Using proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb$^{-1}$ collected by the CMS experiment at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV, the $\Lambda_\text{b}^0$ $\to$ J/$\psi\Xi^-$K$^+$ decay is observed for the first time, with a statistical significance exceeding 5 standard deviations. The relative branching fraction, with respect to the $\Lambda_\text{b}^0$ $\to$ $\psi$(2S)$\Lambda$ decay, is measured to be $\mathcal{B}$($\Lambda_\text{b}^0$ $\to$ J/$\psi\Xi^-$K$^+$)/$\mathcal{B}$( $\Lambda_\text{b}^0$ $\to$ $\psi$(2S)$\Lambda$) = [3.38 $\pm$ 1.02 $\pm$ 0.61 $\pm$ 0.03]%, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic, and the third is related to the uncertainties in $\mathcal{B}$($\psi$(2S) $\to$ J/$\psi\pi^+\pi^-$) and $\mathcal{B}$($\Xi^-$ $\to$ $\Lambda\pi^-$).

A test of lepton flavor universality in B ± → K ± μ + μ − and B ± → K ± e + e − decays, as well as a measurement of differential and integrated branching fractions of a nonresonant B ± → K ± μ + μ − decay are presented. The analysis is made possible by a dedicated data set of proton-proton collisions at s = 13 TeV recorded in 2018, by the CMS experiment at the LHC, using a special high-rate data stream designed for collecting about 10 billion unbiased b hadron decays. The ratio of the branching fractions B ( B ± → K ± μ + μ − ) to B ( B ± → K ± e + e − ) is determined from the measured double ratio R ( K ) of these decays to the respective branching fractions of the B ± → J / ψ K ± with J / ψ → μ + μ − and e + e − decays, which allow for significant cancellation of systematic uncertainties. The ratio R ( K ) is measured in the range 1.1 < q 2 < 6.0 GeV 2 , where q is the invariant mass of the lepton pair, and is found to be R ( K ) = 0.78 − 0.23 + 0.47 , in agreement with the standard model expectation R ( K ) ≈ 1 . This measurement is limited by the statistical precision of the electron channel. The integrated branching fraction in the same q 2 range, B ( B ± → K ± μ + μ − ) = ( 12.42 ± 0.68 ) × 10 − 8 , is consistent with the present world-average value and has a comparable precision.

Using a data sample of $$\sqrt{s}=13\,\text {TeV}$$ proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2017 and 2018 with an integrated luminosity of $$103\text {~fb}^{-1}$$ , the $$\text {B}^{0}_{\mathrm{s}} \rightarrow \uppsi (\text {2S})\text {K}_\mathrm{S}^{0}$$ and $$\text {B}^{0} \rightarrow \uppsi (\text {2S})\text {K}_\mathrm{S}^{0} \uppi ^+\uppi ^-$$ decays are observed with significances exceeding 5 standard deviations. The resulting branching fraction ratios, measured for the first time, correspond to $${\mathcal {B}}(\text {B}^{0}_{\mathrm{s}} \rightarrow \uppsi (\text {2S})K_\mathrm{S}^{0})/{\mathcal {B}}(\text {B}^{0}\rightarrow \uppsi (\text {2S})K_\mathrm{S}^{0}) = (3.33 \pm 0.69 (\text {stat})\, \pm 0.11\,(\text {syst}) \pm 0.34\,(f_{\mathrm{s}}/f_{\mathrm{d}})) \times 10^{-2}$$ and $${\mathcal {B}}(\text {B}^{0} \rightarrow \uppsi (\text {2S})\text {K}_\mathrm{S}^{0} \uppi ^{+} \uppi ^{-})/ {\mathcal {B}}(\text {B}^{0} \rightarrow \uppsi (\text {2S})\text {K}^{0}_{\mathrm{S}}) = 0.480 \pm 0.013\,(\text {stat}) \pm 0.032\,(\text {syst})$$ , where the last uncertainty in the first ratio is related to the uncertainty in the ratio of production cross sections of $$\hbox {B}^{0}_{\mathrm{s}}$$ and $$\hbox {B}^{0}$$ mesons, $$f_{\mathrm{s}}/f_{\mathrm{d}}$$ .

The B$^0_s$ and B$^+$ production yields are measured in PbPb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV. The data sample, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC, corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 1.7 nb$^{-1}$. The mesons are reconstructed in the exclusive decay channels B$^0_s$ $\to$ J/$\psi(\mu^+\mu^-)\phi($K$^+$K$^-)$ and B$^+$ $\to$ J/$\psi(\mu^+\mu^-)$K$^+$, in the transverse momentum range 7-50 GeV/c and absolute rapidity 0-2.4. The B$^0_s$ meson is observed with a statistical significance in excess of five standard deviations for the first time in nucleus-nucleus collisions. The measurements are performed as functions of the transverse momentum of the B mesons and of the PbPb collision centrality. The ratio of production yields of B$^0_s$ and B$^+$ is measured and compared to theoretical models that include quark recombination effects.

The colour of the sky has been the subject of many studies related to solar luminance distribution. This paper presents the angular sky luminance distributions measured at the ground level for white light and three spectral bands centred at blue (450 nm), green (550 nm) and red (650 nm) in the principal plane of the sun at two locations in Sri Lanka. The luminance measurements were taken by an LDR detector along with three colour filters. Results reveal that the groundlevel angular luminance distributions of white, green, and red light are similar with high peak levels of direct sun luminance which sharply decrease away from the solar disc followed by a relatively small gradual rise for angular solar distances exceeding 90 degrees. In contrast, the direct sun luminance for blue light shows a small peak directly under the sun which too decreases away from the solar disc and remains with little variation up to 90 degrees but rises to comparatively high levels of luminance for angular solar distances above 90 degrees. The measured blue peak luminance under direct sunlight is higher in Kandy which is at a higher altitude with a shorter air column above the site compared to Mahiyanganaya where the peak luminance is smaller due to more light being scattered by the longer air column at the lower altitude in Mahiyanganaya.

A combination of searches for top squark pair production using proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb(-1) collected by the CMS experiment, is presented. Signatures with at least 2 jets and large missing transverse momentum are categorized into events with 0, 1, or 2 leptons. New results for regions of parameter space where the kinematical properties of top squark pair production and top quark pair production are very similar are presented. Depending on themodel, the combined result excludes a top squarkmass up to 1325 GeV for amassless neutralino, and a neutralinomass up to 700 GeV for a top squarkmass of 1150 GeV. Top squarks with masses from 145 to 295 GeV, for neutralino masses from 0 to 100 GeV, with a mass difference between the top squark and the neutralino in a window of 30 GeV around the mass of the top quark, are excluded for the first time with CMS data. The results of theses searches are also interpreted in an alternative signal model of dark matter production via a spin-0 mediator in association with a top quark pair. Upper limits are set on the cross section for mediator particle masses of up to 420 GeV.

A search is conducted for a low-mass charged Higgs boson produced in a top quark decay and subsequently decaying into a charm and a strange quark. The data sample was recorded in proton-proton collisions at $\\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV by the CMS experiment at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb$^{-1}$. The search is performed in the process of top quark pair production, where one top quark decays to a bottom quark and a charged Higgs boson, and the other to a bottom quark and a W boson. With the W boson decaying to a charged lepton (electron or muon) and a neutrino, the final state comprises an isolated lepton, missing transverse momentum, and at least four jets, of which two are tagged as b jets. To enhance the search sensitivity, one of the jets originating from the charged Higgs boson is required to satisfy a charm tagging selection. No significant excess beyond standard model predictions is found in the dijet invariant mass distribution. An upper limit in the range 1.68-0.25% is set on the branching fraction of the top quark decay to the charged Higgs boson and bottom quark for a charged Higgs boson mass between 80 and 160 GeV.

To monitor the acidity of rainwater, an automated rain sampler which can measure the real-time pH level and conductivity of rainwater was developed and utilised during the southwest monsoon season. The rainwater sampler detects the start of a rain and collects 250 ml of rainwater. The pH level and the conductivity of the collected rainwater samples were measured and recorded with the prevailing weather parameters. The pH probe was subjected to a verification test using a standard buffer solution whereas the conductivity probe reading was verified using distilled water. The pH level and conductivity measurements including weather data were transmitted to a central location using a GSM modem for further analysis. A programmable logic controller was used to control the entire process. Using the instrument, field measurements were carried out in Kandy in the hill country of Sri Lanka during the months from May to mid September. We conclude from the analysis that there are no changes in the acidity of the rainwater during the southwest monsoon season and the developed instrument can be used successfully for the purpose of environment monitoring in real time.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) of unknown etiology is recognized as a major public health challenge and a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the dry zone in Sri Lanka. CKD is asymptomatic and are diagnosed only in late stages. Evidence points to strong correlation between progression of CKD and kidney fibrosis. Several biochemical markers of renal fibrosis have been associated with progression of CKD. However, no marker is able to predict CKD consistently and accurately before being detected with traditional clinical tests (serum creatinine, and cystatin C, urine albumin or protein, and ultrasound scanning). In this paper, we hypothesize that fibrosis in the kidney, and therefore the severity of the disease, is reflected in the frequency spectrum of the scattered ultrasound from the kidney. We present a design of a simple ultrasound system, and a set of clinical and laboratory studies to identify spectral characteristics of the scattered ultrasound wave from the kidney that correlates with CKD. We believe that spectral parameters identified in these studies can be used to detect and stratify CKD at an earlier stage than what is possible with current markers of CKD.

Snake robots maneuver in complex environments and exhibit large number of degrees of freedom in movement. Thus incorporating the required locomotion while ensuring simplicity and likelihood to actual serpentine motion is a challenge. This paper introduces two novel clustering sequence control mechanisms for both serial and parallel snake robots having eight cyclic configurations contributing to a serpentine gait. Four such variations for each robot were simulated and compared with each other with respect to the degree to which it mimics biological snakes and overall locomotion speed.

Applications that involve monitoring of environmental parameters require measuring devices to be placed at different geographical locations but are controlled centrally at a remote site. The measuring devices in such applications need to be physically small, consume low power, and must be capable of local processing tasks facilitating the mobility to span the measuring area in a vast geographic area. This chapter presents the design of a generalized, re-configurable, re-programmable smart sensor node using a Zigbee with a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) that embeds all processing and communication functionalities based on the IEEE 1451 family of standards. Design of the sensor nodes includes communication, processing and transducer control functionalities in a single core increasing the speedup of processing power due to inter-process communication taking place within the chip itself.

In this paper, an analysis of temporal variation of wind speed and wind direction recorded at 10 min intervals are presented. The measurements were carried out at Hambanthota, a site located in the southern coastal belt of Sri Lanka which has a high potential for wind power generation. The multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis was used to analyze the temporal scaling properties of wind speeds and wind directions. The analysis was carried out for seasonal variation of wind speed and wind direction. It was observed that the scaling behavior of wind speed in Hambanthota is similar to the scaling behavior observed in previous studies which were carried out in other parts of the world. The seasonal wind and wind direction change exhibits different scaling behavior. No difference in scaling behavior was observed with heights. The degree of multifractality is high for wind direction when compared with wind speed for each season.

To monitor the acidity of rain water in real time, a rain water sampling system was developed. The rain sampler detects the initial rain after a dry spell and collects a water sample. Before performing the measurements, the pH probe is calibrated using a standard buffer solution whereas the conductivity probe is calibrated using deionized water. After calibrating the probes the pH and the conductivity of the collected rain water sample are measured using the pH and the conductivity probe. Weather parameters such as air temperature, humidity and pressure are also recorded simultaneously. The pH and conductivity measurement data including weather parameters are transmitted to central station using a GSM modem for further analysis. The collected rain water sample is preserved at the remote monitoring station for post chemical analysis. A programmable logic controller controls the entire process.

Applications that involve monitoring of water quality parameters require measuring devices to be placed at different geographical locations but are controlled centrally at a remote site. The measuring devices in such applications need to be small, consume low power, and must be capable of local processing tasks facilitating the mobility to span the measuring area in a vast geographic area. This paper presents the design of a generalized, low-cost, reconfigurable, reprogrammable smart sensor node using a ZigBee with a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) that embeds all processing and communication functionalities based on the IEEE 1451 family of standards. Design of the sensor nodes includes processing and transducer control functionalities in a single core increasing the speedup of processing power due to interprocess communication taking place within the chip itself. Results obtained by measuring the pH value and temperature of water samples verify the performance of the proposed sensor node.

In this paper we discuss about a hardware based Controller Area Network (CAN) sniffer. This sniffer will listen to a CAN network, read incoming frames, convert them to computer understandable form and forward it to the computer. For this an extensive study of the CAN protocol was carried out. In this study the CAN message frame architecture, bit coding techniques and CAN bit sampling techniques were examined. For the implementation, a developer board with Xilinx Spartan 3E Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which has 1920 Configurable Logic Blocks (CLB) was used. To match the FPGA voltages and Transistor-Transistor Logic (TTL) to RS-232 logic, intermediate circuitry was used. When realizing the implementation, from the available total, 431 flip flops and 768 Look Up Tables (LUT) were used. From these 601 were used as logic, 166 were used as route through and 1 was used as a shift register. Due to the limitations of the FPGA and the developer board, the developed sniffer was limited to 125 Kbps low speed fault tolerant CAN. When a CAN frame arrives at the FPGA, it reads the frame, divides into 17 bytes and forwards to the computer using RS-232 serial communications. In the realized implementation there is a 20.625 ms delay between reading two frames. This is due to a bottle neck in RS-232 baud rate. This can be improved by using Universal Serial Bus (USB) protocols to communicate with the computer.

A virtual laboratory application setup is used to control and monitor remotely the operation of several sensor nodes placed at different geographical locations. In this paper, we present the design of a generalized, low-cost and re- configurable smart sensor node using a Zigbee with a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) that embeds all processing and communication functionalities based on the IEEE 1451 family of standards with communication taking place through a 1-wire protocol. The architecture of the sensor node is based on the single chip concept that includes communication, processing and transducer control functionalities. The proposed architecture reduces the physical size, power and increases speedup of processing due to inter-module communication. Results indicate the accuracy of the proposed system is tested with a temperature sensor which has 1-wire protocol.

J.Allen, T.Awes, A.Badal a, S.Baum gart , R.Bellwied, L.Benhabib, C.Bernard, N.Bianchi, F.Blanco, Y.Bortoli, G .Bourdaud, O .Bourrion, B.Boyer, E.Bruna, J.Butterworth, H.Caines, D.Calvo Diaz Aldagalan, G .P.Capitani, Y.Carcagno, A.Casanova Diaz, M .Cherney, G .Conesa Balbastre, T.M .Corm ier, L.Cunqueiro M endez, H.Delagrange, M .DelFranco, M .Dialinas, P.DiNezza, A.Donoghue, M .Elnim r, A.Enokizono, M .Estienne, J.Faivre, A.Fantoni, F.Fichera, B.Foglio, S.Fresneau, J.Fujita, C.Furget, S.G adrat, I.G arishvili, M .G erm ain, N.G iudice, Y.G orbunov, A.G rim aldi, N.G uardone, R.G uernane, C.Hadjidakis, J.Ham blen, J.W .Harris, D.Hasch, M .Heinz, P.T.Hille, D.Hornback, R.Ichou, P.Jacobs, S.Jangal, K .Jayananda, J.L.K lay, A.G .K nospe, S.K ox, J.K ral, P.Laloux, S.LaPointe, P.La Rocca, S.Lewis, Q .Li, F.Librizzi, D.M adagodahettigeDon, I.M artashvili, B.M ayes, T.M illetto, V.M uccifora, H.M uller, J.F.M uraz, C.Nattrass, F.Noto, N.Novitzky, G .O dyniec, A.O rlandi, A.Palm eri, G .S.Pappalardo, A.Pavlinov, W .Pesci, V.Petrov, C.Petta, P.Pichot, L.Pinsky, M .Ploskon, F.Pom pei, A.Pulvirenti, J.Putschke, C.A.Pruneau, J.Rak, J.Rasson, K .F.Read, J.S.Real, A.R.Reolon, F.Riggi, J.Riso, F.Ronchetti, C.Roy, D.Roy, M .Salem i, S.Salur, M .Sharm a, D.Silverm yr, N.Sm irnov, R.Soltz, V.Sparti, J.-S.Stutzm ann, T.J.M .Sym ons, A.Tarazona M artinez, L.Tarini, R.Thom en, A.Tim m ins, M .van Leeuwen, R.Vieira, A.Viticchi e, S.Voloshin, D.W ang, Y.W ang, and R.M .W ard

A virtual laboratory application requires sensors to be setup at different geographical locations but controlled centrally at a remote site. The sensors in such applications need to be physically small, consume low power and capable of local processing tasks facilitating mobility to spread the sensor network system in a vast geographic area. In this paper, we present the design of a low-cost smart sensor node developed using a reconfigurable Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) that embeds all processing and communication functionalities based on IEEE 1451 family of standards. The single chip design facilitates increased speedup of processing due to interprocess communication taking place within the chip itself. Results indicate the stability and the performance of the proposed architecture at different baud rates.