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On the thermo-mechanical behaviour of the IFMIF target assembly under steady state and transient operative scenarios

Optical active centres in ZnO samples

2006

Abstract In recent years, there has been a resurgence in the interest in the use of ZnO (Eg ∼ 3.37 eV) as a material for a wide range of opto-emitter applications spanning visible and short wavelengths. Bulk, thin films and nanomaterials obtained using different synthesis methods have been investigated for optoelectronic and biotechnological device applications. Nominally undoped bulk samples typically present a myriad-structured near-band-edge recombination, mainly due to free/bound excitons and donor–acceptor pair transitions. Furthermore, deep level emission due to intrinsic defects and extrinsic impurities, such as transition metal ions, are commonly observed in different grades of bulk…

Factors that affect the permeability of commercial hollow-fibre membranes in a submerged anaerobic MBR (HF-SAnMBR) system

2013

A demonstration plant with two commercial HF ultrafiltration membrane modules (PURON (R), Koch Membrane Systems, PUR-PSH31) was operated with urban wastewater. The effect of the main operating variables on membrane performance at sub-critical and supracritical filtration conditions was tested. The physical operating variables that affected membrane performance most were gas sparging intensity and back-flush (BF) frequency. Indeed, low gas sparging intensities (around 0.23 Nm(3) h(-1) m(-2)) and low BF frequencies (30s back-flush for every 10 basic filtration relaxation cycles) were enough to enable membranes to be operated sub-critically even when levels of mixed liquor total solids were hi…

ICR in human cadaveric specimens: An essential parameter to consider in a new lumbar disc prosthesis design.

2020

[EN] Study design Biomechanical study in cadaveric specimens. Background The commercially available lumbar disc prostheses do not reproduce the intact disc's Instantaneous centre of Rotation (ICR), thus inducing an overload on adjacent anatomical structures, promoting secondary degeneration. Aim To examine biomechanical testing of cadaveric lumbar spine specimens in order to evaluate and define the ICR of intact lumbar discs. Material and Methods Twelve cold preserved fresh human cadaveric lumbosacral spine specimens were subjected to computerized tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and biomechanical testing. Kinematic studies were performed to analyse range of movements in or…

Neuronal activity and secreted amyloid β lead to altered amyloid β precursor protein and presenilin 1 interactions.

2013

Deposition of amyloid β (Aβ) containing plaques in the brain is one of the neuropathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD). It has been suggested that modulation of neuronal activity may alter Aβ production in the brain. We postulate that these changes in Aβ production are due to changes in the rate-limiting step of Aβ generation, APP cleavage by γ-secretase. By combining biochemical approaches with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy, we found that neuronal inhibition decreases endogenous APP and PS1 interactions, which correlates with reduced Aβ production. By contrast, neuronal activation had a two-phase effect: it initially enhanced APP-PS1 interaction leading to increased …

Brancati su Pirandello e il pirandellismo

2019

Nel romanzo breve "Sogno di un valzer" uscito a puntate su “Quadrivio”, dal 5 giugno al 14 agosto 1938, Vitaliano Brancati mette in scena, tra osservazione dei luoghi e rilevamento di costume, un’umanità fuori misura, continuamente in bilico tra realtà e sogno. A Caltanissetta (Nissa) la città nel cui Istituto magistrale lo scrittore, voltate le spalle alla Roma fascista, è venuto a insegnare, personaggi non appariscenti, insignificanti, che tuttavia covano desideri, si arrovellano in domande metafisiche. Prende così forma il leitmotiv delle critica al pirandellismo che più volte con ironia sottile affiora negli scritti brancatiani. Il saggio mostra come esso si intrecci con la comicità sul…

Peripherality of the CEE Region

2023

Pawłuszko offers a summary of the center-periphery perspective on the relationship between the Western European center and the Central and Eastern European peripheries. Focusing on economic history and politics, the chapter draws attention to the crucial intervention of the integration processes in the history of CEE region and uses a broad perspective to facilitate a better understanding of its roots. As well as looking at the ways in which the history was constructed, Pawłuszko explores the theoretical implications of current state in intra-European relations in the field of security studies. “Peripherality of the CEE region” concludes with a study of current geoeconomic position of the C…

Slinky inflation

2005

We present a new approach to quintessential inflation, in which both dark energy and inflation are explained by the evolution of a single scalar field. We start from a simple scalar potential with both oscillatory and exponential behavior. We employ the conventional reheating mechanism of new inflation, in which the scalar decays to light fermions with a decay width that is proportional to the scalar mass. Because our scalar mass is proportional to the Hubble rate, this gives adequate reheating at early times while shutting off at late times to preserve quintessence and satisfy nucleosynthesis constraints. We discuss a simple model which solves the horizon, flatness, and "why now" problems.…

Impact of general reionization scenarios on extraction of inflationary parameters

2010

Determination of whether the Harrison-Zel'dovich spectrum for primordial scalar perturbations is consistent with observations is sensitive to assumptions about the reionization scenario. In light of this result, we revisit constraints on inflationary models using more general reionization scenarios. While the bounds on the tensor-to-scalar ratio are largely unmodified, when different reionization schemes are addressed, hybrid models are back into the inflationary game. In the general reionization picture, we reconstruct both the shape and amplitude of the inflaton potential. We discuss how relaxing the simple reionization restriction affects the reconstruction of the potential through the c…

Primordial power spectrum features in phenomenological descriptions of inflation

2016

We extend an alternative, phenomenological approach to inflation by means of an equation of state and a sound speed, both of them functions of the number of $e$-folds and four phenomenological parameters. This approach captures a number of possible inflationary models, including those with non-canonical kinetic terms or scale-dependent non-gaussianities. We perform Markov Chain Monte Carlo analyses using the latest cosmological publicly available measurements, which include Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data from the Planck satellite. Within this parametrization, we discard scale invariance with a significance of about $10\sigma$, and the running of the spectral index is constrained as …