Particle discrimination in a NaI crystal using the COSINUS remote TES design

The COSINUS direct dark matter experiment situated at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy is set to investigate the nature of the annually modulating signal detected by the DAMA/LIBRA experiment. COSINUS has already demonstrated that sodium iodide crystals can be operated at mK temperature as cryogenic scintillating calorimeters using transition edge sensors, despite the complication of handling a hygroscopic and low melting point material. With results from a new COSINUS prototype, we show that particle discrimination on an event-by-event basis in NaI is feasible using the dual-channel readout of both phonons and scintillation light. The detector was mounted in the novel remoTES design and operated in an above-ground facility for 9.06 g$\cdot$d of exposure. With a 3.7 g NaI crystal, e$^-$/$\gamma$ events could be clearly distinguished from nuclear recoils down to the nuclear recoil energy threshold of 15 keV.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figure

Stendhal’s Gaze: Towards an hermeneutic approach of the tourist

Is travel inherently beneficial to human character? This is one of the principal questions to the practice of tourism from a philosophical viewpoint and posed as such by Dean MacCannell. But it is also a question with a long tradition. In this article, I aim to elaborate on MacCannell’s initial understandings of Stendhal’s work as a starting point for the philosophical deepening of tourism studies. MacCannell has criticised John Urry and argued for an analysis by replacing the term ‘the tourist gaze’ by ‘tourist agency’. MacCannell’s alternative version of the gaze is based on the non-representational discourse of the tourist-subject. Based on the work of the French writer Stendhal, MacCannell argues that the tourist gaze presumes a second gaze which ‘turns back onto the gazing subject an ethical responsibility for the construction of its own existence’. Although this notion makes the tourist not only a passive spectator but also an active narrator, the narration is nonetheless never a formal, ‘factual’ description of the things visited and experienced by the tourist. Instead of objectively representing the world, travel in this respect becomes a way of constructing the self

Organization of Ca2+ stores in myeloid cells: association of SERCA2b and the type-1 inositol-1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor.

In this study, we have analysed the relationship between Ca2+ pumps and Ins(1,4,5)P3-sensitive Ca2+ channels in myeloid cells. To study whether sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum Ca(2+)-ATPase (SERCA)-type Ca(2+)-ATPases are responsible for Ca2+ uptake into Ins(1,4,5)P3-sensitive Ca2+ stores, we used the three structurally unrelated inhibitors thapsigargin, 2,5-di-t-butylhydroquinone and cyclopiazonic acid. In HL-60 cells, all three compounds precluded formation of the phosphorylated intermediate of SERCA-type Ca(2+)-ATPases. They also decreased, in parallel, ATP-dependent Ca2+ accumulation and the amount of Ins(1,4,5)P3-releasable Ca2+. Immunoblotting with subtype-directed antibodies demonstrated that HL-60 cells contain the Ca2+ pump SERCA2 (subtype b), and the Ca(2+)-release-channel type-1 Ins(1,4,5)P3 receptor. In subcellular fractionation studies, SERCA2 and type-1 Ins(1,4,5)P3 receptor co-purified. Immunofluorescence studies demonstrated that both type-1 Ins(1,4,5)P3 receptor and SERCA2 were evenly distributed throughout the cell in moving neutrophils. During phagocytosis both proteins translocated to the periphagosomal space. Taken together, our results suggest that in myeloid cells (i) SERCA-type Ca(2+)-ATPases function as Ca2+ pumps of Ins(1,4,5)P3-sensitive Ca2+ stores, and (ii) SERCA2 and type-1 Ins(1,4,5)P3 receptor reside either in the same or two tightly associated subcellular compartments

Implications of Creativity: A New Experiential Paradigm for an Aesthetics of the Extended Mind?

This essay is divided into two parts. In the first one it aims at showing the relationship that exists between narrative mind, performativity and creativity. The core issues are: in what sense and how does the literary mind express its own creativity, that is, what does it mean for a literary mind to be creative? When is it possible to maintain that a literary mind is creative in a sense that is considered as positive? Usually, when attempting to answer these questions, only the isolated and finished product of the creative act is taken into consideration. Contrariwise, we will here maintain that a literary mind\u2019s creativity, or creativity more generally, should be evaluated by considering also the experiential fulfillment of the aesthetic production, and hence narration as bound not to the intentional transparency of cognitive acts but to their material components. From this standpoint, creativity results as a radically aesthetic competence in its performativity, if not even the very basis of that mind\u2019s extension that is typical at least of human beings. What will hence be introduced in the second part of this essay is a particular paradigm of aesthetic experience. The basic reasons for this proposal will be explained through a paradox that we believe thrives in our present conception of the aesthetic. The general coordinates of the paradigm at issue will then be provided by attempting to highlight, at least in principle, its specific connection with the extended mind model