Altered networks in bothersome tinnitus: a functional connectivity study

Background  

The objective was to examine functional connectivity linked to the auditory system in patients with bothersome tinnitus. Activity was low frequency (< 0.1 Hz), spontaneous blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses at rest. The question was whether the experience of chronic bothersome tinnitus induced changes in synaptic efficacy between co-activated components. Functional connectivity for seed regions in auditory, visual, attention, and control networks was computed across all 2 mm³ brain volumes in 17 patients with moderate-severe bothersome tinnitus (Tinnitus Handicap Index: average 53.5 ± 3.6 (range 38-76)) and 17 age-matched controls.     

Working group report: Heavy-ion physics and quark-gluon plasma

This is the report of Heavy Ion Physics and Quark-Gluon Plasma at WHEPP-09 which was part of Working Group-4. Discussion and work on some aspects of quark-gluon plasma believed to have created in heavy-ion collisions and in early Universe are reported.     

Mid-IR fiber-optic reflectance spectroscopy for identifying the finish on wooden furniture

Mid-IR fiber-optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS) is a totally noninvasive infrared analytical technique allowing the investigation of artworks without the need for any sampling. The development and optimization of this analytical methodology can provide a tool that is capable of supporting conservators during the first steps of their interventions, yielding fast results and dramatically reducing the number of samples needed to identify the materials involved. Furthermore, since reflection IR spectra suffer from important spectral anomalies that complicate accurate spectral interpretation, it is important to characterize known reference materials and substrates in advance. This work aims to verify the possibility of investigating and identifying the most widely used wood finishes by means of fiber-optic (chalcogenide and metal halides) mid-infrared spectroscopy. Two historically widely employed wood finishes (beeswax, shellac) and two modern ones (a hydrogenated hydrocarbon resin and a microcrystalline wax) were investigated in an extended IR range (from 1000 to 6000 cm⁻¹) with reflectance spectroscopy and with FORS. The broad spectral response of the MCT detector was exploited in order to include overtones and combination bands from the NIR spectral range in the investigation. The reflectance spectra were compared with those collected in transmission mode in order to highlight modifications to shapes and intensities, to assign absorptions, and finally to select “marker” bands indicating the presence of certain finishing materials, even when applied onto a substrate such as wood, which shows many absorptions in the mid-infrared region. After the characterization, the different products were applied to samples of aged pear wood and investigated with the same techniques in order to check the ability of mid-IR FORS to reveal the presence and composition of the product on the wooden substrate.     

On Some Noncoercive Variational Inequalities

We study existence and regularity of solutions of noncoercive variational inequalities.     

Pulsed CO2 laser-driven production of ultrafine silicon,silicon carbide,silicon nitride and silicon oxynitride powders

Summary Ultrafine Si, Si₃N₄, SiC and silicon oxynitride powders have been produced by irradiating gas-phase reactants by means of a CO₂ laser. The mechanism of SiH₄ CO₂ laser-induced absorption and dissociation is discussed on the basis of the results of the spectral and time-resolved measurement of fragment chemiluminescence. The role played by the SiH₂ radical in the powder formation is investigated. The quality of Si, Si₃N₄, SiC and silicon oxynitride powders is checked by means of several off-line diagnostics (IR spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction at wide and small angle, BET analysis). The possibility of controlling powder stoichiometry and doping from the gas-phase reactant concentration is discussed.     

Hypergeometric-Gaussian modes

We studied a novel family of paraxial laser beams forming an overcomplete yet nonorthogonal set of modes. These modes have a singular phase profile and are eigenfunctions of the photon orbital angular momentum. The intensity profile is characterized by a single brilliant ring with the singularity at its center, where the field amplitude vanishes. The complex amplitude is proportional to the degenerate (confluent) hypergeometric function, and therefore we term such beams hypergeometric-Gaussian (HyGG) modes. Unlike the recently introduced hypergeometric modes [Opt. Lett. 32, 742 (2007)], the HyGG modes carry a finite power and have been generated in this work with a liquid-crystal spatial light modulator. We briefly consider some subfamilies of the HyGG modes as the modified Bessel Gaussian modes, the modified exponential Gaussian modes, and the modified Laguerre-Gaussian modes.