Editoria - maggio 2015
Proceedings of the International School of Physics “Enrico Fermi” – Course 187
Water: Fundamentals as the basis for understanding the environment and promoting technology
edited by P. G. Debenedetti, M. A. Ricci and F. Bruni
Water: fascinating in all its phases, forms and states of aggregation. Without it, life as we know it would not exist on Earth, for as Paracelsus stated in the 16th century: “water is the matrix of the world and of all its creatures”. While it may appear to be a simple molecule, there is still much about it which is not fully understood. What is notably lacking is a microscopically based understanding of the reasons for the many anomalous properties of water.
This book presents lectures from the Enrico Fermi summer school "Water: Fundamentals as the basis for understanding the environment and promoting technology" held in Varenna, Italy, in July 2013. The aim of the school was to offer a glimpse of the many questions that remain unanswered about this molecule, and topics covered included: water in relation to other liquids, biological water, local environment of water protons, atmospheric water, amorphous solid phases of water, NMR studies of water, spectroscopic studies of water, the structure of liquid water, and supercooled water, among others. Particular attention was devoted to liquid water polymorphism which is one of the “hot topics” that are at present vigorously debated in the literature.
While this list is by no means exhaustive or complete, it is wide enough to provide a solid basis to young researchers in the field, and the book will be a valuable source of reference for students and all those with an interest in the properties of this fascinating substance.
Il Nuovo Saggiatore
È online e in distribuzione l'ultimo numero:
Il Nuovo Saggiatore – Vol. 31, anno 2015, N. 1-2
Uno speciale articolo del Presidente Onorario, Renato Angelo Ricci, celebra i 30 anni del bollettino della SIF.
In questo numero e in tutti i numeri del 2015, in occasione dell'IYL2015, la rubrica Percorsi sarà dedicata ad articoli storici sui numerosi anniversari correlati alla luce. Apre la rassegna l'articolo di S. A. Khan "Medieval Islamic achievements in optics". Sempre per celebrare l'anno della luce, in ogni numero saranno anche presentate e commentate, a cura di A. Bettini, alcune pagine di studiosi italiani che hanno contribuito allo sviluppo della scienza e tecnologia della luce, partendo da "Francesco Maria Grimaldi - La diffrazione della luce".
Da segnalare anche interessanti articoli scientifici su temi di attualità, come "A classic never gets old" (sull'ottica classica e quantistica) di M. Liscidini e J. E. Sipe, "Camere a piani resistivi: rivelatori per la scienza, rivelatori per la vita" di M. Abbrescia e "Radiochemical solar neutrino experiments: Door opener for modern Astroparticle Physics" di T. A. Kirsten.
Nella rubrica Il Nostro Mondo compaiono i programmi dei corsi di Varenna, i bandi dei concorsi a premi e le informazioni sul 101° Congresso Nazionale della SIF.
La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento, Vol. 38, N. 4 (2015)
Bloch oscillations in atom interferometry
P. Cladé
An atom interferometer as been used to precisely
measure the recoil velocity of an atom that absorbs a photon.
To reach a high sensitivity, many recoils are transferred to atoms
using the Bloch oscillations technique. In this paper the details
of this technique and its application to
high precision measurement will be presented.
How this method allows us to perform an atom recoil measurement
at the level of 1.3 x 10-9 will be described in detail.
This measurement is used in the most precise
determination of the fine structure constant
that is independent of quantum electrodynamics.
EPJ E – Topical Issue
Thermal non-equilibrium phenomena in multi-component fluids
This Topical Issue deals with thermodiffusion; a phenomenon, also known as the Ludwig-Soret effect, that describes the coupling between a temperature gradient and the resulting mass fluxes. Discovered more than 150 years ago, no unique theoretical explanation is yet available, and experimental data is not exhaustive. Given the recent trend to investigate thermodiffusion in ternary systems, a benchmark measurement is provided in this Topical Issue by six different teams measuring mass transport properties of the same ternary mixture both in microgravity and on ground to provide reference averaged values for the quantities of interest.
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EPJ Plus – Focus Point
Status of third-generation synchrotron crystallography beamlines:
An overview
Third generation synchrotron beamlines are a key tool for crystallography techniques.
The growth and continuous development of the European beamline portfolio during the last decade has been extremely remarkable. EPJ Plus publishes a focus point on synchrotron beamlines devoted to crystallography in order to provide a global view of the status at the European scale, including an invited paper from the Chinese light source.
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EPL – Highlights from Vol. 110, 2015
Self-organization and self-avoiding limit cycles
by Hexner D. and Levine D.
Chaotic explosions
by Altmann Eduardo G. et al.
Plasma density evolution in a microwave pulse compressor
by Beilin L. et al.
Non-collinear antiferromagnets and the anomalous Hall effect
by Kübler J. and Felser C.
EPL Highlights are published in the first issue of each volume, i.e. four times a year, as well as in
