ElectroCardioGraphy

The Basic ElectroCardioGraphy Course is a 6 hours course offered to the students of Volta by Sergio Leonardi, a young professor of Cardiology at the University of Pavia. The Course will span three dates: January 26th, February 10th and February 24th 2022. Lectures will be held in English in the College lecture theatre at 6.00 pm. All medical students of Collegio A Volta, of both the Golgi and Harvey Course are warmly invited to attend the course.  The poster of the Course is available here.

Course Synopsis
This 6-hour course aims to provide medical students the knowledge and skills necessary to perform systematic analyses of the normal ECG, of the most common normal variants, of the diagnostic principles of myocardial ischemia and infarction, and of the most important arrhythmias. Finally, rapid ECG interpretation in patients with acute cardiovascular disease will be discussed.

Biographical Sketch
Sergio Leonardi studied Medicine and Cardiology at the University of Pavia from 1999 to 2008) and worked at the Duke Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina from 2009 to 2012 and was awarded a Master of Health Science (MHS) degree by Duke University in 2012. He is a member of staff of Policlinico S Matteo since 2012 where he heads the Cardiovascular Clinical Research Centre from 2021 and a member of staff of the University of Pavia since 2018. He lectures undergraduate and graduate medical students at the University of Pavia on pathophysiology, diagnosis and management of patients with cardiovascular diseases and has an innovative and extensive research programme in clinical cardiology. He has contributed to a number of major clinical studies and has an outstanding record of published work in top medical journals (New Engl Med J, Lancet, etc).

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Courtesy of Digirad.




 

From Black-Hole Singularities to Cyclic Cosmology

20 January 2022. 
Roger Penrose, Wadham College and Institute of Mathematics, University of Oxford

At 6.00 pm on 20th January 2022 English mathematician and Nobel laureate Sir Roger Penrose will give a lecture entitled: From Black-Hole Singularities toCyclic Cosmology.  The lecture will be online and is accessible through this link.

Sir Roger Penrose, a member of Wadham College and the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, has made fundamental contributions to mathematcs and physics through his work on black holes and developed a new and attractive theory on the origin of the universe.  He has written extensively and reached out to the lay public with a number of books including: The emperor's new mind (1989),  The nature of space and time (with S Hawking, 1996), The road to reality (2004) and Cycles of time (2010).  The poster of the lecture can be downloaded here. A short biography of Sir Roger's and a synopsis of the lecture are available below.


Biography

Sir Roger Penrose, was born in England, in Colchester, August 8, 1931. He studied Mathematics at University College London (BSc) and at the University of Cambridge where he was awarded a PhD  degree in Pure Mathematics for his work in algebra and geometry and where he carried out further research after his PhD as a Research Fellow of St John's College.

In 1964 Sir Roger was appointed as a Reader at Birkbeck College, London and two years later he was promoted to Professor of Applied Mathematics there. In 1973 he was appointed Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford where he is currently the Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics.
 
His research interests include many aspects of geometry, having made contributions to the theory of non-periodic tilings, general relativity theory and to the foundations of quantum theory.
Sir Roger was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1972) and a Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1998). He has received numerous Prizes for his contributions to Mathematics and Physics including the Wolf Foundation Prize for Physics (jointly with Stephen Hawking for their studies of the universe); the Dannie Heinemann Prize from the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics; the Royal Society Royal Medal; the Dirac Medal and Medal of the British Institute of Physics; the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society; the Naylor Prize of the London Mathematical Society; the Albert Einstein Prize and Medal of the Albert Einstein Society; the 2006 Communications Award of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics (JPBM) in the US and the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2020.


Synopsis
The “singularity theorems” of the 1960s, demonstrated that large enough celestial bodies, or collections of such bodies, would, collapse gravitationally, to what are referred to as “singularities”, where the equations and assumptions of Einstein’s classical theory of general relativity cannot be mathematically continued. These singularities are normally expected to lie deep within what are now referred to as black holes, and would, themselves, not be observable from the outside. Nevertheless, their presence is regarded as fundamentally problematic for classical physics and it is argued that a quantum theory of gravity would be needed to resolve the issue.

Similar arguments (initiated by Stephen Hawking) apply also the “Big-Bang” picture of the origin of the universe, showing, again, the inevitability of a “singular” structure of such an initial state. However, a puzzling yet fundamental distinction between these two types of singularity is found, deeply connected with the 2nd law of thermodynamics, according which the “randomness” in the universe increases with time. It is hard to see how any ordinary procedures of “quantization” of the gravitational field can resolve this problem,

Nevertheless, a deeper understanding of the special nature of the Big Bang can be illuminated by examining it from the perspective of conformal geometry, according to which the Big-Bang singularity becomes non-singular, this being quite different from the situation arising from the singularities in black holes. In conformal geometry, big and small become equivalent, which can only hold for a singularity of the type we seem to find at the Big Bang. This situation is also relevant in relating the extremely hot and dense Big Bang to the extremely cold and rarefied remote future of a previous “cosmic aeon”, leading to the picture of conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC) according to which our Big Bang is viewed as the conformally continued remote future of a previous cosmic aeon. It turns out that there are now certain strong observational signals, providing some remarkable support for this highly non-intuitive but mathematically consistent CCC picture.


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A computer model of a black hole. Courtesy of https://www.shutterstock.com/images.


 




Saturday, 08 January 2022 17:37

Black Holes

On the 20th of January at 6.00 pm the English mathematician and Nobel laureate Sir Roger Penrose will give a lecture online entitled From Black-Hole Singularities to Cyclic Cosmology

Sir Roger, a member of Wadham College and of the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, has made fundamental contributions to mathematcs and physics through his work on black hole singularities and has developed a new and attractive theory on the origin of the universe.  He has also written a number of boos for the lay public, including: The emperor's new mind (1989),  The nature of space and time (with S Hawking, 1996), The road to reality (2004) and Cycles of time (2010).

College students interested in attending the lecture should register in advance through this link. The poster of the lecture can be downloaded here. The abstract of the lecture and a short biography of Sir Roger are available at this page.






Where next for EU-UK relations ?


17th November 2020. Simon Usherwood, Surrey University  
Where next for EU-UK relations ?


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B Johnson and U von der Leyen negotiating Brexit.

 

 

Convergence in the euro area and the consequences of Covid-19 crisis


November 12th 2020. Jérôme Creel, École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris  
Convergence in the euro area and the consequences of Covid-19 crisis


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Early Covid-19 deaths across Europe (March-May 2020). Data source: Eurostat.

 

 


Constructing Europe: Reflections from the Mediterranean

10th November 2020.  Cetta Mainwaring, Glasgow University     
Constructing “Europe”: Reflections from the Mediterranean


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The temple of Segesta in Sicily, Italy

 

 

Saturday, 06 November 2021 17:17

College Teaching

EDiSU has published a call for students interested in contributing to College teaching (courses, supervision or support activities). The call is available on the EDiSU website at this page where the application form can also be found.

While nearly half of the activities adverstised involve Collegio A Volta, students of this College may apply for activities to be carried out in other EDiSU Colleges as well. Each student may express an interest in up to three activities. The deadline for application is Monday the 15th of November at 12.00 noon. Shortlisted students will be interviewed in order to assess/confirm suitability for the role requested.

Image: R Paroli, a former undergraduate and postgraduate member of the College supervising a group of Volta undergraduates in General and Inorganic Chemistry.






Volta Rowing Club (VROC)

Rowing is a beautiful sport with a strong association with University studies and life. Pavia is a city on a river (the river Ticino) and the University of Pavia has a strong rowing tradition, which includes an annual race with the University of Pisa taking place alternatively in Pisa on the river Arno or in Pavia on the river Ticino. Collegio Volta has a first class rower, Corrado Regalbuto, who is a College undergraduate student in Medicine and a member of the University Sport Club (CUS) and the national eight with coxswain (8+) and four without coxswain ($-) squads. The College expects that the presence in College of an athlete of the calibre of Corrado Regalbuto may encourage other students to take up rowing. The purpose of the Volta Rowing Club  (VROC) is to assist this process by promoting rowing events in College by organising meetings, seminars, movies and any other activity that may encourage rowing among Volta students.

The following students enrolled in the VROC for the academic year 2021/22.  Corrado Regalbuto has agreed to act as Club Secretary and coach for the students enrolled.

Agnese    Zambinelli
Wasma    Amin Abdelgadir Ahmed
Andrei S    Blindu
Davide    Gianatti
Elena    Mariani
Corrado    Regalbuto
Ivan     Voloshyn

Volta Garden Club (VGAC)

The construction of the new College wing on the North front (due to open in October 2014) has appreciably reduced the surface of the College grounds. The College, nevertheless, is left with ~ 7,500 sqm of College green and needs to develop this resource in the best possible way. The purpose of the Volta Garden Club (VGAC) aims to promote ideas and discussion among College members about the best ways to develop the College grounds and encourage students to take a first hand interest in gardening (the College aims to make available an of the College grounds for student's gardening projects). The Club also promotes seminar and visits by experts in gardening and landscaping projects, an example of which has been a College lecture by Prof Francesco Sartori, the Director of the Botanical Garden of the University of Pavia and organises trips and visits of College students to a selection of beautiful Italian gardens open to the public.

The following students enrolled in the VGAC for the academic year 2021/22.  Michele Colombelli agreed to act as Club Secretary for this academic year.

Amina    Amer
Michele    Colombelli
Carlo     Galli
Ali    Ghanbari
Veronica    Maresca
Elia A    Perli
Iris M    Scholz
Soheil    Shishehbor
Alessia    Traversa
Maryam    Yazdani
Mehdi        Alipour Masoumabad
Arianna    Armanetti
Paolo    Catarsi
Oday    Gharaba
Martina    Giacomini
Davide    Gianatti
Shayan    Kamalzadeh
Aisyah R    Laily
Giovanni    Marchese
Tuba    Özcan
Hadiseh    Safari Zavaraki
Alice    Salacrist
Martina GRM    Soresi
Emanuele    Tumbiolo
Emma    Vedovati
Hisham    Wazeer

Volta Cine Club (VCIC)

The College has an active Cine Club (VCIC) that has offered a variety of titles over the last two academic years. Topics such as people’s rights, education, justice and freedom have featured strongly in the work presented by the Cine Club both in the 2011/12 and 2012/13 academic years and the last series of films was offered jointly with members of the local (Pavia) branch of Amnesty International. The Volta Cine Club was constituted formally as a Club in 2013/14 and featured a series of award-winning documentaries on Planet Earth and the Natural World in October/November 2013, a series on Reality and Illusion in October/November 2014 and numerous other displays and discussions in more recent years.

The following students enrolled in the VCIC for the academic year 2021/22. Mircea A Codrea agreed to act as Club Secretary for this academic year.

Amina    Amer
Ilaria    Campese
Raffaele    Castellucci
Beatrice    Cicchetti
Daniele    Di Marco
Simone    Filippi
Valerio    Florestano
Carlo     Galli
Giulia    Gossetti
Maral    Kazemian
Aurora    Legittimo
Matteo    Lo Porto
Maria Pia    Longo
Pinar    Olguner
Dario    Pulito
Basma    Ragab
Letizia     Rovertoni
Ines    Shopi
Alessia    Traversa
Stefany M    Vecchio
Francesca     Veneziani
Maryam    Yazdani
Agnese    Zambinelli
Gabriele    Adobati
Mehdi        Alipour Masoumabad
Paolo    Catarsi
Mircea A    Codrea
Lorenzo    Cosci
Giovanni    Marchese
Tuba    Özcan
Alice    Salacrist
Maurizio    Sanna
Martina GRM    Soresi
Emma    Vedovati

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