Female vs Males inmates: Authors' reply and sample size calculation

Bruno and colleagues highlighted the relatively low absolute-percentage of psychiatric morbidity that we found in our sample, as compared to their male sample. They invited to the use of diagnostic tools, specific for personality disorders and suicidal risk factors, to better investigate these critical issues. In summary, our results showed high percentages of psychiatric morbidity (44%), especially anxiety and depression. Female inmates declared to be most stressed by the distance from family and loved ones, and they did not present any antisocial personality diagnosis. They also showed a resilient reaction to their situation, because more than a half of women requested a supportive psychological therapy during their detention (14/25= 56%), and 10 of them were those with a psychiatric disorder (10/11= 90.9%), thus a higher proportion than those reported in male detainees at the Messina jail (56%), by Zoccali and colleagues (Zoccali et al., 2008). As we have acknowledged, we could further explore other personality disorders and not merely the antisocial personality pathological traits, as we did in our study. In conclusion, we agree with them about the need to repeat the screening for mental health and a deeper ascertainment of specific suicidal risk factors, with an adequate sample. Nonetheless, we believe that our data were not biased, and likely represented the psychological asset of the ladies’ detainee with a final sentence at the Pagliarelli jail of Palermo

A Multifrequency Analysis of the Polarized Diffuse Galactic Radio Emission at Degree Scales

The polarized diffuse Galactic radio emission, mainly synchrotron emission, is expected to be one of the most relevant source of astrophysical contamination at low and moderate multipoles in cosmic microwave background polarization anisotropy experiments at frequencies lower then 50 to 100 GHz. We present here preliminary results based on a recent analysis of the Leiden surveys covering about 50% of the sky at low as well as at middle and high Galactic latitudes. By implementing specific interpolation methods to deal with these data, which show a large variation of the sampling across the sky, we produce maps of the polarized diffuse Galactic synchrotron component at frequencies between 408 and 1411 MHz with pixel sizes larger or equal to about 0.92 degrees. We derive the angular power spectrum of this component for the whole covered region and for three patches in the sky significantly oversampled with respect to the average and at different Galactic latitudes. We find multipole spectral indices typically ranging between about -3 and about -1, according to the considered frequency and sky region. At frequencies higher or equal to 610 MHz, the frequency spectral indices observed in the considered sky regions are about -3.5, compatible with an intrinsic frequency spectral index of about -5.8 and a depolarization due to Faraday rotation with a rotation measure RM of about 15 radians per square meter. This implies that the observed angular power spectrum of the polarized signal is about 85% or 20% of the intrinsic one at 1411 MHz or 820 MHz respectively.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. to appear in S.Cecchini et al., Astrophysical Polarized Backgrounds, AIP Conf. Proceeding

Entanglement for all quantum states

It is shown that a state that is factorizable in the Hilbert space corresponding to some choice of degrees of freedom, becomes entangled for a different choice of degrees of freedom. Therefore, entanglement is not a special case but is ubiquitous in quantum systems. Simple examples are calculated and a general proof is provided. The physical relevance of the change of tensor product structure is mentioned.Comment: 9 page

Spinons as Composite Fermions

We show that gauge invariant composites in the fermionic realization of $SU(N)_1$ conformal field theory explicitly exhibit the holomorphic factorization of the corresponding WZW primaries. In the $SU(2)_1$ case we show that the holomorphic sector realizes the spinon $Y(sl_2)$ algebra, thus allowing the classification of the chiral Fock space in terms of semionic quasi-particle excitations created by the composite fermions.Comment: SU(N)_1 case included. Final version to appear in Mod. Phys. Lett. A. Latex, 13 page

Present limits to cosmic bubbles from the COBE-DMR three point correlation function

The existence of large scale voids in several galaxy surveys suggests the occurence of an inflationary first order phase transition. This process generates primordial bubbles that, before evolving into the present voids, leave at decoupling a non-Gaussian imprint on the CMB. I this paper we evaluate an analytical expression of the collapsed three point correlation function from the bubble temperature fluctuations. Comparing the results with COBE-DMR measures, we obtain upper limits on the allowed non-Gaussianity and hence on the bubble parameters.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; submitted to MNRA

A possible contribution to CMB anisotropies at high l from primordial voids

We present preliminary results of an analysis into the effects of primordial voids on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We show that an inflationary bubble model of void formation predicts excess power in the CMB angular power spectrum that peaks between 2000 < l < 3000. Therefore, voids that exist on or close to the last scattering surface at the epoch of decoupling can contribute significantly to the apparent rise in power on these scales recently detected by the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI).Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. MNRAS accepted versio