New Physics and New Technologies in Next-Generation Neutrino Experiments.

PhD ThesisWe are living a pivotal moment for neutrino physics. A new generation of experiments is about to begin and will extend our understanding of neutrinos. Very large scale experiments, like Hyper-Kamiokande, will collect unprecedented statistics and will constrain oscillation parameters to high precision: the CP violation phase, the octant of 23, and the mass hierarchy are likely to be determined. Many are the experimental difficulties behind a successful megaton water Cherenkov detector, but improvements in photodetection technologies luckily allow such an ambitious project. One of the most important challenges is to keep systematical uncertainties under control, so as they do not dominate over statistical errors. Assessing the impact of the systematics on the overall sensitivity of the experiment is a fundamental requirement to the final success of Hyper-Kamiokande. Thanks to powerful accelerator facilities, future long baseline experiments, such as DUNE, will also explore the intensity frontier of neutrino physics and study rare phenomena. Numerous extension to the Standard Model (SM) and alternative theories have been introduced to explain neutrino masses and mixings. These new scenarios often predict new physics, the signature of which is accessible to next-generation experiments. An interesting example comes from lowscale see-saw models, which consider GeV-scale neutral leptons coupled to SM particles with suppressed mixing angles. The near detector system of DUNE is an ideal place for searches of these particles, thanks to high exposure that compensate small event rates. Current neutrino experiments have also joined this new venture; Super-Kamiokande has been extensively refurbished in view of a new phase, starting in early 2020, in which the detector will turn into a supernova observatory. This is achieved by doping the water of Super-Kamiokande with gadolinium, in order to increase the efficiency of neutron tagging up to 90 %. The use of gadolinium is a novel technique which will be adopted by many existing and planned experiments. The benefits of improved neutron tagging are not limited just to supernova neutrinos, but to a plethora of other studies, such as reactor and atmospheric neutrinos or proton decay. In this thesis, all of the topics above are addressed. After a review of SM neutrino physics in Chapter 1, the gadolinium-loaded water Cherenkov technique is discussed in Chapter 2 with particular focus on Super-Kamiokande. A new technique to monitor gadolinium concentration in water using UV spectroscopy and an improved method for neutron calibration using a californium source are presented. Chapter 3 deals with CP violation in neutrino oscillation and the potential of Hyper-Kamiokande to constraining oscillation parameters. The methodology used to asses the experimental sensitivity is described in detail. First estimations are shown with the full systematic model and some of its variations are also taken into account. In Chapter 4 a possible Standard Model extension to explain neutrino masses is considered, and the phenomenology of such models is extensively studied in the context of a beam dump experiment. The prospect of the DUNE’s near detector to searches of heavy neutral lepton decays is then evaluated in Chapter 5. It is found that the DUNE ND is capable of extending current limits on these searches, reaching regions of the parameter space extremely interesting from a theoretical point of view

Dynamic of lipid droplets and gene expression in response to beta-aminoisobutyric acid treatment on 3T3-L1 cells

Research on adipobiology has recognized the browning process of white adipocytes as a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of obesity and related morbidities. Physical exercise stimulates the secretion of myokines, such as \uf062-aminoisobutyric acid (BAIBA), which in turn promotes adaptive thermogenesis. White adipocyte conversion to brown cells involves dynamic changes in lipid droplet (LD) dimension and in the transcription of brown-specific marker genes. This study analyzes the effect of different doses of BAIBA and at different days of development on 3T3-L1 cells by evaluating morphological changes in LDs and the expression of browning gene markers. Results suggested that the highest concentration of BAIBA after 4 days of differentiation produced the most significant effects. The number of LDs per cell increased in comparison to control cells, whereas the surface area significantly decreased. Brown adipocyte markers were up-regulated, but the effect of treatment was lost at 10 days of differentiation. The thermogenic program induced by BAIBA may reflect a rapid adaptation of adipose tissue to physical exercise. This connection stresses the beneficial impact of physical exercise on metabolic health

Relationship between lipid droplets size and integrated optical density

Lipid accumulation is largely investigated due to its role in many human diseases. The attention is mainly focused on the lipid droplets (LDs), spherical cytoplasmic organelles which are devoted to the storage of the lipids. The amount of lipid content is often evaluated by measuring LDs size and/or the integrated optical density (IOD) in cultured cells. Both evaluations are directly associated to the lipid content and therefore they are correlated to each other, but a lack of theoretical relationship between size and IOD was observed in literature. Here we investigated the size-IOD relationship of LDs observed in microscopical images of cultured cells. The experimental data were obtained from immature and differentiated 3T3-L1 murine cells, which have been extensively used in studies on adipogenesis. A simple model based on the spherical shape of the LDs and the Lambert-Beer law, which describes the light absorption by an optical thick material, leads to a mathematical relationship. Despite only light rays\u2019 absorption was considered in the model, neglecting their scattering, a very good agreement between the theoretical curve and the experimental data was found. Moreover, a computational simulation corroborates the model indicating the validity of the mathematically theoretical relationship between size and IOD. The theoretical model could be used to calculate the absorption coefficient in the LDs population and it could be applied to seek for morphologically and functionally LDs subpopulations. The identification of LDs dynamic by measuring size and IOD could be related to different pathophysiological conditions and useful for understand cellular lipid-associated diseases

Characteristics and patterns of care of endometrial cancer before and during COVID-19 pandemic

Objective: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has correlated with the disruption of screening activities and diagnostic assessments. Endometrial cancer (EC) is one of the most common gynecological malignancies and it is often detected at an early stage, because it frequently produces symptoms. Here, we aim to investigate the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on patterns of presentation and treatment of EC patients. Methods: This is a retrospective study involving 54 centers in Italy. We evaluated patterns of presentation and treatment of EC patients before (period 1: March 1, 2019 to February 29, 2020) and during (period 2: April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021) the COVID-19 outbreak. Results: Medical records of 5,164 EC patients have been retrieved: 2,718 and 2,446 women treated in period 1 and period 2, respectively. Surgery was the mainstay of treatment in both periods (p=0.356). Nodal assessment was omitted in 689 (27.3%) and 484 (21.2%) patients treated in period 1 and 2, respectively (p<0.001). While, the prevalence of patients undergoing sentinel node mapping (with or without backup lymphadenectomy) has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic (46.7% in period 1 vs. 52.8% in period 2; p<0.001). Overall, 1,280 (50.4%) and 1,021 (44.7%) patients had no adjuvant therapy in period 1 and 2, respectively (p<0.001). Adjuvant therapy use has increased during COVID-19 pandemic (p<0.001). Conclusion: Our data suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the characteristics and patterns of care of EC patients. These findings highlight the need to implement healthcare services during the pandemic

Practice patterns and 90-day treatment-related morbidity in early-stage cervical cancer

To evaluate the impact of the Laparoscopic Approach to Cervical Cancer (LACC) Trial on patterns of care and surgery-related morbidity in early-stage cervical cancer

Heavy Neutral Leptons from low-scale seesaws at the DUNE Near Detector

Heavy nearly-sterile neutrinos are a common ingredient in extensions of the Standard Model which aim to explain neutrino masses, like for instance in Type I seesaw models, or one of its variants. If the scale of the new Heavy Neutral Leptons (HNLs) is sufficiently low, observable signatures can arise in a range of current and upcoming experiments, from the LHC to neutrino experiments. In this article, we discuss the phenomenology of sterile neutrinos in the MeV to GeV mass range, focusing on their decays. We embed our discussion in a realistic mass model and consider the resulting implications. We focus in particular on the impact on the signal of the strong polarisation effects in the beam for Majorana and (pseudo-)Dirac states, providing formulae to incorporate these in both production and decay. We study how the Near Detector of the upcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment can constrain HNL states by searching for their de- cay products inside the detector. We conduct a Monte Carlo background analysis for the most promising signatures, incorporating the detector’s particle identification capabilities, and estimate the experimental sensitivity of DUNE to these particles. We also present an estimate of the ντ -derived HNL flux at DUNE, currently missing in the literature, which allows us to discuss searches for HNLs at higher masses

The Urban Archaeology Project in Asculum. From civitas caput gentis to civitas foederata

The paper presents a view over the last archaeological acquisitions achieved by the Urban Archaeology Project in Asculum, led by the University of Bologna in agreement with the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio delle Marche