Discursos visuales

Pensando en la amplitud que confieren los términos materialidad y tiempo, elegimos como punto de partida primeramente enmarcarlos en el mundo del arte, y acotarlos luego en las artes plásticas en particular, dado que los dos conceptos podrían llevarnos a otras áreas que el arte en general abarca. Tanto es así que podríamos encontrarlos antes en obras y proyectos plásticos a la música o en las artes del movimiento, por ejemplo, las cuales de por sí conllevan el concepto de tiempo, y es por ello que hablaremos en este caso sólo de obras plásticas en las que se entrelazan materialidad y tiempo en el hacer y en los resultados.Facultad de Bellas Arte

Discursos visuales

Pensando en la amplitud que confieren los términos materialidad y tiempo, elegimos como punto de partida primeramente enmarcarlos en el mundo del arte, y acotarlos luego en las artes plásticas en particular, dado que los dos conceptos podrían llevarnos a otras áreas que el arte en general abarca. Tanto es así que podríamos encontrarlos antes en obras y proyectos plásticos a la música o en las artes del movimiento, por ejemplo, las cuales de por sí conllevan el concepto de tiempo, y es por ello que hablaremos en este caso sólo de obras plásticas en las que se entrelazan materialidad y tiempo en el hacer y en los resultados.Facultad de Bellas Arte

Discursos visuales

Pensando en la amplitud que confieren los términos materialidad y tiempo, elegimos como punto de partida primeramente enmarcarlos en el mundo del arte, y acotarlos luego en las artes plásticas en particular, dado que los dos conceptos podrían llevarnos a otras áreas que el arte en general abarca. Tanto es así que podríamos encontrarlos antes en obras y proyectos plásticos a la música o en las artes del movimiento, por ejemplo, las cuales de por sí conllevan el concepto de tiempo, y es por ello que hablaremos en este caso sólo de obras plásticas en las que se entrelazan materialidad y tiempo en el hacer y en los resultados.Facultad de Bellas Arte

Natural Killer and NK-Like T-Cell Activation in Colorectal Carcinoma Patients Treated with Autologous Tumor-Derived Heat Shock Protein 96

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are involved in the activation of both adaptive and innate immune systems. Here, we report that vaccination with autologous tumor-derived HSP96 of colorectal cancer patients, radically resected for liver metastases, induced a significant boost of natural killer (NK) activity detected as cytokine secretion and cytotoxicity in the presence of NK-sensitive targets. Increased NK activity was associated with a raise in CD3−CD56+ NK and/or CD3+CD56+ NK-like T cells, displaying enhanced expression of NKG2D and/or NKp46 receptors. Up-regulated expression of CD83 and CD40 and increased interleukin-12 release on stimulation were observed in CD14+ cells from post-HSP96 peripheral blood mononuclear cells, suggesting an indirect pathway of NK stimulation by HSP96-activated monocytes. Additionally, CD3−CD56+ and CD3+CD56+ lymphocytes were found to undergo functional and phenotypic activation on in vitro exposure to HSP96 even in the absence of monocytes, supporting a potential direct activity of HSP96 on these cell subsets. This evidence was confirmed by the specific binding of FITC-conjugated HSP96 to a subset of both CD3−CD56+ and CD3+CD56+ cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from colorectal cancer patients. Altogether, these findings identify the activation of the NK compartment as an additional immunologic effect of autologous tumor-derived HSP96 administration in cancer patients

The zCOSMOS 10k-Bright Spectroscopic Sample

We present spectroscopic redshifts of a large sample of galaxies with I_(AB) < 22.5 in the COSMOS field, measured from spectra of 10,644 objects that have been obtained in the first two years of observations in the zCOSMOS-bright redshift survey. These include a statistically complete subset of 10,109 objects. The average accuracy of individual redshifts is 110 km s^(–1), independent of redshift. The reliability of individual redshifts is described by a Confidence Class that has been empirically calibrated through repeat spectroscopic observations of over 600 galaxies. There is very good agreement between spectroscopic and photometric redshifts for the most secure Confidence Classes. For the less secure Confidence Classes, there is a good correspondence between the fraction of objects with a consistent photometric redshift and the spectroscopic repeatability, suggesting that the photometric redshifts can be used to indicate which of the less secure spectroscopic redshifts are likely right and which are probably wrong, and to give an indication of the nature of objects for which we failed to determine a redshift. Using this approach, we can construct a spectroscopic sample that is 99% reliable and which is 88% complete in the sample as a whole, and 95% complete in the redshift range 0.5 < z < 0.8. The luminosity and mass completeness levels of the zCOSMOS-bright sample of galaxies is also discussed

Mass and environment as drivers of galaxy evolution in SDSS and zCOSMOS and the origin of the Schechter function

We explore the inter-relationships between mass, star-formation rate and environment in the SDSS, zCOSMOS and other surveys. The differential effects of mass and environment are completely separable to z ~ 1, indicating that two distinct processes are operating, "mass-quenching" and "environment-quenching". Environment-quenching, at fixed over-density, evidently does not change with epoch to z ~ 1, suggesting that it occurs as large-scale structure develops in the Universe. The observed constancy of the mass-function shape for star-forming galaxies, demands that the mass-quenching of galaxies around and above M*, must be proportional to their star-formation rates at all z < 2. We postulate that this simple mass-quenching law also holds over a much broader range of stellar mass and epoch. These two simple quenching processes, plus some additional quenching due to merging, then naturally produce (a) a quasi-static Schechter mass function for star-forming galaxies with a value of M* that is set by the proportionality between the star-formation and mass-quenching rates, (b) a double Schechter function for passive galaxies with two components: the dominant one is produced by mass-quenching and has exactly the same M* as the star-forming galaxies but an alpha shallower by +1, while the other is produced by environment effects and has the same M* and alpha as the star-forming galaxies, and is larger in high density environments. Subsequent merging of quenched galaxies modifies these predictions somewhat in the denser environments, slightly increasing M* and making alpha more negative. All of these detailed quantitative relationships between the Schechter parameters are indeed seen in the SDSS, lending strong support to our simple empirically-based model. The model naturally produces for passive galaxies the "anti-hierarchical" run of mean ages and alpha-element abundances with mass.Comment: 66 pages, 19 figures, 1 movie, accepted for publication in ApJ. The movie is also available at http://www.exp-astro.phys.ethz.ch/zCOSMOS/MF_simulation_d1_d4.mo

Stable population structure in Europe since the Iron Age, despite high mobility

Ancient DNA research in the past decade has revealed that European population structure changed dramatically in the prehistoric period (14,000–3000 years before present, YBP), reflecting the widespread introduction of Neolithic farmer and Bronze Age Steppe ancestries. However, little is known about how population structure changed from the historical period onward (3000 YBP - present). To address this, we collected whole genomes from 204 individuals from Europe and the Mediterranean, many of which are the first historical period genomes from their region (e.g. Armenia and France). We found that most regions show remarkable inter-individual heterogeneity. At least 7% of historical individuals carry ancestry uncommon in the region where they were sampled, some indicating cross-Mediterranean contacts. Despite this high level of mobility, overall population structure across western Eurasia is relatively stable through the historical period up to the present, mirroring geography. We show that, under standard population genetics models with local panmixia, the observed level of dispersal would lead to a collapse of population structure. Persistent population structure thus suggests a lower effective migration rate than indicated by the observed dispersal. We hypothesize that this phenomenon can be explained by extensive transient dispersal arising from drastically improved transportation networks and the Roman Empire’s mobilization of people for trade, labor, and military. This work highlights the utility of ancient DNA in elucidating finer scale human population dynamics in recent history

Investigation on the explosible properties of textile dusts

The textile industry has encountered in the past some episodes of dust explosion with fatalities, monetary losses and serious damages. In general, the textile industry deals with “nontraditional dusts”, which originate from fibrous materials handled by the companies belonging to textile department. In order to better understand the hazard related to textile-related dusts, the local federation of employers of a northern Italian district funded a research program with the aim to make an extensive survey of the characteristics of the dusts present as by-product in several local manufacturers. One hundred dust samples were collected from several different industrial sites. Some of these were part of the wool manufacturing chain, others operated in the field of natural or synthetic fibers. All the samples were analyzed to determine the particle size distribution. Wet-sieving and/or laser diffraction methods were used depending on the sample. 15 samples were submitted to the speditive explosibility test (SET) developed at Politecnico di Torino (Danzi et. Al. 2016), 14 of these resulted explosible. Some samples, including the one which was negative at the SET, were submitted to test in a 20l sphere. All resulted explosible. In the paper the details of the experimental program and all the results are described