426 research outputs found
AGGIORNAMENTO SULLâATTIVITAâ DI SORVEGLIANZA SVOLTA NEL 2009 AI CAMPI FLEGREI MISURE GRAVIMETRICHE
Dal 16 febbraio al 18 marzo 2009 si Ăš svolta una campagna gravimetrica ai Campi Flegrei. Le misure sono state rilevate sullâintera rete che Ăš attualmente costituita da 28 vertici (figura 1), tutti posizionati in corrispondenza, o in prossimitĂ , di capisaldi di livellazione e collegati alla stazione assoluta di Napoli assunta quale riferimento
Heavy Superheated Droplet Detectors as a Probe of Spin-independent WIMP Dark Matter Existence
At present, application of Superheated Droplet Detectors (SDDs) in WIMP dark
matter searches has been limited to the spin-dependent sector, owing to the
general use of fluorinated refrigerants which have high spin sensitivity. Given
their recent demonstration of a significant constraint capability with
relatively small exposures and the relative economy of the technique, we
consider the potential impact of heavy versions of such devices on the
spin-independent sector. Limits obtainable from a -loaded SDD
are estimated on the basis of the radiopurity levels and backgrounds already
achieved by the SIMPLE and PICASSO experiments. With 34 kgd exposure,
equivalent to the current CDMS, such a device may already probe to below
10 pb in the spin-independent cross section.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted Phys. Rev.
The new IMGC-02 transportable absolute gravimeter: measurement apparatus and applications in geophysics and volcanology
The research carried out at the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (formerly Istituto di Metrologia «G.
Colonnetti») aiming to develop a transportable ballistic absolute gravimeter ended with a new version of the instrument,
called the IMGC-02. It uses laser interferometry to measure the symmetrical free rising and falling
motion of a test mass in the gravity field. Providing the same accuracy achieved with previous versions, the instrumental
improvements mainly concern size, weight, data processing algorithms and operational simplicity.
An uncertainty of 9 ÎŒGal (1 ÎŒGal=1Ă10â8 m·sâ2) can be achieved within a single observation session, lasting
about 12 h, while the time series of several observation sessions show a reproducibility of 4 ÎŒGal. At this level,
gravity measurements provide useful information in Geophysics and Volcanology. A wide set of dynamic
phenomena, i.e. seismicity and volcanic activity, can produce temporal gravity changes, often quite small, with
an amplitude ranging from a few to hundreds of microgals. Therefore the IMGC absolute gravimeter has been
employed since 1986 in surveying the Italian active volcanoes. A brief history of the gravimeter and the description
of the new apparatus, together with the main results of ongoing applications in Geophysics and Volcanology
are presented
Observation of an Efimov spectrum in an atomic system
In 1970 V. Efimov predicted a puzzling quantum-mechanical effect that is
still of great interest today. He found that three particles subjected to a
resonant pairwise interaction can join into an infinite number of loosely bound
states even though each particle pair cannot bind. Interestingly, the
properties of these aggregates, such as the peculiar geometric scaling of their
energy spectrum, are universal, i.e. independent of the microscopic details of
their components. Despite an extensive search in many different physical
systems, including atoms, molecules and nuclei, the characteristic spectrum of
Efimov trimer states still eludes observation. Here we report on the discovery
of two bound trimer states of potassium atoms very close to the Efimov
scenario, which we reveal by studying three-particle collisions in an ultracold
gas. Our observation provides the first evidence of an Efimov spectrum and
allows a direct test of its scaling behaviour, shedding new light onto the
physics of few-body systems.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl
The new IMGC-02 transportable absolute gravimeter: measurement apparatus and applications in geophysics and volcanology
The research carried out at the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (formerly Istituto di Metrologia «G.
Colonnetti») aiming to develop a transportable ballistic absolute gravimeter ended with a new version of the instrument,
called the IMGC-02. It uses laser interferometry to measure the symmetrical free rising and falling
motion of a test mass in the gravity field. Providing the same accuracy achieved with previous versions, the instrumental
improvements mainly concern size, weight, data processing algorithms and operational simplicity.
An uncertainty of 9 ÎŒGal (1 ÎŒGal=1Ă10â8 m·sâ2) can be achieved within a single observation session, lasting
about 12 h, while the time series of several observation sessions show a reproducibility of 4 ÎŒGal. At this level,
gravity measurements provide useful information in Geophysics and Volcanology. A wide set of dynamic
phenomena, i.e. seismicity and volcanic activity, can produce temporal gravity changes, often quite small, with
an amplitude ranging from a few to hundreds of microgals. Therefore the IMGC absolute gravimeter has been
employed since 1986 in surveying the Italian active volcanoes. A brief history of the gravimeter and the description
of the new apparatus, together with the main results of ongoing applications in Geophysics and Volcanology
are presented
Improved vision based pose estimation for industrial robots via sparse regression
In this work amonocular machine vision based pose estimation system is developed for industrial robots and the accuracy of the estimated pose is im-proved via sparse regression. The proposed sparse regressionbased methodis usedimprove the accuracy obtained from the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) based pose estimation algorithmduring the trajectory tracking of an industrial robotâs end effector. The proposed method utilizes a set of basis functions to sparsely identify the nonlinear relationship between the estimated pose and the true pose provided by a laser tracker.Moreover,a camera target was designed and fitted with fiducial markers,andto prevent ambiguities in pose estimation, the markers are placed in such a way to guarantee the detection of at least two distinct nonparallel markers from a single camera within ± 90° in all directions of the cam-eraâs view. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by an experi-mental study performed using a KUKA KR240 R2900 ultra robot while follow-ing sixteen distinct trajectories based on ISO 9238. The obtained results show that the proposed method provides parsimonious models which improve the pose estimation accuracy and precision of the vision based system during trajectory tracking of industrial robots' end effector
PRAME Expression in Mucosal Melanoma of the Head and Neck Region
PRAME (PReferentially expressed Antigen in MElanoma), a cancer-testis antigen expressed in normal and neoplastic tissues with several functions, proved to be a useful diagnostic tool in the differential diagnosis between benign and malignant melanocytic lesions. The current study aims to perform PRAME stain on a retrospective case series of mucosal melanocytic tumors of the head and neck region to compare 3 different scores and evaluate the most reliable one in this diagnostic set. Immunohistochemical analysis for PRAME was performed in 54 benign and malignant mucosal melanocytic tumors of the head and neck region collected from 41 patients. The best-performing cutoff of PRAME-positive cells (nuclear stain) to differentiate benign and malignant mucosal melanocytic tumors of the head and neck region is that proposed by Raghavan and colleagues (<60%/â„60% of PRAME-positive cells), with 100% and 77.8% of benign lesions and malignant tumors respectively correctly identified. Applying this score, PRAME stain showed the best results (sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and positive and negative predictive values) for the diagnosis of head and neck melanocytic tumors. However, a subset of PRAME-negative malignant tumors was identified, especially located in the palatal area (hard and soft palate). Finally, high PRAME expression (â„60%) was associated with specific sites (nasal cavity/nasal septum/turbinates nasopharynx, and the maxillary sinus), nodular histotype, and female sex
Critical temperature of non-interacting Bose gases on disordered lattices
For a non-interacting Bose gas on a lattice we compute the shift of the
critical temperature for condensation when random-bond and onsite disorder are
present. We evidence that the shift depends on the space dimensionality D and
the filling fraction f. For D -> infinity (infinite-range model), using results
from the theory of random matrices, we show that the shift of the critical
temperature is negative, depends on f, and vanishes only for large f. The
connections with analogous results obtained for the spherical model are
discussed. For D=3 we find that, for large f, the critical temperature Tc is
enhanced by disorder and that the relative shift does not sensibly depend on f;
at variance, for small f, Tc decreases in agreement with the results obtained
for a Bose gas in the continuum. We also provide numerical estimates for the
shift of the critical temperature due to disorder induced on a non-interacting
Bose gas by a bichromatic incommensurate potential.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures; Fig. 8 improved adding results for another value
of q (q=830/1076
Strings on Bubbling Geometries
We study gauge theory operators which take the form of a product of a trace
with a Schur polynomial, and their string theory duals. These states represent
strings excited on bubbling AdS geometries which are dual to the Schur
polynomials. These geometries generically take the form of multiple annuli in
the phase space plane. We study the coherent state wavefunction of the lattice,
which labels the trace part of the operator, for a general Young tableau and
their dual description on the droplet plane with a general concentric ring
pattern. In addition we identify a density matrix over the coherent states on
all the geometries within a fixed constraint. This density matrix may be used
to calculate the entropy of a given ensemble of operators. We finally recover
the BMN string spectrum along the geodesic near any circle from the ansatz of
the coherent state wavefunction.Comment: 41 pages, 12 figures, published version in JHE
Molecular velocity auto-correlation of simple liquids observed by NMR MGSE method
The velocity auto-correlation spectra of simple liquids obtained by the NMR
method of modulated gradient spin echo show features in the low frequency range
up to a few kHz, which can be explained reasonably well by a long
time tail decay only for non-polar liquid toluene, while the spectra of polar
liquids, such as ethanol, water and glycerol, are more congruent with the model
of diffusion of particles temporarily trapped in potential wells created by
their neighbors. As the method provides the spectrum averaged over ensemble of
particle trajectories, the initial non-exponential decay of spin echoes is
attributed to a spatial heterogeneity of molecular motion in a bulk of liquid,
reflected in distribution of the echo decays for short trajectories. While at
longer time intervals, and thus with longer trajectories, heterogeneity is
averaged out, giving rise to a spectrum which is explained as a combination of
molecular self-diffusion and eddy diffusion within the vortexes of hydrodynamic
fluctuations.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figur
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