2,812 research outputs found
The LAUE project for broadband gamma-ray focusing lenses
We present the LAUE project devoted to develop an advanced technology for
building a high focal length Laue lens for soft gamma--ray astronomy (80-600
keV). The final goal is to develop a focusing optics that can improve the
current sensitivity in the above energy band by 2 orders of magnitude.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, presented at the SPIE conference on "Optics for
EUV, X-ray, and Gamma-ray Astronomy". To be published in the Proceedings of
SPIE, vol.8147, 201
Development status of the LAUE project
We present the status of LAUE, a project supported by the Italian Space
Agency (ASI), and devoted to develop Laue lenses with long focal length (up to
100 meters), for hard X--/soft gamma--ray astronomy (80-600 keV). Thanks to
their focusing capability, the design goal is to improve the sensitivity of the
current instrumention in the above energy band by 2 orders of magnitude, down
to a few times photons/(cm s keV).Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, presented at the Space Telescopes and
Instrumentation Symposium in Amsterdam, 2012: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray
Conference. Published in the Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 8443, id.
84430B-84430B-9 (2012
New development: Directly elected mayors in Italy: creating a strong leader doesnât mean creating strong leadership
More than 20 years after their introduction, directly elected mayors are key players in Italian urban governance. This article explains the main effects of this reform on local government systems and provides lessons for other countries considering directly elected mayors
Co-occurrence simplicial complexes in mathematics:identifying the holes of knowledge
In the last years complex networks tools contributed to provide insights on
the structure of research, through the study of collaboration, citation and
co-occurrence networks. The network approach focuses on pairwise relationships,
often compressing multidimensional data structures and inevitably losing
information. In this paper we propose for the first time a simplicial complex
approach to word co-occurrences, providing a natural framework for the study of
higher-order relations in the space of scientific knowledge. Using topological
methods we explore the conceptual landscape of mathematical research, focusing
on homological holes, regions with low connectivity in the simplicial
structure. We find that homological holes are ubiquitous, which suggests that
they capture some essential feature of research practice in mathematics. Holes
die when a subset of their concepts appear in the same article, hence their
death may be a sign of the creation of new knowledge, as we show with some
examples. We find a positive relation between the dimension of a hole and the
time it takes to be closed: larger holes may represent potential for important
advances in the field because they separate conceptually distant areas. We also
show that authors' conceptual entropy is positively related with their
contribution to homological holes, suggesting that polymaths tend to be on the
frontier of research
Scientific prospects in soft gamma-ray astronomy enabled by the LAUE project
This paper summarizes the development of a successful project, LAUE,
supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and devoted to the development of
long focal length (up to 100 m) Laue lenses for hard X--/soft gamma--ray
astronomy (80-600 keV). The apparatus is ready and the assembling of a
prototype lens petal is ongoing. The great achievement of this project is the
use of bent crystals. From measurements obtained on single crystals and from
simulations, we have estimated the expected Point Spread Function and thus the
sensitivity of a lens made of petals. The expected sensitivity is a few
photons cm s keV. We discuss a number of
open astrophysical questions that can settled with such an instrument aboard a
free-flying satellite.Comment: 17 pages, 18 figures, published in Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume
8861, id. 886106 17 pp. (2013
The practices of apartheid as a war crime: a critical analysis
The human suffering caused by the political ideology of apartheid in South Africa during the Apartheid era (1948-1994) prompted worldwide condemnation and a variety of diplomatic and legal responses. Amongst these responses was the attempt to have apartheid recognised both as a crime against humanity in the 1973 Apartheid Convention as well as a war crime in Article 85(4)(c) of Additional Protocol I. This article examines the origins, nature and current status of the practices of apartheid as a war crime and its possible application to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Robust pricing and hedging of double no-touch options
Double no-touch options, contracts which pay out a fixed amount provided an
underlying asset remains within a given interval, are commonly traded,
particularly in FX markets. In this work, we establish model-free bounds on the
price of these options based on the prices of more liquidly traded options
(call and digital call options). Key steps are the construction of super- and
sub-hedging strategies to establish the bounds, and the use of Skorokhod
embedding techniques to show the bounds are the best possible.
In addition to establishing rigorous bounds, we consider carefully what is
meant by arbitrage in settings where there is no {\it a priori} known
probability measure. We discuss two natural extensions of the notion of
arbitrage, weak arbitrage and weak free lunch with vanishing risk, which are
needed to establish equivalence between the lack of arbitrage and the existence
of a market model.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figure
Performance of a Large-Area GEM Detector Prototype for the Upgrade of the CMS Muon Endcap System
Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) technology is being considered for the forward
muon upgrade of the CMS experiment in Phase 2 of the CERN LHC. Its first
implementation is planned for the GE1/1 system in the region of the muon endcap mainly to control muon level-1 trigger rates
after the second long LHC shutdown. A GE1/1 triple-GEM detector is read out by
3,072 radial strips with 455 rad pitch arranged in eight -sectors.
We assembled a full-size GE1/1 prototype of 1m length at Florida Tech and
tested it in 20-120 GeV hadron beams at Fermilab using Ar/CO 70:30 and
the RD51 scalable readout system. Four small GEM detectors with 2-D readout and
an average measured azimuthal resolution of 36 rad provided precise
reference tracks. Construction of this largest GEM detector built to-date is
described. Strip cluster parameters, detection efficiency, and spatial
resolution are studied with position and high voltage scans. The plateau
detection efficiency is [97.1 0.2 (stat)]\%. The azimuthal resolution is
found to be [123.5 1.6 (stat)] rad when operating in the center of
the efficiency plateau and using full pulse height information. The resolution
can be slightly improved by 10 rad when correcting for the bias due
to discrete readout strips. The CMS upgrade design calls for readout
electronics with binary hit output. When strip clusters are formed
correspondingly without charge-weighting and with fixed hit thresholds, a
position resolution of [136.8 2.5 stat] rad is measured, consistent
with the expected resolution of strip-pitch/ = 131.3 rad. Other
-sectors of the detector show similar response and performance.Comment: 8 pages, 32 figures, submitted to Proc. 2014 IEEE Nucl. Sci.
Symposium, Seattle, WA, reference adde
Development and performance of Triple-GEM detectors for the upgrade of the muon system of the CMS experiment
The CMS Collaboration is evaluating GEM detectors for the upgrade of the muon system. This contribution will focus on the R&D performed on chambers design features and will discuss the performance of the upgraded detector
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