Global Fits of the CKM Matrix

We report upon the present status of global fits to Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures invited talk presented at EPS conference, Aachen July 17-2

Fatal anaphylactic sting reaction in a patient with mastocytosis

We report on a 33-year-old female patient with indolent systemic mastocytosis and urticaria pigmentosa who died of an anaphylactic reaction after a yellow jacket sting. As she had no history of previous anaphylactic sting reaction, there was no testing performed in order to detect hymenoptera venom sensitization. But even if a sensitization had been diagnosed, no venom immunotherapy (VIT) would have been recommended. It is almost certain that VIT would have saved her life and it is most likely that VIT is indicated in some patients with mastocytosis with no history of anaphylactic sting reaction. However, no criteria have been established in order to allow a selection of mastocytosis patients eligible for such a `prophylactic' VIT. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

Geometric aspects of HF driven Langmuir turbulence in the ionosphere

International audienceThe geometric aspects of HF-generated Langmuir turbulence in the ionosphere and its detection by radars are theoretically discussed in a broad approach, including local modelling (damped and driven Zakharov system), basic parametric instabilities, polarization and strength of the driving electric field, and radar configurations. Selected examples of numerical results from the local model are presented and discussed in relation to recent experiments, with emphasis on recent experiments at the EISCAT facilities. Anisotropic aspects of the cavitation process in the magnetized plasma are exhibited. Basic processes of cascades and cavitation are by now well identified in these experiments, but a few problems of the detailed agreement between theory and experiments are pointed out

Situation des personnes transgenres par rapport au VIH/IST en Suisse : rapid assessment

Ce rapport permet d'identifier le sous-groupe des personnes transgenres pratiquant ou ayant pratiqué le travail du sexe comme une population clairement exposée à un risque notoirement élevé d'infection par le VIH et les IST. L'ampleur rapportée du phénomène justifie pleinement l'inclusion de cette population dans le dispositif de surveillance comportementale du VIH et des autres IST, mais également la réalisation urgente d'actions de prévention communautaire. Par contre, il ne nous permet pas d'arriver à un consensus fort en ce qui concerne la situation des personnes transgenres non travailleuses du sexe par rapport au VIH et aux autres IST en Suisse. Les données internationales sont cependant suffisamment préoccupantes pour justifier la réalisation d'une recherche sur la santé sexuelle au sein de cette population. Cette recherche devra prendre en compte les contextes de vie souvent hostiles auxquels sont confrontées les personnes transgenres. Par ailleurs, les personnes transgenres devraient pouvoir être reconnues en tant que telles et enregistrées de manière systématique dans les systèmes de déclaration du VIH et des autres IST, dans les outils de suivi statistique des centres de dépistage et de conseil VIH/IST, ainsi que dans l'enquête suisse sur la santé

Absence of boron aggregates in superconducting silicon confirmed by atom probe tomography

Superconducting boron-doped silicon films prepared by gas immersion laser doping (GILD) technique are analyzed by atom probe tomography. The resulting three-dimensional chemical composition reveals that boron atoms are incorporated into crystalline silicon in the atomic percent concentration range, well above their solubility limit, without creating clusters or precipitates at the atomic scale. The boron spatial distribution is found to be compatible with local density of states measurements performed by scanning tunneling spectroscopy. These results, combined with the observations of very low impurity level and of a sharp two-dimensional interface between doped and undoped regions show, that the Si:B material obtained by GILD is a well-defined random substitutional alloy endowed with promising superconducting properties.Comment: 4 page

Some Results on the Boundary Control of Systems of Conservation Laws

This note is concerned with the study of the initial boundary value problem for systems of conservation laws from the point of view of control theory, where the initial data is fixed and the boundary data are regarded as control functions. We first consider the problem of controllability at a fixed time for genuinely nonlinear Temple class systems, and present a description of the set of attainable configurations of the corresponding solutions in terms of suitable Oleinik-type estimates. We next present a result concerning the asymptotic stabilization near a constant state for general $n\times n$ systems. Finally we show with an example that in general one cannot achieve exact controllability to a constant state in finite time.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, conferenc