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We calculate the energy per particle of symmetric nuclear matter and pure neutron matter using the many-body Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach and employing the Chiral Next-to-next-to-next-to leading order (N3LO) nucleon-nucleon (NN) potential, supplemented with various parametrizations of the Chiral Next-to-next-to leading order (N2LO) three-nucleon force. Such combination is able to reproduce several observables of the physics of light nuclei for suitable choices of the parameters entering in the three-nucleon interaction. We find that some of these parametrizations, provide also reasonable values for the observables of nuclear matter at the saturation point.

The present work aims at optimizing the use of computing resources available at the grid Italian Tier-2 sites of the ALICE experiment at CERN LHC by making them accessible to interactive distributed analysis, thanks to modern solutions based on cloud computing. The scalability and elasticity of the computing resources via dynamic ("on-demand") provisioning is essentially limited by the size of the computing site, reaching the theoretical optimum only in the asymptotic case of infinite resources. The main challenge of the project is to overcome this limitation by federating different sites through a distributed cloud facility. Storage capacities of the participating sites are seen as a single federated storage area, preventing the need of mirroring data across them: high data access efficiency is guaranteed by location-aware analysis software and storage interfaces, in a transparent way from an end-user perspective. Moreover, the interactive analysis on the federated cloud reduces the execution time with respect to grid batch jobs. The tests of the investigated solutions for both cloud computing and distributed storage on wide area network will be presented.

Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccination has been reported to decrease susceptibility to respiratory tract infections, an effect proposed to be mediated by the general long-term boosting of innate immune mechanisms, also termed trained immunity. Here, we discuss the non-specific beneficial effects of BCG against viral infections and whether this vaccine may afford protection to COVID-19. Could the BCG vaccine be used to bridge the gap until a specific COVID-19 vaccine is developed? Luke O’Neill and Mihai Netea discuss the science behind this approach.

International audience; The expansion of Bantu languages represents one of the most momentous events in the history of Africa. While it is well accepted that Bantu languages spread from their homeland (Cameroon/Nigeria) approximately 5000 years ago (ya), there is no consensus about the timing and geographical routes underlying this expansion. Two main models of Bantu expansion have been suggested: The 'early-split' model claims that the most recent ancestor of Eastern languages expanded north of the rainforest towards the Great Lakes region approximately 4000 ya, while the 'late-split' model proposes that Eastern languages diversified from Western languages south of the rainforest approximately 2000 ya. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the language dispersal was coupled with the movement of people, raising the question of language shift versus demic diffusion. We use a novel approach taking into account both the spatial and temporal predictions of the two models and formally test these predictions with linguistic and genetic data. Our results show evidence for a demic diffusion in the genetic data, which is confirmed by the correlations between genetic and linguistic distances. While there is little support for the early-split model, the late-split model shows a relatively good fit to the data. Our analyses demonstrate that subsequent contact among languages/populations strongly affected the signal of the initial migration via isolation by distance.

Love suicide was a situation lavishly employed by playwrights in early modern England. We generally regard as tragic heroes the dramatic star-crossed lovers who kill themselves onstage and we see their death as the sensationally pathetic climax of the play. On the other hand, in Elizabethan and early Stuart society, suicide, or, as it was called, ‘self-slaughter’ or ‘self-murder’, was considered both as a crime and as one of the most dreadful sins a Christian could possibly commit. I would suggest that the tension between these two conflicting views on suicide had a relevant emotional impact on the audiences to whom these plays were originally addressed. In order to prove this, I wish to analyse in particular domestic plays which stage the range of responses elicited within a community that has to cope with the suicide of one of its members.

In this paper we consider the prehistory of quantum gravity (1916-1930) from two perspectives. First, we investigate how this research field constituted itself and we propose for the first time a red thread to trace its evolution in this earliest period. Second, we focus on a case study: the earliest work of Leon Rosenfeld. In 1927 he tried to merge wave mechanics with general relativity in the context of a five-dimensional universe. We describe how Oskar Klein, Louis de Broglie, and Theophile De Donder influenced Rosenfeld's work and analyze how and why Rosenfeld attempted to reconcile Einstein's theory with quantum phenomena. We argue that Rosenfeld investigated for the first time the corrections to a classical space-time metric generated by a quantum source. As far as we know, Rosenfeld's approach has been largely ignored until today: he himself considered it "an accident." After having reconsidered its connection with de Broglie's ideas and Rosenfeld's interpretation of the wave function in 1927, we argue that Rosenfeld's work can be interpreted as a first attempt to introduce the pilot-wave theory in the context of quantum gravity and we infer that this was one of the reasons that ruled it out.

During the Assyrian rule over Northern Mesopotamia (present-day northern Iraq), complex systems of canals were built to increase the surface of cultivable land and improve the movement of people and goods across the irrigated waterscape of the hinterland of Nineveh and other major urban centres, with the aim of granting socio-economic prosperity to the empire. Nevertheless, supra-regional political instability eventually led to the rapid downfall of the Assyrian state during the late seventh century BCE, causing the swift abandonment of the canal systems. In this study, we examine the post-abandonment formation processes of the natural and anthropogenic infillings of three portions of King Sennacherib’s Khinis canal system (705–681 BCE, northwestern Kurdistan Region of Iraq) through means of archaeological, sedimentological and micromorphological analyses. We identify water lain sediments, desiccation features, colluvial gravel intake and pastoral occupation layers, anchoring the deposit to radiometric dating and contextualising it against the known regional climatic history. The interpretation of pedostratigraphic evidence highlights subsequent phases of use, abandonment, and repurposing of the canals, reflecting shifts in land-use from agriculture to pastoralism and dynamic adaptation and resilience of the local ancient communities in response to Late-Holocene climate changes and geopolitical events.

As a response to Hurricane Mitch and the resulting widespread loss of life and destruction of Honduran infrastructure in 1998, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) conducted the first wide-area airborne lidar topographic mapping project in Central America. The survey was executed by the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin (BEG) in 2000, and it was intended to cover 240 square kilometers distributed among 15 flood-prone communities throughout Honduras. The original data processing produced basic digital elevation models at 1.5-meter grid spacing which were used as inputs for hydrological modeling. The USGS published the results in a series of technical reports in 2002. The authors became interested in this dataset in 2013 while searching for geospatial data that would provide additional context and comparative references for an archaeological lidar project conducted in 2012 in the Honduran Mosquitia. After multiple requests to representatives from the USGS and BEG, we found various types of processed data in personal and institutional archives, culminating in the identification of 8-mm magnetic tapes that contained the original point clouds. Point clouds for the 15 communities plus a test area centered on the Maya site of Copan were recovered from the tapes (16 areas totaling 700 km2). These point clouds have been reprocessed by the authors using contemporary software and methods into higher resolution and fidelity products. Within these new products, we have identified and mapped multiple archaeological sites in proximity to modern cities, many of which are not part of the official Honduran site registry. Besides improving our understanding of ancient Honduras, our experiences dealing with issues of data management and access, ethics, and international collaboration have been informative. This paper summarizes our experiences in the hope that they will contribute to the discussion and development of best practices for handling geospatial datasets of archaeological value.