Plato's Phaedo: Selected Papers From the Eleventh Symposium Platonicum

The paper deals with the "deuteros plous", literally ‘the second voyage’, proverbially ‘the next best way’, discussed in Plato’s "Phaedo", the key passage being Phd. 99e4–100a3. The second voyage refers to what Plato’s Socrates calls his “flight into the logoi”. Elaborating on the subject, the author first (I) provides a non-standard interpretation of the passage in question, and then (II) outlines the philosophical problem that it seems to imply, and, finally, (III) tries to apply this philosophical problem to the "ultimate final proof" of immortality and to draw an analogy with the ontological argument for the existence of God, as proposed by Descartes in his 5th "Meditation". The main points are as follows: (a) the “flight into the logoi” can have two different interpretations, a common one and an astonishing one, and (b) there is a structural analogy between Descartes’s ontological argument for the existence of God in his 5th "Meditation" and the "ultimate final proof" for the immortality of the soul in the "Phaedo"

COLLABORATIVE EMOTIONAL MAPPING AS A TOOL FOR URBAN MOBILITY PLANNING

In this article, we present a framework to collect and represent people’s emotions, considering the urban mobility context of Curitiba. As a procedure, we have interviewed individuals during an intermodal challenge. The participants have described their experiences of urban mobility while using different transport modes. We have we used emojis as graphic symbols representing emotional data, once it is a modern language widely incorporated in everyday life as well as evokes a natural emotional association with the data we collected. We built an online geoinformation solution for visualising the emotional phenomenon. As a result, we found that the proposed methodology captures environmental factors as well as specific urban features triggering positive and negative/neutral emotions. Therefore, we validated the methodology of collaborative emotional mapping through volunteered geographic information, collecting and representing emotions on maps through emojis. Thus, here we argue this is a valid way to represent emotions and incorporate a modern language to maps. Based on the results and broader literature, we affirm this is a valuable alternative to increase knowledge about cities, once mapping emotions could assist urban planners in identifying variables, generating positive and negative feelings over the city space, which drives urban planning within a citizen-centred perspective

The Borexino Thermal Monitoring & Management System and simulations of the fluid-dynamics of the Borexino detector under asymmetrical, changing boundary conditions

A comprehensive monitoring system for the thermal environment inside the Borexino neutrino detector was developed and installed in order to reduce uncertainties in determining temperatures throughout the detector. A complementary thermal management system limits undesirable thermal couplings between the environment and Borexino's active sections. This strategy is bringing improved radioactive background conditions to the region of interest for the physics signal thanks to reduced fluid mixing induced in the liquid scintillator. Although fluid-dynamical equilibrium has not yet been fully reached, and thermal fine-tuning is possible, the system has proven extremely effective at stabilizing the detector's thermal conditions while offering precise insights into its mechanisms of internal thermal transport. Furthermore, a Computational Fluid-Dynamics analysis has been performed, based on the empirical measurements provided by the thermal monitoring system, and providing information into present and future thermal trends. A two-dimensional modeling approach was implemented in order to achieve a proper understanding of the thermal and fluid-dynamics in Borexino. It was optimized for different regions and periods of interest, focusing on the most critical effects that were identified as influencing background concentrations. Literature experimental case studies were reproduced to benchmark the method and settings, and a Borexino-specific benchmark was implemented in order to validate the modeling approach for thermal transport. Finally, fully-convective models were applied to understand general and specific fluid motions impacting the detector's Active Volume.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1705.09078, arXiv:1705.0965

Dissecting the role of distinct OCT4-SOX2 heterodimer configurations in pluripotency

The transcription factors OCT4 and SOX2 are required for generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and for maintaining embryonic stem cells (ESCs). OCT4 and SOX2 associate and bind to DNA in different configurations depending on the arrangement of their individual DNA binding elements. Here we have investigated the role of the different OCT4-SOX2-DNA assemblies in regulating and inducing pluripotency. To this end, we have generated SOX2 mutants that interfere with specific OCT4-SOX2 heterodimer configurations and assessed their ability to generate iPSCs and to rescue ESC self-renewal. Our results demonstrate that the OCT4-SOX2 configuration that dimerizes on a Hoxb1-like composite, a canonical element with juxtaposed individual binding sites, plays a more critical role in the induction and maintenance of pluripotency than any other OCT4-SOX2 configuration. Overall, the results of this study provide new insight into the protein interactions required to establish a de novo pluripotent network and to maintain a true pluripotent cell fate.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Ectopia cordis: prenatal diagnosis, perinatal outcomes, and postnatal follow-up of an international multicenter cohort case series

Objective: This study aimed to analyze prenatal diagnosis, perinatal outcomes, and postnatal follow-up in fetuses with ectopia cordis (EC). Methods: This retrospective analysis accessed 31 patients with EC who were either diagnosed or referred to a tertiary Fetal Medicine centers for EC diagnosis in Brazil, Germany, Italy, and Poland. We analyzed prenatal diagnosis, perinatal outcomes, and follow-up in these patients. Results: Our study included a cohort of 31 fetuses with EC, 4 and 27 of whom had partial and complete protrusion of the heart through a ventral defect in the thoracoabdominal wall, respectively. EC was diagnosed by fetal echocardiography at a mean gestational age of 20.3 ± 8.6 weeks (range, 8-35 weeks). Of the four cases, in which the karyotype was performed, all of them had a normal result (1 - 46,XX and 3 - 46,XY). Five patients showed conotruncal abnormalities and six ventricular septal defects. Termination of pregnancy (TOP) was performed in 15 cases (48%) and seven pregnant women had spontaneous fetal demise (22.5%). Of the seven fetuses that were born alive, four of them died, and three infants underwent surgery. Among these three infants, all of them survived, one was 5 months, 13 years old and 29 years old at the time of study completion. Conclusions: Ectopia cordis is associated with high mortality rates and intracardiac/extra-cardiac defects. Ventricular septal defects and conotruncal anomalies were the more common intracardiac defects associated with EC. However, in this cohort of fetuses with EC the incidence of PC was lower than reported in the literature

Trichlorostannyl complexes of Ruthenium(II): Synthesis, structure, reactivity and computational studies

Trichlorostannyl complexes [Ru(SnCl3) (Cp')L] (2a-c) were prepared by treatment of optically active half-sandwich chlorocomplexes [RuCl(Cp')L] (1a-c) with an excess of SnCl2.2H2O in ethanol. Treatment of trichlorostannyl complexes 2a-c with NaBH4 afforded trihydridostannyl derivatives [Ru(SnH3) (Cp')L] (3a-c) in moderated yields. Treatment of 2a-c with MgBrMe gave the trimethylstannyl complexes Ru(SnMe3) (Cp')L (4a-c). Alkynylstannyl derivatives [Ru{Sn(C≡CPh)3}(Cp')L] (5a-c) were prepared by treatment of trichlorostannyl compounds 2a-c with an excess of LiC≡CPh in thf. All the complexes present optical activity. The complexes were characterized spectroscopically and by X-ray crystal structure determination of [RuCl(η5-C5Me5)L] (1b), [Ru(SnCl3) (η5-C5Me5)L] (2b), and [Ru(SnCl3) (η5-C9H7)L] (2c). The influence of different ligands on the RuP interaction in several complexes 1a-c, 2a-c and 3a-c was evaluated by DFT calculations. These calculations indicate that [SnCl3]- has a stronger stabilization effect than [Cl]- and the same occurs between C9H7 and C5Me5. These relative stabilities combined with the distortion energies of the fragments produce a stabilizing effect in the RuP bonds of complex 2c that is twice as strong as in the 1b complex

Final results of Borexino Phase-I on low energy solar neutrino spectroscopy

Borexino has been running since May 2007 at the LNGS with the primary goal of detecting solar neutrinos. The detector, a large, unsegmented liquid scintillator calorimeter characterized by unprecedented low levels of intrinsic radioactivity, is optimized for the study of the lower energy part of the spectrum. During the Phase-I (2007-2010) Borexino first detected and then precisely measured the flux of the 7Be solar neutrinos, ruled out any significant day-night asymmetry of their interaction rate, made the first direct observation of the pep neutrinos, and set the tightest upper limit on the flux of CNO neutrinos. In this paper we discuss the signal signature and provide a comprehensive description of the backgrounds, quantify their event rates, describe the methods for their identification, selection or subtraction, and describe data analysis. Key features are an extensive in situ calibration program using radioactive sources, the detailed modeling of the detector response, the ability to define an innermost fiducial volume with extremely low background via software cuts, and the excellent pulse-shape discrimination capability of the scintillator that allows particle identification. We report a measurement of the annual modulation of the 7 Be neutrino interaction rate. The period, the amplitude, and the phase of the observed modulation are consistent with the solar origin of these events, and the absence of their annual modulation is rejected with higher than 99% C.L. The physics implications of phase-I results in the context of the neutrino oscillation physics and solar models are presented

Spectroscopy of geo-neutrinos from 2056 days of Borexino data

We report an improved geo-neutrino measurement with Borexino from 2056 days of data taking. The present exposure is $(5.5\pm0.3)\times10^{31}$ proton$\times$yr. Assuming a chondritic Th/U mass ratio of 3.9, we obtain $23.7 ^{+6.5}_{-5.7} (stat) ^{+0.9}_{-0.6} (sys)$ geo-neutrino events. The null observation of geo-neutrinos with Borexino alone has a probability of $3.6 \times 10^{-9}$ (5.9$\sigma$). A geo-neutrino signal from the mantle is obtained at 98\% C.L. The radiogenic heat production for U and Th from the present best-fit result is restricted to the range 23-36 TW, taking into account the uncertainty on the distribution of heat producing elements inside the Earth.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The Main Results of the Borexino Experiment

The main physical results on the registration of solar neutrinos and the search for rare processes obtained by the Borexino collaboration to date are presented.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figgures, To be published as Proceedings of the Third Annual Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference, St. Petersburg, Russia, 201