
One loop penguin diagram representing the transition \(b \to s \gamma \).
From quantum mechanics, photons can have either left handed or right handed circular polarization. In the standard model, the photon in the decay \(b\to s\gamma\) is primarily left handed, due to spin and angular momentum conservation. However, models beyond the standard model, including some minimally super symmetric models (MSSM) predict a larger than standard model right handed component to the photon polarization. So even though the decay rates observed for \(b\to s\gamma\) agree with those predicted by the standard model, the photon polarization itself is sensitive to new physics scenarios.
As it turns out, the decays \(B^\pm \to K^\pm \pi^\mp \pi^\pm \gamma \) are well suited to explore photon polarizations after playing a few tricks. In order to understand why, the easies way is to consider a picture.
Picture defining the angle \(\theta\) in the analysis of \(B^\pm\to K^\pm \pi^\mp \pi^\pm \gamma\). From the Lake Louise Conference Talk
In the picture to the left, we consider the rest frame of a possible resonance which decays into \(K^\pm \pi^\mp \pi^\pm\). It is then possible to form the triple product of \(p_\gamma\cdot(p_{\pi,slow}\times p_{\pi,fast})\). Effectively, this defines the angle \(\theta\) defined in the picture to the left.
Now for the trick: Photon polarization is odd under parity transformation, and so is the triple product defined above. Defining the decay rate as a function of this angle, we find:
\(\frac{d\Gamma}{d \cos(\theta)}\propto \sum_{i=0,2,4}a_i cos^i\theta + \lambda_i\sum_{j=1,3} a_j \cos^j \theta\)
This is an expansion in Legendre Polynomials up to the 4th order. The odd moments are those which would contribute to photon polarization effects. The lambda is the photon polarization. Therefore, by looking at the decay rate as a function of this angle, we can directly access the photon polarization. However, another way to access the same information is by taking the asymmetry between the decay rate for events where theta is above the plane and those where theta is below the plane. This is then proportional to the photon polarization as well and allows for direct statistical calculation. We will call this the up-down asymmetry, or \(A_{ud}\). For more information, a useful theory paper is found here.
Enter LHCb. With the 3 fb\(^{-1}\) collected over 2011 and 2012 containing ~14,000 signal events, the up-down asymmetry was measured.
Up-down asymmetry for the analysis of \(b\to s\gamma\). From the Lake Louise Conference Talk
In bins of invariant mass of the \(K \pi \pi\) system, we see the asymmetry is clearly non-zero, and varies across the mass range given. As seen in the note posted to the arXiv, the shapes of the fit of the Legendre moments are not the same in differing mass bins, either. This corresponds to a 5.2\(\sigma\) observation of photon polarization in this channel. What this means for new physics models, however, is not interpreted, though I'm sure that the arXiv will be full of explanations given about a week.
Tags: b decay, b2sgamma, beauty, gamma, Lake Louise Winter Institute, LHCb, penguin, strange
The Standard Model checked to the ninth decimal
Tuesday, July 30th, 2013
At the European Physics Society conference in Stockholm, two experiments operating at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, LHCb and CMS reported on July 19 solid evidence that the Standard Model of particle physics still shows no sign of wear and tear by checking a prediction of the model to the ninth decimal place.
The Standard Model makes very accurate predictions but theorists know this theory has its limits. At higher energy, its equations start breaking down. Theorists are convinced that despite all the success of this model, it is not giving us the big picture. Hence, scientists have been trying to find a "secret passage" to the next level, a more encompassing and more robust theory.
One way to achieve this is to look for a small deviation in a measured quantity from the value predicted by the Standard Model and a good place to find such a deviation is in an extremely rare process. It is much easier to hear a faint noise in a quiet place than in the middle of traffic during rush hour.
Specifically, the scientists measured how often composite particles denoted Bs and Bd (pronounced "b sub s and b sub d)" mesons decay into a pair of muons (particles similar to electrons but about 200 times heavier). A Bs meson is a composite particle containing b and s quarks while Bd mesons are made of b and d quarks. These heavy particles are unstable and quickly break apart into lighter particles.
The Standard Model predicts that Bs mesons decay into a pair of muons about three times in a billion while for Bd mesons, it occurs thirty times less often. This gives two excellent places to look for small deviations that could reveal the existence of new phenomena not foreseen within the Standard Model.
All theories going beyond the Standard Model come with new particles that would affect how other particles decay, i.e. how they break apart. Decays are very much like making change for a big coin. Imagine a coin of one euro. It can be broken into pieces of 1, 5, 10, 20 or 50 cents Now, say a new 25-cent coin is introduced. An automatic teller would not give change for one euro in a particular way (say with coins of 50, 20, 20 and 10 cents) as often as before just because new possibilities now exist.
By measuring how often a Bs meson decays into muons, scientists were hoping to see the first deviations from the predictions of the Standard Model. On the contrary, the two experiments confirmed this prediction within experimental errors.
CMS, whose name stands for Compact Muon Spectrometer, and LHCb, an experiment designed specifically to study particles containing b quarks, are particularly suited for these types of measurements. CMS got (3.0 +1.0-0.9) x 10-9 and LHCb obtained (2.9 +1.1-1.0) x 10-9, while the Standard Model prediction stands at (3.5 ± 0.3) x 10-9. The significances of the CMS and LHCb signals correspond to 4.3σ and 4.0σ, respectively, which means, the excesses of events that are seen most likely come from signal and not from background. Two other experiments presented new results based on smaller data samples. ATLAS (using a partial data sample) and D0 (final result with their full data sample) and they obtained the same upper limit at 15 x 10-9.
The results obtained by LHCb and CMS, as well as their combined value, is compared to the prediction from the Standard Model shown by the vertical black line and its theoretical uncertainty (green band).
For Bd decays, 95% confidence level upper limits were set at 7.4 x 10-10 for LHCb while CMS obtained 11 x 10-10. The Standard Model predicts this to be less than 1 x 10-10.
All these values are consistent with the Standard Model predictions but they do not yet rule out new physics. After the LHC resumes operation at higher energy in 2015, the LHC experiments will continue improving their Bs measurements. In particular, they will aim to get a first measurement for Bd mesons instead of an upper limit, and then evaluate the ratio for the Bs and Bd mesons, such that some of the experimental and theoretical uncertainties will cancel out, to obtain an even more precise measurement. Since no deviations were found in the ninth decimal position, it means the experiments need to check the tenth decimal position.
More details can be found on the CMS and LHCb websites.
Tags: CMS, LHCb, rare decays
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text:
← Dylan's "Just like a woman" as you have never known it before.
Bob Dylan and the Romantic Refuge →
"Fur Slippers" – another Bob Dylan song we missed earlier
Posted on September 25, 2018 by TonyAttwood
Aaron Galbraith has been doing an amazing amount of work uncovering Dylan songs that we have not covered already on this site. So that will teach me to claim we've reviewed every Dylan song of which there is a recording available! We haven't. I think there must be about half a dozen more.
"Fur Slippers" is mentioned in Heylin's "Still on the Road" although very dismissively, calling it "an incongruous attempt at a 50s R'n'B single" and he places it as being composed in April 1981.
What I missed (and which Heylin does mention) is that BB King recorded the song in 1999, at which time Tim Drummond, the bass guitarist, was added as co-composer. That is certainly quite likely as Drummond is often found as the co-composer of songs with artists he worked with, including Dylan's "Saved", "Who's Talking" with J J Cale, "Saddle Up The Palomino" with Neil Young and "Down In Hollywood" with Ry Cooder.
Which part of it Drummond wrote, and which Bob wrote is anyone's guess, but my take would be that Drummond laid down the basic blues and Bob made up the lyrics as he went along.
There are other versions of the lyrics around, but these are the lyrics I hear from the recording – except one line that I can't quite hear and as usual I don't want to make an idiot of myself by guessing. Larry are you there to help me out?
Ain't got no radio ain't got no telephone
Ain't got not girlfriend ain't got nowhere to go
She was here yesterday but she's gone today
And when she left she took my fur slippers away.
Where did she go, where can she be
Maybe at a movie show, maybe she's watching TV
She was here yesterday, what more can I say
All that I know she took my fur slippers away.
They were so soft they look so fine
They felt so good they were all mine
Can't go outside the ground is too hard
Where can I go, can't even go in my backyard
?? This is what I'll say
You can keep my girlfriend bring back my fur slippers today
It is very much a one idea song: I don't care about the person, I care about my property. A complete denigration of the woman, placing an possession above the life of the individual.
In this regard it is typical of the blues, self-centred, disregarding of the feelings of others, and I guess it is intended to be amusing. Which maybe it is for about 30 seconds, but even then not that amusing.
In essence I see this is a sketch, an idea that is played with, which is never meant to be taken seriously, the sort of thing which any writer in any mode (novels, plays, poems, songs, odes, advertisements…) will either have destroyed, or will have kept in a box in his/her house, amidst hundreds of such sketches that have just popped into one's mind and not gone anywhere.
Indeed perhaps Bob never wrote those lyrics down, but simply made them up in the studio and forgot about them thereafter. In fact if this had turned up on the Basement Tapes, it would have been just another case of the guys larking about and no one thinking any more about it.
What we should also remember I guess is that this song was recorded at the end of BB King's career (a career that began with 3 O'Clock Blues way way back in 1951). I am sure others can correct me on this, if I am very wide of the mark, but I just wonder if an association with a Bob Dylan song – any Bob Dylan song, no matter how odd – might have helped him out at this time.
So let's remember a great performer in a better light. This is the original recording of the very first BB record. And if nothing else reviewing Fur Slippers gives me a chance to put up this record. If you don't know it, please do spend a moment with it.
What else is on the site
You'll find an index to our latest posts arranged by themes and subjects on the home page. You can also see details of our main sections on this site at the top of this page under the picture.
The index to the 500+ Dylan compositions reviewed is now on a new page of its own. You will find it here. It contains reviews of every Dylan composition that we can find a recording of – if you know of anything we have missed please do write in.
We also have a discussion group "Untold Dylan" on Facebook. Just type the phrase "Untold Dylan" in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews
8 Responses to "Fur Slippers" – another Bob Dylan song we missed earlier
Gonna post a reward, this is what I'll say ….
Ain't got no fur slippers no more
Aaron G says:
Strangely enough there was another cover of this song by The Crudup Brothers from the album Franktown Blues and its better than BBs in my opinion…lyrics are easier to understand.
Dylan's version was also slated for inclusion on Bootleg Series 1-3 but dropped in favour of something else..not sure what replaced it. I can imagine Bob doing this track now with his current band and it sounding amazing!! Maybe that's just me!!
Here is the Crudup version
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9vMWbaIc3AY
Stumpzian Farber says:
I like the Crudup version. Might the term "fur slipper" have a double meaning?
I make it 27 missing tracks that I sent over the weekend! 🙂 🙂
I'm just slightly crazy when it comes to these things and love searching out the rare tracks for all my favourite artists… if someone told me about 20 new McCartney or Neil Young songs that i'd never heard of I would be absolutely delighted…it would probably be my best day!! I probably wouldn't be able to sleep until I had them in my possession!! I hope you feel the same way!
James Bax says:
Fur slipper is definitely the vagene.
That missing line, to a Southern ear, is pretty obvious: "Gonna post a reward, this is what I'll say"
Normally I would agree on the second meaning of fur slippers…but in this case I think he genuinely just wants his nice pair of fur slippers back!!
Music of Bob Dylan says:
Hello there, Thank you for posting this analysis of a song from Bob Dylan's Music Box: http://thebobdylanproject.com/Song/id/205/Fur-Slippers Come and join us inside and listen to every song composed, recorded or performed by Bob Dylan, plus all the great covers streaming on YouTube, Spotify, Deezer and SoundCloud plus so much more… including this link.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Ted Lindsay
August 8, 1936 - May 2, 2021
Elteen Ted Lindsay, 84, passed away May 2, 2021. A native of Greer, son of the late Francis Eugene and Agnes Durham "Granny" Lindsay, he was a U.S. Air Force Reserves Veteran, a retired employee of City of Greer Parks and Recreation, a former employee of Hertz Rental Car and Rolling Green Village, and a charter member of Northwood Baptist Church. Surviving are his wife, Susan Dillard Lindsay of the home; a daughter, Lorrie Lusk (Randall) of Seneca; one sister, Bobbie Jo Hudson of Greer; and a grandson, Justin Lusk. Mr. Lindsay was predeceased by his first wife, Juanita Griffin Lindsay, a brother, Marshall "Pot" Lindsay and two sisters, Norma Jean Bennefield and Linda Sue Hayes Barnette. Funeral services will be held 3:00 p.m. Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at Northwood Baptist Church, conducted by Rev. David Cobb. Burial will follow in Wood Memorial Park. Memorials may be made to Northwood Baptist Church, 888 Ansel School Road, Greer, SC 29651, Greer Community Ministries, P.O. Box 1373, Greer, SC 29652 or Greer Christian Learning Center, P.O. Box 2013, Greer, SC 29652. Online condolences may be made at www.thewoodmortuary.com
Elteen Ted Lindsay, 84, passed away May 2, 2021. A native of Greer, son of the late Francis Eugene and Agnes Durham "Granny" Lindsay, he was a U.S. Air Force Reserves Veteran, a retired employee of City of Greer Parks and Recreation,... View Obituary & Service Information
The family of Ted Lindsay created this Life Tributes page to make it easy to share your memories.
Elteen Ted Lindsay, 84, passed away May 2, 2021.
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This article today is dedicated to Marozka cryptovirus which has become more active in the last couple of weeks of March this year. Like many analogues, it comes to a computer that encrypts user data of various formats, including audio, video, documents, office and much more. Moreover, it changes the extension of the infected files to .Marozka.
SEND.ID.TO is cryptovirus extorting money from users. After it penetrates your system, it encrypts your files in various formats, including Office documents, multimedia, photos, videos and more. Also, it is worth noting that it encrypts user data using a special algorithm AES-256, which makes these files unusable.
Today's article is devoted to RabbitFox cryptovirus that has become very common in the last week. This virus, like many analogues, comes to the computer and encrypts user data of various types, including Office documents, audio, video, multimedia, archives and much more.
Today we will try to describe the Tronas cryptovirus that comes to the computer and encrypts user files of various formats (documents, office, audio, video, archives, multimedia, and so on). It is worth noting that Tronas encrypts files using an algorithm that makes files "stony", in other words, unsuitable for further use.


Neurotransmitter receptors are not only expressed in target cell dendrites but also in axonal terminals, where these receptors regulate neurotransmitter release (see figure 1).... Neurotransmitters carry many functions in the body and some of them are specifically designated for certain roles like Acetylcholine Acetyl choline : One of the major neurotransmitter in the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves.
Common Neurotransmitters: Criteria for Neurotransmitters, Key Locations, Classifications and Functions. Advances in and shapes which determine their functions. Localization within the brain also determines function. When neurons malfunction, behavioral symptoms may occur. When drugs alter neuronal function, behavioral scott flansburg math magic pdf The editors of this book, building on their known neuropharmacological interests (Perry et al., 1999), have sought to show that neurotransmitters may be central to the mechanisms of consciousness, by outlining the neurochemical mediators of distributed neural function and their relationship to various conscious states.


text:
package org.apache.camel.itest.karaf;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.ops4j.pax.exam.Configuration;
import org.ops4j.pax.exam.Option;
import org.ops4j.pax.exam.junit.PaxExam;

@RunWith(PaxExam.class)
public class CamelJdbcAggregatorTest extends AbstractFeatureTest {

    // the aggregator is included in the camel-sql artifact
    public static final String COMPONENT = "sql";

    @Test
    public void test() throws Exception {
        // its not a component
    }

    @Configuration
    public static Option[] configure() {
        return configure(COMPONENT);
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


As Far As Blindness Could See Buy Album directly from Androcles and the Lion via their Bandcamp account.
Attn. MicroKORG owners: Retro synth preset bank for the MicroKORG – Great analog/vintage/retro sounds/emulations.


HARRISBURG – Rep. Eric Nelson (R-Hempfield) this week was appointed to five House committees for the 2019-20 legislative session.
His committee assignments are Aging and Older Adult Services, Consumer Affairs, Human Services, Labor and Industry, and Policy. As a result of his strong work on the Policy Committee, he will again serve as a deputy chair this session.
Nelson's demonstrated commitment to job creation, coupled with his willingness to work in a bipartisan manner, have landed him the Majority Chairman of the Pennsylvania Legislative Gas and Oil Caucus. The caucus is a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers who value the transformative nature of Pennsylvania's natural gas industry on job growth, the state's labor workforce, Pennsylvania ratepayers and our environment. The Democrat chair will be Rep. Ed Neilson (D-Philadelphia).
This will be Nelson's second term as a deputy policy chair. The House Majority Policy Committee travels across the state, conducting hearings and roundtable discussions about important issues to gather testimony and information from key stakeholders.
The 57th Legislative District includes the following Westmoreland County communities: the city of Greensburg; the townships of Hempfield (part) and Salem; and the boroughs of Delmont, Hunker, New Stanton, South Greensburg, Southwest Greensburg and Youngwood.


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Adults with Asperger Syndrome at significantly higher risk of suicidal thoughts than the general population
by Lancet
Adults with the autism spectrum condition known as Asperger Syndrome are nine times more likely to experience suicidal thoughts than people from the UK general population, according to the first large-scale clinical study of its kind, published in The Lancet Psychiatry.
The study surveyed 374 individuals (256 men and 118 women) diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome as adults between 2004 and 2013 at the Cambridge Lifetime Asperger Syndrome Service (CLASS) clinic in Cambridge UK. It revealed a significantly higher rate of suicidal ideation among adults with Asperger Syndrome (66%), compared with the rate found in the general population (17%), and patients with psychosis (59%) taken from other data sources.
The research, led by Dr Sarah Cassidy and Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, from the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, and the CLASS clinic in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT), found that two-thirds (66%) of adults with Asperger Syndrome had contemplated suicide and a third (35%) had planned or attempted suicide during their lifetime. Suicidal thoughts and behaviours were significantly more common in adults with Asperger Syndrome and a history of depression.
Among adults with Asperger Syndrome, those with depression were four times more likely to experience suicidal thoughts, and twice as likely to plan or attempt suicide, compared to individuals with Asperger Syndrome but without a history of depression. A second risk factor for suicide plans or attempts was a higher level of autistic traits.
"Our findings confirm anecdotal reports that adults with Asperger Syndrome have a significantly higher risk of suicide in comparison to other clinical groups, and that depression is a key risk factor in this", said Dr Cassidy.
According to Professor Baron-Cohen, "Adults with Asperger Syndrome often suffer with secondary depression due to social isolation, loneliness, social exclusion, lack of community services, under-achievement, and unemployment. Their depression and risk of suicide are preventable with the appropriate support. This study should be a wake-up call for the urgent need for high quality services, to prevent the tragic waste of even a single life. "
Autism spectrum conditions are a group of developmental brain conditions that cause difficulties in communication and social interaction, alongside the presence of unusually narrow interests and difficulties in adapting to change. In Asperger Syndrome, people show the key symptoms but without delayed language or intellectual disability. In the UK, one in 100 people (around 700 000) has an autism spectrum condition.
Study confirms a gene linked to Asperger Syndrome and empathy
Provided by Lancet
Citation: Adults with Asperger Syndrome at significantly higher risk of suicidal thoughts than the general population (2014, June 25) retrieved 17 January 2020 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-06-adults-asperger-syndrome-significantly-higher.html
Experts: No link between Asperger's, violence
Effects of Asperger's syndrome noticeable in babies
Autism diagnoses may decrease with new criteria
Rising awareness may explain spike in autism diagnoses
The level and nature of autistic intelligence II: What about Asperger Syndrome?
'Dialogic praxis' enhances psychotherapeutic success for youth
Mix of stress and air pollution may lead to cognitive difficulties in children
No clear evidence of increase in adolescent suicide after '13 Reasons Why'


text:
You are browsing: All Ceremonies of the Sarum Missal: A Careful Conjecture
Ceremonies of the Sarum Missal: A Careful Conjecture (Paperback)
Richard Urquhart
R.J. Urquhart provides the first systematic description of the ceremonial of the Sarum Mass in 500 years. Using a variety of sources, and tracing the Sarum rite and its occasional use from the Act of Supremacy through to modern times, Urquhart has compiled a volume that offers the best possible reconstruction and overview of these profoundly beautiful rites from the liturgical treasury of the Church.
Urquhart considers Sarum in the light of Pope Benedict XVI's groundbreaking apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, and how this has reopened the question of the catholicity of part of the Anglican patrimony. He also considers the impact of Pope Benedict's Summorum Pontificum and its proposition that what was sacred for earlier generations remains sacred now, arguing that this supremely pastoral teaching calls for a more profound and detailed study of the rite.
Urquhart covers all aspects of the ritual, beginning with an outline of the vessels, books and vestments and then moving on to outline both Low and High Mass, special forms, processions and blessings, and the ritual year. Appendices cover the role of the laity, and offer an Ordo Missae with simple rubrics.
Philosophy, Psychology & Social SciencesReligion & Beliefs Christianity Christian liturgy, prayerbooks & hymnalsReligion & Beliefs Christianity Christian theology Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Publication Date: 28/07/2022 ISBN-13: 9780567696670 Details: Type: Paperback Format: Books
Richard Urquhart teaches Classics at Oakham School in Rutland, UK.
More books by Richard Urquhart
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(Hardback)


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What is Going On With Legal Sports Betting in Florida?
by Dave Schwab - 12/13/2021
There are close to 30 states in the US offering legal sports betting in some form. One state recently added to that list was Florida. More recently, the Sunshine State has come off of that list due to ongoing legal challenges to that state's gaming system.
For a number of years, Florida's Seminole Tribe has basically held a monopoly on legal gaming within state borders. This has been highlighted by a collection of Hard Rock casino gaming properties located in different parts of the state.
In an effort to bring legal sports betting into the fold, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis negotiated the terms of an amended gaming compact with the tribe earlier this year. The amended compact gave the Seminoles complete control over legal sports betting along with added table games such as slots in the tribe's land-based casinos.
Get free sports picks for every league and nearly every matchup on Doc's free picks page.
Florida lawmakers were quick to approve the new gaming compact from a legislative standpoint. The federal government gave its stamp of approval through a US Department of the Interior formal review. With everything now in place, the Seminole Tribe went live with online sports betting through a Hard Rock Sportsbook mobile betting app.
While all the parties involved with the process were thrilled with the outcome, legal challenges to this plan still had to be addressed. The biggest obstacle was the expansion of any form of gaming in the state outside of approved federal tribal lands.
If gaming was to be expanded outside of Seminole properties, it would take an amendment to Florida's state constitution. In turn, this would require the approval Florida voters through a special referendum on the general election ballot.
The Seminoles took that stance that mobile sports bets were going through servers located on their tribal territory.
Opposing parties took their case to court. A federal district court judge ruled against the Seminole Tribe on the argument that processing sports bets through servers located on tribal land was illegal.
US District Judge Dabney Friedrich stated that this act violated federal Indian gaming laws on Nov. 22. The Seminoles quickly filed an emergency motion that asked the District of Columbia court to stay the ruling.
It was then determined that the "Appellant has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending appeal."
The net result of this matter was the temporary suspension of the Hard Rock Sportsbook mobile betting app. That suspension went into effect on Saturday, Dec. 4. Gary Bitner is a spokesperson for the Seminole Tribe. He confirmed that the tribe's decision to "temporarily suspend operations." This was tied to the decision on the appeal by the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Account balances for all active players "will be refunded as requested." He added that despite the current situation, the Seminoles "remain committed to building the best place for sports betting in Florida."
One of the main reasons why both Gov. DeSantis and Florida lawmakers pushed the amended compact through the approval process so quicky were the terms of the deal. The Seminole Tribe committed to a $2.5 billion payment to the state over the first five years.
That figure grew to several billion dollars over the course of the entire 30-year term tied to the amended gaming compact.
One aspect of the compact that garnered the most opposition was the expansion into mobile sports betting anywhere within the state. This expanded legal gaming well outside the confines of tribal land. The fact that mobile bets were being processed through computer servers on tribal land was just too wide of a loophole to ignore.
The Seminoles will continue with the appeal process. However, the immediate future of legal mobile sports betting in the state remains up in the air with no immediate resolution in sight.
Get expert sports picks on every game, or if you want our very best bet premium picks by the experts, sign up for your free $60 account with a guarantee.
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You are here: Home / Crime / Courts / Ruling on IWD office closings appears headed for an appeal
Ruling on IWD office closings appears headed for an appeal
December 9, 2011 By Matt Kelley
It sounds as if Governor Branstad will appeal a Polk County judge's ruling on the governor's line-item veto that led to the closure of 36 Iowa Workforce Development offices. The judge ruled Branstad's action to be unconstitutional because he attempted to redirect money through the line-item veto.
The governor's spokesman, Tim Albrecht, says Branstad "respectfully disagrees" with the ruling. "We knew from the get-go, regardless of how the district court was going to rule, that this was absolutely going to be decided by the Iowa Supreme Court. So, this is only the first step in this process," Albrecht said.
Five legislative Democrats and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) filed the lawsuit. AFSCME Council 61 president Danny Homan hoped the judge's ruling would lead to the reopening of the Iowa Workforce Development offices, but he anticipates Branstad will appeal.
"It would appear that's where we're heading," Homan said. "That would be a shame for not only the unemployed folks, but also for the citizens of the state because we're continuing to waste taxpayer money to defend his illegal veto." Branstad said his decision to close the IWD offices would save the state $6.5 million a year.
Albrecht says the offices have been replaced by a "much more efficient" system involving computer stations in libraries, homeless shelters and other locations. "We've also offered Saturday hours, which were unavailable before. We have access points that are open, in some cases, 14 hours a day," Albrecht said.
Homan rejects Albrecht's "improved efficiency" claim. He says the one-on-one assistance previously offered was more effective. "A computer can't give them suggestions how to improve their interview tactics or how to improve their job writing skills," Homan said.
Albrecht says the offices will remain closed during any potential appeal process. "These offices were an archaic relic of the 21st century that no longer serve the needs of those unemployed in Iowa," Albrecht said.
Homan claims the computer-based system is unreliable and confusing for many job seekers. "A lot of folks…have been going into these sites and they're stuck back in a corner and most of the people don't even know how to turn (the computers) on or they have problems logging on," Homan said. "If that's an effective system, I find it to be very troublesome."
Filed Under: Crime / Courts, News, Politics / Govt Tagged With: Employment and Labor, Republican Party, Terry Branstad


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Antecedente is an album by the Panamanian musician Rubén Blades (credited with Son del Solar), released on 20 September 1988. The album was often reviewed with La Pistola y El Corazón, by Los Lobos, which also was a return-to-roots effort.

The album won a Grammy Award, for "Best Tropical Latin Performance". It peaked at No. 8 on Billboard'''s Tropical Albums chart.

Production
The album was produced by Blades. His backing band changed its name from Seis del Solar to Son del Solar, with trombones replacing some of the synthesizer parts.Antecedente marked a return to salsa for Blades, who had remarked that he did not like how older studio recording techniques made the music sound.

Critical reception

Robert Christgau wrote that "Blades augments a revamped, renamed Seis del Solar with salsa trombones and begets a dance album for the people of Panama." Trouser Press deemed the album "rewardingly rootsy." The St. Petersburg Times called it "a hot-blooded, no-nonsense salsa-style record brimming with gliding Latin rhythms, layers of punchy percussion and a relentless two-trombone backdrop—all topped off by Blades' plucky tenor." The New York Times determined that "the music is full of life, trading away letter-perfect period authenticity for heartfelt spirit."The Washington Post considered the songs to be "not the fast, dizzying dance workouts of the barrio dance halls but a more sinuous sound that can accommodate both his evocative lyrics and his hypnotic syncopation." The Globe and Mail'' labeled the album "a collection of dance tunes that forgo his usual political commentary for songs of love—of women, neighborhood and country."

AllMusic called the album a "return to exuberant, dance-oriented salsa."

Track listing

References

Rubén Blades albums
1988 albums
Elektra Records albums

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Drivers sentenced for road race fatality
22 December 2017 |News, Driving offences
Two drivers who raced at speeds in excess of 70mph on a 30mph road in Barry and caused the death of a mother-of-two have been sentenced today.
Joseph Fettah was driving a VW Golf along Cardiff Road in Barry, South Wales when he started racing against Jamie Oaten in an Audi A5 on 27 September 2016.
The cars were seen travelling at speed, one behind the other. Oaten's car was then seen to brake heavily before it hit the side of Jenna Miller's car as she was coming out of a petrol station.
Fettah managed to avoid a collision, swerving at the last second. He then pretended that he had no involvement in the incident.
Mrs Miller was left with catastrophic injuries and died in hospital.
Oaten had previously pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving while Fettah denied the charge. Fettah was convicted by a jury at Cardiff Crown Court.
Janine Davies of the CPS said: "Although Joseph Fettah was not driving the vehicle that collided with Mrs Miller's car, our case was that he was jointly responsible.
"Through witness accounts, CCTV and expert evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service demonstrated how he was racing with Oaten and how this ultimately led to a loss of life.
"Our thoughts are with the family of Jenna Miller. They have shown great strength throughout the court process and we thank them for their support."
Jamie Oaten was sentenced to three years and nine months' imprisonment and was disqualified from driving for seven years.
Joseph Fettah was sentenced to five years detention at a Young Offender Institution and was disqualified from driving for seven years and six months.
Janine Davies is a District Crown Prosecutor for CPS Cymru-Wales
Jamie Oaten pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving on 18 April 2017
Joseph Fettah was convicted by a jury on 28 November 2017
CPS News Centre
Find out what's new at the Crown Prosecution Service's digital News Centre.
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Related prosecution guidance
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Panasonic KX-TCA86 Headset with 2.5 MM jack. Works with the Vodavi Starplus STS telephones and the Panasonic KX-T7700 Series phones.
Plantronics M220C Over the ear Headset with 2.5 MM jack. Works with the Vodavi Starplus STS, Comdial DX-80 & DX-120 telephones and the Panasonic KX-T7700 Series phones.
Plantronics M110 Over the ear Headset with 2.5 MM jack. Works with the Vodavi Starplus STS, Comdial DX-80 & DX-120 telephones and the Panasonic KX-T7700 Series phones.


When was the last time you saw someone wearing a pair of white jeans? I don't mean your best friend, or your coworker, or some random person on the street. I mean someone famous, someone whose every fashion move we follow, be she a supermodel like Bella Hadid, a music legend like Beyoncé, or a reality star à la Kim Kardashian West. It's summertime, and instead of classic white jeans and tees, we're living among stars in diamanté bodysuits or sometimes no pants at all. These women are wearing metallic bike shorts, leopard-print minidresses, and low-slung track pants. It really seems like the days of chic white denim are behind us, lost to the era of Princess Diana in white jeans and a navy blazer and Jacqueline Kennedy in her white jeans and black tee.
White jeans, if we're talking about that sort of Diana-meets-Jackie preppy style here, aren't exactly Bey and Bella's speed. But even just a year or two ago, models like Karlie Kloss and Kate Moss were still reminding us of how cool summertime white denim can be, even when worn simply with a loose white or gray T-shirt and a pair of pretty ballet flats. I've found myself hoping white jeans will make a comeback this summer, if only to take my mind off of impossibly gigantic sun hats, itty-bitty bra tops, and orthopedic sneakers. Ladies, can't we put on a pair of pants? Alternatively, can't we swap the baggy mom pants and capri jorts for something a little less frumpy?
White jeans go with everything. Even the quirkier style habits of today like corsets, bucket hats, and beaded kiddie bags. Really, everything!
Here are five ways to bring the white jean back into your life before the summer of 2018 is over.


MISSOULA – Some of the best Native American dancers and drum groups in North America will gather at the University of Montana on Friday and Saturday, April 19-20, for the 51st Annual Kyiyo Celebration in the Adams Center.
Hosted by the Kyiyo Native American Student Association, the event is one of the oldest student-run powwows in the country and allows the Native American community to share its culture with the UM campus, Missoula and beyond through traditional dance and song. The two-day event will feature dancing and drumming contests, a basketball tournament, vendors and more.
Grand entry times are at 7 p.m. Friday, noon and 7 p.m. Saturday.
People who volunteer for 3.5-hour shifts during the powwow will receive free weekend admission. Sign up for a volunteer shift at https://signup.com/go/KBCihFm.
The Kyiyo Native American Student Association plays an integral role in promoting the cultural traditions and customs of all Native Americans. Through extracurricular activities offered throughout the year, Kyiyo engages UM students and employees in the cultural identities of Native Americans to support cultural diversity. Kyiyo is open to all Native American and non-native students, as well as any community members. The club is a chartered member of the Associated Students of UM.
For more information visit http://hs.umt.edu/kyiyo/default.php.
Contact: Mahalia Hendren, marketing coordinator, Kyiyo Native American Student Association, mahalia.hendren@umontana.edu.


A useful book with all SMD resistor values you might ever need in your lab.
8850 high quality resistors from the Taiwanese company Yageo will match all your needs.
Perfect for everyone who is making prototypes, electronic projects or small production.
See the related products for other SMD books.


Sure, your agency might be delivering eye-popping creative on a regular basis—but if it's not based upon the right strategy and they're not delivering the right metrics, what are they really achieving? If you and your agency aren't obsessing over results on a regular basis, something's not right.
Here are some common areas in which agencies and their clients commonly fall short when it comes to measurement—and how you can help reverse the trend, grow your business and most importantly, prove the value of marketing.
All goals should be measurable. Corporate goals. Marketing goals. Sales goals. On a campaign-basis. On a brand-basis. Total conversions. Percentage improvements from previous years. Everything.
Find metrics that are direct indicators of your goals. Segment your goals by your distinct audiences and use marketing best practices to make sure you're isolating that audience's activity.
Every brand should have a marketing contact database, but few employ adequate layers of classification to ensure that any and all measurement efforts are hyper-relevant and reveal actionable insights.
Here it is: the bigfoot of marketing. While rarely seen in the flesh, measuring Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) is, in fact, possible—with the right systems and strategies in place. When you can tell your CEO that your latest campaign paid for itself in three weeks, you've objectively proven your value as a marketer.
Identify the prerequisites for becoming a sales qualified lead.
Convert those prerequisites into questions on contact or lead generation forms.
Deliver targeted messages and offers to nurture those leads, attaching a dollar value to each conversion.
If all this measurement sounds a little nuts, good! You work in marketing—we're all a little nuts. Fortunately, with the right agency, working with you as a partner to define your goals and deliver real results, the burden of proof becomes that much lighter.
Ready to get Measurably Mental?
Arnie's role at Pipitone Group is one of strategy, counsel and execution. Arnie's keen discernment for detail and processes stems from his decades-long career in the industry. As the primary facilitator of the IntelliStep™ Planning Process, Arnie has served many clients, including CENTRIA, Ellwood Group, Guttman Energy, Allegheny County Economic Development, Westinghouse, Sloan, Vitro Architectural Glass, PPG Industries and Construction Specialties, just to name a few.