Nonparametric estimation of the survival function for ordered multivariate failure time data: a comparative study

In longitudinal studies of disease, patients may experience several events through a follow-up period. In these studies, the sequentially ordered events are often of interest and lead to problems that have received much attention recently. Issues of interest include the estimation of bivariate survival, marginal distributions and the conditional distribution of gap times. In this work we consider the estimation of the survival function conditional to a previous event. Different nonparametric approaches will be considered for estimating these quantities, all based on the Kaplan-Meier estimator of the survival function. We explore the finite sample behavior of the estimators through simulations. The different methods proposed in this article are applied to a data set from a German Breast Cancer Study. The methods are used to obtain predictors for the conditional survival probabilities as well as to study the influence of recurrence in overall survival.

Search for New Phenomena in Dijet Angular Distributions in Proton-Proton Collisions at s√=8 TeV Measured with the ATLAS Detector

A search for new phenomena in LHC proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of s√=8 TeV was performed with the ATLAS detector using an integrated luminosity of 17.3 fb−1. The angular distributions are studied in events with at least two jets; the highest dijet mass observed is 5.5 TeV. All angular distributions are consistent with the predictions of the Standard Model. In a benchmark model of quark contact interactions, a compositeness scale below 8.1 TeV in a destructive interference scenario and 12.0 TeV in a constructive interference scenario is excluded at 95% CL; median expected limits are 8.9 TeV for the destructive interference scenario and 14.1 TeV for the constructive interference scenario.

Angular distributions in tt¯H(H→bb¯) reconstructed events at the LHC

The associated production of a Higgs boson and a top-quark pair, tt¯H, in proton-proton collisions is addressed in this paper for a center of mass energy of 13TeV at the LHC. Dileptonic final states of tt¯H events with two oppositely charged leptons and four jets from the decays t→bW+→bℓ+νℓ, t¯→b¯W−→b¯ℓ−ν¯ℓ and h→bb¯, are used. Signal events, generated with MadGraph5_aMC@NLO, are fully reconstructed by applying a kinematic fit. New angular distributions of the decay products as well as angular asymmetries are explored in order to improve discrimination of tt¯H signal events over the dominant irreducible background contribution, tt¯bb¯. Even after the full kinematic fit reconstruction of the events, the proposed angular distributions and asymmetries are still quite different in the tt¯H signal and the dominant background (tt¯bb¯).