Standard accounts of civil disobedience include nonviolence as a necessary condition. Here I argue that such accounts are mistaken and that civil disobedience can include violence in many aspects, primarily excepting violence directed at other persons. I base this argument on a novel understanding of civil disobedience: the special character of the practice comes from its combination of condemnation of a political practice with an expressed commitment to the political. The commitment to the political is a commitment to engaging with (...) others as co-members in the on-going political project of living together. I show how such an understanding of civil disobedience is superior to the Rawlsian strain of thought, which focuses on fidelity to law. Rawls was concerned with civil disobedience solely in the context of overriding political obligation. The project of characterizing a contestatory political practice that can be distinguished and used in a wider variety of contexts than Rawls is concerned with, including under illegitimate regimes, beyond the nation-state, or on behalf of anarchism, requires a different understanding of civil disobedience. (shrink)

Political legitimacy is best understood as one type of a broader notion, which I call institutional legitimacy. An institution is legitimate in my sense when it has the right to function. The right to function correlates to a duty of non-interference. Understanding legitimacy in this way favorably contrasts with legitimacy understood in the traditional way, as the right to rule correlating to a duty of obedience. It helps unify our discourses of legitimacy across a wider range of practices, especially including (...) the many evaluations we increasingly make of international institutions of various sorts, but also including domestic institutions. (shrink)

Exclusionary defeat is Joseph Raz’s proposal for understanding the more complex, layered structure of practical reasoning. Exclusionary reasons are widely appealed to in legal theory and consistently arise in many other areas of philosophy. They have also been subject to a variety of challenges. I propose a new account of exclusionary reasons based on their justificatory role, rejecting Raz’s motivational account and especially contrasting exclusion with undercutting defeat. I explain the appeal and coherence of exclusionary reasons by appeal to commonsense (...) value pluralism and the intermediate space of public policies, social roles, and organizations. We often want our choices to have a certain character or instantiate a certain value and in order to do so, that choice can only be based on a restricted set of reasons. Exclusion explains how pro tanto practical reasons can be disqualified from counting towards a choice of a particular kind without being outweighed or undercut. (shrink)

I argue that legitimacy discourses serve a gatekeeping function. They give practitioners telic standards for riding herd on social practices, ensuring that minimally acceptable versions of the practice are implemented. Such a function is a necessary part of implementing formalized social practices, especially including law. This gatekeeping account shows that political philosophers have misunderstood legitimacy; it is not secondary to justice and only necessary because we cannot agree about justice. Instead, it is a necessary feature of actual human social practices, (...) which must be implemented via practitioners' discretion in changing contexts. (shrink)

The essays collected in this special issue explore what legitimacy means for actors and institutions that do not function like traditional states but nevertheless wield significant power in the global realm. They are connected by the idea that the specific purposes of non-state actors and the contexts in which they operate shape what it means for them to be legitimate and so shape the standards of justification that they have to meet. In this introduction, we develop this guiding methodology further (...) and show how the special issue’s individual contributions apply it to their cases. In the first section, we provide a sketch of our purpose-dependent theory of legitimacy beyond the state. We then highlight two features of the institutional context beyond the state that set it apart from the domestic case: problems of feasibility and the structure of international law. (shrink)

I argue for a new conception of practical authority based on an analysis of the relationship between authority and subject. Commands entail a demand for practical deference, which establishes a relationship of hierarchy and vulnerability that involves a variety of signals and commitments. In order for these signals and commitments to be justified, the subject must be under a preexisting duty, the authority’s commands must take precedence over the subject’s judgment regarding fulfillment of that duty, the authority must accept the (...) position and responsibilities of command, and the authority must be sufficiently trustworthy relative to how vulnerable the subject makes herself by deferring. This results in an instrumentalist conception of practical authority that can be favorably compared to Joseph Raz’s famous service conception. The relational conception’s main advantage is that it focuses on the authority as much as the subject, requiring that the authority accept responsibility for the relationship and be sufficiently trustworthy. (shrink)

By appeal to the phenomenon of presupposition accommodation, Rae Langton and others have proposed that speakers can gain genuine authority over their audiences when they implicitly claim such autho...

Institutions undertake a huge variety of constitutive purposes. One of the roles of legitimacy is to protect and promote an institution’s pursuit of its purpose; state legitimacy is generally understood as the right to rule, for example. When considering legitimacy beyond the state, we have to take account of how differences in purposes change legitimacy. I focus in particular on how differences in purpose matter for the stringency of the standards that an institution must meet in order to be legitimate. (...) An important characteristic of an institution’s purpose is its deontic status, i.e. whether it is morally impermissible, merely permissible, or mandatory. Although this matters, it does so in some non-obvious ways; the mere fact of a morally impermissible purpose is not necessarily delegitimating, for example. I also consider the problem of conflicting, multiple, and contested institutional purposes, and the different theoretical roles for institutional purpose. Understanding how differences in purpose matter for an institution’s legitimacy is one part of the broader project of theorizing institutional legitimacy in the many contexts beyond the traditional context of the state. (shrink)

Courts and jurors sometimes refuse to assign liability to defendants on the basis of statistics alone, despite their apparent reliability. I argue that this refusal is best understood as a recognition of defendants’ right to security. Understood as a robust good in Philip Pettit’s sense, security requires that someone risking harm to others’ protected interests adopt a disposition of concern that controls against wrongfully harming them. Since trials risk harm, the state must adopt such a disposition. Statistics leave open the (...) possibility of innocence and so wrongful harm in a way that the state cannot ignore; if it does use such statistics, it makes defendants wrongfully insecure. This explanation of the problem of bare statistical evidence is especially apt because security grounds the right to a fair trial and judicial procedural rights more generally. (shrink)

Contrary to the widely accepted consensus, Christopher Heath Wellman argues that there are no pre-institutional judicial procedural rights. Thus commonly affirmed rights like the right to a fair trial cannot be assumed in the literature on punishment and legal philosophy as they usually are. Wellman canvasses and rejects a variety of grounds proposed for such rights. I answer his skepticism by proposing two novel grounds for procedural rights. First, a general right against unreasonable risk of punishment grounds rights to an (...) institutionalized system of punishment. Second, to complement and extend the first ground, I more controversially propose a right to provision of the robust good of security. People have a right to others' protecting for avoiding wrongfully harming them: when I take an action that is reasonably expected to threaten the protected interests of others, I must take appropriate care to avoid setting back those interests. Inflicting punishment on someone--intentionally harming them in response to a violation--is prima facie wrongful, so I can only count as taking appropriate care in punishing when I follow familiar procedures that reliably and redundantly test whether they are liable to such punishment, i.e. whether they have forfeited their right against punishment through a culpable act. (shrink)

Constituent power is an idea with a long tradition in modern political thought but has been largely abandoned since the middle of the twentieth century. Here I offer a new account of constituent power that avoids problems of the classical account, including the paradox of constitutionalism, and clarifies how individuals contribute to creating their shared political order. I argue that constituent power should be understood as an individual power-with: the agential power to constitute a legal order with others. Our individual, (...) banal acts of law-abidingness each partially effect the collective outcome. We generally exercise constituent power unconsciously and automatically, guiding our actions to succeed as defined by law and relying on the legal system to take up our contributions and effectively combine them with others. (shrink)

In Morality and Socially Constructed Norms, Valentini searches for a unifying principle that underlies whatever genuine obligations we might have to obey the norms of any and all social practices, ranging from line queueing norms, through offsides rules in soccer, to obligations not to break the law. I argue that this search is driven, and distorted, by a commitment to what Bernard Williams labeled the ‘morality system’. Once we see this, we should question the value of the unifying project. Most (...) social norms can be considered on their own terms, as part of a rich and variegated ethical life, without subsuming them under the question of whether others’ moral rights are at stake. Similarly, political obligation needs to be understood in relation to the practical activity of politics, not as an abstract moral quandary. (shrink)

This volume addresses the normative legitimacy of the international order, asking how we can make sense of legitimacy claims of increasingly diverse global governance institutions and practices and how their legitimacy relates to and differs from state legitimacy. -/- State legitimacy is a central concern of modern political thought but is inadequate when applied to institutions that differ from the state in type, level of governance, scope, and much else. We need a new, tailored approach to the legitimacy of institutions (...) beyond the state, especially international and transnational institutions. Such an approach includes foundational questions: what does it mean for institutions to be legitimate that have radically different purposes, means, interests, capacities, constituents, and roles from states? And what standards do such institutions have to meet in order to count as legitimate? The contributions to this volume seek to advance the debate on these questions at both abstract and more concrete levels. They range from conceptual questions about the nature of legitimacy and international institutions, to rule of law, to the legitimacy of the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court, and occupying military forces in the face of challenges specific to their nature and context. Together they demonstrate both the promise and challenges of theorizing legitimacy beyond the state. -/- The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. (shrink)

We provide a retrospective of 25 years of the International Conference on AI and Law, which was first held in 1987. Fifty papers have been selected from the thirteen conferences and each of them is described in a short subsection individually written by one of the 24 authors. These subsections attempt to place the paper discussed in the context of the development of AI and Law, while often offering some personal reactions and reflections. As a whole, the subsections build into (...) a history of the last quarter century of the field, and provide some insights into where it has come from, where it is now, and where it might go. (shrink)

The current issue of the American Journal of Bioethics illustrates the scope of disagreement among professionals about normothermic regional perfusion (NRP). A similar range of opinions has been de...

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

Bayesians take “definite” or “single-case” probabilities to be basic. Definite probabilities attach to closed formulas or propositions. We write them here using small caps: PROB(P) and PROB(P/Q). Most objective probability theories begin instead with “indefinite” or “general” probabilities (sometimes called “statistical probabilities”). Indefinite probabilities attach to open formulas or propositions. We write indefinite probabilities using lower case “prob” and free variables: prob(Bx/Ax). The indefinite probability of an A being a B is not about any particular A, but rather about the (...) property of being an A. In this respect, its logical form is the same as that of relative frequencies. For instance, we might talk about the probability of a human baby being female. That probability is about human babies in general — not about individuals. If we examine a baby and determine conclusively that she is female, then the definite probability of her being female is 1, but that does not alter the indefinite probability of human babies in general being female. Most objective approaches to probability tie probabilities to relative frequencies in some way, and the resulting probabilities have the same logical form as the relative frequencies. That is, they are indefinite probabilities. The simplest theories identify indefinite probabilities with relative frequencies.3 It is often objected that such “finite frequency theories” are inadequate because our probability judgments often diverge from relative frequencies. For example, we can talk about a coin being fair (and so the indefinite probability of a flip landing heads is 0.5) even when it is flipped only once and then destroyed (in which case the relative frequency is either 1 or 0). For understanding such indefinite probabilities, it has been suggested that we need a notion of probability that talks about possible instances of properties as well as actual instances.. (shrink)

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.Crystallographic studies of ligands bound to biological macromolecules represent an important source of information concerning drug-target interactions, providing atomic level insights into the physical chemistry of complex formation between macromolecules and ligands. Of the more than 115,000 entries extant in the Protein Data Bank archive, ∼75% include at least one non-polymeric ligand. Ligand geometrical and stereochemical quality, the suitability of ligand models for in silico drug discovery and design, and the goodness-of-fit of ligand models (...) to electron-density maps vary widely across the archive. We describe the proceedings and conclusions from the first Worldwide PDB/Cambridge Crystallographic Data Center/Drug Design Data Resource Ligand Validation Workshop held at the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics at Rutgers University on July 30-31, 2015. Experts in protein crystallography from academe and industry came together with non-profit and for-profit software providers for crystallography and with experts in computational chemistry and data archiving to discuss and make recommendations on best practices, as framed by a series of questions central to structural studies of macromolecule-ligand complexes. What data concerning bound ligands should be archived in the PDB? How should the ligands be best represented? How should structural models of macromolecule-ligand complexes be validated? What supplementary information should accompany publications of structural studies of biological macromolecules? Consensus recommendations on best practices developed in response to each of these questions are provided, together with some details regarding implementation. Important issues addressed but not resolved at the workshop are also enumerated. (shrink)

© 2017 Moriarty et al.Chemical restraints for use in macromolecular structure refinement are produced by a variety of methods, including a number of programs that use chemical information to generate the required bond, angle, dihedral, chiral and planar restraints. These programs help to automate the process and therefore minimize the errors that could otherwise occur if it were performed manually. Furthermore, restraint-dictionary generation programs can incorporate chemical and other prior knowledge to provide reasonable choices of types and values. However, the (...) use of restraints to define the geometry of a molecule is an approximation introduced with efficiency in mind. The representation of a bond as a parabolic function is a convenience and does not reflect the true variability in even the simplest of molecules. Another complicating factor is the interplay of the molecule with other parts of the macromolecular model. Finally, difficult situations arise from molecules with rare or unusual moieties that may not have their conformational space fully explored. These factors give rise to the need for an interactive editor for WYSIWYG interactions with the restraints and molecule. Restraints Editor, Especially Ligands is a graphical user interface for simple and error-free editing along with additional features to provide greater control of the restraint dictionaries in macromolecular refinement.Obtaining a restraint dictionary for novel ligands or improving restraints for known ligands can require their manual modification. This can be tedious and error-prone. REEL is a restraints editor that provides quick, easy and accurate development, allowing global changes and fine-tuning of individual restraints. (shrink)

© 2015 International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research. Objective: To recommend methods for assessing quality of care via patient-reported outcome-based performance measures of symptoms, functional status, and quality of life. Methods: A Technical Expert Panel was assembled by the American Medical Association-convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement. An environmental scan and structured literature review were conducted to identify quality programs that integrate PRO-PMs. Key methodological considerations in the design, implementation, and analysis of these PRO-PM data were systematically identified. Recommended (...) methods for addressing each identified consideration were developed on the basis of published patient-reported outcome standards and refined through public comment. Literature review focused on programs using PROs to assess performance and on PRO guidance documents. Results: Thirteen PRO programs and 10 guidance documents were identified. Nine best practices were developed, including the following: provide a rationale for measuring the outcome and for using a PRO-PM; describe the context of use; select a measure that is meaningful to patients with adequate psychometric properties; provide evidence of the measure's sensitivity to differences in care; address missing data and risk adjustment; and provide a framework for implementation, interpretation, dissemination, and continuous refinement. Conclusion: Methods for integrating PROs into performance measurement are available. (shrink)

© 2017 Liebschner et al.The crystallographic maps that are routinely used during the structure-solution workflow are almost always model-biased because model information is used for their calculation. As these maps are also used to validate the atomic models that result from model building and refinement, this constitutes an immediate problem: anything added to the model will manifest itself in the map and thus hinder the validation. OMIT maps are a common tool to verify the presence of atoms in the model. (...) The simplest way to compute an OMIT map is to exclude the atoms in question from the structure, update the corresponding structure factors and compute a residual map. It is then expected that if these atoms are present in the crystal structure, the electron density for the omitted atoms will be seen as positive features in this map. This, however, is complicated by the flat bulk-solvent model which is almost universally used in modern crystallographic refinement programs. This model postulates constant electron density at any voxel of the unit-cell volume that is not occupied by the atomic model. Consequently, if the density arising from the omitted atoms is weak then the bulk-solvent model may obscure it further. A possible solution to this problem is to prevent bulk solvent from entering the selected OMIT regions, which may improve the interpretative power of residual maps. This approach is called a polder map. Polder OMIT maps can be particularly useful for displaying weak densities of ligands, solvent molecules, side chains, alternative conformations and residues both in terminal regions and in loops. The tools described in this manuscript have been implemented and are available in PHENIX.Residual OMIT maps can be improved by the selective exclusion of bulk solvent from the OMIT region. (shrink)

We show that if among the tested hypotheses the number of true hypotheses is not equal to the number of false hypotheses, then Neyman-Pearson theory of testing hypotheses does not warrant minimal epistemic reliability. We also argue that N-P does not protect from the possible negative effects of the pragmatic value-laden unequal setting of error probabilities on N-P’s epistemic reliability. Most importantly, we argue that in the case of a negative impact no methodological adjustment is available to neutralize it, so (...) in such cases the discussed pragmatic-value-ladenness of N-P inevitably compromises the goal of attaining truth. (shrink)

In this work, we explore the epistemic import of the value-ladenness of Neyman-Pearson’s Theory of Testing Hypotheses by reconstructing and extending Daniel Steel’s argument for the legitimate influence of pragmatic values on scientific inference. We focus on how to properly understand N-P’s pragmatic value-ladenness and the epistemic reliability of N-P. We develop an account of the twofold influence of pragmatic values on N-P’s epistemic reliability and replicability. We refer to these two distinguished aspects as “direct” and “indirect”. We discuss the (...) replicability of experiments in terms of the indirect aspect and the replicability of outcomes in terms of the direct aspect. We argue that the influence of pragmatic values is beneficial to N-P’s epistemic reliability and replicability indirectly. We show that while the direct influence of pragmatic values can be beneficial, its negative effects on reliability and replicability are also unavoidable in some cases, with the direct and indirect aspects possibly being incongruent. (shrink)

The study area was a small lowland river valley within a range of 4750 m length and approx. 150 m width (about 62 ha), situated in the south-east of Poland, in the middle of Sandomierz Basin (Fig. 1). Flora and the chosen most valuable plant communities of the river bed with adjacent ecotone zone were investigated in 2007. During the study 291 species of vascular plants were found. Among them 10 are protected: Batrachium peltatum, Convallaria majalis, Dactylorhiza majalis, Daphne mezereum, (...) Frangula alnus, Hedera helix, Lycopodium annotium, Nuphar lutea, Utricularia vulgaris, and Viburnum opulus. Other species were considered to be value-raising, e.g. Achillea ptarmica, Batrachium circinatum, Calla palustris, Crepis paludosa, Hottonia palustris, Hypochoeris glabra, Senecio ovatus or Valeriana dioica. The number of antropophytes with the amount of 10% is relatively low. Most valuable plant communities represent 3 types of Nature 2000 habitats: natural eutrophic lakes with Magnopotamion or Hydrocharition – code 3150, transition and quaking bogs – code 7140-1, and alluvial forests with Alnus glutinosa and Fraxinus excelsior – code 91E0-3. Human activities brought about the emergence of 3 different areas within the valley: channeled river site (K), natural river bed site (N) and agricultural field site (P). Those areas differ significantly in terms of the composition of flora, vegetation and biological diversity. Most valuable is (P) and the least is (K). The greatest potential source of danger for biodiversity is the wrong forester’s management, especially interference in the natural processes (the planned building of the extra pond) and preventing wooden biomass accumulation. (shrink)

© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.Light-induced oxidation of water by photosystem II in plants, algae and cyanobacteria has generated most of the dioxygen in the atmosphere. PS II, a membrane-bound multi-subunit pigment protein complex, couples the one-electron photochemistry at the reaction centre with the four-electron redox chemistry of water oxidation at the Mn 4 CaO 5 cluster in the oxygen-evolving complex. Under illumination, the OEC cycles through five intermediate S-states, in which S 1 is (...) the dark-stable state and S 3 is the last semi-stable state before O-O bond formation and O 2 evolution. A detailed understanding of the O-O bond formation mechanism remains a challenge, and will require elucidation of both the structures of the OEC in the different S-states and the binding of the two substrate waters to the catalytic site. Here we report the use of femtosecond pulses from an X-ray free electron laser to obtain damage-free, room temperature structures of dark-adapted, two-flash illuminated, and ammonia-bound two-flash illuminated PS II. Although the recent 1.95 Å resolution structure of PS II at cryogenic temperature using an XFEL provided a damage-free view of the S 1 state, measurements at room temperature are required to study the structural landscape of proteins under functional conditions, and also for in situ advancement of the S-states. To investigate the water-binding site, ammonia, a water analogue, has been used as a marker, as it binds to the Mn 4 CaO 5 cluster in the S 2 and S 3 states. Since the ammonia-bound OEC is active, the ammonia-binding Mn site is not a substrate water site. This approach, together with a comparison of the native dark and 2F states, is used to discriminate between proposed O-O bond formation mechanisms. (shrink)

© 2016, CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration.The number of charged particles inside jets is a widely used discriminant for identifying the quark or gluon nature of the initiating parton and is sensitive to both the perturbative and non-perturbative components of fragmentation. This paper presents a measurement of the average number of charged particles with >500 pT> 500 {\mathrm{MeV}} MeV inside high-momentum jets in dijet events using 20.3 fb-1 of data recorded with the ATLAS detector in pp collisions (...) at √s = 8 TeV collisions at the LHC. The jets considered have transverse momenta from 50 GeV up to and beyond 1.5 TeV. The reconstructed charged-particle track multiplicity distribution is unfolded to remove distortions from detector effects and the resulting charged-particle multiplicity is compared to several models. Furthermore, quark and gluon jet fractions are used to extract the average charged-particle multiplicity for quark and gluon jets separately. (shrink)

© 2014, CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration.A search is conducted for non-resonant new phenomena in dielectron and dimuon final states, originating from either contact interactions or large extra spatial dimensions. The LHC 2012 proton–proton collision dataset recorded by the ATLAS detector is used, corresponding to 20 fb at = 8 TeV. The dilepton invariant mass spectrum is a discriminating variable in both searches, with the contact interaction search additionally utilizing the dilepton forward-backward asymmetry. No significant deviations from (...) the Standard Model expectation are observed. Lower limits are set on the contact interaction scale between 15.4 TeV and 26.3 TeV, at the 95 % credibility level. For large extra spatial dimensions, lower limits are set on the string scale between 3.2 TeV to 5.0 TeV. (shrink)

Posttranslational modification of proteins and peptides is important for diverse biological processes in plants and animals. The paucity of heterologous expression systems for PTMs and the technical challenges associated with chemical synthesis of these modified proteins has limited detailed molecular characterization and therapeutic applications. Here we describe an optimized system for expression of tyrosine-sulfated proteins in Escherichia coli and its application in a bio-based crop protection strategy in rice.

© 2017, CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration.A measurement of the calorimeter response to isolated charged hadrons in the ATLAS detector at the LHC is presented. This measurement is performed with 3.2 nb- 1 of proton–proton collision data at s=7 TeV from 2010 and 0.1 nb- 1 of data at s=8 TeV from 2012. A number of aspects of the calorimeter response to isolated hadrons are explored. After accounting for energy deposited by neutral particles, there is a 5% (...) discrepancy in the modelling, using various sets of Geant4 hadronic physics models, of the calorimeter response to isolated charged hadrons in the central calorimeter region. The description of the response to anti-protons at low momenta is found to be improved with respect to previous analyses. The electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters are also examined separately, and the detector simulation is found to describe the response in the hadronic calorimeter well. The jet energy scale uncertainty and correlations in scale between jets of different momenta and pseudorapidity are derived based on these studies. The uncertainty is 2–5% for jets with transverse momenta above 2 TeV, where this method provides the jet energy scale uncertainty for ATLAS. (shrink)

© 2016, CERN for the benefit of the.The luminosity determination for the ATLAS detector at the LHC during pp collisions at s= 8 TeV in 2012 is presented. The evaluation of the luminosity scale is performed using several luminometers, and comparisons between these luminosity detectors are made to assess the accuracy, consistency and long-term stability of the results. A luminosity uncertainty of δL/ L= ± 1.9 % is obtained for the 22.7fb-1 of pp collision data delivered to ATLAS at s= (...) 8 TeV in 2012. (shrink)

© 2017, The Author.Differential cross sections are presented for the prompt and non-prompt production of the hidden-charm states X and ψ, in the decay mode J/ψπ+π−, measured using 11.4 fb−1 of pp collisions at s=8 TeV by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The ratio of cross-sections X/ψ is also given, separately for prompt and non-prompt components, as well as the non-prompt fractions of X and ψ. Assuming independent single effective lifetimes for non-prompt X and ψ production gives RB=ℬ+any)ℬ→J/ψπ+π−)/ℬ+any)ℬ→J/ψπ+π−)=±0.08)×10−2 separating (...) short- and long-lived contributions, assuming that the short-lived component is due to Bc decays, gives RB = ± 0.11) × 10−2, with the fraction of non-prompt X produced via Bc decays for pT) > 10 GeV being ± 2 ± 5)%. The distributions of the dipion invariant mass in the X and ψ decays are also measured and compared to theoretical predictions.[Figure not available: see fulltext.]. (shrink)

© 2017, The Author.Same- and opposite-sign charge asymmetries are measured in lepton+jets tt¯ events in which a b-hadron decays semileptonically to a soft muon, using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1 from proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of s=√8 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The charge asymmetries are based on the charge of the lepton from the top-quark decay and the charge of the soft muon from the semileptonic (...) decay of a b-hadron and are measured in a fiducial region corresponding to the experimental acceptance. Four CP asymmetries are measured and are found to be compatible with zero and consistent with the Standard Model.[Figure not available: see fulltext.]. (shrink)

© 2016 The Author.The top quark mass is measured in the tt̄ → dileptonchannel using ATLAS data recorded in the year 2012 at the LHC. The data were taken at a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy of √s=8 TeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 20.2fb-1. Exploiting the template method, and using the distribution of invariant masses of lepton-b-jetpairs, the top quark mass is measured to be mtop=172.99 ±0.41 ±0.74 GeV, with a total uncertainty of 0.84 GeV. Finally, acombination with (...) previous ATLAS mtop measurements from √s=7TeVdata in the tt̄ → dilepton and tt̄→lepton+jetschannels results in mtop=172.84 ±0.34 ±0.61 GeV, with a total uncertainty of 0.70 GeV. (shrink)

© 2016 The Author.This paper describes a measurement of the inclusive top quark pair production cross-section with a data sample of 3.2 fb−1of proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of √s=13 TeV, collected in 2015 by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. This measurement uses events with an opposite-charge electron-muon pair in the final state. Jets containing b-quarks are tagged using an algorithm based on track impact parameters and reconstructed secondary vertices. The numbers of events with exactly one and exactly (...) two b-tagged jets are counted and used to determine simultaneously σtt̄and the efficiency to reconstruct and b-tag a jet from a top quark decay, thereby minimising the associated systematic uncertainties. The cross-section is measured to be: σtt̄ = 818±8 ± 27 ±19 ± 12 pb, where the four uncertainties arise from data statistics, experimental and theoretical systematic effects, the integrated luminosity and the LHC beam energy, giving a total relative uncertainty of 4.4%. The result is consistent with theoretical QCD calculations at next-to-next-to-leading order. A fiducial measurement corresponding to the experimental acceptance of the leptons is also presented. (shrink)

© 2016 The Author.The production of W±Z events in proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV is measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The collected data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb−1. The W±Z candidates are reconstructed using leptonic decays of the gauge bosons into electrons or muons. The measured inclusive cross section in the detector fiducial region for leptonic decay modes is σfid.W±Z→ℓʹ νℓℓ=63.2 ±3.2 ±2.6 ±1.5 fb. In comparison, the next-to-leading-order Standard Model (...) prediction is 53.4+3.6−2.8fb. The extrapolation of the measurement from the fiducial to the total phase space yields σtot.W±Z=50.6 ±2.6 ±2.0 ±0.9 ±1.2 pb, in agreement with a recent next-to-next-to-leading-order calculation of 48.2+1.1−1.0pb. The cross section as a function of jet multiplicity is also measured, together with the charge-dependent W+Z and W−Z cross sections and their ratio. (shrink)

© 2016, CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration.The dijet production cross section for jets containing a b-hadron has been measured in proton–proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of s=7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The data used correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.2fb-1. The cross section is measured for events with two identified b-jets with a transverse momentum pT> 20 GeV and a minimum separation in the η–ϕ plane of Δ R= 0.4. At least (...) one of the jets in the event is required to have pT> 270 GeV. The cross section is measured differentially as a function of dijet invariant mass, dijet transverse momentum, boost of the dijet system, and the rapidity difference, azimuthal angle and angular distance between the b-jets. The results are compared to different predictions of leading order and next-to-leading order perturbative quantum chromodynamics matrix elements supplemented with models for parton-showers and hadronization. (shrink)

© 2016, CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration.The algorithms used by the ATLAS Collaboration to reconstruct and identify prompt photons are described. Measurements of the photon identification efficiencies are reported, using 4.9 fb- 1 of pp collision data collected at the LHC at s=7 TeV and 20.3 fb- 1 at s=8 TeV. The efficiencies are measured separately for converted and unconverted photons, in four different pseudorapidity regions, for transverse momenta between 10 GeV and 1.5 TeV. The results from (...) the combination of three data-driven techniques are compared to the predictions from a simulation of the detector response, after correcting the electromagnetic shower momenta in the simulation for the average differences observed with respect to data. Data-to-simulation efficiency ratios used as correction factors in physics measurements are determined to account for the small residual efficiency differences. These factors are measured with uncertainties between 0.5% and 10% in 7 TeV data and between 0.5% and 5.6% in 8 TeV data, depending on the photon transverse momentum and pseudorapidity. (shrink)

© 2017, The Author.A measurement of the ZZ production cross section in the ℓ−ℓ+ℓ′ −ℓ′ + and ℓ−ℓ+νν¯ channels in proton-proton collisions at s=8TeV at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1 collected by the ATLAS experiment in 2012 is presented. The fiducial cross sections for ZZ → ℓ−ℓ+ℓ′ −ℓ′ + and ZZ→ ℓ−ℓ+νν¯ are measured in selected phase-space regions. The total cross section for ZZ events produced with both Z bosons (...) in the mass range 66 to 116 GeV is measured from the combination of the two channels to be 7.3 ± 0.4 ± 0.3− 0.1− 0.2 pb, which is consistent with the Standard Model prediction of 6. 6− 0.6+ 0.7 pb. The differential cross sections in bins of various kinematic variables are presented. The differential event yield as a function of the transverse momentum of the leading Z boson is used to set limits on anomalous neutral triple gauge boson couplings in ZZ production.[Figure not available: see fulltext.]. (shrink)

© 2017, CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration.The production of two prompt J/ ψ mesons, each with transverse momenta pT> 8.5 GeV and rapidity |y| < 2.1, is studied using a sample of proton-proton collisions at s=8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 11.4 fb- 1 collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The differential cross-section, assuming unpolarised J/ ψ production, is measured as a function of the transverse momentum of the lower-pTJ/ ψ meson, (...) di-J/ ψpT and mass, the difference in rapidity between the two J/ ψ mesons, and the azimuthal angle between the two J/ ψ mesons. The fraction of prompt pair events due to double parton scattering is determined by studying kinematic correlations between the two J/ ψ mesons. The total and double parton scattering cross-sections are compared with predictions. The effective cross-section of double parton scattering is measured to be σeff= 6.3 ± 1.6 ± 1.0 mb. (shrink)

© 2017, The Author.Ratios of top-quark pair to Z-boson cross sections measured from proton-proton collisions at the LHC centre-of-mass energies of s=13 TeV, 8 TeV, and 7 TeV are presented by the ATLAS Collaboration. Single ratios, at a given s for the two processes and at different s for each process, as well as double ratios of the two processes at different s, are evaluated. The ratios are constructed using previously published ATLAS measurements of the tt¯ and Z-boson production cross (...) sections, corrected to a common phase space where required, and a new analysis of Z → ℓ+ℓ− where ℓ = e, μ at s=13 TeV performed with data collected in 2015 with an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb−1. Correlations of systematic uncertainties are taken into account when evaluating the uncertainties in the ratios. The correlation model is also used to evaluate the combined cross section of the Z → e+e− and the Z → μ+μ− channels for each s value. The results are compared to calculations performed at next-to-next-to-leading-order accuracy using recent sets of parton distribution functions. The data demonstrate significant power to constrain the gluon distribution function for the Bjorken-x values near 0.1 and the light-quark sea for x < 0.02.[Figure not available: see fulltext.]. (shrink)

© 2017, The Author.Measurements of top quark spin observables in tt¯ events are presented based on 20.2 fb−1 of s=8 TeV proton-proton collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The analysis is performed in the dilepton final state, characterised by the presence of two isolated leptons. There are 15 observables, each sensitive to a different coefficient of the spin density matrix of tt¯ production, which are measured independently. Ten of these observables are measured for the first time. All (...) of them are corrected for detector resolution and acceptance effects back to the parton and stable-particle levels. The measured values of the observables at parton level are compared to Standard Model predictions at next-to-leading order in QCD. The corrected distributions at stable-particle level are presented and the means of the distributions are compared to Monte Carlo predictions. No significant deviation from the Standard Model is observed for any observable.[Figure not available: see fulltext.]. (shrink)

© 2017, CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration.This paper presents a measurement of the polarisation of W bosons from tt¯ decays, reconstructed in events with one high-pT lepton and at least four jets. Data from pp collisions at the LHC were collected at s = 8 TeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 20.2 fb- 1. The angle θ∗ between the b-quark from the top quark decay and a direct W boson decay product in the W boson (...) rest frame is sensitive to the W boson polarisation. Two different W decay products are used as polarisation analysers: the charged lepton and the down-type quark for the leptonically and hadronically decaying W boson, respectively. The most precise measurement of the W boson polarisation via the distribution of cos θ∗ is obtained using the leptonic analyser and events in which at least two of the jets are tagged as b-quark jets. The fitted fractions of longitudinal, left- and right-handed polarisation states are F0=0.709±0.019, FL=0.299±0.015 and FR=-0.008±0.014, and are the most precisely measured W boson polarisation fractions to date. Limits on anomalous couplings of the Wtb vertex are set. (shrink)

© 2017 CERN.A measurement of the inclusive pp→tt+X production cross section in the τ+jets final state using only the hadronic decays of the τ lepton is presented. The measurement is performed using 20.2 fb-1 of proton-proton collision data recorded at a center-of-mass energy of s=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The cross section is measured via a counting experiment by imposing a set of selection criteria on the identification and kinematic variables of the reconstructed particles (...) and jets, and on event kinematic variables and characteristics. The production cross section is measured to be σtt=239±29 pb, which is in agreement with the measurements in other final states and the theoretical predictions at this center-of-mass energy. (shrink)

© 2016, CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration.The dijet production cross section for jets containing a b-hadron has been measured in proton–proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of s=7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The data used correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.2fb-1. The cross section is measured for events with two identified b-jets with a transverse momentum pT> 20 GeV and a minimum separation in the η–ϕ plane of Δ R= 0.4. At least (...) one of the jets in the event is required to have pT> 270 GeV. The cross section is measured differentially as a function of dijet invariant mass, dijet transverse momentum, boost of the dijet system, and the rapidity difference, azimuthal angle and angular distance between the b-jets. The results are compared to different predictions of leading order and next-to-leading order perturbative quantum chromodynamics matrix elements supplemented with models for parton-showers and hadronization. (shrink)