Acoustic characteristics of Italian Parkinsonian speech: a study on early-stage patients

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurological illness which also has effects on speech production, resulting in segmental and suprasegmental abnormalities. The aim of the current study is to test the validity of two acoustic parameters - %V and VtoV - for the detection of rhythmical variation in early-stage PD speech, in comparison to healthy speech. 40 Italian native speakers were enrolled in the research, 20 early-stage PD subjects and 20 neurologically healthy and matched controls, and a corpus of read speech was collected. The results of voice analysis confirmed an alteration of vocalic duration and %V in PD productions. In particular, %V could be a reliable cue for PD speech characterization, even at the very early onset of the disease

Crystal structures and polymorphism of polymers: Influence of defects and disorder

The crystal structures and the polymorphism of polymers are described on the basis of the main principles that define the conformation of polymer chains in the crystalline state and the modes of packing of macromolecules. We show that the presence of defects and disorder in the crystals influences the polymorphic behavior. The cases of polymorphism of isotactic poly(butene) (iPB) and syndiotactic poly(styrene) (sPS) are ilustrated as examples. In the case of iPB, the effect of the presence of defects of stereoregularity and of comonomeric units on the crystallization of form I and form II is described as an example of alteration of the crystallization behavior because of the modification of both thermodynamic stability and crystallization kinetics from the melt of the polymorphic forms. The case of sPS is taken as an example of a very complex polymorphic behavior arising from the presence and development of structural disorder

Possible crossover from BCS superconductivity to Bose-Einstein condensate in quark matter

The possibility of the crossover from the BCS pairing to the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of diquarks with going down in density is discussed in the framework of in the Nambu Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model. We find that the quark matter at moderate density may be close to the intermediate of the crossover, the precursory regime to the BEC phase.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Contributed to International Workshop on Quantum Chromodynamics: QCD@Work 2007, Martina Franca, Valle d'Itria, Italy, 16-20 Jun 200

Chiral Lagrangians with tensor sources

The implementation of tensor sources in Chiral Lagrangians allows the computation of Green functions and form factors involving tensor currents, that is, quark bilinears of the form \bar{q}_i\sigma^{\mu\nu}q_j. Whereas only four new terms show up at O(p^4), we find around a hundred of them at O(p^6). So it becomes essential to ensure that this set o operators is indeed minimal and non-redundant (i.e., it is a basis). We discuss two phenomenological applications in the context of vector meson resonances and the radiative pion decay.Comment: Talk given at the 4th International Worshop on Quantum ChromoDynamics, Theory and experiment, June 16-20, 2007. Martina Franca - Valle d'Itria - Ital

Evading 1/m_b-suppressed IR divergencies in QCDF: Bs-->KK Decays and B_{d,s} mixing

We analyze the deviations of the mixing induced CP asymmetry in B-->phi Ks from sin(2beta), as well as the deviations of the asymmetries in Bs-->K*K*, Bs-->phi K* and Bs-->phi phi from sin(2beta_s), that arise in SM due to penguin pollution. We use a theoretical input which is short-distance dominated in QCD-factorization and thus free of IR-divergencies. We also provide alternative ways to extract angles of the unitarity triangle from penguin-mediated decays, and give predictions for Bs-->K*K* observables.Comment: 5 pages. Talk given at the International Workshop on Quantum Chromodynamics: QCD@Work 2007, Martina Franca, Italy, June 200

Instabilities in two flavor quark matter

I discuss briefly the instabilities of two flavor quark matter, paying attention to the gradient instability which develops in the g2SC phase in the Goldstone $U(1)_A$ sector.Comment: 6 pages. Talk given at QCD@Work07, Martina Franca (Italy). Some typos corrected, one reference adde

The role of communicative acts in the Dream process: engaging Moroccan migrants in a community development initiative in urban Spain

Abstract The present article offers relevant insights into how the evidence-based community development initiative known as the Dream process has had a positive impact on the inclusion, participation and leadership of a marginalized community of Moroccan immigrants in urban Spain. More specifically, we analyse how the commitment to promote dialogic communicative acts and to reduce power communicative acts during the process has attenuated some of the race, gender and class barriers that hindered the community's involvement in dialogic and decision-making spaces aimed at improving their living conditions. In this article, we first introduce the state of the art using studies that have examined the role of interaction and deliberation in community development processes in disadvantaged contexts. Then, we briefly refer to the deterioration of the living conditions of the Moroccan immigrant population in Spain. Finally, we present the main results obtained from the qualitative case study research carried out through the implementation of the communicative methodology. This case study provides both theoretical claims and practical orientations to examine how dialogic approaches can contribute to community development processes in contexts severely affected by racial segregation and poverty

Probing Universal Extra Dimensions through rare decays induced by b→sb \to s transition

A few $B_{d,s}$ and $\Lambda_b$ decays induced by $b \to s$ transition are studied in the Standard Model and in the framework of the Appelquist, Cheng and Dobrescu (ACD) model, which is a New Physics scenario where a single universal extra dimension is considered. In particular, we investigate the sensitivity of the observables to the radius $R$ of the compactified extra dimension.Comment: LaTex, 7 pages, 4 eps figures. Contribution to the International Workshop QCD@Work 2007, June 16-20, Martina Franca - Ital