Improved Upper Limits on the Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background from 2009-2010 LIGO and Virgo Data

Gravitational waves from a variety of sources are predicted to superpose to create a stochastic background. This background is expected to contain unique information from throughout the history of the Universe that is unavailable through standard electromagnetic observations, making its study of fundamental importance to understanding the evolution of the Universe. We carry out a search for the stochastic background with the latest data from the LIGO and Virgo detectors. Consistent with predictions from most stochastic gravitational-wave background models, the data display no evidence of a stochastic gravitational-wave signal. Assuming a gravitational-wave spectrum of Omega(GW)(f) = Omega(alpha)(f/f(ref))(alpha), we place 95% confidence level upper limits on the energy density of the background in each of four frequency bands spanning 41.5-1726 Hz. In the frequency band of 41.5-169.25 Hz for a spectral index of alpha = 0, we constrain the energy density of the stochastic background to be Omega(GW)(f) < 5.6 x 10(-6). For the 600-1000 Hz band, Omega(GW)(f) < 0.14(f/900 Hz)(3), a factor of 2.5 lower than the best previously reported upper limits. We find Omega(GW)(f) < 1.8 x 10(-4) using a spectral index of zero for 170-600 Hz and Omega(GW)(f) < 1.0(f/1300 Hz)(3) for 1000-1726 Hz, bands in which no previous direct limits have been placed. The limits in these four bands are the lowest direct measurements to date on the stochastic background. We discuss the implications of these results in light of the recent claim by the BICEP2 experiment of the possible evidence for inflationary gravitational waves.

Moderate Exercise Reduces Food Consumption in Obese Mice for Activate Jak-2/Stat-3 Pathway in the Hypothalami

It is very known that due to inflammatory processes the obesity leads to resistance to leptin, it reduces phosphorylation via JAK-2/STAT-3, which generates lower STAT-3 activity in the cell nucleus, and it leads to decrease the number of transcription of anorexigenic neurons (POMC/CART) and allowing transcription of orexigenic (NPY/AgRP). PURPOSE: The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of moderate aerobic training on food intake of obese mice through analysis of activity of hypothalamic proteins JAK-2/STAT-3. METHODS: It were used 30 Swiss mice (30 days old) divided into 3 groups: Control Group (C): sedentary animals fed with balanced diet ; Obese (OB) sedentary animals fed with high-fat diet throughout the experiment and Trained Obese (TOB) : animals fed with high fat diet throughout the experiment , kept sedentary during the first half of the experiment (8 weeks) and submitted to physical training protocol during the second half of the experiment (8 weeks). The exercise program consisted of treadmill running 1h, 5 days/week during 8 weeks at a speed equivalent to 60 % of maximum potency determined at the beginning of training period. To assess the leptin resistance, after rats were deprived of food for 6h with free access to water, they received i.p injection with leptin (2.0µl, 10-6M), after this, the chow was returned and food intake was determined by measuring the quantity and Kcal consumed at the end of 2h. The hypothalami was removed for determination of JAK-2 and STAt-3 activity. RESULTS: Our results showed that moderate physical exercise was effective in improving the JAK/STAT signaling pathway in the hypothalamus of obese animals. This has made these obese animals had reduced food intake and consequently lower body mass gain. CONCLUSION: It can be concluded that physical exercise, for restoring leptin signaling in the hypothalamus, controls the synthesis of neurons responsible for appetite and thus is an important tool in the treatment of obesity.

Estresse oxidativo, alterações metabólicas e renais decorrentes da elevada ingestão de sacarose: efeito protetor da N-acetilcisteína (NAC)

Oxidative stress is related with physiopathology of diabetes mellitus type II and with its secondary complications, such as diabetic nephropathy. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of n-acetylcysteine NAC, an antioxidant from Allium cepa, on oxidative stress, morphometrical and nutritional parameters and basal metabolism and energetic substrate utilization, serum glucose and oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), and renal function of high-sucrose intake rats. Animals were initially divided into three groups. Rats in the control group (C; n=10) were given free access to a standard chow and water; (S; n=10) group received standard chow and 30% sucrose in its drinking water; (SN; n=5) group received standard chow and 2g/L NAC and 30% sucrose in its drinking water. After 25 days of treatments, rats were submitted to indirect calorimetry in fasted and feed states. After 30 days of treatments, rats from C and S groups were divided into four groups of five rats each. The (CC) and (SS) groups were given an intra-gastric dose 0,6mL saline (0,9%NaCl) and the (CNAC) and (SNAC) groups were treated with a intra-gastric dose of 0,6mL NAC (160g/day), and then everybody received a intra-gastric dose of glucose solution (20%) for the OGTT. Animals of S and SN groups have higher liquid consumption and lower food consumption than C group. Calorimetric analyses confirm that despite of the final body weight had not statistical difference among groups, S group have lower resting metabolic rate when compared to C and SN animals. Besides, S group has higher respiratory quotient, higher carbohydrate oxidation and lower lipid oxidation, both in fasted and feed states, than C and SN groups, evidencing the beneficial effect of NAC. Fasting plasma glucose is increased in SS and SNAC animals when compared to CC and CNAC, however SN group has glicemic level at 30 min before OGTT decreased when ...(Complete abstract click electronic access below)

A presença das mulheres nas ciências exatas

Most well-known and studied names in schoolbooks are men's. It gives one the idea that the world of numbers does not belong to female individuals. In order to verify that this thought is a misconception, a research is carried out about women who, despite all prejudice, have faced many adversities, leaving us many contributions on exact sciences and being relevant until the present date. Nowadays, there is not as much sexual discrimination. Women’s under-representation in exact sciences is due to other motives, such as issues of choice and the option of part-time jobs for professional/familiar balance. Maybe because of this, women have little acknowledgment, as it can be seen in Nobel Prize, where of its 851 awards, only 44 were for women. They are present at different degrees of education, such as licentiate graduation, bachelor’s or master’s, but still outnumbered. The number of female graduates was higher than male’s, according to collected data from Mathematics licentiate graduation Department from 2000 until 2012 in UNESP, Guaratinguetá campus

A ginástica no ensino fundamental e médio na cidade de Rio Claro/SP: a perspectiva dos alunos

The Gymnastic as a manifestation of the Body Culture Movement should be part of the contents worked in scholar Physical Education, throughout the process of Basic teaching. However, according to studies conducted by researchers from academic Gymnastics school knowledge involving the gymnastics have been tentatively taught in school by numerous factors. For this, the objective of this research was to understand and analyze the opinion of students in middle and high school about gymnastics classes developed with the involvement of graduation scholarship holder and the coordination of the project Gymnastics Goes to School from the UNESP/Campus Rio Claro “Núcleos de Ensino”, in 2012. This research used a questionnaire with topics about the Gymnastic with options: Never Practiced, Like a Lot, Like, Am Indifferent, Dislike, Hate with a space for writing and drawing, relevant to the research objectives. The research was performed with 79 students in middle and high school. With data analysis, it was observed that the students identified themselves more with the Artistic Gymnastic, followed by Rhythmic and Acrobatic Gymnastic and, at last, the General Gymnastic, both through the questionnaire and trough the drawings, which goes against the results from the article published in 2010 by Pereira et al, entitled The students detest the contents gymnastic in physical education classes: motives and alternatives, where the students understand the gymnastics activities only as support, abdominal and stretching. Therefore, to have a real understanding of gymnastics in school, there is a need for teachers to explain and develop the contents gimmicks, so the students could understand the difference among Gymnastics activities and, at the same time, discovering the pleasures of this body practice

Narrativa e experiência: percepções, práticas culturais e memórias de pessoas migrantes

Based in the contact with adults with little education that living in two suburbs of Rio Claro-SP, whose population is largely coming from other states, there were some questions, including: What are reasons for migration are pointed in the narratives of adults little schooling participants EJA classes? So, in the first moment of this research, we present some data collected through a questionnaire applied to students of EJA, we taking information about the state and county of origin of each student. In the second stage methodology was used Oral History pointed questions about the motives of migration reported by subjects who migrated, access and search for education and practice in reading and writing. It was also realized, an activity imagery (or walker interview) with the student, highlighting elements of the landscape of the neighborhood that brings memory's birthplace. Therefore, we present here the stories of women who had migratory experience

Os rapazes da Rua Panisperna e os centomila Majorana: os fatos e as versões literária e audiovisual

While a certain novel ponders about the traces left by Ettore Majorana and expounds some theories about the fate of the character mysteriously disappeared, a movie by Gianni Amelio also inspirited by facts goes through another path, of the story of Via Panisperna boys, stressing the enigmatic figure of Ettore Majorana and the exciting episodes surrounding some of the greatest physicists of the world. When Leonardo Sciascia publishes the novel in which he uses the actual fact of Ettore Majorana’s disappearance in order to create what he calls a “philosophical novel of mystery”, the public had already probably forgotten the intriguing events of 1938: the young and bright physicist disappeared, by all accounts, voluntarily, without leaving proofs of his death or reliable evidence of his whereabouts. In 1972, Sciascia learns about mysterious clues by means of Erasmo Recami and considers the motives that could have made Majorana leave Italy and later abandon his life almost in the mode fictionalized by Pirandello.

A representação em Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas e A consciência de Zeno

Pós-graduação em Letras - IBILCE

A influência do colecionismo na representação da memória social: análise da coleção Amidicis Tocantins

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Effects of aging and maternal protein restriction on the muscle fibers morphology and neuromuscular junctions of rats after nutritional recovery

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Effect of lithium on behavioral disinhibition induced by electrolytic lesion of the median raphe nucleus

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Narrow-band search of continuous gravitational-wave signals from Crab and Vela pulsars in Virgo VSR4 data

In this paper we present the results of a coherent narrow-band search for continuous gravitational-wave signals from the Crab and Vela pulsars conducted on Virgo VSR4 data. In order to take into account a possible small mismatch between the gravitational-wave frequency and two times the star rotation frequency, inferred from measurement of the electromagnetic pulse rate, a range of 0.02 Hz around two times the star rotational frequency has been searched for both the pulsars. No evidence for a signal has been found and 95% confidence level upper limits have been computed assuming both that polarization parameters are completely unknown and that they are known with some uncertainty, as derived from x-ray observations of the pulsar wind torii. For Vela the upper limits are comparable to the spin-down limit, computed assuming that all the observed spin-down is due to the emission of gravitational waves. For Crab the upper limits are about a factor of 2 below the spin-down limit, and represent a significant improvement with respect to past analysis. This is the first time the spin-down limit is significantly overcome in a narrow-band search.

Directed search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 with initial LIGO data

We present results of a search for continuously emitted gravitational radiation, directed at the brightest low-mass x-ray binary, Scorpius X-1. Our semicoherent analysis covers 10 days of LIGO S5 data ranging from 50-550 Hz, and performs an incoherent sum of coherent F-statistic power distributed amongst frequency-modulated orbital sidebands. All candidates not removed at the veto stage were found to be consistent with noise at a 1% false alarm rate. We present Bayesian 95% confidence upper limits on gravitational-wave strain amplitude using two different prior distributions: a standard one, with no a priori assumptions about the orientation of Scorpius X-1; and an angle-restricted one, using a prior derived from electromagnetic observations. Median strain upper limits of 1.3 x 10(-24) and 8 x 10(-25) are reported at 150 Hz for the standard and angle-restricted searches respectively. This proof-of-principle analysis was limited to a short observation time by unknown effects of accretion on the intrinsic spin frequency of the neutron star, but improves upon previous upper limits by factors of similar to 1.4 for the standard, and 2.3 for the angle-restricted search at the sensitive region of the detector.

Advanced LIGO

The Advanced LIGO gravitational wave detectors are second-generation instruments designed and built for the two LIGO observatories in Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA, USA. The two instruments are identical in design, and are specialized versions of a Michelson interferometer with 4 km long arms. As in Initial LIGO, Fabry-Perot cavities are used in the arms to increase the interaction time with a gravitational wave, and power recycling is used to increase the effective laser power. Signal recycling has been added in Advanced LIGO to improve the frequency response. In the most sensitive frequency region around 100 Hz, the design strain sensitivity is a factor of 10 better than Initial LIGO. In addition, the low frequency end of the sensitivity band is moved from 40 Hz down to 10 Hz. All interferometer components have been replaced with improved technologies to achieve this sensitivity gain. Much better seismic isolation and test mass suspensions are responsible for the gains at lower frequencies. Higher laser power, larger test masses and improved mirror coatings lead to the improved sensitivity at mid and high frequencies. Data collecting runs with these new instruments are planned to begin in mid-2015.

Combined measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in pp collisions at root s=7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS experiments

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)