Silica-based bioactive solids obtained from modified diatomaceous earth to be used as antimicrobial filler material

It is well known that microbiological spoilage in indoor surfaces has a negative impact on human health. Antimicrobial functionalized materials are intensely studied. The present work seeks the synthesis of eco-friendly and cheap bioactive hybrid filler from diatomaceous earth (DE). The activation method used proved to be efficient to enhance the amount of quaternary ammonium groups supported by DE which was corroborated by spectroscopic methods and the thermogravimetry analysis. Zeta potential measurements reviled a bilayer arrangement of the ammonium groups on the functionalized solids and the bioassays showed their antimicrobial activity.Facultad de Ingenierí

A Bayesian Networks Approach to Operational Risk

A system for Operational Risk management based on the computational paradigm of Bayesian Networks is presented. The algorithm allows the construction of a Bayesian Network targeted for each bank using only internal loss data, and takes into account in a simple and realistic way the correlations among different processes of the bank. The internal losses are averaged over a variable time horizon, so that the correlations at different times are removed, while the correlations at the same time are kept: the averaged losses are thus suitable to perform the learning of the network topology and parameters. The algorithm has been validated on synthetic time series. It should be stressed that the practical implementation of the proposed algorithm has a small impact on the organizational structure of a bank and requires an investment in human resources limited to the computational area

Testing large mixing MSW solutions of the solar neutrino problem through Earth regeneration effects

Large mixing MSW solutions to the solar neutrino problem appear to be currently favored by the data. We discuss the possibility of discriminating them by means of present and future experiments. In particular, we show that the study of energy and time dependence of the Earth regeneration effect can be useful in this respect.Comment: Talk given at Europhysics Neutrino Oscillation Workshop (NOW 2000), Conca Specchiulla, Otranto, Lecce, Italy, 9-16 Sep. 200

Universality of three-body systems in 2D: parametrization of the bound states energies

Universal properties of mass-imbalanced three-body systems in 2D are studied using zero-range interactions in momentum space. The dependence of the three-particle binding energy on the parameters (masses and two-body energies) is highly non-trivial even in the simplest case of two identical particles and a distinct one. This dependence is parametrized for ground and excited states in terms of {\itshape supercircles} functions in the most general case of three distinguishable particles.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, published versio