Expected performance of the ASTRI-SST-2M telescope prototype

ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) is an Italian flagship project pursued by INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) strictly linked to the development of the Cherenkov Telescope Array, CTA. Primary goal of the ASTRI program is the design and production of an end-to-end prototype of a Small Size Telescope for the CTA sub-array devoted to the highest gamma-ray energy region. The prototype, named ASTRI SST-2M, will be tested on field in Italy during 2014. This telescope will be the first Cherenkov telescope adopting the double reflection layout in a Schwarzschild-Couder configuration with a tessellated primary mirror and a monolithic secondary mirror. The collected light will be focused on a compact and light-weight camera based on silicon photo-multipliers covering a 9.6 deg full field of view. Detailed Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to estimate the performance of the planned telescope. The results regarding its energy threshold, sensitivity and angular resolution are shown and discussed.Comment: In Proceedings of the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2013), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). All CTA contributions at arXiv:1307.223

Risk Estimation in COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps

In the context of COVID-19, contact tracing has shown its value as a tool for contention of the pandemic. In addition to its paper based form, contact tracing can be carried out in a more scalable and faster way by using digital apps. Mobile phones can record digital signals emitted by communication and sensing technologies, enabling the identification of risky contacts between users. Factors such as proximity, encounter duration, environment, ventilation, and the use (or not) of protective measures contribute to the probability of contagion. Estimation of these factors from the data collected by phones remains a challenge. In this work in progress we describe some of the challenges of digital contact tracing, the type of data that can be collected with mobile phones and focus particularly on the problem of proximity estimation using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals. Specifically, we use machine learning models fed with different combinations of statistical features derived from the BLE signal and study how improvements in accuracy can be obtained with respect to reference models currently in use.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

A METHOD TO CALIBRATE THE HIGH-RESOLUTION CATANIA ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY SPECTROPOLARIMETER

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Gastric giant villous adenoma

Les auteurs rapportent un cas de polype villeux géant de l'estomac. Malgré l'extension de la lésion, celle-ci n'était que partiellement cancérisée. La transformation maligne est restée superficielle sur la majorité des prélèvements. Seuls de rares foyers d'envahissement sous-muqueux ont été détectés

Nanoparticle-Enhanced Surface Plasmon Resonance Imaging Enables the Ultrasensitive Detection of Non-Amplified Cell-Free Fetal DNA for Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing

Although many potential applications in early clinical diagnosis have been proposed, the use of a surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRI) technique for non-invasive prenatal diagnostic approaches based on maternal blood analysis is confined. Here, we report a nanoparticle-enhanced SPRI strategy for a non-invasive prenatal fetal sex determination based on the detection of a Y-chromosome specific sequence (single-gene SRY) in cell-free fetal DNA from maternal plasma. The SPR assay proposed here allows for detection of male DNA in mixtures of 2.5 aM male and female genomic DNAs with no preliminary amplification of the DNA target sequence, thus establishing an analytical protocol that does not require costly, time-consuming, and prone to sample contamination PCR-based procedures. Afterward, the developed protocol was successfully applied to reveal male cell-free fetal DNA in the plasma of pregnant women at different gestational ages, including early gestational ages. This approach would pave the way for the establishment of faster and cost-effective non-invasive prenatal testing