9,148 research outputs found
Bioarchaeological and palaeogenomic portrait of two Pompeians that died during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD
The archaeological site of Pompeii is one of the 54 UNESCO World Heritage sites in Italy, thanks to its
uniqueness: the town was completely destroyed and buried by a Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 AD. In this
work, we present a multidisciplinary approach with bioarchaeological and palaeogenomic analyses
of two Pompeian human remains from the Casa del Fabbro. We have been able to characterize the
genetic profle of the frst Pompeian’ genome, which has strong afnities with the surrounding
central Italian population from the Roman Imperial Age. Our fndings suggest that, despite the
extensive connection between Rome and other Mediterranean populations, a noticeable degree
of genetic homogeneity exists in the Italian peninsula at that time. Moreover, palaeopathological
analyses identifed the presence of spinal tuberculosis and we further investigated the presence of
ancient DNA from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In conclusion, our study demonstrates the power of
a combined approach to investigate ancient humans and confrms the possibility to retrieve ancient
DNA from Pompeii human remains. Our initial fndings provide a foundation to promote an intensive
and extensive paleogenetic analysis in order to reconstruct the genetic history of population from
Pompeii, a unique archaeological site
Technical and economic feasibility of the capture and geological storage of CO2 from a bio-fuel distillery: CPER Artenay project
AbstractThis paper first focuses on the environmental benefits of the CCS system applied to a bio-ethanol distillery before estimating its feasibility under geological and economic constraints.First, the calculation of CO2 balance in this application shows that the introduction of CO2 capture and sto rage in biomass energy systems (B-CCS) can si gnificantly increase the CO2 abat ement potential of the system and even leads to negative carbon emissions. Besides, a preliminary geological investigation reveals that the studied area has a good storage potential although the presence of major faults, while the low capture costs of CO2 from biomass fermentation emphasize the economic potential o f such a solution
Search for massive rare particles with the SLIM experiment
The search for magnetic monopoles in the cosmic radiation remains one of the
main aims of non-accelerator particle astrophysics. Experiments at high
altitude allow lower mass thresholds with respect to detectors at sea level or
underground. The SLIM experiment is a large array of nuclear track detectors at
the Chacaltaya High Altitude Laboratory (5290 m a.s.l.). The results from the
analysis of 171 m exposed for more than 3.5 y are here reported. The
completion of the analysis of the whole detector will allow to set the lowest
flux upper limit for Magnetic Monopoles in the mass range 10 - 10
GeV. The experiment is also sensitive to SQM nuggets and Q-balls, which are
possible Dark Matter candidates.Comment: Presented at the 29-th ICRC, Pune, India (2005
(Non) singular Kantowski-Sachs Universe from quantum spherically reduced matter
Using s-wave and large N approximation the one-loop effective action for 2d
dilaton coupled scalars and spinors which are obtained by spherical reduction
of 4d minimal matter is found. Quantum effective equations for reduced Einstein
gravity are written. Their analytical solutions corresponding to 4d
Kantowski-Sachs (KS) Universe are presented. For quantum-corrected Einstein
gravity we get non-singular KS cosmology which represents 1) quantum-corrected
KS cosmology which existed on classical level or 2)purely quantum solution
which had no classical limit. The analogy with Nariai BH is briefly mentioned.
For purely induced gravity (no Einstein term) we found general analytical
solution but all KS cosmologies under discussion are singular. The
corresponding equations of motion are reformulated as classical mechanics
problem of motion of unit mass particle in some potential V.Comment: LaTeX file, 16 pages, a few misprints are correcte
Search for strange quark matter and Q-balls with the SLIM experiment
We report on the search for Strange Quark Matter (SQM) and charged Q-balls
with the SLIM experiment at the Chacaltaya High Altitude Laboratory (5230 m
a.s.l.) from 2001 to 2005. The SLIM experiment was a 427 m array of
Nuclear Track Detectors (NTDs) arranged in modules of cm
area. SLIM NTDs were exposed to the cosmic radiation for 4.22 years after which
they were brought back to the Bologna Laboratory where they were etched and
analyzed. We estimate the properties and energy losses in matter of nuclearites
(large SQM nuggets), strangelets (small charged SQM nuggets) and Q-balls; and
discuss their detection with the SLIM experiment. The flux upper limits in the
CR of such downgoing particles are at the level of /cm/s/sr
(90% CL).Comment: 4 pages, 7 eps figures. Talk given at the 24th International
Conference on Nuclear Tracks in Solids, Bologna, Italy, 1-5 September 200
Bounce behaviour in Kantowski-Sachs and Bianchi Cosmologies
Many cosmological scenarios envisage either a bounce of the universe at early
times, or collapse of matter locally to form a black hole which re-expands into
a new expanding universe region. Energy conditions preclude this happening for
ordinary matter in general relativistic universes, but scalar or dilatonic
fields can violate some of these conditions, and so could possibly provide
bounce behaviour. In this paper we show that such bounces cannot occur in
Kantowski-Sachs models without violating the {\it reality condition}
. This also holds true for other isotropic spatially
homogenous Bianchi models, with the exception of closed
Friedmann-Robertson-Walker and Bianchi IX models; bounce behaviour violates the
{\em weak energy condition} and . We turn to the
Randall-Sundrum type braneworld scenario for a possible resolution of this
problem.Comment: Matches published versio
Operator Counting and Eigenvalue Distributions for 3D Supersymmetric Gauge Theories
We give further support for our conjecture relating eigenvalue distributions
of the Kapustin-Willett-Yaakov matrix model in the large N limit to numbers of
operators in the chiral ring of the corresponding supersymmetric
three-dimensional gauge theory. We show that the relation holds for
non-critical R-charges and for examples with {\mathcal N}=2 instead of
{\mathcal N}=3 supersymmetry where the bifundamental matter fields are
nonchiral. We prove that, for non-critical R-charges, the conjecture is
equivalent to a relation between the free energy of the gauge theory on a three
sphere and the volume of a Sasaki manifold that is part of the moduli space of
the gauge theory. We also investigate the consequences of our conjecture for
chiral theories where the matrix model is not well understood.Comment: 27 pages + appendices, 5 figure
The Morphology of N=6 Chern-Simons Theory
We tabulate various properties of the language of N=6 Chern-Simons Theory, in
the sense of Polyakov. Specifically we enumerate and compute character formulas
for all syllables of up to four letters, i.e. all irreducible representations
of OSp(6|4) built from up to four fundamental fields of the ABJM theory. We
also present all tensor product decompositions for up to four singletons and
list the (cyclically invariant) four-letter words, which correspond to
single-trace operators of length four. As an application of these results we
use the two-loop dilatation operator to compute the leading correction to the
Hagedorn temperature of the weakly-coupled planar ABJM theory on R \times S^2.Comment: 41 pages, 1 figure; v2: minor correction
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