ComSciCon-Triangle: Regional Science Communication Training for Graduate Students.

The ability of scientists to effectively communicate their research, and scientific ideas in general, with a variety of audiences is critical in both academic and non-academic careers. There is currently a dearth of formal and informal science communication training opportunities for graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This curriculum paper introduces ComSciCon-Triangle, a graduate student-organized science communication workshop for graduate students in STEM at research universities in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, region. Started in 2015, this annual workshop aims to empower graduate students to be more engaged in communicating their research with the public as well as with fellow scientists. Each workshop consists of interactive panel discussions with invited science communicators (science writers, academics, filmmakers, etc.), informal networking opportunities with invited guests and other attendees, and hands-on sessions for improving oral and written communication skills. Analyzing pre- and post-survey data from all ComSciCon-Triangle attendees from 2015 to 2017, we find that workshop attendees feel significantly more confident in their ability to communicate scientific ideas with both the general public and with other scientists, and more confident submitting a written piece to a popular science publication or journal. We discuss how ComSciCon-Triangle serves as a model for local science communication workshops "for graduate students, organized by graduate students."

NRQCD Confronts LHCb Data on Quarkonium Production within Jets.

We analyze the recent LHCb measurement of the distribution of the fraction of the transverse momentum, z(J/ψ), carried by the J/ψ within a jet. LHCb data are compared with analytic calculations using the fragmenting jet function (FJF) formalism for studying J/ψ in jets. Logarithms in the FJFs are resummed using Dokshitzer-Gribov-Lipatov-Altarelli-Parisi evolution. We also convolve hard QCD partonic cross sections, showered with pythia, with leading order nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics (NRQCD) fragmentation functions and obtain consistent results. Both approaches use madgraph to calculate the hard process that creates the jet initiating parton. These calculations give reasonable agreement with the z(J/ψ) distribution that was shown to be poorly described by default pythia simulations in the LHCb paper. We compare our predictions for the J/ψ distribution using various extractions of nonperturbative NRQCD long-distance matrix elements (LDMEs) in the literature. NRQCD calculations agree with LHCb data better than default pythia regardless of which fit to the LDMEs is used. LDMEs from fits that focus exclusively on high transverse momentum data from colliders are in good agreement with the LHCb measurement.