Education, Cultural Change, Territory. The Third Sector's Innovation. An Italian Case Study

This contribution proposes a theoretical-empirical reflection on the relationship among the three sociological concepts identified by the authors as essential dimensions of the innovation: cultural change, education, and territory. The aim is to illustrate the complex relationship among these dimensions and the implications involved in terms of s oci ologi cal perspectives and research tools, on the basis of the analysis of an emblematic case study: “FQTS”, Italian acronym of the project of Education of Executives and Leaders of the Third Sector in the Southern Italy. In particular, this investigation will be aimed at: (re)defining sociological concepts considered fundamental for the study of innovation; reconstructing the main empirical evidence emerging from the analysis of the case study; and summarizing the relevance of the research results, in terms of new themes and sociological perspectives, as well as of methodological questions

Jet and photon physics

Jet production in proton-proton collisions is one of the main phenomenological predictions of QCD. The ATLAS and CMS Collaborations have performed measurements of several jet observables at the LHC and compared their results to theoretical predictions and event generators. Useful physics input for the determination of the parton distribution functions and the strong coupling constant is provided. Photon production measurements represent another important test of QCD and show strong sensitivity to higher-order corrections.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference on Large Hadron Collider Physics, Columbia University, New York, U.S.A., June 2-7, 201

Tales from the prehistory of Quantum Gravity. L\'eon Rosenfeld's earliest contribution

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the earliest work of L\'eon Rosenfeld, one of the pioneers in the search of Quantum Gravity, the supposed theory unifying quantum theory and general relativity. We describe how and why Rosenfeld tried to face this problem in 1927, analysing the role of his mentors: Oskar Klein, Louis de Broglie and Th\'eophile De Donder. Rosenfeld asked himself how quantum mechanics should \textit{concretely} modify general relativity. In the context of a five-dimensional theory, Rosenfeld tried to construct a unifying framework for the gravitational and electromagnetic interaction and wave mechanics. Using a sort of "general relativistic quantum mechanics" Rosenfeld introduced a wave equation on a curved background. He investigated the metric created by what he called `quantum phenomena', represented by wave functions. Rosenfeld integrated Einstein equations in the weak field limit, with wave functions as source of the gravitational field. The author performed a sort of semi-classical approximation obtaining at the first order the Reissner-Nordstr\"om metric. We analyse how Rosenfeld's work is part of the history of Quantum Mechanics, because in his investigation Rosenfeld was guided by Bohr's correspondence principle. Finally we briefly discuss how his contribution is connected with the task of finding out which metric can be generated by a quantum field, a problem that quantum field theory on curved backgrounds will start to address 35 years later.Comment: 83 pages. Accepted for publication in the European Physical Journal (H

Nanoparticles-cell association predicted by protein corona fingerprints

In a physiological environment (e.g., blood and interstitial fluids) nanoparticles (NPs) will bind proteins shaping a "protein corona" layer. The long-lived protein layer tightly bound to the NP surface is referred to as the hard corona (HC) and encodes information that controls NP bioactivity (e.g. cellular association, cellular signaling pathways, biodistribution, and toxicity). Decrypting this complex code has become a priority to predict the NP biological outcomes. Here, we use a library of 16 lipid NPs of varying size (Ø ≈ 100-250 nm) and surface chemistry (unmodified and PEGylated) to investigate the relationships between NP physicochemical properties (nanoparticle size, aggregation state and surface charge), protein corona fingerprints (PCFs), and NP-cell association. We found out that none of the NPs' physicochemical properties alone was exclusively able to account for association with human cervical cancer cell line (HeLa). For the entire library of NPs, a total of 436 distinct serum proteins were detected. We developed a predictive-validation modeling that provides a means of assessing the relative significance of the identified corona proteins. Interestingly, a minor fraction of the HC, which consists of only 8 PCFs were identified as main promoters of NP association with HeLa cells. Remarkably, identified PCFs have several receptors with high level of expression on the plasma membrane of HeLa cells