Photometry of a Galactic field at l = 232, b = -6. The old open cluster Auner 1, the Norma-Cygnus spiral arm and the signature of the warped Galactic Thick Disk

We perform a detailed photometric study of the stellar populations in a Galactic Field at l = 232, b = -6 in the Canis Major (CMa) constellation. We present the first U,B,V,I photometry of the old open cluster Auner1 and determine it to be 3.25 Gyr old and to lie at 8.9 kpc from the Sun. In the background of the cluster, at more than 9 kpc, we detect a young population most probably associated to the Norma Cygnus spiral arm. Furthermore, we detect the signature of an older population and identify its Turn Off and Red Giant Branch. This population is found to have a mean age of 7 Gyrs and a mean metallicity of Z = 0.006 . We reconstruct the geometry of the stellar distribution and argue that this older population - often associated to the Canis Major {\it galaxy}- belongs in fact to the warped old thin/thick disk component along this line of sight.Comment: 19 pages, 7 eps figures (some degraded), accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa

No evidence for a dark matter disk within 4 kpc from the Galactic plane

We estimated the dynamical surface mass density (Sigma) at the solar Galactocentric distance between 2 and 4 kpc from the Galactic plane, as inferred from the observed kinematics of the thick disk. We find Sigma(z=2 kpc)=57.6+-5.8 Mo pc^-2, and it shows only a tiny increase in the z-range considered by our investigation. We compared our results with the expectations for the visible mass, adopting the most recent estimates in the literature for contributions of the Galactic stellar disk and interstellar medium, and proposed models of the dark matter distribution. Our results match the expectation for the visible mass alone, never differing from it by more than 0.8 $Mo pc^-2 at any z, and thus we find little evidence for any dark component. We assume that the dark halo could be undetectable with our method, but the dark disk, recently proposed as a natural expectation of the LambdaCDM models, should be detected. Given the good agreement with the visible mass alone, models including a dark disk are less likely, but within errors its existence cannot be excluded. In any case, these results put constraints on its properties: thinner models (scale height lower than 4 kpc) reconcile better with our results and, for any scale height, the lower-density models are preferred. We believe that successfully predicting the stellar thick disk properties and a dark disk in agreement with our observations could be a challenging theoretical task.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

New Perspectives on the Sanctuary of Aesculapius in Nora (Sardinia): From Photogrammetry to Visualizing and Querying Tools

The ritual space of the Sanctuary of Aesculapius in Nora (Sardinia) is the main focus of a recent archaeological campaign led by the Cultural Heritage Department of the University of Padova. A partnership with 3DOM research group (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento) has offered new opportunities for a digital investigation of the site. The aim of the project is to map and visualize the sanctuary with methodologies enabling different users to engage with the site in new ways. They offer different web tools for exploring, understanding and interacting with the site, by focusing on 3D modelling, semantic enrichment and the contextualization of digital records. The entire site of Nora has been surveyed by a drone, which produced a digital model of the peninsula. A number of outputs have been used for different scales of visualization and a range of purposes: an open source multi-resolution web renderer is used to navigate the point cloud, labelled using a system of bounding boxes. At the same time it provides access to a 2.5D model of each building. Plugins in QGIS are used to produce extrusions of any mapped feature, gaining height values from the point cloud, and attributes from the shapefile. Photogrammetric models of single ritual artifacts can be located in their own context and be displayed using 3D web renderers

BVRIJHK photometry and proper motion analysis of NGC 6253 and the surrounding field

Context. We present a photometric and astrometric catalog of 187963 stars located in the field around the old super-metal-rich Galactic open cluster NGC 6253. The total field-of-view covered by the catalog is 34' x 33'. In this field, we provide CCD BVRI photometry. For a smaller region close to the cluster's center, we also provide near-infrared JHK photometry. Aims. We analyze the properties of NGC 6253 by using our new photometric data and astrometric membership. Methods. In June 2004, we targeted the cluster during a 10 day multi-site campaign, which involved the MPG/ESO 2.2m telescope with its wide-field imager and the Anglo-Australian 3.9m telescope, equipped with the IRIS2 near-infrared imager. Archival CCD images of NGC 6253 were used to derive relative proper motions and to calculate the cluster membership probabilities. Results. We have refined the cluster's fundamental parameters, deriving (V_0-M_v)=11.15, E(B - V)=0.15, E(V - I)=0.25, E(V - J)=0.50, and E(V - H)=0.55. The color excess ratios obtained using both the optical and near infrared colors indicate a normal reddening law in the direction of NGC 6253. The age of NGC 6253 at 3.5 Gyr, determined from our best-fitting isochrone appears to be slightly older than the previous estimates. Finally, we estimated the binary fraction among the cluster members to be \sim20%-30% and identified 11 blue straggler candidates.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, 11 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A. Catalog avaiable via CD

Giant Quantum Reflection of Neon Atoms from a Ridged Silicon Surface

The specular reflectivity of slow, metastable neon atoms from a silicon surface was found to increase markedly when the flat surface was replaced by a grating structure with parallel narrow ridges. For a surface with ridges that have a sufficiently narrow top, the reflectivity was found to increase more than two orders of magnitude at the incident angle of 10 mRad from the surface. The slope of the reflectivity vs the incident angle near zero was found to be nearly an order of magnitude smaller than that of a flat surface. A grating with 6.5% efficiency for the first-order diffraction was fabricated by using the ridged surface structure.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. To be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Photocatalytic bacterial inactivation by TiO2-coated surfaces

The aim of this study was the evaluation of the photoactivated antibacterial activity of titanium dioxide (TiO(2))-coated surfaces. Bacterial inactivation was evaluated using TiO(2)-coated Petri dishes. The experimental conditions optimized with Petri dishes were used to test the antibacterial effect of TiO(2)-coated ceramic tiles. The best antibacterial effect with Petri dishes was observed at 180, 60, 30 and 20 min of exposure for Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas putida and Listeria innocua, respectively. The ceramic tiles demonstrated a photoactivated bactericidal effect at the same exposure time. In general, no differences were observed between the antibacterial effect obtained with Petri dishes and tiles. However, the photochemical activity of Petri dishes was greater than the activity of the tiles. Results obtained indicates that the TiO(2)-coated surfaces showed a photoactivated bactericidal effect with all bacteria tested highlighting that the titania could be used in the ceramic and building industry for the production of coated surfaces to be placed in microbiologically sensitive environments, such as the hospital and food industry

CA-IX-Expressing Small Extracellular Vesicles (sEVs) Are Released by Melanoma Cells under Hypoxia and in the Blood of Advanced Melanoma Patients

Cutaneous melanoma is a highly aggressive skin cancer, with poor prognosis. The tumor microenvironment is characterized by areas of hypoxia. Carbonic anhydrase IX (CA-IX) is a marker of tumor hypoxia and its expression is regulated by hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1). CA-IX has been found to be highly expressed in invasive melanomas. In this study, we investigated the effects of hypoxia on the release of small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) in two melanoma in vitro models. We demonstrated that melanoma cells release sEVs under both normoxic and hypoxic conditions, but only hypoxia-induced sEVs express CA-IX mRNA and protein. Moreover, we optimized an ELISA assay to provide evidence for CA-IX protein expression on the membranes of the sEVs. These CA-IX-positive sEVs may be exploited as potential biomarkers for liquid biopsy