University of Notre Dame

About: University of Notre Dame is a education organization based out in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 22238 authors who have published 55201 publications receiving 2032925 citations. The organization is also known as: University of Notre Dame du Lac & University of Notre Dame, South Bend.

Disturbance Attenuation Properties of Time-Controlled Switched Systems

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the disturbance attenuation properties of time-controlled switched systems consisting of several linear time-invariant subsystems by using an average dwell time approach incorporated with a piecewise Lyapunov function. First, we show that when all subsystems are Hurwitz stable and achieve a disturbance attenuation level smaller than a positive scalar γ0, the switched system under an average dwell time scheme achieves a weighted disturbance attenuation level γ0, and the weighted disturbance attenuation approaches normal disturbance attenuation if the average dwell time is chosen sufficiently large. We extend this result to the case where not all subsystems are Hurwitz stable, by showing that in addition to the average dwell time scheme, if the total activation time of unstable subsystems is relatively small compared with that of the Hurwitz stable subsystems, then a reasonable weighted disturbance attenuation level is guaranteed. Finally, a discussion is made on the case for which nonlinear norm-bounded perturbations exist in the subsystems.

Jet energy scale and resolution in the CMS experiment in pp collisions at 8 TeV

Abstract: Improved jet energy scale corrections, based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb^(-1) collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, are presented. The corrections as a function of pseudorapidity η and transverse momentum p_T are extracted from data and simulated events combining several channels and methods. They account successively for the effects of pileup, uniformity of the detector response, and residual data-simulation jet energy scale differences. Further corrections, depending on the jet flavor and distance parameter (jet size) R, are also presented. The jet energy resolution is measured in data and simulated events and is studied as a function of pileup, jet size, and jet flavor. Typical jet energy resolutions at the central rapidities are 15–20% at 30 GeV, about 10% at 100 GeV, and 5% at 1 TeV. The studies exploit events with dijet topology, as well as photon+jet, Z+jet and multijet events. Several new techniques are used to account for the various sources of jet energy scale corrections, and a full set of uncertainties, and their correlations, are provided. The final uncertainties on the jet energy scale are below 3% across the phase space considered by most analyses (p_T > 30 GeV and 0|η| 30 GeV is reached, when excluding the jet flavor uncertainties, which are provided separately for different jet flavors. A new benchmark for jet energy scale determination at hadron colliders is achieved with 0.32% uncertainty for jets with p_T of the order of 165–330 GeV, and |η| < 0.8.

Biased efficacy estimates in phase-III dengue vaccine trials due to heterogeneous exposure and differential detectability of primary infections across trial arms.

Abstract: Vaccine efficacy (VE) estimates are crucial for assessing the suitability of dengue vaccine candidates for public health implementation, but efficacy trials are subject to a known bias to estimate VE toward the null if heterogeneous exposure is not accounted for in the analysis of trial data. In light of many well-characterized sources of heterogeneity in dengue virus (DENV) transmission, our goal was to estimate the potential magnitude of this bias in VE estimates for a hypothetical dengue vaccine. To ensure that we realistically modeled heterogeneous exposure, we simulated city-wide DENV transmission and vaccine trial protocols using an agent-based model calibrated with entomological and epidemiological data from long-term field studies in Iquitos, Peru. By simulating a vaccine with a true VE of 0.8 in 1,000 replicate trials each designed to attain 90% power, we found that conventional methods underestimated VE by as much as 21% due to heterogeneous exposure. Accounting for the number of exposures in the vaccine and placebo arms eliminated this bias completely, and the more realistic option of including a frailty term to model exposure as a random effect reduced this bias partially. We also discovered a distinct bias in VE estimates away from the null due to lower detectability of primary DENV infections among seronegative individuals in the vaccinated group. This difference in detectability resulted from our assumption that primary infections in vaccinees who are seronegative at baseline resemble secondary infections, which experience a shorter window of detectable viremia due to a quicker immune response. This resulted in an artefactual finding that VE estimates for the seronegative group were approximately 1% greater than for the seropositive group. Simulation models of vaccine trials that account for these factors can be used to anticipate the extent of bias in field trials and to aid in their interpretation.

Environmental Photochemistry on Semiconductor Surfaces: Photosensitized Degradation of a Textile Azo Dye, Acid Orange 7, on TiO2 Particles Using Visible Light

Abstract: Photosensitized degradation of a textile azo dye, Acid Orange 7, has been carried out on TiO2 particles using visible light Mechanistic details of the dye degradation have been elucidated using diffuse reflectance absorption and FTIR techniques Degradation does not occur on Al2O3 surface or in the absence of oxygen The dependence of the dye degradation rate on the surface coverage shows the participation of excited dye and TiO2 semiconductor in the surface photochemical process Diffuse reflectance laser flash photolysis confirms the charge injection from the excited dye molecule into the conduction band of the semiconductor as the primary mechanism for producing oxidized dye radical The surface-adsorbed oxygen plays an important role in scavenging photogenerated electrons, thus preventing the recombination between the oxidized dye radical and the photoinjected electrons Diffuse reflectance FTIR was used to make a tentative identification of reaction intermediates and end products of dye degradation

Mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers

Abstract: The design flexibility of quantum cascade lasers has enabled their expansion into mid-infrared wavelengths of 3–25 μm. This Review focuses on the two major areas of recent improvement: power and power efficiency, and spectral performance.