Commissioning ATLAS and CMS with top quarks

The large ttbar production cross-section at the LHC suggests the use of top quark decays to calibrate several critical parts of the detectors, such as the trigger system, the jet energy scale and b-tagging.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. Talk given at `V Workshop Italiano sulla Fisica pp a LHC', Perugia, Italy, 30 January - 2 February 200

Per l'applicazione delle REICAT: i cambiamenti nelle forme dei nomi degli autori

The new Italian cataloguing rules (Regole italiane di catalogazione, REICAT), published in June 2009, are now to be applied in catalogues, revising when necessary obsolete forms of headings and inconsistencies. The article focuses on the main changes in the form of the headings for Persons and Corporate Bodies, in relation to the former code of rules (RICA, published in 1979) and the practice of the national bibliography (BNI) and the national library network (SBN). As a general principle, headings are based on the name or form of name most frequently found in editions of the author's works: e.g. a pseudonym or assumed name, or an incomplete form (with elements of the name omitted or represented by initials). The first part of the article concerns general changes related to the additions to a name and to prescribed punctuation, while the second part describes the main changes for Persons (author’s preference and national usage, completeness variants, transliteration or transcription of names in different scripts, headings for saints) and for Corporate Bodies (name qualifiers, minor changes, subordinate corporate bodies and bodies related to other bodies). The aim of most changes is the removal of special exceptions or inconsistencies and the choice of forms of headings closer to common usage and as clear as possible to catalogue users

Re-discovery of the top quark at the LHC and first measurements

This paper describes the top quark physics measurements that can be performed with the first LHC data in the ATLAS and CMS experiments.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Talk given at `V Workshop Italiano sulla Fisica pp a LHC', Perugia, Italy, 30 January - 2 February 200

Monte Carlo generators for top quark physics at the LHC

We review the main features of Monte Carlo generators for top quark phenomenology and present some results for t-tbar and single-top signals and backgrounds at the LHC.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. Talk given at `V Workshop Italiano sulla Fisica pp a LHC', Perugia, Italy, 30 January - 2 February 2008. References update

Ferromagnetically contacted carbon nanotube quantum dots

This thesis presents research into spin-transport in Carbon nanotube quantum dots. Sputtered Permalloy electrodes designed with shape anisotropy were used to contact Carbon nanotubes grown by chemicalvapour deposition in lateral spin-valve structures. The magnetoresistance of these spin-valves were measured at low-temperatures and as a function of the charge state of the quantum dots. Two conductance regimes were measured in a Carbon nanotube spinvalve with Permalloy nucleation pads. At high bias outside of the coulomb blockade regime a ~ 10% magnetoresistance was measured that is analogous to giant-magnetoresistance, in that it is due to spindependent scattering at the ferromagnet-Carbon nanotube interfaces. At lower bias the device enters the coulomb blockade regime and the magnetoresistance observed develops a different structure, over a larger field range, together with the development of an offset in conductance between saturations. The maximum value of this MR was MR ~ 245% and it was attributed to changes in the induced charge on the quantum dot. By modifying the design of the Permalloy electrodes, a single domain state at the point of contact of the Carbon nanotube was achieved. A well defined anti-parallel state of the Permalloy electrodes, with associated changes in the conduction of the devices was observed, yet the conductance offset remained, with a maximum MR of ~ 60%. The positions of the coulomb peaks were measured during magnetic reversal of the electrodes, showing the change in induced charge on the quantum dot, with a maximum MR ~ 350%. Predictions of device transport based on the magneto-coulomb effect and spin-dependent interfacial phase shifts were compared to experimental results and found to not fit the observed behaviour. This led to the conclusion that changes in the charge state of the quantum dots must be due to a fixed spin-quantisation axis intrinsic to the Carbon nanotube.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Un'esperienza di catalogazione di risorse elettroniche: la Biblioteca italiana telematica

The Italian Telematic Library (Biblioteca Italiana Telematica, BIT) came into being in 1997 as an inter-university research project of national interest. Its aim was to make texts of Italian culture available in digital form through the work of about twenty research groups, in different subject fields, of fifteen universities, who had formed the CiBit consortium (Interuniversity Centre for the Italian Telematic Library), with headquarters in Pisa. The BIT is a digital library of texts of Italian culture that date from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. They are mainly literary texts “of controlled origin”. This means that they are digitized, marked up and controlled by specialized teams following strict philological criteria, organized within a coherent library architecture with bibliographical and cataloguing standards that are accepted at national and international level. The analysis and implementation of library features and, more specifically, of the catalogue structure of the BIT have been entrusted to one of the research units of the University of Pisa, coordinated by A. Petrucciani. The unit was also responsible for the digitization of a selection of “classical” works of Italian bibliography and librarianship from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century. Thanks to cooperation with the Institute of Computational Linguistics of the National Research Council (CNR) of Pisa, the DBT (Textual Data Base) programme developed by Eugenio Picchi in the Applet Java version was used in the first stage of the project; for the sake of standardization a software program for the automatic conversion of the DBT coding into SGML/TEI markup was written and tested. The Web site of the Italian Telematic Library with DBT software was accessible until the Autumn of 2002 at the URL <http://cibit.humnet. unipi.it>. However, in 2002 the structure of the site was reconsidered in the light of recent developments and it was agreed to change from the DBT software and markup to newer and better options. The new site is accessible since May 2003 at the URL , with a search engine of new conception developed at the Computer Science Department of the University of Pisa. It was also decided to adopt the XML/TEI markup. Moreover, for the catalogue functions of the BIT (identification and selection of one or more texts with given characteristics, e.g. type, genre, period, etc.) it was realized that there was a need for a modern and powerful library system that would use a standard format (UNIMARC) and that would be able to overcome the limits of a search engine or of an ad hoc database application, typical of most “digital libraries”. The choice of a standard format for bibliographic data is seen as a qualifying element of the BIT programme

A Novel Synthetic Yeast for Enzymatic Biodigester Pretreatment

Lignin, a complex organic polymer, is a major roadblock to the efficiency of biofuel conversion as it both physically blocks carbohydrate substrates and poisons biomass degrading enzymes, even if broken down to monomer units. A pretreatment process is often applied to separate the lignin from biomass prior to biofuel conversion. However, contemporary methods of pretreatment require large amounts of energy, which may be economically uncompelling or unfeasible. Taking inspiration from several genes that have been isolated from termites and fungi which translate to enzymes that degrade lignin, we want to establish a novel “enzymatic pretreatment” system where microbes secrete these enzymes to degrade lignocellulosic biomass. We incorporated the following genes into yeast vectors: laccase, lignin peroxidase, and alpha-keto-reductase from Reticulitermes flavipes; versatile peroxidase from Colletotrichum fioriniae PJ7; manganese peroxide from Heterobasidion irregulare TC 32-1; and tyrosinase from Agaricus bisporus. These vectors code for fusion proteins with yeast secretion tags at the end of each enzyme gene, fluorescent protein tags at the beginning, as well as standardized restriction sites for synthetic biology manipulation. Furthermore, we designed an additional vector to contain our genetically modified yeast using an oxygen-repressed killswitch. We expect that transformants with our construct will be able to secrete said enzymes and contribute to lignin degradation if added to a biomass slurry. Future studies may focus on constructing a prototype bioreactor system and optimizing which combination of enzymes lead to the most efficient biofuel production

Search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu decay channel, where l = e or mu, in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The data were collected at the LHC, with the CMS detector, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 inverse femtobarns. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation, and upper limits are set on the Higgs boson production cross section. The presence of the standard model Higgs boson with a mass in the 270-440 GeV range is excluded at 95% confidence level.Comment: Submitted to JHE