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    New experimental limit on the Pauli exclusion principle violation by electrons from the VIP experiment

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    Il Principio di Esclusione di Pauli (PEP) rappresenta uno dei principi fondamentali della fisica moderna ed è alla base della nostra comprensione della materia. Il PEP è una manifestazione della relazione Spin-Statistica ed è intimamente correlato alla nozione di “identità” delle particelle. Nella sua forma originale il PEP fu una conseguenza della vecchia teoria quantistica di Bohr, secondo la quale un elettrone in un atomo avrebbe potuto muoversi solo attraverso un set discreto di orbite. Sulla base di osservazioni sperimentali (ad esempio i raggi-X negli spettri atomici) Pauli aggiunse il postulato secondo cui in un atomo un solo elettrone può occupare ciascuna delle orbite consentite (includendo la definizione di Spin). Quando la teoria di Bohr cedette il posto alla meccanica quantistica moderna, in cui le tradizionali orbite tipo-pianeta degli elettroni nell’atomo vennero sostituite dalla più astratta nozione di stati elettronici, il PEP si tradusse nel fatto che due elettroni non avrebbero potuto trovarsi nello stesso stato (cioè i due non avrebbero potuto avere gli stessi numeri quantici). Tale stato di cose è rimasto invariato dopo oltre 60 anni dalla formulazione di Pauli. Di conseguenza, sebbene non ci siano motivi di dubitare la validità del Principio di Esclusione, oggi si dibatte sui suoi limiti. In questa tesi descriverò il metodo per osservare possibili piccole violazioni del PEP per gli elettroni, attraverso la ricerca di raggi-X provenienti da transizioni anomale in atomi di rame. Tali transizioni sarebbero prodotte da elettroni “nuovi” introdotti attraverso un flusso di corrente in una lamina di rame, che potrebbero essere catturati e compiere transizioni (che violano il PEP) verso un livello 1S già occupato da due elettroni con spin opposto. Nel 1990, un limite superiore alla probabilità di violazione del PEP fu trovato, sfruttando tale metodo, da Ramberg and Snow (RS). L’esperimento VIP (Violation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle) ha effettuato le misure più precise sulla validità del PEP per elettroni, fissando il limite della probabilità sulla sua violazione a 5.7 x 10-29. Questo risultato, presentato qui per la prima volta, ha migliorato le misure di RS per almeno tre ordini di grandezza e rappresenta il valore di riferimento per tutte quelle teorie che sono correlate ad una possibile violazione della relazione spin-statistica.The Pauli Exclusion Principle (PEP) represents one of the fundamental principles of the modern physics and is at the very basis of our understanding of matter: thus it is of foremost importance to test the limits of its validity. The PEP is a manifestation of the Spin-Statistics relation: the half-integer spin particles (fermions) follow Fermi statistics, while the integer-spin particles (bosons) the Bose –Einstein one, and is intimately related with the notion of “identity” of particles. In its original form the PEP was an adjunct to Bohr’s old quantum theory, which stated that an electron in an atom could only move to one of a discrete set of orbits; on the basis of experimental findings (X-ray atomic spectra for example) Pauli added the postulate that only one electron in the atom can fill each of the allowed orbits (including the spin in the orbit’s definition). When Bohr’s theory gave way to modern quantum mechanics, in which the traditional planet-like orbits of electrons in atoms are replaced by the more abstract notion of the electron states, the PEP survived as the statement that no two electrons could be in the same state (i.e. they cannot have the same quantum numbers). More generally, there is a strong connection between spin and symmetry class, as Pauli stressed in his Nobel Lecture “…we want to stress here a law of Nature which is generally valid, namely, the connection between spin and symmetry class. A half-integer value of the spin quantum number is always connected with antisymmetrical states (exclusion principle), an integer spin with symmetrical states”. In the same Nobel lecture however, Pauli himself says “Already in my original paper I stressed the circumstance that I was unable to give a logical reason for the exclusion principle or to deduce it from more general assumption. I had the feeling and I still have it today, that this is a deficiency. The impression that the shadow of some incompleteness fell here on the bright light of success of the new quantum mechanics seems to me unavoidable”. This statement, more than 60 years after Pauli formulated it, can be repeated practically unchanged – not much progress has been achieved in the deep understanding of the physical origin of the spin-statistics relation. As a consequence, even if today there are no compelling reasons to doubt the validity of the Pauli Exclusion Principle, it still spurs a lively debate on its limits, as testified by the abundant contributions found in the literature and in topical conferences. Here I describe a method to observe possible small violations of the PEP for electrons, through the search for anomalous X-ray transitions in copper atoms, produced by new electrons in a copper block (introduced by a circulating current), which can be captured in a Pauli-forbidden transition to the 1S level, already occupied by two electrons. In 1990, an upper limit on the PEP violation was found using this method by Ramberg and Snow (RS) with a dedicated experiment. The search method is implemented in the VIP (Violation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle) experiment, an international collaboration among 6 Institutions from 4 countries, that has the scientific goal to improve by three-four orders of magnitude the RS’s limit on the probability of PEP violation for electrons, bringing it into the 10^-29–10^-30 region, which may be of particular interest for all those theories related to possible PEP violations, and that would come from new physics. Reaching such limits opens up some very interesting scenarios, as stressed by Duck and Sudarshan: “… recently… membrane theorists have been speculating on a large compactification radius for one of their eleven dimensions, which could give a ratio (for PEP violation) of 10^-30”. VIP has performed the most precise measurement on the validity of PEP for electrons, establishing the limit on the probability of its violation at 5.7 x 10^-29. This result, presented here for the first time, improves on RS measurement by almost three orders of magnitude, and represents the reference value for all those theories that deal with possible violations of spin-statistics relation

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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