70 research outputs found
Sports brands communication in the "Covid" age: strategies, representations, identity and consumption
The paper investigates the role of brand communication during the first period of pandemic age, in which Sport and PA were also called to redesign behaviours, cultural and consumer practices as well as to answer new questions of meaning. The new spirit of the time we are living in, is characterized by the domination of the medical-scientific language, and by a strong contraction of the economy in which trends and fashions appear scaled down and subordinate to new goals of well-being. The pandemic has increased the digitized experiences of sports practices, bringing out more and more aspects of individualism, narcissism, which are combined with a continuous search for well-being, health, beauty, fashion. Sports brands therefore appear as social spaces to observe the changes in sports communication and its consumption practices.
The paper analysis how – during the first lockdown – the story-telling of sports brands has changed values, going to new socially responsible commitments in terms of global health and security. Following the multidimensional theory of communication, some emblematic cases of global sports brands are investigated through qualitative methods, in order to highlight the emergence of new issues: representations, identities, rules and consumption as innovative aspects of sports cultural production.
The aim is to show sport and PA as a sort of pandemic “domestication” of the social reality we are experiencing
AdS Phase Transitions at finite \kappa
We investigate the effect of adding a Chern-Simons term coupled to an axion
field to SU(2) Einstein-Yang-Mills in a fixed /Schwarzschild background.
We show that, when the axion has no potential, there is a phase transition
between a Reissner-Nordstrom black-hole and one with a non-abelian condensate
as per the vanishing Chern-Simons case. Furthermore, by giving the axion field
a mass, one observes a phase transition between a Reissner-Nordstrom black-hole
with axion hair to a "superconducting" phase which also has a non-trivial axion
profile. We are able to perform a preliminary analysis for this interesting
case and observe that we can shift the critical temperature at which the phase
transition occurs and observe interesting features of the order parameter
scaling form.Comment: Version Published in JHE
Holographic Charged Fluid with Anomalous Current at Finite Cutoff Surface in Einstein-Maxwell Gravity
The holographic charged fluid with anomalous current in Einstein-Maxwell
gravity has been generalized from the infinite boundary to the finite cutoff
surface by using the gravity/fluid correspondence. After perturbing the boosted
Reissner-Nordstrom (RN)-AdS black brane solution of the Einstein-Maxwell
gravity with the Chern-Simons term, we obtain the first order perturbative
gravitational and Maxwell solutions, and calculate the stress tensor and
charged current of the dual fluid at finite cutoff surfaces which contains
undetermined parameters after demanding regularity condition at the future
horizon. We adopt the Dirichlet boundary condition and impose the Landau frame
to fix these parameters, finally obtain the dependence of transport
coefficients in the dual stress tensor and charged current on the arbitrary
radical cutoff . We find that the dual fluid is not conformal, but it has
vanishing bulk viscosity, and the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio is
universally . Other transport coefficients of the dual current turns
out to be cutoff-dependent. In particular, the chiral vortical conductivity
expressed in terms of thermodynamic quantities takes the same form as that of
the dual fluid at the asymptotic AdS boundary, and the chiral magnetic
conductivity receives a cutoff-dependent correction which vanishes at the
infinite boundary.Comment: 19 pages, v2: references added, v3: typos corrected, v5: typos
corrected, version accepted for publication in JHE
Paratransgenesis to control malaria vectors: a semi-field pilot study
BACKGROUND:
Malaria still remains a serious health burden in developing countries, causing more than 1 million deaths annually. Given the lack of an effective vaccine against its major etiological agent, Plasmodium falciparum, and the growing resistance of this parasite to the currently available drugs repertoire and of Anopheles mosquitoes to insecticides, the development of innovative control measures is an imperative to reduce malaria transmission. Paratransgenesis, the modification of symbiotic organisms to deliver anti-pathogen effector molecules, represents a novel strategy against Plasmodium development in mosquito vectors, showing the potential to reduce parasite development. However, the field application of laboratory-based evidence of paratransgenesis imposes the use of more realistic confined semi-field environments.
METHODS:
Large cages were used to evaluate the ability of bacteria of the genus Asaia expressing green fluorescent protein (Asaia (gfp)), to diffuse in Anopheles stephensi and Anopheles gambiae target mosquito populations. Asaia (gfp) was introduced in large cages through the release of paratransgenic males or by sugar feeding stations. Recombinant bacteria transmission was directly detected by fluorescent microscopy, and further assessed by molecular analysis.
RESULTS:
Here we show the first known trial in semi-field condition on paratransgenic anophelines. Modified bacteria were able to spread at high rate in different populations of An. stephensi and An. gambiae, dominant malaria vectors, exploring horizontal ways and successfully colonising mosquito midguts. Moreover, in An. gambiae, vertical and trans-stadial diffusion mechanisms were demonstrated.
CONCLUSIONS:
Our results demonstrate the considerable ability of modified Asaia to colonise different populations of malaria vectors, including pecies where its association is not primary, in large environments. The data support the potential to employ transgenic Asaia as a tool for malaria control, disclosing promising perspective for its field application with suitable effector molecules
Non-conformal Hydrodynamics in Einstein-dilaton Theory
In the Einestein-dilaton theory with a Liouville potential parameterized by
, we find a Schwarzschild-type black hole solution. This black hole
solution, whose asymptotic geometry is described by the warped metric, is
thermodynamically stable only for . Applying the gauge/gravity
duality, we find that the dual gauge theory represents a non-conformal thermal
system with the equation of state depending on . After turning on the
bulk vector fluctuations with and without a dilaton coupling, we calculate the
charge diffusion constant, which indicates that the life time of the quasi
normal mode decreases with . Interestingly, the vector fluctuation with
the dilaton coupling shows that the DC conductivity increases with temperature,
a feature commonly found in electrolytes.Comment: 27 pages and 2 figures, published in JHE
Maxwell-Chern-Simons Vortices and Holographic Superconductors
We investigate probe limit vortex solutions of a charged scalar field in
Einstein-Maxwell theory in 3+1 dimensions, for an asymptotically AdS
Schwarzschild black hole metric with the addition of an axionic coupling to the
Maxwell field. We show that the inclusion of such a term, together with a
suitable potential for the axion field, can induce an effective Chern-Simons
term on the 2+1 dimensional boundary. We obtain numerical solutions of the
equations of motion and find Maxwell-Chern-Simons like magnetic vortex
configurations, where the magnetic field profile varies with the size of the
effective Chern-Simons coupling. The axion field has a non-trivial profile
inside the AdS bulk but does not condense at spatial infinity.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, version accepted for publication in JHE
Optimal preparation of high-entropy boride-silicon carbide ceramics
High-entropy boride-silicon carbide (HEB-SiC) ceramics were fabricated using boride-based powders prepared from borothermal and boro/carbothermal reduction methods. The effects of processing routes (borothermal reduction and boro/carbothermal reduction) on the HEB powders were examined. HEB-SiC ceramics with > 98% theoretical density were prepared by spark plasma sintering at 2000 °C. It was demonstrated that the addition of SiC led to slight coarsening of the microstructure. The HEB-SiC ceramics prepared from boro/carbothermal reduction powders showed a fine-grained microstructure and higher Vickers’ hardness but lower fracture toughness value as compared with the same composition prepared from borothermal reduction powders. These results indicated that the selection of the powder processing method and the addition of SiC phase could contribute to the optimal preparation of high-entropy boride-based ceramics
Super-Higgs in Superspace
We determine the effective gravitational couplings in superspace whose
components reproduce the supergravity Higgs effect for the constrained
Goldstino multiplet. It reproduces the known Gravitino sector whilst
constraining the off-shell completion. We show that these components arise by
computing the effective action. This may be useful for phenomenological studies
and model building: We give an example of its application to multiple
Goldstini.Comment: 17 pages. Version 2: Typos reduced, comments added and section 5
clarifie
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