Measurement of properties of the Higgs boson in bosonic decay channels using the ATLAS detector

The properties of the Higgs boson measured in bosonic decay channels ($H \rightarrow \gamma\gamma$, $H \rightarrow ZZ^* \rightarrow 4\ell$, $H \rightarrow WW^{*} \rightarrow \ell\nu\ell\nu$, $H \rightarrow Z\gamma$) with 25 fb$^{-1}$ of pp collision data from the Large Hadron Collider run-1 collected by the ATLAS experiment are presented. The results include an improved measurement of the mass of the Higgs boson from a combined fit to the invariant mass spectra of the decay channels $H \rightarrow \gamma\gamma$ and $H \rightarrow ZZ^* \rightarrow 4\ell$, which yields $m_H = 125.36 \pm 0.37$ (stat) $\pm 0.18$ (syst) GeV = $125.36 \pm 0.41$ GeV and supersedes the previous result from ATLAS.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, Large Hadron Collider Physics (LHCP) Conference 201

Rare B decays at LHCb

Rare loop-induced decays are sensitive to New Physics in many Standard Model extensions. In this paper we discuss the potential of the LHCb experiment to very rare $\mathrm{B_s} \to \mu^+ \mu^-$ decays, radiative penguin $\mathrm{b \to s}\gamma$ decays and electroweak penguin $\mathrm{b \to s\ell\ell}$ decays. The experimental strategies and the expected sensitivities are presented.Comment: Submitted for the SUSY07 proceedings, 4 pages, LaTeX, 3 figure

Technology Mobility and Job Mobility A comparative analysis between patent and survey data

In recent years, increasing attention and resources have been devoted to the analysis of workers’ mobility and the collection of new and extensive datasets in order to monitor and appraise this phenomenon. Most of the studies make use of information about inventors extracted from patent data. In fact, patent data collects detailed information on inventors, their geographical location and the applicants of their patents. This paper instead makes use of unique data on inventors’ curriculum vitae collected through a survey addressed to a group of Italian inventors in the pharmaceutical field and compares this information to those extracted from patent data. Results seem to challenge the traditional interpretation of mobility phenomena based on patent data and suggest that patent and survey data might capture different aspects of inventors’ career path. In particular, results indicate that survey data describes the whole set of inventors’ employers and the knowledge flows across them. Conversely, patent data portrays a different set that is the one composed of those actors directly involved in inventive processes and participating to the production of patented knowledge. More interestingly, they overlap only partially and do not necessarily coincide.Patent; Mobility; Inventor

Thyroid hormone receptors and ligand, tissue distribution and sexual behavior

The thyroid hormones (THs) triiodothyronine (T3) and tetraiodothyronine, or thyroxine (T4), not only dramatically impact on development and differentiation, but also on the sexual and reproductive function. There is large body of literature, in fact, on the effects of THs on the reproductive function in both humans (Poppe and Velkeniers, 2004; Wajner et al., 2009) and animals (Hapon et al., 2010; Nelson et al., 2011). For a long time the gonads were thought to be unresponsive to THs, but TH receptors (TR) were discovered in rat (Jannini et al., 1990; Palmero et al., 1988) and then in human testis (Jannini et al., 2000). In women, the association of menstrual disturbance with thyroid disease was described as early as 1840 by von Basedow, but the discovery of TRs in the ovary was carried out at the end of last century (Wakim et al., 1994b). Therefore, the link between thyroid and reproductive function was well established. Since then, research has shown that thyroid dysfunction is associated with an adverse effect on fertility, both in men (Wagner et al., 2009) and women (Dittrich et al., 2011). There is also evidence that THs can affect the sex steroid hormone axis (Bagamasbad and Denver, 2011), consequently sexual hormones and the pituitary gland can mediate the action of THs on the reproductive physiology. While the effects of THs on fertility have been widely studied, little is known about their influence on sexual function. In the last few years, an increasing number of evidences have shown the influence of THs on male sexual function, particularly on ejaculation control as well on desire and erectile function (Carani et al., 2005; Corona et al., 2012b; Di Sante et al., 2016). The female sexual function and the relationship with thyroid function is still less studied. Furthermore, studies conducted on animals have shown the presence of TRs in the male (Carosa et al., 2010) and female genitalia (Rodriguez-Castelan et al., 2017). Moreover, knockout mice for TRs showed alterations in sexual behavior (Dellovade et al., 2000). The purpose of this review is to summarize and discuss the available data on the influence of THs on male and female sexual function to understand the molecular mechanisms of the influence of the thyroid gland on sexual behavior and function

Bootstrapping Newton Gravity

A non-linear equation obtained by adding gravitational self-interaction terms to the Poisson equation for Newtonian gravity is here employed in order to analyse a static spherically sym- metric homogeneous compact source of given proper mass and radius and the outer vacuum. The main feature of this picture is that, although the freedom of shifting the potential by an ar- bitrary constant is of course lost, the solutions remain qualitatively very close to the Newtonian behaviour. We also notice that the negative gravitational potential energy is smaller than the proper mass for sources with small compactness, but for sources that should form black holes according to General Relativity, the gravitational potential energy becomes of the same order of magnitude of the proper mass, or even larger. Moreover, the pressure overcomes the energy density for large values of the compactness, but it remains finite for finite compactness, hence there exists no Buchdahl limit. This classical description is meant to serve as the starting point for investigating quantum features of (near) black hole configurations within the corpuscular picture of gravity in future developments.Comment: 23 pages, 20 plots. New section and appendix about stability and the pressure clarify comparison with GR. Conclusions rewritten to make motivations cleare

Bootstrapped Newtonian stars and black holes

We study equilibrium configurations of a homogenous ball of matter in a bootstrapped description of gravity which includes a gravitational self-interaction term beyond the Newtonian coupling. Both matter density and pressure are accounted for as sources of the gravitational potential for test particles. Unlike the general relativistic case, no Buchdahl limit is found and the pressure can in principle support a star of arbitrarily large compactness. By defining the horizon as the location where the escape velocity of test particles equals the speed of light, like in Newtonian gravity, we find a minimum value of the compactness for which this occurs. The solutions for the gravitational potential here found could effectively describe the interior of macroscopic black holes in the quantum theory, as well as predict consequent deviations from general relativity in the strong field regime of very compact objects.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figures. Version accepted for publication in EPJ

Territorial Patterns of Innovation in Europe

This paper investigates over the way in which regions innovate. The conceptual framework departs from the simple idea that scientific activities equates knowledge, assuming that the presence of local knowledge produced by research centers, universities and firms was a necessary and sufficient condition for increasing the innovative capacities in local firms, fed by local spillovers. In particular, the paradigmatic jump in interpreting regional innovation processes lies in a conceptual framework interpreting not a single phase of the innovation process, but the different modes of performing the different phases of the innovation process, highlighting the context conditions (internal and external to the region) that accompany each innovation pattern. The paper conceptually identifies different territorial patterns of innovation, and empirically test their existence in Europe. Interesting results emerge from the European territory, witnessing the existence of large differences in the territorial patterns of innovation. These results strongly support normative suggestions towards thematically/regionally focused innovation policies.