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The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games such asDungeons and Dragons.A coalition of moral entrepreneurs that included representatives from the Christian Right, the field of psychology, and law enforcement claimed that these games were not only psychologically dangerous but an occult religion masquerading as a game.Dangerous Gamesexplores both the history and the sociological significance of this panic.Fantasy role-playing games do share several functions in common with religion. However, religion-as a socially constructed world of shared meaning-can also be compared to a fantasy role-playing game. In fact, the claims of the moral entrepreneurs, in which they presented themselves as heroes battling a dark conspiracy, often resembled the very games of imagination they condemned as evil. By attacking the imagination, they preserved the taken-for-granted status of their own socially constructed reality. Interpreted in this way, the panic over fantasy-role playing games yields new insights about how humans play and together construct and maintain meaningful worlds.Laycock's clear and accessible writing ensures thatDangerous Gameswill be required reading for those with an interest in religion, popular culture, and social behavior, both in the classroom and beyond.

Conditions data infrastructure for both ATLAS and CMS have to deal with the management of several terabytes of data [1, 2]. Distributed computing access to this data requires particular care and attention to manage request-rates of up to several tens of kHz. Thanks to the large overlap in use cases and requirements, ATLAS and CMS have worked towards a common solution for conditions data management with the aim of using this design for data-taking in Run 3. In the meantime other experiments, including NA62, have expressed an interest in this cross-experiment initiative. For experiments with a smaller payload volume and complexity, there is particular interest in having simple payload storage. The conditions data management model is implemented in a small set of relational database tables. A prototype access toolkit consisting of an intermediate web server has been implemented, using standard technologies available in the Java community. Access is provided through a set of REST services for which the API has been described in a generic way using standard Open API specifications, implemented in Swagger. Such a solution allows the automatic generation of client code and server stubs and further allows changes in the backend technology transparently. An important advantage of using a REST API for conditions access is the possibility of caching identical URLs, addressing one of the biggest challenges that large distributed computing solutions impose on conditions data access, avoiding direct DB access by means of standard web proxy solutions.

In this contribution, the data preparation workflows for Run 2 are presented. The challenges posed by the excellent performance and high live time fraction of the LHC are discussed, and the solutions implemented by ATLAS are described. The prompt calibration loop procedures are described and examples are given. Several levels of data quality assessment are used to quickly spot problems in the control room and prevent data loss, and to provide the final selection used for physics analysis. Finally the data quality efficiency for physics analysis is shown.

Otherkin are individuals who identify as “not entirely human.” Scholarship has framed this identity claim as religious because it is frequently supported by a framework of metaphysical beliefs. This article draws on survey data and interviews with Otherkin in order to provide a more thorough treatment of the phenomenon and to assess and qualify the movement's religious dimensions. It is argued that, in addition to having a substantively religious quality, the Otherkin community serves existential and social functions commonly associated with religion. In the final analysis, the Otherkin community is regarded as an alternativenomos—a socially constructed worldview—that sustains alternate ontologies.

While a significant fraction of ATLAS physicists directly analyse the AOD (Analysis Object Data) produced at the CERN Tier 0, a much larger fraction have opted to analyse data in a flat ROOT format. The large scale production of this Derived Physics Data (DPD) format must cater for both detailed performance studies of the ATLAS detector and object reconstruction, as well as higher level and generally lighter-content physics analysis. The delay between data-taking and DPD production allows for software improvements, while the ease of arbitrarily defined skimming/slimming of this format results in an optimally performant format for end-user analysis. Given the diversity of requirements, there are many flavours of DPDs, which can result in large peak computing resource demands. While the current model has proven to be very flexible for the individual groups and has successfully met the needs of the collaboration, the resource requirements at the end of Run 1 were much larger than planned. In the near future, ATLAS plans to consolidate DPD production, optimising resource usage vs flexibility such that the final analysis format will be more homogeneous across ATLAS while still keeping most of the advantages enjoyed during Run 1. The ATLAS Run 1 DPD Production Model is presented along with an overview of the resource usage at the end of Run 1, followed by an outlook for future plans.

The urban heat island intensity (difference between a semi-rural and urban dry bulb air temperature, urban heat island intensity) has been analysed for Manchester using data from 1996 to 2011. The semi-rural sites were airfields and the urban site was 2 km from the centre of Manchester. Although the urban site was not as developed as the city centre it showed a significant urban heat island intensity. A stochastic model developed from the data showed that the maximum mean daily value would be about 6℃ which compared well with more detailed measurements. However, there was a highly significant trend of increasing urban heat island intensity which by the end of the century could add 2.4 K to the predicted climate change increase. An analysis of the urban morphology showed that the urban site had indeed become more urban over 9 years of the study, losing green spaces which mitigate against the urban heat island intensity. Practical application: The results from this paper will allow building and HVAC designers to consider the increase in the urban heat island in their designs when using future weather data. Although the results are for Manchester, similar trends may well apply to other similar-sized cities. Designers should consider the future weather data available, as their buildings will last for a considerable time so they should be as future-proofed as possible.

A combination is presented of all inclusive deep inelastic cross sections previously published by the H1 and ZEUS collaborations at HERA for neutral and charged current $e^{\\pm}p$ scattering for zero beam polarisation. The data were taken at proton beam energies of 920, 820, 575 and 460 GeV and an electron beam energy of 27.5 GeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 1 fb$^{-1}$ and span six orders of magnitude in negative four-momentum-transfer squared, $Q^2$, and Bjorken $x$. The correlations of the systematic uncertainties were evaluated and taken into account for the combination. The combined cross sections were input to QCD analyses at leading order, next-to-leading order and at next-to-next-to-leading order, providing a new set of parton distribution functions, called HERAPDF2.0. In addition to the experimental uncertainties, model and parameterisation uncertainties were assessed for these parton distribution functions. Variants of HERAPDF2.0 with an alternative gluon parameterisation, HERAPDF2.0AG, and using fixed-flavour-number schemes, HERAPDF2.0FF, are presented. The analysis was extended by including HERA data on charm and jet production, resulting in the variant HERAPDF2.0Jets. The inclusion of jet-production cross sections made a simultaneous determination of these parton distributions and the strong coupling constant possible, resulting in $\\alpha_s(M_Z)=0.1183 \\pm 0.0009 {\\rm(exp)} \\pm 0.0005{\\rm (model/parameterisation)} \\pm 0.0012{\\rm (hadronisation)} ^{+0.0037}_{-0.0030}{\\rm (scale)}$. An extraction of $xF_3^{\\gamma Z}$ and results on electroweak unification and scaling violations are also presented.

A bstract A search for the K + → π + X decay, where X is a long-lived feebly interacting particle, is performed through an interpretation of the K + → π + ν ν ¯ analysis of data collected in 2017 by the NA62 experiment at CERN. Two ranges of X masses, 0–110 MeV /c 2 and 154–260 MeV /c 2 , and lifetimes above 100 ps are considered. The limits set on the branching ratio, BR( K + → π + X ), are competitive with previously reported searches in the first mass range, and improve on current limits in the second mass range by more than an order of magnitude.

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae and/or non-USASCII text omitted; see image) A search is presented for a high-mass Higgs boson in the ..., ..., ..., and ... decay modes using the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The search uses proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb... The results of the search are interpreted in the scenario of a heavy Higgs boson with a width that is small compared with the experimental mass resolution. The Higgs boson mass range considered extends up to ... for all four decay modes and down to as low as 140 ..., depending on the decay mode. No significant excess of events over the Standard Model prediction is found. A simultaneous fit to the four decay modes yields upper limits on the production cross-section of a heavy Higgs boson times the branching ratio to ... boson pairs. 95 % confidence level upper limits range from 0.53 pb at ... GeV to 0.008 pb at ... GeV for the gluon-fusion production mode and from 0.31 pb at ... GeV to 0.009 pb at ... GeV for the vector-boson-fusion production mode. The results are also interpreted in the context of Type-I and Type-II two-Higgs-doublet models.

Measurements of open charm and beauty production cross sections in deep inelastic ep scattering at HERA from the H1 and ZEUS Collaborations are combined. Reduced cross sections are obtained in the kinematic range of negative four-momentum transfer squared of the photon 2.5GeV2≤Q2≤2000GeV2 and Bjorken scaling variable 3·10-5≤xBj≤5·10-2. The combination method accounts for the correlations of the statistical and systematic uncertainties among the different datasets. Perturbative QCD calculations are compared to the combined data. A next-to-leading order QCD analysis is performed using these data together with the combined inclusive deep inelastic scattering cross sections from HERA. The running charm- and beauty-quark masses are determined as mc(mc)=1.290-0.041+0.046(exp/fit)-0.014+0.062(model)-0.031+0.003(parameterisation) GeV and mb(mb)=4.049-0.109+0.104(exp/fit)-0.032+0.090(model)-0.031+0.001(parameterisation)GeV.