Potential of hardy kiwifruit (Actinidia arguta) for fruit spread production: a first insight

Hardy kiwifruits represent an unexplored agricultural resource for South Tyrol which could be of particular interest to the region by contributing to agricultural biodiversity and the valorisation of minor crops in the area. The main limitation of this crop is its short shelf-life as a fresh raw material, which is related to its intrinsic perishability. Processing hardy kiwis into canned products could be a valid strategy for encouraging the production and spread of this crop throughout the territory, enabling food products derived from it to be available all year round. This study evaluated the suitability of hardy kiwifruits for processing into spreads. Results indicate that no pectin needs to be added to ensure that the fruit spread has a pleasant texture, and browning over time occurred slowly, despite the preserve not being stabilised with antioxidant agents, suggesting that the shelf-life of such a preserve might be quite long. Finally, from a preliminary sensory evaluation, consumers rated the preserve positively with regard to its texture, sweetness and flavour, and it obtained a positive overall evaluation from an organoleptic point of view, indicating that this crop has potential for use in the production of fruit spreads

Quality of raspberries preserves obtained from different varieties

The aim of this work was to qualitatively evaluate four different raspberry varieties in order to identify the most suitable for processing into fruit spread. The study, which consisted of two years of experimentation, included agronomic evaluations (choice of varieties, cultivation under uniform conditions, harvesting and analysis of fruit quality parameters), technological evaluations (standardisation of the fruit spread preparation procedure, evaluation of the finished product in terms of chemical and physical properties and the evolution of the colour of the preserves over time) and sensory evaluations (consumer test aimed at identifying preferences between fruit spreads). The results obtained can support local producers by providing information on the characteristics of the varieties under investigation and the processed products obtained from them

MAGIC and H.E.S.S. detect VHE gamma rays from the blazar OT081 for the first time: a deep multiwavelength study

https://pos.sissa.it/395/815/pdfPublished versio

Epilepsy in primary cerebral tumors: The characteristics of epilepsy at the onset (results from the PERNO study-Project of Emilia Romagna Region on Neuro-Oncology)

Purpose: To present new information on the semiology and short-term evolution of seizures associated with primary brain tumors (PBTs) in a prospective study. Methods: This study is a section of the PERNO study - Project of Emilia Romagna Region on Neuro-Oncology, the main aim of which is to collect prospectively all cases of PBTs occurring in the Emilia-Romagna region, northeast Italy (3,983, 346 population) from January 2009 to December 2011, to allow epidemiologic, clinical, and biomolecular studies.The epilepsy section of the PERNO study included all the patients who experienced seizures, either as first symptom of the tumor or appearing during the course of the disease. Each patient was interviewed by the referring neurologist with a specific interest in epilepsy. The patients who entered the study were followed up with visits on a quarterly basis. Key Findings: We collected 100 cases with full clinical, neuroradiologic, and pathologic data. The majority (79%) had high grade PBTs (glioblastoma in 50 cases), whereas the remaining patients had low-grade gliomas, mostly localized in the frontal (60%), temporal (38%), and parietal (28%) lobes. Seizures were the first symptom of the tumor in 72 cases. Overall, the initial seizures were tonic-clonic (48%) (without clear initial focal signs in more than half of the patients), focal motor (26%), complex partial (10%), and somatosensitive (8%). The majority of cases (60%) had isolated seizures or a low seizure frequency at the onset of the disease, whereas a high seizure frequency or status epilepticus was observed in 18% and 12% of cases, respectively. Ninety-two patients underwent surgical removal of the tumor, which was either radical (38%) or partial (53%). Seven patients underwent only cerebral biopsy. In the 72 patients in whom seizures were the first symptom, the mean time to the surgical treatment was 174 days, with a significant difference between high grade (95 days) and low grade (481 days) gliomas. At the time of our first observation, the majority of patients (69%) had already undergone surgical removal, with a mean follow-up of 3 months after the procedure. Overall, 39 patients (56%) were seizure free after tumor removal. The good outcome did not depend on presurgical seizure frequency or tumor type, although there was a trend for better results with low-grade PBTs. Significance: These data provide evidence that seizures are strictly linked to the tumoral lesion: They are the initial symptom of the tumor, reflect the tumor location and type, are usually resistant to antiepileptic treatment, and may disappear after the treatment of the lesion.Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2013 International League Against Epilepsy

The blazar TXS 0506+056 associated with a high-energy neutrino: insights into extragalactic jets and cosmic ray acceleration

International audienceA neutrino with energy ∼290 TeV, IceCube-170922A, was detected in coincidence with the BL Lac object TXS 0506+056 during enhanced gamma-ray activity, with chance coincidence being rejected at ∼3σ level. We monitored the object in the very-high-energy (VHE) band with the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes for ∼41 hr from 1.3 to 40.4 days after the neutrino detection. Day-timescale variability is clearly resolved. We interpret the quasi-simultaneous neutrino and broadband electromagnetic observations with a novel one-zone lepto-hadronic model, based on interactions of electrons and protons co-accelerated in the jet with external photons originating from a slow-moving plasma sheath surrounding the faster jet spine. We can reproduce the multiwavelength spectra of TXS 0506+056 with neutrino rate and energy compatible with IceCube-170922A, and with plausible values for the jet power of . The steep spectrum observed by MAGIC is concordant with internal γγ absorption above ∼100 GeV entailed by photohadronic production of a ∼290 TeV neutrino, corroborating a genuine connection between the multi-messenger signals. In contrast to previous predictions of predominantly hadronic emission from neutrino sources, the gamma-rays can be mostly ascribed to inverse Compton upscattering of external photons by accelerated electrons. The X-ray and VHE bands provide crucial constraints on the emission from both accelerated electrons and protons. We infer that the maximum energy of protons in the jet comoving frame can be in the range ∼1014 – 1018 eV

Upper limits on the very high energy emission from GRBs observed by MAGIC

The MAGIC collaboration has developed a dedicated observational strategy to repoint rapidly towards gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). In this contribution we present the information extracted from the large sample of the GRBs observed by MAGIC from 2013 to 2019. None of these GRBs were significantly detected, and this study aims to shed light on the reasons behind those non-detections. The same strategy had led to the successful detection of two GRBs at Very High Energies (VHE, E > 100 GeV). We describe the details of the MAGIC GRB observational procedure and the general properties of each observed GRB. The lack of detection can be attributed either to unfavourable conditions or GRB intrinsic properties, such as the magnetic field’s energy density, the bulk Lorentz factor, or the emitting region’s size. For the presented sample of GRBs, we show the methods used to obtain flux upper limits in the VHE range, and propose physical implications of the non-detection of VHE emission. These results constitute an essential reference point to study the broadband emission of GRBs, and for the Cherenkov telescope community to organize future follow-ups of GRBs at VHE energies

Multi-messenger characterization of Mrk501 during historically low X-ray and gamma-ray activity

Blazars, together with other active galactic nuclei, are the most luminous persistent sources in our universe; and therefore a prime candidate for very-high-energy (>0.2 TeV, VHE) gamma-ray observations. For the two MAGIC telescopes, the Mrk501 galaxy is among the brightest observed blazars due to its proximity. We report a multi-wavelength and multi-messenger study of Mrk501 with data from 2017 to 2020, when Mrk501 showed a VHE flux typically below 10% that of the Crab Nebula. During this time, we performed three long observations with NuSTAR, which characterized the hard X-ray emission during three different low-activity flux levels. This Mrk501 dataset provided the unprecedented opportunity to study multi-wavelength variability and correlations with sensitive instruments during historically low X-ray and VHE gamma-ray emission (below 5% of the Crab Nebula flux in the VHE range), which could be considered as the baseline emission of Mrk501. We complemented the broadband spectral energy distributions (SED) of the identified historically low X-ray and VHE gamma-ray flux with data published by IceCube, in order to evaluate the potential existence of a hadronic component that is stable (or slowly variable), and less visible than the leptonic component that may dominate the emission during typical and flaring activity. In this contribution, we will also describe the evolution of the broadband SED comparing different theoretical scenarios

Resolving the origin of very-high-energy gamma-ray emission from the PeVatron candidate SNR G106.3+2.7 using MAGIC telescopes

The supernova remnant (SNR) G106.3+2.7 associated with a 100 TeV gamma-ray source reported by HAWC, Tibet ASγ, and LHAASO Collaborations is one of the promising PeVatron candidates. Because the SNR contains an energetic pulsar wind nebula (PWN) dubbed Boomerang powered by the pulsar PSR J2229+6114, it is unclear whether the gamma-ray emission originates from the SNR or PWN complex and whether it is caused by hadronic or leptonic processes. We observed gamma rays above 200 GeV in the vicinity of the SNR G106.3+2.7 using the MAGIC telescopes for total ∼ 120 hours between May 2017 and August 2019 with an angular resolution of 0.07– 0.10 degrees, achieving an unprecedented exposure for this object at these energies. An extended gamma-ray emission spatially correlated with the radio continuum emission at the head and tail of SNR G106.3+2.7 was detected using the MAGIC telescopes. We found a significant gamma-ray emission above 5.65 TeV only from the SNR tail region, while no significant emission in the same band is found at the SNR head region containing the Boomerang PWN. Therefore, the gamma rays above 10 TeV detected with the air shower experiments are, likely, mainly emitted from the SNR tail region. In this presentation, we discuss the morphology of the gamma-ray emission from this complex region and attempt self-consistent multi-wavelength modeling of the energy spectrum

Protons Spectrum from MAGIC Telescopes data

Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) are designed to detect cosmic gamma rays. As a by-product, IACTs detect Cherenkov flashes generated by millions of hadronic air showers every night. We present the proton energy spectrum from several hundred GeV to several hundred TeV, retrieved from the hadron induced showers detected by the MAGIC telescopes. The protons are discriminated from He and other heavy nuclei by means of using machine learning classification. The energy estimation is based on a specially developed deep neural network regressor. In the last decade, Deep Learning methods gained much interest in the scientific community for their ability to extract complex relations in data and process large datasets in a short time. The proton energy spectrum obtained in this work is compared to the spectra obtained by dedicated cosmic ray experiments

MAGIC detection of Geminga: an Inverse Compton tail?

We report the detection of pulsed emission from the Geminga pulsar (PSR J0633+1746) with the MAGIC telescopes. After the Crab and Vela pulsars, Geminga is the third pulsar detected in the very-high-energy domain, and its estimated age of 340 ky makes it the oldest one. The spectrum derived by MAGIC extends from 15 GeV to 75 GeV and can be modeled by a power-law function with spectral index Γ = 5.62 ± 0.54. Joint fits to MAGIC and Fermi-LAT data disfavour the existence of a sub-exponential cut-off in this energy range. Our results are discussed in the framework of the outer gap pulsar model. The measured power-law emission can be interpreted as the transition from curvature radiation to inverse Compton (IC) scattering of charges accelerated in the northern outer gap. The IC component is expected to continue towards higher energies. These results have been published in Acciari et al. 202