The paroxysmal event and its deposits

The 5 April 2003 eruption of Stromboli volcano (Italy) was the most violent in the past 50 years. It was also the best documented due to the accurate geophysical monitoring of the ongoing effusive eruption. Detailed field studies carried out a few hours to a few months after the event provided further information that were coupled with visual documentation to reconstruct the explosive dynamics. The eruption consisted of an 8-min-long explosive event preceded by a short-lived precursory activity that evolved into the impulsive ejection of gas and pyroclasts. Meter-sized ballistic blocks were launched to altitudes of up to 1400 m above the craters falling on the volcano flanks and on the village of Ginostra, about 2 km far from the vent. The vertical jet of gas and pyroclasts above the craters fed a convective plume that reached a height of 4 km. The calculated erupted mass yielded values of 1.1–1.4 × 108 kg. Later explosions generated a scoria flow deposit, with an estimated mass of 1.0–1.3 × 107 kg. Final, waning ash explosions closet the event. The juvenile fraction consisted of an almost aphyric, highly vesicular pumice mingled with a shallow-derived, crystal-rich, moderately vesicular scoria. Resuming of the lava emission a few hours after the paroxysm indicate that the shallow magmatic system was not significantly modified during the explosions. Combination of volume data with duration of eruptive phases allowed us to estimate the eruptive intensity: during the climactic explosive event, the mass discharge rate was between 106 and 107 kg/s, whereas during the pyroclastic flow activity, it was 2.8–3.6 × 105 kg/s. Strong similarities with other historical paroxysms at Stromboli suggest similar explosion dynamics

An 81-Year-Old Man with a 6-Year History of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Presenting with Disease Flare Following Ibrutinib Discontinuation

Patient: Male, 81-year-old Final Diagnosis: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia Symptoms: Fever Medication: — Clinical Procedure: — Specialty: Hematology Objective: Background: Case Report: Conclusions: Unusual clinical course Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a mature B-cell neoplasm and the most common leukemia in adults in Western countries. Novel agents, including BTK inhibitors and the BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax, have dramati-cally changed the treatment landscape. Moreover, a disease flare, characterized by sudden worsening of clinical symptoms, radiographic findings of rapidly worsening splenomegaly or lymphadenopathy, and laboratory changes (increased absolute lymphocyte count or lactate dehydrogenase), is a phenomenon described in up to 25% of patients with CLL after ibrutinib discontinuation. We describe a patient with CLL with disease flare after ibrutinib discontinuation due to disease progression and describe the subsequent management of vene-toclax initial treatment in the course of the disease flare. We describe the case of an 81-year-old man with a 6-year history of CLL who was treated with multiple lines of therapy and developed worsening of disease-related signs and symptoms with fever, marked increase of lym-phocyte count, acute worsening of renal function, and increase in lymph nodes and spleen size following ces-sation of targeted therapy with ibrutinib at the time of disease progression. There was subsequent overlap-ping of ibrutinib during the venetoclax dose escalation period to prevent disease flare recurrence. Our report highlights the problem of disease flare after ibrutinib discontinuation in order to avoid associated patient morbidity, underscoring the importance of awareness of this phenomenon and focusing on the addition of venetoclax at time of progression in ibrutinib-treated patients, as a temporary overlap strategy, to prevent disease flare

The machine protection system for the ELI-NP gamma beam system

The new Gamma Beam System (GBS) of the ELI-NPproject [1], currently under installation in Magurele (RO)by INFN, as part of EuroGammas consortium, can providegamma rays that open new possibilities for nuclear photonicsand nuclear physics.ELI-NP gamma rays are produced by Compton back-scattering to get monochromaticity (0,1% bandwidth), highflux (1013photons), tunable direction and energy up to19.5 MeV. Such gamma beam is obtained when a high-intensity laser collides a high-brightness electron beam withenergies up to740 MeV, a repetition rate of100 Hz, withtrains of 32 bunches within the same RF bucket.An advanced Machine Protection System (MPS) has beendeveloped, in order to ensure proper operation for this chal-lenging facility. The MPS operates on different layers of thecontrol system and is interfaced with all its sub-systems. Forinstance, it comprises different kind of beam loss monitors(based on Cherenkov optical fiber), hall probes, fast currenttransformer together with BPMs, and an embedded systembased on FPGA with distributed I/O over EtherCAT, to mon-itor vacuum and RF systems [2], which require fast responseto be interlocked within one RF pulse

Sisters in structure but different in character, some benzaldehyde and cinnamaldehyde derivatives differentially tune Aspergillus flavus secondary metabolism

Great are the expectations for a new generation of antimicrobials, and strenuous are the research efforts towards the exploration of diverse molecular scaffolds—possibly of natural origin – aimed at the synthesis of new compounds against the spread of hazardous fungi. Also high but winding are the paths leading to the definition of biological targets specifically fitting the drug’s structural characteristics. The present study is addressed to inspect differential biological behaviours of cinnamaldehyde and benzaldehyde thiosemicarbazone scaffolds, exploiting the secondary metabolism of the mycotoxigenic phytopathogen Aspergillus flavus. Interestingly, owing to modifications on the parent chemical scaffold, some thiosemicarbazones displayed an increased specificity against one or more developmental processes (conidia germination, aflatoxin biosynthesis, sclerotia production) of A. flavus biology. Through the comparative analysis of results, the ligand-based screening strategy here described has allowed us to delineate which modifications are more promising for distinct purposes: from the control of mycotoxins contamination in food and feed commodities, to the environmental management of microbial pathogens, to the investigation of specific structure–activity features for new generation drug discovery

The Birth of a Hawaiian Fissure Eruption

Most basaltic explosive eruptions intensify abruptly, allowing little time to document processes at the start of eruption. One opportunity came with the initiation of activity from fissure 8 (F8) during the 2018 eruption on the lower East Rift Zone of Klauea, Hawaii. F8 erupted in four episodes. We recorded 28 minutes of high-definition video during a 51-minute period, capturing the onset of the second episode on 5 May. From the videos we were able to analyze the following in-flight parameters: frequency and duration of explosions; ejecta heights; pyroclast exit velocities; in-flight total mass and estimated mass eruption rates; and the in-flight total grain size distributions. Videos record a transition from initial pulsating outgassing, via spaced, but increasingly rapid, discrete explosions, to quasi-sustained, unsteady fountaining. This transition accompanied waxing intensity (mass flux) of the F8 eruption. We infer that all activity was driven by a combination of the ascent of a coupled mixture of small bubbles and melt, and the buoyant rise of decoupled gas slugs and/or pockets. The balance between these two types of concurrent flow determined the exact form of the eruptive activity at any point in time, and changes to their relative contributions drove the transition we observed at early F8. Qualitative observations of other Hawaiian fountains at Klauea suggest that this physical model may apply more generally. This study demonstrates the value of in-flight parameters derived from high resolution videos, which offer a rapid and highly time-sensitive alternative to measurements based on sampling of deposits post-eruption

A surge in obsidian exploitation more than 1.2 million years ago at Simbiro III (Melka Kunture, Upper Awash, Ethiopia)

Pleistocene archaeology records the changing behaviour and capacities of early hominins. These behavioural changes, for example, to stone tools, are commonly linked to environmental constraints. It has been argued that, in earlier times, multiple activities of everyday life were all uniformly conducted at the same spot. The separation of focused activities across different localities, which indicates a degree of planning, according to this mindset characterizes later hominins since only 500,000 years ago. Simbiro III level C, in the upper Awash valley of Ethiopia, allows us to test this assumption in its assemblage of stone tools made only with obsidian, dated to more than 1.2 million years (Myr) old. Here we first reconstruct the palaeoenvironment, showing that the landscape was seasonally flooded. Following the deposition of an accumulation of obsidian cobbles by a meandering river, hominins began to exploit these in new ways, producing large tools with sharp cutting edges. We show through statistical analysis that this was a focused activity, that very standardized handaxes were produced and that this was a stone-tool workshop. We argue that at Simbiro III, hominins were doing much more than simply reacting to environmental changes; they were taking advantage of new opportunities, and developing new techniques and new skills according to them

Beam manipulation for resonant plasma wakefield acceleration

Plasma-based acceleration has already proved the ability to reach ultra-high accelerating gradients. However the step towards the realization of a plasma-based accelerator still requires some e ff ort to guarantee high brightness beams, stability and reliability. A significant improvement in the efficiency of PWFA has been demonstrated so far accelerating a witness bunch in the wake of a higher charge driver bunch. The transformer ratio, therefore the energy transfer from the driver to the witness beam, can be increased by resonantly exciting the plasma with a properly pre-shaped drive electron beam. Theoretical and experimental studies of beam manipulation for resonant PWFA will be presented her

Delivery status of the ELI-NP gamma beam system

International audienceThe ELI-NP GBS is a high intensity and monochromatic gamma source under construction in Magurele (Romania). The design and construction of the Gamma Beam System complex as well as the integration of the technical plants and the commissioning of the overall facility, was awarded to the Eurogammas Consortium in March 2014. The delivery of the facility has been planned in for 4 stages and the first one was fulfilled in October 31st 2015. The engineering aspects related to the delivery stage 1 are presented

High power test results of the Eli-NP S-Band gun fabricated with the new clamping technology without brazing

High gradient RF photoguns have been a key development to enable several applications of high quality electron beams. They allow the generation of beams with very high peak current and low transverse emittance, thus satisfying the tight demands of free-electron lasers, energy recovery linacs, Compton/Thomson sources and high-energy linear colliders. A new fabrication technique for this type of structures has been recently developed and implemented at the Laboratories of Frascati of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN-LNF, Italy). It is based on the use of special RF-vacuum gaskets, that allow a brazing-free realization process. The S-band gun of the ELI-NP gamma beam system (GBS) has been fabricated with this new technique. It operates at 100 Hz with 120 MV/m cathode peak field and 1.5 μs long RF pulses to house the 32 bunches necessary to reach the target gamma flux. High gradient tests, performed at full power and full repetition rate, have shown extremely good performances of the structure in terms of breakdown rate. In the paper, we report and discuss all the experimental results, the electromagnetic design and the mechanical realization processes