Plans for the LIGO–TAMA joint search for gravitational wave bursts

We describe the plans for a joint search for unmodelled gravitational wave bursts being carried out by the LIGO and TAMA Collaborations using data collected during February–April 2003. We take a conservative approach to detection, requiring candidate gravitational wave bursts to be seen in coincidence by all four interferometers. We focus on some of the complications of performing this coincidence analysis, in particular the effects of the different alignments and noise spectra of the interferometers

Serum deprivation alters lipid profile in HN9.10e embryonic hippocampal cells

The understanding of the mechanism of apoptosis is important to improve the use of stem cells for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. Sphingolipids are bioactive molecules involved in the regulation of cell fate. In HN9.10e embryonic hippocampal cells, serum deprivation induces apoptosis preceded by sphingomyelinase activation and raise of ceramide levels. Increasing evidence indicates that individual ceramide species regulated by specific pathways in distinct subcellular compartments might carry out distinct cellular functions, but the ceramides species involved in embryonic hippocampal cell death induced by growth factor deprivation are unknown. In the present paper, by using the UFLC-MS/MS methodology, we have investigated the effect of serum deprivation on the lipid profile in HN9.10e cells. At 48h of serum deprivation, we detected a decrease in cholesterol and increase in sphingosine-1-phoshate 18:1, phosphatidylcholine 18:1 18:0, sphingomyelin 18:1 16:0 and in ceramides 18:1 16:0; we also found an increase in saturated/unsaturated fatty acid ratio in sphingomyelin. We hypothesize that the rearrangement of sphingo- and glycerolipids with increase of saturated fatty acids in serum-deprivated, neural cells might represent a cellular response aimed at holding cholesterol inside the cells

Large Chiral Diffeomorphisms on Riemann Surfaces and W-algebras

The diffeomorphism action lifted on truncated (chiral) Taylor expansion of a complex scalar field over a Riemann surface is presented in the paper under the name of large diffeomorphisms. After an heuristic approach, we show how a linear truncation in the Taylor expansion can generate an algebra of symmetry characterized by some structure functions. Such a linear truncation is explicitly realized by introducing the notion of Forsyth frame over the Riemann surface with the help of a conformally covariant algebraic differential equation. The large chiral diffeomorphism action is then implemented through a B.R.S. formulation (for a given order of truncation) leading to a more algebraic set up. In this context the ghost fields behave as holomorphically covariant jets. Subsequently, the link with the so called W-algebras is made explicit once the ghost parameters are turned from jets into tensorial ghost ones. We give a general solution with the help of the structure functions pertaining to all the possible truncations lower or equal to the given order. This provides another contribution to the relationship between KdV flows and W-diffeomorphimsComment: LaTeX file, 31 pages, no figure. Version to appear in J. Math. Phys. Work partly supported by Region PACA and INF

L¿EDILIZIA DI CULTO TRA LIBERTÀ COSTITUZIONALI E GOVERNO DEL TERRITORIO: LA LEGGE N. 12 DEL 2005 DELLA REGIONE LOMBARDIA

This study concerns the construction and the preservation of religious buildings, mainly from an historical point of view by reconstructing the urban city laws since the Italian Unification, through Fascism, the two World Wars and finally the rebuilding during the second postwar period. At the beginning of the Seventies, the first devolution occurred and places of worship, that had been constructed or consecrated for religious purposes, began to be provided with city plans and each federalist intervention occurred without any constitutional changes. It was only at the beginning of the new Millennium that the most significant constitutional reform happened with the overturning of the State and the Regions' legislative competences: the general legislative competence had been conferred to the Regions, while the State remained in charge of specific topics listed in the Constitution. However, even if the competence of the State and the religious Confessions relationships continued to be regulated by the State's laws, the construction of religious buildings began to be controlled by the local authorities. In the last chapter I have focused my attention on the specific case of Lombardia's law for the governance of territories (legge per il governo del territorio), in which five articles concerns the construction of religious buildings. The Lombard law maker demands a long series of requirements of religious Confessions in order to consider a probable construction of a religious edifice or a change in the use of an existing building. There seems to be no problem at present if the religious faith has stipulated an "agreement" with the State. However, the attempt to exclude the Islamic faith is evident, since that it has not made any agreements with the Public Authority. The unconstitutionality of Lombardia's urban city law is therefore evident because it is in contrast with the Italian Constitution articles 3,8, 19 and 20, which represent Italian Secularism and therefore an equal treatment for every religious faith without discrimination or preference for any of them

Induced quantum gravity on a Riemann Surface

Induced quantum gravity dynamics built over a Riemann surface is studied in arbitrary dimension. Local coordinates on the target space are given by means of the Laguerre-Forsyth construction. A simple model is proposed and pertubatively quantized. In doing so, the classical W-symmetry turns out to be preserved on-shell at any order of the $\hbar$ perturbative expansion. As a main result, due to quantum corrections, the target coordinates acquire a non-trivial character.Comment: LaTex, 32 pages, no figures, submitted to Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Spectral Line Removal in the LIGO Data Analysis System (LDAS)

High power in narrow frequency bands, spectral lines, are a feature of an interferometric gravitational wave detector's output. Some lines are coherent between interferometers, in particular, the 2 km and 4 km LIGO Hanford instruments. This is of concern to data analysis techniques, such as the stochastic background search, that use correlations between instruments to detect gravitational radiation. Several techniques of `line removal' have been proposed. Where a line is attributable to a measurable environmental disturbance, a simple linear model may be fitted to predict, and subsequently subtract away, that line. This technique has been implemented (as the command oelslr) in the LIGO Data Analysis System (LDAS). We demonstrate its application to LIGO S1 data.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, to be published in CQG GWDAW02 proceeding

The Beathealth Project: Synchronising Movement and Music

This paper will describe the new EU Beathealth project1: an initiative to create an intelligent technical architecture capable of delivering embodied, flexible, and efficient rhythmical stimulation adapted to individuals’ motor performance and skills for the purpose of enhancing/recovering movement activity. Additionally, it will explain how it can exemplify the principles of Ubiquitious Music and how knowledge from this field can suggest creativity-driven social enhancements

Smartphone-based chemiluminescent origami µpad for the rapid assessment of glucose blood levels

Microfluidic paper analytical devices (µPADs) represent one of the most appealing trends in the development of simple and inexpensive analytical systems for diagnostic applications at the point of care (POC). Herein, we describe a smartphone-based origami µPAD for the quantitative determination of glucose in blood samples based on the glucose oxidase-catalyzed oxidation of glucose leading to hydrogen peroxide, which is then detected by means of the luminol/hexacyanoferrate(III) chemiluminescent (CL) system. By exploiting the foldable µPAD format, a two-step analytical procedure has been implemented. First, the diluted blood sample was added, and hydrogen peroxide was accumulated, then the biosensor was folded, and a transport buffer was added to bring hydrogen peroxide in contact with CL reagents, thus promoting the CL reaction. To enable POC applicability, the reagents required for the assay were preloaded in the µPAD so that no chemicals handling was required, and a 3D-printed portable device was developed for measuring the CL emission using the smartphone’s CMOS camera. The µPAD was stable for 30-day storage at room temperature and the assay, displaying a limit of detection of 10 µmol L−1, proved able to identify both hypoglycemic and hyperglycemic blood samples in less than 20 min