Measurement of the Masses and Lifetimes of B Hadrons at the Tevatron

The latest results for the B Hadron sector at the Tevatron Collider are summarized. The properties of B Hadrons can be precisely measured at the Tevatron. In particularly we will focus on the masses and lifetimes. The new Tevatron results for the CP violation in B Hadrons will be also discussed.Comment: Proceedings of the 40th Rancontres de Moriond QCD and High Energies Hadronic Interactions 2006, 4 pages, 3 figure

CP and charge asymmetries at CDF

We present CDF results on the branching fractions and time-integrated direct CP asymmetries for B0 and B0s decay modes into pairs of charmless charged hadrons (pions or kaons). We report also the first observation of B0s->DsK mode and the measurement of its branching fraction.Comment: Proceedings of The 2007 Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics Manchester, England 19-25 July 2007. To be published electronically by IoP Journals. FERMILAB-CONF-07-590-E. Nov 2007. 3p

CKM Parameters and Rare B Decays

Measurements of the angles and sides of the unitarity triangle and of the rates of rare B meson decays are crucial for the precise determination of Standard Model parameters and are sensitive to the presence of new physics particles in the loop diagrams. In this paper the recent measurements performed in this area by Babar and Belle will be presented. The direct measurement of the angle alpha is for the first time as precise as the indirect determination. The precision of the V_ub determination has improved significantly with respect to previous measurement. New limits on B->tau nu decays are presented, as well as updated measurements on b->s radiative transitions and a new observation of b->d gamma transition made by Belle.Comment: Talk presented at the Lepton-Photon 2005 Symposium, June 30-July 5, Uppsala, Sweden. 14 pages, 13 figure

Topology on the Lattice

We review the method developed in Pisa to determine the topological susceptibility in lattice QCD and present a collection of new and old results obtained by the method.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. Contribution to "Sense of Beauty in Physics - a volume in honour of Adriano Di Giacomo" (Pisa University Press, Pisa, 2006), on the occasion of his 70th birthda

The quality of the Catalan and Spanish education systems: A perspective from PISA

For Catalonia and Spain, public perception is that the PISA reports show that their education systems are underperforming. The goal of this chapter is to quantify how much of the Catalan and Spanish PISA score can be attributed to the education levels of parents and what part must instead be explained by other factors. To do so we use standard statistical techniques to examine how the Catalan and Spanish PISA score would have compared with other countries and regions if all had the same parental education levels and immigration levels. For Spain the main results show that there is a sizable increase in PISA scores relative to the rest of Europe when parental schooling is accounted for. But Spain's performance is rather poor to start out with and only rises to somewhat above average when accounting for parental education levels. For Catalonia accounting for parental education levels leads to small improvements in the PISA score compared to other Spanish regions and to Flanders, Lombardy, and Denmark. Moreover, immigration or the concentration of immigrants at some schools accounts for little of the below average performance of Catalonia.Catalan education systems; Spanish education systems;

From Pisa to Santander : a statement on children's growth and wellbeing

From Pisa to Santander: A Statement on Children's Growth and Wellbeingpeer-reviewe

School Quality, Educational Attainment and Aggregation Bias

Data from 31 countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is used to estimate education production functions for reading literacy.The analysis suggests that the probability of finding statistically significant and correctly signed class size effects increases the higher the level of aggregation used to measure class size.Class size, PISA data, bias

Regularity of higher codimension area minimizing integral currents

This lecture notes are an expanded version of the course given at the ERC-School on Geometric Measure Theory and Real Analysis, held in Pisa, September 30th - October 30th 2013. The lectures aim to explain the main steps of a new proof of the partial regularity of area minimizing integer rectifiable currents in higher codimension, due originally to F. Almgren, which is contained in a series of papers in collaboration with C. De Lellis (University of Zurich).Comment: This text will appear in "Geometric Measure Theory and Real Analysis", pp. 131--192, Proceedings of the ERC school in Pisa (2013), L. Ambrosio Ed., Edizioni SNS (CRM Series

Is Confinement a Phase of Broken Dual Gauge Symmetry?

We study whether broken dual gauge symmetry, as detected by a monopole order parameter introduced by the Pisa group, is necessarily associated with the confinement phase of a lattice gauge theory. We find a number of examples, including SU(2) gauge-Higgs theory, mixed fundamental-adjoint SU(2) gauge theory, and pure SU(5) gauge theory, which appear to indicate a dual gauge symmetry transition in the absence of a transition to or from a confined phase. While these results are not necessarily fatal to the dual superconductor hypothesis, they may pose some problems of interpretation for the present formulation of the Pisa monopole criterion.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure