3,563 research outputs found
Simulating the High Energy Gamma-ray sky seen by the GLAST Large Area Telescope
This paper presents the simulation of the GLAST high energy gamma-ray
telescope. The simulation package, written in C++, is based on the Geant4
toolkit, and it is integrated into a general framework used to process events.
A detailed simulation of the electronic signals inside Silicon detectors has
been provided and it is used for the particle tracking, which is handled by a
dedicated software. A unique repository for the geometrical description of the
detector has been realized using the XML language and a C++ library to access
this information has been designed and implemented. A new event display based
on the HepRep protocol was implemented. The full simulation was used to
simulate a full week of GLAST high energy gamma-ray observations. This paper
outlines the contribution developed by the Italian GLAST software group.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, to be published in the Proceedings of the 6th
International Symposium ''Frontiers of Fundamental and Computational
Physics'' (FFP6), Udine (Italy), Sep. 26-29, 200
Liquid biopsy in bladder cancer: State of the art and future perspectives
Bladder cancer is the most common malignancy of the urinary tract. Cystoscopy represents the gold standard in the diagnosis of suspicious bladder lesions. However, the procedure is invasive and burdened by pain, discomfort and infective complications. Cytology, which represents an alternative diagnostic possibility is limited by poor sensitivity. Considering the limitations of both procedures, and the necessity to perform multiple evaluations in patients who are in follow-up for bladder cancer, an improved non-invasive methodology is required in the clinical management of this disease. Liquid biopsy, e.g. the detection of clinical biomarkers in urine, represent a promising novel and non-invasive approach that could overcome those limitations and be integrated into the current clinical practice. The aim of this review is to summarize the state of the art of this approach and the latest novelties regarding detection, prognosis and surveillance of bladder cancer
INFN Camera demonstrator for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
The Cherenkov Telescope Array is a world-wide project for a new generation of
ground-based Cherenkov telescopes of the Imaging class with the aim of
exploring the highest energy region of the electromagnetic spectrum. With two
planned arrays, one for each hemisphere, it will guarantee a good sky coverage
in the energy range from a few tens of GeV to hundreds of TeV, with improved
angular resolution and a sensitivity in the TeV energy region better by one
order of magnitude than the currently operating arrays. In order to cover this
wide energy range, three different telescope types are envisaged, with
different mirror sizes and focal plane features. In particular, for the highest
energies a possible design is a dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder optical
scheme, with a compact focal plane. A silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) based
camera is being proposed as a solution to match the dimensions of the pixel
(angular size of ~ 0.17 degrees). INFN is developing a camera demonstrator made
by 9 Photo Sensor Modules (PSMs, 64 pixels each, with total coverage 1/4 of the
focal plane) equipped with FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy) Near
UltraViolet High Fill factor SiPMs and Front-End Electronics (FEE) based on a
Target 7 ASIC, a 16 channels fast sampler (up to 2GS/s) with deep buffer,
self-trigger and on-demand digitization capabilities specifically developed for
this purpose. The pixel dimensions of mm lead to a very compact
design with challenging problems of thermal dissipation. A modular structure,
made by copper frames hosting one PSM and the corresponding FEE, has been
conceived, with a water cooling system to keep the required working
temperature. The actual design, the adopted technical solutions and the
achieved results for this demonstrator are presented and discussed.Comment: In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference
(ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands. All CTA contributions at
arXiv:1508.0589
Radiative Decays of Excited Vector Mesons
Radiative decays of the radial and orbital excitations of
the , and are calculated in the quark model, using wave
functions obtained variationally from the Hamiltonian with standard quark-model
parameters. The larger radiative widths should be measurable at new
high-intensity facilities being proposed, and in some cases may be measurable
in data from existing experiments. The radiative decays are a strong
discriminator between the and excitations, and can also be
used to provide unique information about the decay products.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figure
Monitoraggio delle condizioni della farnia (Quercus robur L.) nel Parco del Ticino mediante tecniche di telerilevamento iperspettrale
Abstract: Pedunculate oak forests (Quercus robur L.) in the Ticino Regional Park (Italy) show sensible damage conditions due to different environmental stresses: insect attacks, summer drought and air pollution. Knowing whether oaks are healthy or stressed can provide useful information in order to conserve the forest ecosystems and avoid the lost of valuable natural resources. Environmental stresses can affect tree biochemical and structural variables, such as the concentration, composition and efficiency in light harvesting of foliar pigments, and the Leaf Area Index (LAI). Interest in the use of these variables for forest condition assessment has recently increased because they can be indirectly estimated from remote observations at leaf and canopy level. In particular, in this research we found that total chlorophyll (Chl) concentration, a biochemical variable related to crown discoloration rate, was the most suitable variable for the detection of pedunculate oak decline in the Ticino Park. A regression analysis between Chl concentration and optical indices computed from hyperspectral MIVIS data was performed in order to estimate Chl concentration from remote observations. The good correlation between field measurements of Chl concentration and MIVIS optical indices allowed the development of a model to map Chl concentration across the Ticino Park forested area. Promising results demonstrated that remotely sensed data can provide an accurate estimation of Chl concentration and indicated the potential of this technique for forest condition monitoring
Design of a SiPM-based cluster for the Large Size Telescope camera of CTA
A Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM)-based photodetector is being built to
demonstrate its feasibility for an alternative silicon-based camera design for
the Large Size Telescope (LST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array. It has been
designed to match the size of the standard Photomultiplier Tube (PMT) cluster
unit and to be compatible with mechanics, electronics and focal plane optics of
the first LST camera. Here, we describe the overall SiPM cluster design along
with the main differences with respect to the currently used PMT cluster unit.
The fast electronics of the SiPM pixel and its layout are also presented. In
order to derive the best working condition for the final unit, we measured the
SiPM performances in terms of gain, photo-detection efficiency and cross-talk.
One pixel, a unit of 14 SiPMs, has been built. We will discuss also some
preliminary results regarding this device and we will highlight the future
steps of this project.Comment: submitted to NIM
The effect of timing and composition of gestational weight gain in obese pregnant women on infant birth weight: A prospective cohort study.
Introduction: CK2 is a protein kinase implicated in several essential cellular
processes, over-expressed in cancer and described to regulate insulin
signaling cascade. Recently CK2 has been described to negatively regulate
thermogenesis (Shinoda K et al, 2015, Cell Metabolism) and to inhibit
insulin release (Rossi M et al, 2015, PNAS). Nevertheless, the role of CK2
in adipose tissue (AT) and its involvement in human obesity development
and therapy has been poorly investigated.
Methods: Our multi-disciplinary team performed biochemical analysis of
signaling pathways by WB and in vitro kinase activity assays, and glucose
handling studies using glucose uptake assay and IF in adipocyte cultures
and glucose and insulin tolerance test in mice. Moreover we quantify CK2
expression/activity in human AT specimens of 27 obese patients, clinically
characterized, in 12 obese patients underwent relevant weight loss and 11
normal-weight controls.
Results: We proved that CK2 amount and activity were not influenced
by insulin stimulation and that CK2 activity was efficiently inhibited by
specific inhibitors, structurally unrelated. We worked with CX-4945, a
CK2 inhibitor currently used in cancer clinical trials, using the minimal
concentration (2.5 \u192
dM) and pre-treatment time (1hr) able to efficiently
inhibit CK2 activity, avoiding any cytotoxic effect. Pharmacological
inhibition of CK2 did not significantly affect in vitro adipogenic differentiation
or expression profiling of mature adipocytes. Conversely, we
showed that in human and murine adipocytes CK2-inhibition decreases
the insulin-induced glucose uptake by counteracting Akt-signaling and
GLUT4-translocation to the plasma membrane. We compared CK2 expression
and activity in different mouse tissues highlighted that white
skeletal muscle fibres and liver contained the highest quantity of this kinase.
CK2 was expressed more in brown AT than in white AT depots. We
show that CK2 promotes insulin-signaling in mouse AT, liver and skeletal
muscle and that in vivo acute treatment with CX-4945 impairs glucose-
tolerance in mice. Studies in tissues of ob/ob and db/db mice highlights
an up-regulation of CK2 expression and activity only in WAT. CK2
hyper-activation is strongly evident also in SAT and VAT of obese patients
and weight loss obtained by bariatric surgery or hypocaloric diet reverts
CK2 up-regulation to normal level.
Conclusion: We show that CK2 is involved in insulin sensitivity, glucose
handling and remodeling of WAT. Moreover we identify CK2 hyper-activation
as a hallmark of human obesity, suggesting a new potential therapeutic
target for metabolic diseases
Strong Decays of Strange Quarkonia
In this paper we evaluate strong decay amplitudes and partial widths of
strange mesons (strangeonia and kaonia) in the 3P0 decay model. We give
numerical results for all energetically allowed open-flavor two-body decay
modes of all nsbar and ssbar strange mesons in the 1S, 2S, 3S, 1P, 2P, 1D and
1F multiplets, comprising strong decays of a total of 43 resonances into 525
two-body modes, with 891 numerically evaluated amplitudes. This set of
resonances includes all strange qqbar states with allowed strong decays
expected in the quark model up to ca. 2.2 GeV. We use standard nonrelativistic
quark model SHO wavefunctions to evaluate these amplitudes, and quote numerical
results for all amplitudes present in each decay mode. We also discuss the
status of the associated experimental candidates, and note which states and
decay modes would be especially interesting for future experimental study at
hadronic, e+e- and photoproduction facilities. These results should also be
useful in distinguishing conventional quark model mesons from exotica such as
glueballs and hybrids through their strong decays.Comment: 69 pages, 5 figures, 39 table
Liquid biopsy biomarkers in urine: A route towards molecular diagnosis and personalized medicine of bladder cancer
Bladder cancer (BC) is characterized by high incidence and recurrence rates together with genomic instability and elevated mutation degree. Currently, cystoscopy combined with cytology is routinely used for diagnosis, prognosis and disease surveillance. Such an approach is often associated with several side effects, discomfort for the patient and high economic burden. Thus, there is an essential demand of non-invasive, sensitive, fast and inexpensive biomarkers for clinical management of BC patients. In this context, liquid biopsy represents a very promising tool that has been widely investigated over the last decade. Liquid biopsy will likely be at the basis of patient selection for precision medicine, both in terms of treatment choice and real-time monitoring of therapeutic effects. Several different urinary biomarkers have been proposed for liquid biopsy in BC, including DNA methylation and mutations, protein-based assays, non-coding RNAs and mRNA signatures. In this review, we summarized the state of the art on different available tests concerning their potential clinical applications for BC detection, prognosis, surveillance and response to therapy
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