393 research outputs found
Contributions à la connaissance des faunes de MammifÚres pléistocÚnes de la Dépression de Brasov (Roumanie)
Die Autoren befassen sich in dieser Arbeit mit der Geologie und der PalĂ€ontologie der Becken von Baraolt und Sfintu-Gheorghe, welche zu der im SĂŒdosten von Transylvanien (SiebenbĂŒrgen) gelegenen Senke von Brasov (Kronstadt) gehören. Diese Senkung tektonischen Ursprungs bildete fast wĂ€hrend des ganzen PleistozĂ€ns ein groĂes Seebecken. Die auf mesozoischem Grund abgelagerten Sedimente wurden in vier Horizonte eingeteilt, welche gleichzeitig ebenso vielen Phasen in der Entwicklung der Becken entsprechen. Die SĂ€ugetierfauna dieser Horizonte wurde in drei Hauptkomplexe gruppiert, welche dem Unter-, Mittel- und OberpleistozĂ€n entsprechen. Der erste faunistische Komplex umfaĂt zwei Phasen, der zweite drei und der letzte eine einzige Phase.researc
Features of Mild-to-Moderate COVID-19 Patients with Dysphonia
Introduction
To explore the prevalence of dysphonia in European patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 and the clinical features of dysphonic patients.
Methods
The clinical and epidemiological data of 702 patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 were collected from 19 European Hospitals. The following data were extracted: age, sex, ethnicity, tobacco consumption, comorbidities, general and otolaryngological symptoms. Dysphonia and otolaryngological symptoms were self-assessed through a 4-point scale. The prevalence of dysphonia, as part of the COVID-19 symptoms, was assessed. The outcomes were compared between dysphonic and non-dysphonic patients. The association between dysphonia severity and outcomes was studied through Bayesian analysis.
Results
A total of 188 patients were dysphonic, accounting for 26.8% of cases. Females developed more frequently dysphonia than males (p=0.022). The proportion of smokers was significantly higher in the dysphonic group (p=0.042). The prevalence of the following symptoms was higher in dysphonic patients compared with non-dysphonic patients: cough, chest pain, sticky sputum, arthralgia, diarrhea, headache, fatigue, nausea and vomiting. The severity of dyspnea, dysphagia, ear pain, face pain, throat pain and nasal obstruction was higher in dysphonic group compared with non-dysphonic group. There were significant associations between the severity of dysphonia, dysphagia and cough.
Conclusion
Dysphonia may be encountered in a quarter of patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 and should be considered as a symptom list of the infection. Dysphonic COVID-19 patients are more symptomatic than non-dysphonic individuals. Future studies are needed to investigate the relevance of dysphonia in the COVID-19 clinical presentation
Advanced Virgo Plus: Future Perspectives
While completing the commissioning phase to prepare the Virgo interferometer for the next joint Observation Run (O4), the Virgo collaboration is also finalizing the design of the next upgrades to the detector to be employed in the following Observation Run (O5). The major upgrade will concern decreasing the thermal noise limit, which will imply using very large test masses and increased laser beam size. But this will not be the only upgrade to be implemented in the break between the O4 and O5 observation runs to increase the Virgo detector strain sensitivity. The paper will cover the challenges linked to this upgrade and implications on the detector's reach and observational potential, reflecting the talk given at 12th Cosmic Ray International Seminar - CRIS 2022 held in September 2022 in Napoli
The Advanced Virgo+ status
The gravitational wave detector Advanced Virgo+ is currently in the commissioning phase in view of the fourth Observing Run (O4). The major upgrades with respect to the Advanced Virgo configuration are the implementation of an additional recycling cavity, the Signal Recycling cavity (SRC), at the output of the interferometer to broaden the sensitivity band and the Frequency Dependent Squeezing (FDS) to reduce quantum noise at all frequencies. The main difference of the Advanced Virgo + detector with respect to the LIGO detectors is the presence of marginally stable recycling cavities, with respect to the stable recycling cavities present in the LIGO detectors, which increases the difficulties in controlling the interferometer in presence of defects (both thermal and cold defects). This work will focus on the interferometer commissioning, highlighting the control challenges to maintain the detector in the working point which maximizes the sensitivity and the duty cycle for scientific data taking
Increasing the Astrophysical Reach of the Advanced Virgo Detector via the Application of Squeezed Vacuum States of Light
Current interferometric gravitational-wave detectors are limited by quantum noise over a wide range of their measurement bandwidth. One method to overcome the quantum limit is the injection of squeezed vacuum states of light into the interferometerâs dark port. Here, we report on the successful application of this quantum technology to improve the shot noise limited sensitivity of the Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detector. A sensitivity enhancement of up to 3.2±0.1ââdB beyond the shot noise limit is achieved. This nonclassical improvement corresponds to a 5%â8% increase of the binary neutron star horizon. The squeezing injection was fully automated and over the first 5 months of the third joint LIGO-Virgo observation run O3 squeezing was applied for more than 99% of the science time. During this period several gravitational-wave candidates have been recorded
Virgo Detector Characterization and Data Quality during the O3 run
The Advanced Virgo detector has contributed with its data to the rapid growth
of the number of detected gravitational-wave signals in the past few years,
alongside the two LIGO instruments. First, during the last month of the
Observation Run 2 (O2) in August 2017 (with, most notably, the compact binary
mergers GW170814 and GW170817) and then during the full Observation Run 3 (O3):
an 11 months data taking period, between April 2019 and March 2020, that led to
the addition of about 80 events to the catalog of transient gravitational-wave
sources maintained by LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA. These discoveries and the manifold
exploitation of the detected waveforms require an accurate characterization of
the quality of the data, such as continuous study and monitoring of the
detector noise. These activities, collectively named {\em detector
characterization} or {\em DetChar}, span the whole workflow of the Virgo data,
from the instrument front-end to the final analysis. They are described in
details in the following article, with a focus on the associated tools, the
results achieved by the Virgo DetChar group during the O3 run and the main
prospects for future data-taking periods with an improved detector.Comment: 86 pages, 33 figures. This paper has been divided into two articles
which supercede it and have been posted to arXiv on October 2022. Please use
these new preprints as references: arXiv:2210.15634 (tools and methods) and
arXiv:2210.15633 (results from the O3 run
Virgo Detector Characterization and Data Quality: results from the O3 run
The Advanced Virgo detector has contributed with its data to the rapid growth
of the number of detected gravitational-wave (GW) signals in the past few
years, alongside the two Advanced LIGO instruments. First during the last month
of the Observation Run 2 (O2) in August 2017 (with, most notably, the compact
binary mergers GW170814 and GW170817), and then during the full Observation Run
3 (O3): an 11-months data taking period, between April 2019 and March 2020,
that led to the addition of about 80 events to the catalog of transient GW
sources maintained by LIGO, Virgo and now KAGRA. These discoveries and the
manifold exploitation of the detected waveforms require an accurate
characterization of the quality of the data, such as continuous study and
monitoring of the detector noise sources. These activities, collectively named
{\em detector characterization and data quality} or {\em DetChar}, span the
whole workflow of the Virgo data, from the instrument front-end hardware to the
final analyses. They are described in details in the following article, with a
focus on the results achieved by the Virgo DetChar group during the O3 run.
Concurrently, a companion article describes the tools that have been used by
the Virgo DetChar group to perform this work.Comment: 57 pages, 18 figures. To be submitted to Class. and Quantum Grav.
This is the "Results" part of preprint arXiv:2205.01555 [gr-qc] which has
been split into two companion articles: one about the tools and methods, the
other about the analyses of the O3 Virgo dat
Virgo Detector Characterization and Data Quality: tools
Detector characterization and data quality studies -- collectively referred
to as {\em DetChar} activities in this article -- are paramount to the
scientific exploitation of the joint dataset collected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
global network of ground-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. They take
place during each phase of the operation of the instruments (upgrade, tuning
and optimization, data taking), are required at all steps of the dataflow (from
data acquisition to the final list of GW events) and operate at various
latencies (from near real-time to vet the public alerts to offline analyses).
This work requires a wide set of tools which have been developed over the years
to fulfill the requirements of the various DetChar studies: data access and
bookkeeping; global monitoring of the instruments and of the different steps of
the data processing; studies of the global properties of the noise at the
detector outputs; identification and follow-up of noise peculiar features
(whether they be transient or continuously present in the data); quick
processing of the public alerts. The present article reviews all the tools used
by the Virgo DetChar group during the third LIGO-Virgo Observation Run (O3,
from April 2019 to March 2020), mainly to analyse the Virgo data acquired at
EGO. Concurrently, a companion article focuses on the results achieved by the
DetChar group during the O3 run using these tools.Comment: 44 pages, 16 figures. To be submitted to Class. and Quantum Grav.
This is the "Tools" part of preprint arXiv:2205.01555 [gr-qc] which has been
split into two companion articles: one about the tools and methods, the other
about the analyses of the O3 Virgo dat
Quantum Backaction on kg-Scale Mirrors: Observation of Radiation Pressure Noise in the Advanced Virgo Detector
The quantum radiation pressure and the quantum shot noise in laser-interferometric gravitational wave detectors constitute a macroscopic manifestation of the Heisenberg inequality. If quantum shot noise can be easily observed, the observation of quantum radiation pressure noise has been elusive, so far, due to the technical noise competing with quantum effects. Here, we discuss the evidence of quantum radiation pressure noise in the Advanced Virgo gravitational wave detector. In our experiment, we inject squeezed vacuum states of light into the interferometer in order to manipulate the quantum backaction on the 42 kg mirrors and observe the corresponding quantum noise driven displacement at frequencies between 30 and 70 Hz. The experimental data, obtained in various interferometer configurations, is tested against the Advanced Virgo detector quantum noise model which confirmed the measured magnitude of quantum radiation pressure noise
Population of Merging Compact Binaries Inferred Using Gravitational Waves through GWTC-3
We report on the population properties of compact binary mergers inferred from gravitational-wave observations of these systems during the first three LIGO-Virgo observing runs. The Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog 3 (GWTC-3) contains signals consistent with three classes of binary mergers: binary black hole, binary neutron star, and neutron star-black hole mergers. We infer the binary neutron star merger rate to be between 10 and 1700 Gpc-3 yr-1 and the neutron star-black hole merger rate to be between 7.8 and 140 Gpc-3 yr-1, assuming a constant rate density in the comoving frame and taking the union of 90% credible intervals for methods used in this work. We infer the binary black hole merger rate, allowing for evolution with redshift, to be between 17.9 and 44 Gpc-3 yr-1 at a fiducial redshift (z=0.2). The rate of binary black hole mergers is observed to increase with redshift at a rate proportional to (1+z)Îș with Îș=2.9-1.8+1.7 for zâČ1. Using both binary neutron star and neutron star-black hole binaries, we obtain a broad, relatively flat neutron star mass distribution extending from 1.2-0.2+0.1 to 2.0-0.3+0.3Mâ. We confidently determine that the merger rate as a function of mass sharply declines after the expected maximum neutron star mass, but cannot yet confirm or rule out the existence of a lower mass gap between neutron stars and black holes. We also find the binary black hole mass distribution has localized over- and underdensities relative to a power-law distribution, with peaks emerging at chirp masses of 8.3-0.5+0.3 and 27.9-1.8+1.9Mâ. While we continue to find that the mass distribution of a binary's more massive component strongly decreases as a function of primary mass, we observe no evidence of a strongly suppressed merger rate above approximately 60Mâ, which would indicate the presence of a upper mass gap. Observed black hole spins are small, with half of spin magnitudes below Ïiâ0.25. While the majority of spins are preferentially aligned with the orbital angular momentum, we infer evidence of antialigned spins among the binary population. We observe an increase in spin magnitude for systems with more unequal-mass ratio. We also observe evidence of misalignment of spins relative to the orbital angular momentum
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