290 research outputs found
On the crosscorrelation between Gravitational Wave Detectors for detecting association with Gamma Ray Bursts
Crosscorrelation of the outputs of two Gravitational Wave (GW) detectors has
recently been proposed [1] as a method for detecting statistical association
between GWs and Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). Unfortunately, the method can be
effectively used only in the case of stationary noise. In this work a different
crosscorrelation algorithm is presented, which may effectively be applied also
in non-stationary conditions for the cumulative analysis of a large number of
GRBs. The value of the crosscorrelation at zero delay, which is the only one
expected to be correlated to any astrophysical signal, is compared with the
distribution of crosscorrelation of the same data for all non-zero delays
within the integration time interval. This background distribution is gaussian,
so the statistical significance of an experimentally observed excess would be
well-defined.
Computer simulations using real noise data of the cryogenic GW detectors
Explorer and Nautilus with superimposed delta-like signals were performed, to
test the effectiveness of the method, and theoretical estimates of its
sensitivity compared to the results of the simulation. The effectiveness of the
proposed algorithm is compared to that of other cumulative techniques, finding
that the algorithm is particularly effective in the case of non-gaussian noise
and of a large (100-1000s) and unpredictable delay between GWs and GRBs.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Submitted by Phys. Rev.
"No More Shall Be a Dull Book": The Aesthetics of History in Antebellum America
<p>In the first half of the nineteenth century, historians in the United States described their work as an aesthetic practice. The romantic nationalist George Bancroft claimed that historical writing ought to provide readers with a series of beautiful images that would "secure the affections" of the American people for the U.S. Constitution. William H. Prescott, author of volumes on the age of conquest, introduced his most popular work by claiming that he wanted to present his readers with a "picture true in itself" and, through his vividly imaginative descriptions, "to surround them in the spirit of the times." For this generation of historians, their magisterial texts were not simply more or less true accounts of European experience in the New World or the story of the nation's revolutionary origins, they were paintings in words--expressionistic and romantic images that would make the passions, conflicts, and virtues of previous generations available to their readers as an imaginative experience.</p><p>Scholars have long understood the various forms of historical consciousness of the nineteenth-century as producing national, imperial, and racial orders in their imagination of the United States as the locus of a linear and progressive flowering of liberty in the New World. My project supplements these totalizing accounts by examining the central texts of nationalist history through the lens of literary analysis to demonstrate how their aesthetic dimensions both enabled and disrupted such a political and temporal imagination. Romantic history emerged in an era of pronounced temporal crisis for the United States. On the surface, these historians sought to provide readers with experiences of an otherwise inaccessible revolutionary past that would help bind a nation confronting fears about dissolution in exponential westward growth, immigration, and the sectional crisis over slavery. Yet, when we look closer at these texts, we realize that they contain covert recognitions of the vitality of struggles for freedom taking place elsewhere--in Haiti, Mexico, or West Indian abolition--that exceeded the terms of U.S. racial republicanism and claimed futures at odds with nationalism's sense of historical preeminence. Both compelled and horrified by the assertion of black freedom throughout the Atlantic world, the beautiful and haunted images of romantic history registered the irruptive force of transatlantic political movements nominally inadmissible within U.S. historical discourse.</p><p> </p><p>While romantic historians developed aesthetic norms for confronting and disavowing alternatives to national orders of time and political progress, abolitionist writers held fast to these disruptions to construct an aesthetics of slave revolution. In the second half of my dissertation, I examine the trajectory of this black radical tradition from the abolitionist historians of the antebellum period to the twentieth-century thinkers who adapted and transformed these aesthetics into a comprehensive anti-imperialism. Considering writings by William C. Nell, Martin R. Delany, W.E.B. Du Bois and C.L.R. James I argue that this tradition did more than reconstruct histories of black political life that had been suppressed by white supremacist orders of knowledge. These writers vitalized history with alternate models of freedom as immediate, proliferating, and eruptive--even when they also sought for signs of racial progress in a linear model. In their vivid descriptions of an experience of freedom that was irreducible to linear models of progress, these texts produced what Walter Benjamin once described as "the constructive principle" in materialist history: "where thinking suddenly halts in a constellation overflowing with tensions, there it yields a shock to the same." This shock of overflowing tensions is the moment when history becomes aesthetic--when imaginative excess overturns the narrative form of history. I ultimately argue that the aesthetics of history can help us reconsider the political stakes of historical scholarship, allowing us to think about the writing of history as an ongoing encounter with freedom that always exceeds the limits of factual, analytical and discursive accounts of what has been.</p>Dissertatio
The immune landscape of thyroid cancer in the context of immune checkpoint inhibition
Immune cells play critical roles in tumor prevention as well as initiation and progression. However, immune-resistant cancer cells can evade the immune system and proceed to form tumors. The normal microenvironment (immune cells, fibroblasts, blood and lymphatic vessels, and interstitial extracellular matrix (ECM)) maintains tissue homeostasis and prevents tumor initiation. Inflammatory mediators, reactive oxygen species, cytokines, and chemokines from an altered microenvironment promote tumor growth. During the last decade, thyroid cancer, the most frequent cancer of the endocrine system, has emerged as the fifth most incident cancer in the United States (USA), and its incidence is steadily growing. Inflammation has long been associated with thyroid cancer, raising critical questions about the role of immune cells in its pathogenesis. A plethora of immune cells and their mediators are present in the thyroid cancer ecosystem. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) targeting immune checkpoints, such as mAbs anti-cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen 4 (anti-CTLA-4) and anti-programmed cell death protein-1/programmed cell death ligand-1 (anti-PD-1/PD-L1), have revolutionized the treatment of many malignancies, but they induce thyroid dysfunction in up to 10% of patients, presumably by enhancing autoimmunity. Combination strategies involving immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) with tyrosine kinase (TK) or serine/threonine protein kinase B-raf (BRAF) inhibitors are showing considerable promise in the treatment of advanced thyroid cancer. This review illustrates how different immune cells contribute to thyroid cancer development and the rationale for the antitumor effects of ICIs in combination with BRAF/TK inhibitors
Search for correlation between GRB's detected by BeppoSAX and gravitational wave detectors EXPLORER and NAUTILUS
Data obtained during five months of 2001 with the gravitational wave (GW)
detectors EXPLORER and NAUTILUS were studied in correlation with the gamma ray
burst data (GRB) obtained with the BeppoSAX satellite. During this period
BeppoSAX was the only GRB satellite in operation, while EXPLORER and NAUTILUS
were the only GW detectors in operation.
No correlation between the GW data and the GRB bursts was found. The
analysis, performed over 47 GRB's, excludes the presence of signals of
amplitude h >=1.2 * 10^{-18}, with 95 % probability, if we allow a time delay
between GW bursts and GRB within +-400 s, and h >= 6.5 * 10^{-19}, if the time
delay is within +- 5 s. The result is also provided in form of scaled
likelihood for unbiased interpretation and easier use for further analysis.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures. Latex file, compiled with cernik.cls (provided
in the package
Effect of cosmic rays on the resonant gravitational wave detector NAUTILUS at temperature T=1.5 K
The interaction between cosmic rays and the gravitational wave bar detector
NAUTILUS is experimentally studied with the aluminum bar at temperature of
T=1.5 K. The results are compared with those obtained in the previous runs when
the bar was at T=0.14 K. The results of the run at T = 1.5 K are in agreement
with the thermo-acoustic model; no large signals at unexpected rate are
noticed, unlike the data taken in the run at T = 0.14 K. The observations
suggest a larger efficiency in the mechanism of conversion of the particle
energy into vibrational mode energy when the aluminum bar is in the
superconductive status.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Accepted by Physics Letters
All-sky upper limit for gravitational radiation from spinning neutron stars
We present results of the all-sky search for gravitational-wave signals from
spinning neutron stars in the data of the EXPLORER resonant bar detector. Our
data analysis technique was based on the maximum likelihood detection method.
We briefly describe the theoretical methods that we used in our search. The
main result of our analysis is an upper limit of for
the dimensionless amplitude of the continuous gravitational-wave signals coming
from any direction in the sky and in the narrow frequency band from 921.00 Hz
to 921.76 Hz.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Proceedings of 7th Gravitational
Wave Data Analysis Workshop, December 17-19, 2002, Kyoto, Japa
Increasing the bandwidth of resonant gravitational antennas: The case of Explorer
Resonant gravitational wave detectors with an observation bandwidth of tens
of hertz are a reality: the antenna Explorer, operated at CERN by the ROG
collaboration, has been upgraded with a new read-out. In this new
configuration, it exhibits an unprecedented useful bandwidth: in over 55 Hz
about its frequency of operation of 919 Hz the spectral sensitivity is better
than 10^{-20} /sqrt(Hz) . We describe the detector and its sensitivity and
discuss the foreseable upgrades to even larger bandwidths.Comment: 4 pages- 4 figures Acceted for publication on Physical Review Letter
Study of the coincidences between the gravitational wave detectors EXPLORER and NAUTILUS in 2001
We report the result from a search for bursts of gravitational waves using
data collected by the cryogenic resonant detectors EXPLORER and NAUTILUS during
the year 2001, for a total measuring time of 90 days. With these data we
repeated the coincidence search performed on the 1998 data (which showed a
small coincidence excess) applying data analysis algorithms based on known
physical characteristics of the detectors. With the 2001 data a new interesting
coincidence excess is found when the detectors are favorably oriented with
respect to the Galactic Disk
Macrophage-polarizing stimuli differentially modulate the inflammatory profile induced by the secreted phospholipase A2 group IA in human lung macrophages
In this study we investigated the effects of snake venom Group IA secreted phospholipase A2 (svGIA) on the release of inflammatory and angiogenic mediators from human lung macrophages (HLMs). HLMs were incubated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or svGIA with or without macrophage-polarizing stimuli (IL-4, IL-10, IFN-γ or the adenosine analogue NECA). M2-polarizing cytokines (IL-4 and IL-10) inhibited TNF-α, IL-6, IL-12, IL-1β, CXCL8 and CCL1 release induced by both LPS and svGIA. IL-4 inhibited also the release of IL-10. IFN-γ reduced IL-10 and IL-12 and increased CCL1 release by both the LPS and svGIA-stimulated HLMs, conversely IFN-γ reduced IL-1β only by svGIA-stimulated HLMs. In addition, IFNγ promoted TNF-α and IL-6 release from svGIA-stimulated HLMs to a greater extent than LPS. NECA inhibited TNF-α and IL-12 but promoted IL-10 release from LPS-stimulated HLMs according to the well-known effect of adenosine in down-regulating M1 activation. By contrast NECA reduced TNF-α, IL-10, CCL1 and IL-1β release from svGIA-activated HLM. IL-10 and NECA increased both LPS- and svGIA-induced vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A) release. By contrast, IL-10 reduced angiopoietin-1 (ANGPT1) production from activated HLMs. IFN-γ and IL-4 reduced VEGF-A and ANGPT1 release from both LPS- and svGIA-activated HLMs. Moreover, IL-10 inhibited LPS-induced ANGPT2 production. In conclusion, we demonstrated a fine-tuning modulation of svGIA-activated HLMs differentially exerted by the classical macrophage-polarizing cytokines
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