Cosmological constraints on Ho\v{r}ava gravity revised in light of GW170817 and GRB170817A and the degeneracy with massive neutrinos

We revise the cosmological bounds on Ho\v{r}ava gravity taking into accounts the stringent constraint on the speed of propagation of gravitational waves from GW170817 and GRB170817A. In light of this we also investigate the degeneracy between massive neutrinos and Ho\v{r}ava gravity. We show that a luminal propagation of gravitational waves suppresses the large-scale Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation temperature anisotropies and the presence of massive neutrinos increases this effect. On the contrary large neutrinos mass can compensate the modifications induced by Ho\v{r}ava gravity in the lensing, matter and primordial B-mode power spectra. Another degeneracy is found, at theoretical level, between the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ and massive neutrinos as well as with the model's parameters. We analyze these effects using CMB, supernovae type Ia (SNIa), galaxy clustering and weak gravitational lensing measurements and we show how such degeneracies are removed. We find that the model's parameters are constrained to be very close to their General Relativity limits and we get a two orders of magnitude improved upper bound, with respect to the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis constraint, on the deviation of the effective gravitational constant from the Newtonian one. The deviance information criterion suggests that in Ho\v{r}ava gravity $\Sigma m_\nu>0$ is favored when CMB data only are considered, while the joint analysis of all datasets prefers zero neutrinos mass.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables. Matches published versio

Fluorescent Glow

This narrative describes aspects of my semester teaching English as a Second Language in the city jail. I had expected to be able to draw grand conclusions about incarceration, inmates and policy, but instead I discovered that the inmates sitting in front of me were, above all else, simply students. The article also includes a digital story about the experience. The narrative is intended for those with interest in jail or prison education

Asymptotic decay under nonlinear and noncoercive dissipative effects for electrical conduction in biological tissues

We consider a nonlinear model for electrical conduction in biological tissues. The nonlinearity appears in the interface condition prescribed on the cell membrane. The purpose of this paper is proving asymptotic convergence for large times to a periodic solution when time-periodic boundary data are assigned. The novelty here is that we allow the nonlinearity to be noncoercive. We consider both the homogenized and the non-homogenized version of the problem

Phase transitions of regular Schwarzschild-Anti-deSitter black holes

We study a solution of the Einstein's equations generated by a self-gravitating, anisotropic, static, non-singular matter fluid. The resulting Schwarzschild like solution is regular and accounts for smearing effects of noncommutative fluctuations of the geometry. We call this solution regular Schwarzschild spacetime. In the presence of an Anti-deSitter cosmological term, the regularized metric offers an extension of the Hawking-Page transition into a van der Waals-like phase diagram. Specifically the regular Schwarzschild-Anti-deSitter geometry undergoes a first order small/large black hole transition similar to the liquid/gas transition of a real fluid. In the present analysis we have considered the cosmological constant as a dynamical quantity and its variation is included in the first law of black hole thermodynamics.Comment: 6 pages. Contribution to the Proceedings of the Karl Schwarzschild Meeting (Frankfurt, July 22-26, 2013

Attachment Theory and Maternal Drug Addiction: The Contribution to\ua0Parenting interventions.

Children\u2019s emotional and relational development can be negatively influenced bymaternal substance abuse, particularly through a dysfunctional caregiving environment. Attachment Theory offers a privileged framework to analyze how drug addiction can affect the quality of adult attachment style, parenting attitudes and behaviors toward the child, and how it can have a detrimental effect on the co-construction of the attachment bond by the mother and the infant. Several studies, as a matter of fact, have identified a prevalence of insecure patterns among drug-abusing mothers and their children. Many interventions for mothers with Substance Use Disorders have focused on enhancing parental skills, but they have often overlooked the emotional and relational features of the mother\u2013infant bond. Instead, in recent years, a number of protocols have been developed in order to strengthen the relationship between drug-abusing mothers and their children, drawing lessons from Attachment Theory. The present study reviews the literature on the adult and infant attachment style in the context of drug addiction, describing currently available treatment programs that address parenting and specifically focus on the mother\u2013infant bond, relying on Attachment Theory

Primordial Non-Gaussianities of inflationary step-like models

We use Minkowski Functionals to explore the presence of non-Gaussian signatures in simulated cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps. Precisely, we analyse the non-Gaussianities produced from the angular power spectra emerging from a class of inflationary models with a primordial step-like potential. This class of models are able to perform the best-fit of the low-$\ell$ `features', revealed first in the CMB angular power spectrum by the WMAP experiment and then confirmed by the Planck collaboration maps. Indeed, such models generate oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum of scalar perturbations, that are then imprinted in the large scales of the CMB field. Interestingly, we discover Gaussian deviations in the CMB maps simulated from the power spectra produced by these models, as compared with Gaussian $\Lambda$CDM maps. Moreover, we also show that the kind and level of the non-Gaussianities produced in these simulated CMB maps are compatible with that found in the four foreground-cleaned Planck maps. Our results indicate that inflationary models with a step-like potential are not only able to improve the best-fit respect to the $\Lambda$CDM model accounting well for the `features' observed in the CMB angular power spectrum, but also suggesting a possible origin for certain non-Gaussian signatures observed in the Planck data.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure