[en] We present calculations of the charming-penguin long-distance contributions to B->Kπ decays due to intermediate charmed meson states. Our calculation is based on the chiral effective Lagrangian for light and heavy mesons, corrected for the hard pion and kaon momenta. We find that the charming-penguin contributions increase significantly the B->Kπ decay rates in comparison with the short-distance contributions, giving results in better agreement with experimental data

[en] The increasing scientific and technological interest in nanoparticles has raised the need for fast, efficient, and precise characterization techniques. Powder diffraction is a very efficient experimental method, as it is straightforward and nondestructive. However, its use for extracting information regarding very small particles brings some common crystallographic approximations to and beyond their limits of validity. Powder pattern diffraction calculation methods are critically discussed, with special focus on spherical particles with log-normal distributions, with the target of determining size distribution parameters. A 20-nm CeO₂ sample is analyzed as an example

[en] We present estimates of the charming penguin contribution to B→Kπ,ππ,Kη,Kη^' decays due to intermediate charmed meson states. We find that this contribution is indeed significant for B→Kπ decays, and its inclusion, together with the tree and penguin terms, produces large branching ratios in agreement with data, though the analysis is affected by large theoretical uncertainties. On the other hand, for B→ππ, Kη, Kη^' decays, the effect of the charming penguin contribution is more modest. We also compute CP asymmetries for B→Kπ, ππ decays, and we obtain rather large results

[en] The mechanism of mineralized bone matrix deposition was investigated taking advantage of a tissue engineering approach in which bone tissue is formed when porous ceramic scaffold is loaded with bone marrow stromal cells and implanted in vivo. The aim of our study is to point out the interaction between the newly formed mineral crystals and the scaffold imposing the three-dimensional desired architecture to the growing bone. High spatial resolution Small Angle X-ray Scattering measurements obtained using synchrotron radiation and X-ray waveguide as optical element allowed a local structural study at the bone-scaffold interface. Using an original methodology for data analysis, we obtained a two-dimensional microscopic map of the mineralization degree, the collagen presence and the mineral orientation degree around the scaffold pore