A large eddy simulation is performed to study secondary tones generated by a NACA0012 airfoil at angle of attack of $\alpha = 3^{\circ}$ with freestream Mach number of $M_{\infty} = 0.3$ and Reynolds number of $Re = 5 \times 10^4$. Laminar separation bubbles are observed over the suction side and near the trailing edge, on the pressure side. Vortex shedding occurs aft of the suction side separation bubble, and vortex interaction results in merging or bursting such that coherent structures or turbulent packets are advected towards the trailing edge. This mechanism modulates the amplitude of the incident pressure signal, leading to different levels of noise emission. Despite the intermittent occurrence of laminar–turbulent transition, the noise spectrum depicts a main tone with multiple equidistant secondary tones. To understand the role of flow instabilities on the tones, the linearised Navier–Stokes equations are examined in their operator form through biglobal stability and resolvent analyses, and by time evolution of disturbances using a matrix-free method. These linear global analyses reveal amplification of disturbances over the suction side separation bubble. Spanwise-averaged pressure fluctuations elucidate aspects of the acoustic feedback loop mechanism in the nonlinear solutions. This feedback process is self-sustained by acoustic waves radiated from the trailing edge, which reach the most sensitive flow location near the leading edge, as identified by the resolvent analysis. Flow disturbances arising from secondary diffraction and phase interference among the most unstable frequencies computed in the eigenspectrum are shown to have an important role in the feedback loop.

After refusing the belief that a voluntary interruption of pregnancy (VIP) must necessarily lead to depression, the paper reports the clinical observation according to which, after a VIP, guilt feelings leading to depression may but do not have to inevitably arise in women, in their partners, in medical staff.

These kind of guilt feelings are centred on the self accusation of having taken away the possibility of a life to a child. So the point is whether the embryo and the fetus can be considered scientifically human life.

Surprisingly, it was psychiatry that gave an important answer to this relevant issue. As a matter of fact, the so-called Birth Theory - which has been laid down by the Italian Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist Massimo Fagioli since 1972 – is hard-and-fast as to this point; human life presupposes a psychic activity which is absent in the fetus.

According to this theory, the fetus is a biological existence which becomes a potential human being from the 22nd/24th week of pregnancy only. Such a potentiality of the fetus can occur only at the very moment of birth when the first stimulation of the retina, caused by the light, originates a transformation of the brain functioning, generating the beginning of its psychic activity in a specific form defined by the author as’imaginative capability’.

It is even more surprising that the Birth Theory, initially elaborated on the basis of clinical observations and deductive reasoning, has recently received important, increasing backing from fetal and neonatal neurology.

In 1962 ‘Some notes on paranoidal and schizophrenic delusional perception’ by the Italian psychiatrist Fagioli has been published. After having left the Psychiatric Hospital in Venice and a neurobiological approach, Fagioli studied clinical phenomenology in Padua. He was inclined to criticize the neurological pathogenesis in Psychiatry. His approach made him introducing in the Schneider's delusional perception a study that focused on a delusional meaning attribution as simultaneous to the act of a normal perceiving.

The simultaneity of both perception and meaning attribution has been remarked as reaction to an environmental stimulus, but, differently from classical psychopathology, in this reaction the perception is not altered, while the thought is. Moreover, we have to observe that thought is connected to reality and to the affective state.

This theoretical position could be distinguished from the classical psychopathological vision, that considers the delusional perception such as an alteration of perception, like can be observed in neurological damage, or considers the perception as normal but not understandable (‘ohne Anlass’). The idea of a thought reaction determined a view to a second level of thought, beyond the consciousness. So that in 1971 Fagioli formulated the annulment drive (‘pulsione di annullamento’), a psychic reaction to a disappointing stimulus from the human affective environment. Since this mechanism, a psychopathological process can originate.

In our opinion, the ‘pulsione di annullamento’, being an immediate and non-conscious activity toward the human reality out of the subject, goes into delusional perception concept of simultaneity in more depth.

Hospital-level predictors of high rates of ‘Clostridium difficile-associated disease’ (CDAD) were evaluated in over 2300 hospitals across California, Arizona, and Minnesota. American Hospital Association data were used to determine hospital characteristics associated with high rates of CDAD. Significant correlations were found between hospital rates of CDAD, common infections and other identified pathogens. Hospitals in urban areas had higher average rates of CDAD; yet, irrespective of geographic location, hospital rates of CDAD were associated with other infections. In addition, hospitals with ‘high CDAD’ rates had slower turnover of beds and were more likely to offer transplant services. These results reveal large differences in rates of CDAD across regions. Hospitals with high rates of CDAD have high rates of other common infections, suggesting a need for broad infection control policies.

The purposes of the study were (i) to describe the abundance and epidemiology of Legionellaceae in the man-made environment in a northern Italian area, (ii) to assess the concordance between pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and automated ribotyping (AR) techniques for genotyping L. pneumophila and (iii) to investigate the correlation between serogrouping and genotyping data. Water was sampled from reservoirs in 12 buildings across an area of 80-km radius. Despite the water temperature always being maintained above 55 °C, all of the buildings sampled were contaminated with Legionellaceae on at least one occasion and 63 L. pneumophila isolates representing nine different serogroups were collected. The two DNA methods revealed a high degree of genetic heterogeneity, even though identical L. pneumophila clones were recovered at different sites. The AR technique provided a fairly reliable approximation of PFGE results (73% concordance), however there was poor correlation between serogrouping and genotyping data as identical DNA fingerprints were shared by isolates of different serogroups.

In the 1998-99 flight, BOOMERanG has produced maps of ∼4% of the sky at high Galactic latitudes, at frequencies of 90, 150, 240 and 410 GHz, with resolution ≳ 10'. The faint structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background at horizon and sub-horizon scales is evident in these maps. These maps compare well to the maps recently obtained at lower frequencies by the WMAP experiment. Here we compare the amplitude and morphology of the structures observed in the two sets of maps. We also outline the polarization sensitive version of BOOMERanG, which was flown early this year to measure the linear polarization of the microwave sky at 150, 240 and 350 GHz.

In this paper we study a Volterra integral equation of the second kind, including two arbitrary continuous functions, in order to determine first-passage-time probability density functions through time-dependent boundaries for time-non-homogeneous one-dimensional diffusion processes with natural boundaries. These results generalize those which were obtained for time-homogeneous diffusion processes by Giorno et al. [3], and for some particular classes of time-non-homogeneous diffusion processes by Gutiérrez et al. [4], [5].

Conformal growth is a confined epitaxial lateral overgrowth technique capable of yielding low dislocation density GaAs films on Si. This technique makes extensive use of selective epitaxy and crystal growth is confined by a dielectric cap as well as by the self-passivated Si surface itself.

In this paper, we have performed a detailed characterisation of the state of stress of the GaAs films in various configurations (after conformal growth and removal of the seed regions, and after the regrowth of an MBE layer) by photoluminescence measurements at 5K and X-ray diffraction experiments. Although the as-grown conformal films are found in the same state of stress than reference MOCVD GaAs epilayers on Si, we report a significant decrease of this stress after MBE regrowth on conformal films.

The high resolution ultraviolet spectrum of AG Dra was observed with IUE in April and August 1981 at phases 0.50 and O.69 according to the Meinunger (1979, Inf. Bull. Var. Stars No.1611) U-light curve. The UV spectrum of the star appears rather different from that of the other classical symbiotic stars. The low resolution IUE spectrum of AG Dra shown in figure 1. The continuum is rather strong with respect to the emission lines and detectable at high resolution. Many intense interstellar lines are present, in spite of the low reddening of the star (E(B-V)=0.06, according to the depth of the 2200A interstellar band).

Since the pioneering work of Siegert (1951), the problem of determining the first passage time distribution for a preassigned continuous and time homogeneous Markov process described by a diffusion equation has been deeply analyzed and satisfactorily solved. Here we discuss the “inverse problem” — of applicative interest — consisting in deciding whether a given function can be considered as the first passage time probability density function for some continuous and homogeneous Markov diffusion process. A constructive criterion is proposed, and some examples are provided. One of these leads to a singular diffusion equation representing a dynamical model for the genesis of the lognormal distribution.