D-mixing and indirect CP violation measurements at LHCb

The LHCb experiment collected during run I the world's largest sample of charmed hadrons. This sample is used to search for CP violation in charm and for the measurements of D0 mixing parameters. The measurement of the D0 to D0bar mixing parameters and the search for indirect CP-violation in two-body charm decays at LHCb experiment are presented.Comment: Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on the CKM Unitarity Triangle (CKM 2014), Vienna, Austria, September 8-12, 201

The public use of reason: A philosophical understanding of knowledge sharing

Copyright @ 2005 Common Ground PublishingFree access to knowledge and knowledge-sharing are among the most relevant claims of the so called "knowledge society", whose beginnings can be find out in the Age of Enlightenment (18th Century). As a matter of fact, in the thinking of Immanuel Kant these claims are explicitly assumed in a philosophical perspective. Thus, the need of sharing knowledge, and in general the need of freedom in the communication of thinking, is not merely held as self evident or just empirically given: on the contrary, Kant asks about its transcendental meaning, and attempts to deduce this meaning a priori from the essence of human being itself. However, this task is not systematically developed, but rather exposed en passant in different passages of his work, where, facing phenomena such as the amazing expansion of book trade, the increasing diffusion of journals and newspapers, the growing role of public opinion and the fierce fighting for freedom of press, Kant tries to demonstrate their critical significance - and therefore also the threat they may represent ñ for the use of reason and thus for the manifestation of human nature as such. In this perspective, he elaborates the concept of the "public use of reason", which will represent the (more or less unspoken) canon for the present understanding of the modern society as a knowledge-based society. The paper analyses Kant' s thought on these topics, with particular reference to the concept of "enlightenment" and of the sense of access to knowledge in a philosophical perspective. Then it considers the misleading transformation of these critical concepts in present day society as characterised by mass culture

Indirect CP violation results and HFAG averages

The current status of the search for indirect CP violation in the neutral D meson system at the B-factories and at LHCb is reported. The indirect CP asymmetry search is performed by the measurement of the proper-time asymmetry ($A_{\Gamma}$) in decays of $D^0-\bar{D^0}$ mesons to CP eigenstates, $K^-K^+$ and $\pi^- \pi^+$, and by $y_{CP}$, the ratio between the effective lifetime measured in decay to a CP eigenstate and that to the mixed eigenstate $K \pi$. All results are consistent with the no CP violation hypothesis. The latest world averages for mixing and CP asymmetry in the charm sector evaluated by the Heavy Flavour Averaging Group are presented. The no mixing hypothesis is excluded at more than 12 standard deviations. The search for direct and indirect CP violation in the charm sector is consistent with no CP violation at 2.0% confident level.Comment: to appear in the proceedings of The 6th International Workshop on Charm Physics (CHARM 2013

Rewarding Creativity: In Law, Economics, and Literature

Scientific, literary and artistic products are the outcome of what in the Western world has been called, at least since the 18th century, creative human labor, or simply, creativity. Since creativity is one of the foremost faculties of the human being, it is in the common interest to protect and encourage it. The problem seems only to be how to do it. How is it possible to make laws consonant with this sound and universal tenet? What measures should be taken? But even prior to that: how can one orient himself with confidence in these questions? In a sense, since the dawn of Western culture, these questions have raised serious discussions. However, the shape these questions have taken today is something new; it is the eventual result of a “revolution” begun two and a half centuries ago that upset the way our humankind relates to works of art and thought. This paper explores the question of what does “rewarding creativity” mean today? And what did it meant before the rise of the modern world? Questioning the principles and institutions that regulate and have regulated the rewarding of creativity in Western culture, might allow us to become better aware of our present situation as regards to art, knowledge and learning – knowing full well that this situation is so puzzling that no historical analysis as such can pretend to shed a complete light on it

Copyright and truth

Copyright @ 2011 Berkeley Electronic PressThis Article calls into question the primary meaning of copyright law. It argues that copyright is not primarily a legal instrument, but rather a fundamental mode of human existence. The starting point of the analysis is Kant’s definition of a book as a “public address” and of author’s rights as ultimately being grounded in the furtherance and maintenance of truth. Building on Kant’s argument, the Article defines the copyright primary subject matter as the act of speaking publicly in one’s own name, and the copyright sphere as the author-public coalescence that such act of speaking generates. This enables reaching a proper understanding of the scope of copyright and to characterizing its specificity as compared to its “fellow rights,” patents and trademarks

Trajectory of a body in a resistant medium: an elementary derivation

A didactical exposition of the classical problem of the trajectory determination of a body, subject to the gravity in a resistant medium, is proposed. Our revisitation is aimed at showing a derivation of the problem solution which should be as simple as possible from a technical point of view, in order to be grasped even by first-year undergraduates. A central role in our analysis is played by the so-called "chain rule" for derivatives, which is systematically used to remove the temporal variable from Newton's law to derive the differential equation of the Cartesian representation of the trajectory, with a considerable reduction of the overall mathematical complexity. In particular, for a resistant medium exerting a force quadratic with respect to the velocity our approach leads, in an elementary way, to the differential equation of the trajectory, which is subsequently solved by series expansion. A comparison of the polynomial approximants obtained by truncating such series with the solution recently proposed through a homotopy analysis is also presented