Reply to the Letter to the Editor: The Italian Society of Rheumatology clinical practice guidelines for the management of polymyalgia rheumatica

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Italian Society of Rheumatology recommendations for the management of gout.

Objective: Gout is the most common arthritis in adults. Despite the availability of valid therapeutic options, the management of patients with gout is still suboptimal. The Italian Society of Rheumatology (SIR) aimed to update, adapt to national contest and disseminate the 2006 EULAR recommendations for the management of gout. Methods: The multidisciplinary group of experts included rheumatologists, general practitioners, internists, geriatricians, nephrologists, cardiologists and evidence-based medicine experts. To maintain consistency with EULAR recommendations, a similar methodology was utilized by the Italian group. The original propositions were translated in Italian and priority research queries were identified through a Delphi consensus approach. A systematic search was conducted for selected queries. Efficacy and safety data on drugs reported in RCTs were combined in a meta-analysis where feasible. The strength of recommendation was measured by utilising the EULAR ordinal and visual analogue scales. Results: The original 12 propositions were translated and adapted to Italian context. Further evidences were collected about the role of diet in the non-pharmacological treatment of gout and the efficacy of oral corticosteroids and low-dose colchicine in the management of acute attacks. Statements concerning uricosuric treatments were withdrawn and replaced with a proposition focused on a new urate lowering agent, febuxostat. A research agenda was developed to identify topics still not adequately investigated concerning the management of gout. Conclusions: The SIR has developed updated recommendations for the management of gout adapted to the Italian healthcare system. Their implementation in clinical practice is expected to improve the management of patients with gout

Simulation studies for the Mini-EUSO detector

Mini-EUSO is a mission of the JEM-EUSO program flying onboard the International Space Station since August 2019. Since the first data acquisition in October 2019, more than 35 sessions have been performed for a total of 52 hours of observations. The detector has been observing Earth at night-time in the UV range and detected a wide variety of transient sources all of which have been modeled through Monte Carlo simulations. Mini-EUSO is also capable of detecting meteors and potentially space debris and we performed simulations for such events to estimate their impact on future missions for cosmic ray science from space. We show here examples of the simulation work done in this framework to analyze the Mini-EUSO data. The expected response of Mini-EUSO with respect to ultra high energy cosmic ray showers has been studied. The efficiency curve of Mini-EUSO as a function of primary energy has been estimated and the energy threshold for Cosmic Rays has been placed to be above 10$^{21}$ eV. We compared the morphology of several transient events detected during the mission with cosmic ray simulations and excluded that they can be due to cosmic ray showers. To validate the energy threshold of the detector, a system of ground based flashers is being used for end-to-end calibration purposes. We therefore implemented a parameterization of such flashers into the JEM-EUSO simulation framework and studied the response of the detector with respect to such sources

Neutrino Target-of-Opportunity Observations with Space-based and Suborbital Optical Cherenkov Detectors

Cosmic-ray accelerators capable of reaching ultra-high energies are expected to also produce very-high energy neutrinos via hadronic interactions within the source or its surrounding environment. Many of the candidate astrophysical source classes are either transient in nature or exhibit flaring activity. Using the Earth as a neutrino converter, suborbital and space-based optical Cherenkov detectors, such as EUSO-SPB2 and POEMMA, will be able to detect upward-moving extensive air showers induced by decay tau-leptons generated from cosmic tau neutrinos with energies ∼10 PeV and above. Both EUSO-SPB2 and POEMMA will be able to quickly repoint, enabling rapid response to astrophysical transient events. we calculate the transient sensitivity and sky coverage for both EUSO-SPB2 and POEMMA, accounting for constraints imposed by the Sun and the Moon on the observation time. We also calculate both detectors\u27 neutrino horizons for a variety of modeled astrophysical neutrino fluences. We find that both EUSO-SPB2 and POEMMA will achieve transient sensitivities at the level of modeled neutrino fluences for nearby sources. We conclude with a discussion of the prospects of each mission detecting at least one transient event for various modeled astrophysical neutrino sources

Neutrino Target-of-Opportunity Observations with Space-based and Suborbital Optical Cherenkov Detectors

Cosmic-ray accelerators capable of reaching ultra-high energies are expected to also produce very-high energy neutrinos via hadronic interactions within the source or its surrounding environment. Many of the candidate astrophysical source classes are either transient in nature or exhibit flaring activity. Using the Earth as a neutrino converter, suborbital and space-based optical Cherenkov detectors, such as POEMMA and EUSO-SPB2, will be able to detect upward-moving extensive air showers induced by decaying tau-leptons generated from cosmic tau neutrinos with energies ∼10 PeV and above. Both EUSO-SPB2 and POEMMA will be able to quickly repoint, enabling rapid response to astrophysical transient events. We calculate the transient sensitivity and sky coverage for both EUSO-SPB2 and POEMMA, accounting for constraints imposed by the Sun and the Moon on the observation time. We also calculate both detectors\u27 neutrino horizons for a variety of modeled astrophysical neutrino fluences. We find that both EUSO-SPB2 and POEMMA will achieve transient sensitivities at the level of modeled neutrino fluences for nearby sources. We conclude with a discussion of the prospects of each mission detecting at least one transient event for various modeled astrophysical neutrino sources

Simulation studies for the Mini-EUSO detector

Mini-EUSO is a mission of the JEM-EUSO program flying onboard the International Space Station since August 2019. Since the first data acquisition in October 2019, more than 35 sessions have been performed for a total of 52 hours of observations. The detector has been observing Earth at night-time in the UV range and detected a wide variety of transient sources all of which have been modelled through Monte Carlo simulations. Mini-EUSO is also capable of detecting meteors and potentially space debris and we performed simulations for such events to estimate their impact on future missions for cosmic ray science from space. We show here examples of the simulation work done in this framework to analyse the Mini-EUSO data. The expected response of Mini-EUSO with respect to ultra high energy cosmic ray showers has been studied. The efficiency curve of Mini-EUSO as a function of primary energy has been estimated and the energy threshold for Cosmic Rays has been placed to be above 10$^{21}$ eV. We compared the morphology of several transient events detected during the mission with cosmic ray simulations and excluded that they can be due to cosmic ray showers. To validate the energy threshold of the detector, a system of ground based flashers is being used for end-to-end calibration purposes. We therefore implemented a parameterisation of such flashers into the JEM-EUSO simulation framework and studied the response of the detector with respect to such sources

EUSO-SPB1 mission and science

The Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon 1 (EUSO-SPB1) was launched in 2017 April from Wanaka, New Zealand. The plan of this mission of opportunity on a NASA super pressure balloon test flight was to circle the southern hemisphere. The primary scientific goal was to make the first observations of ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray extensive air showers (EASs) by looking down on the atmosphere with an ultraviolet (UV) fluorescence telescope from suborbital altitude (33 km). After 12 days and 4 h aloft, the flight was terminated prematurely in the Pacific Ocean. Before the flight, the instrument was tested extensively in the West Desert of Utah, USA, with UV point sources and lasers. The test results indicated that the instrument had sensitivity to EASs of ⪆ 3 EeV. Simulations of the telescope system, telescope on time, and realized flight trajectory predicted an observation of about 1 event assuming clear sky conditions. The effects of high clouds were estimated to reduce this value by approximately a factor of 2. A manual search and a machine-learning-based search did not find any EAS signals in these data. Here we review the EUSO-SPB1 instrument and flight and the EAS search

Measurement of UV light emission of the nighttime Earth by Mini-EUSO for space-based UHECR observations

The JEM-EUSO (Joint Experiment Missions for Extreme Universe Space Observatory) program aims at the realization of the ultra-high energy cosmic ray (UHECR) observation using wide field of view fluorescence detectors in orbit. Ultra-violet (UV) light emission from the atmosphere such as airglow and anthropogenic light on the Earth\u27s surface are the main background for the space-based UHECR observations. The Mini-EUSO mission has been operated on the International Space Station (ISS) since 2019 which is the first space-based experiment for the program. The Mini-EUSO instrument consists of a 25 cm refractive optics and the photo-detector module with the 2304-pixel array of the multi-anode photomultiplier tubes. On the nadir-looking window of the ISS, the instrument is capable of continuously monitoring a ~300 km x 300 km area. In the present work, we report the preliminary result of the measurement of the UV light in the nighttime Earth using the Mini-EUSO data downlinked to the ground. We mapped UV light distribution both locally and globally below the ISS obit. Simulations were also made to characterize the instrument response to diffuse background light. We discuss the impact of such light on space-based UHECR observations and the Mini-EUSO science objectives

EUSO@TurLab project in view of Mini-EUSO and EUSO-SPB2 missions

The TurLab facility is a laboratory, equipped with a 5 m diameter and 1 m depth rotating tank, located in the fourth basement level of the Physics Department of the University of Turin. In the past years, we have used the facility to perform experiments related to the observations of Extreme Energy Cosmic Rays (EECRs) from space using the fluorescence technique for JEM-EUSO missions with the main objective to test the response of the trigger logic. In the missions, the diffuse night brightness and artificial and natural light sources can vary significantly in time and space in the Field of View (FoV) of the telescope. Therefore, it is essential to verify the detector performance and test the trigger logic under such an environment. By means of the tank rotation, a various terrestrial surface with the different optical characteristics such as ocean, land, forest, desert and clouds, as well as artificial and natural light sources such as city lights, lightnings and meteors passing by the detector FoV one after the other is reproduced. The fact that the tank is located in a very dark place enables the tests under an optically controlled environment. Using the Mini-EUSO data taken since 2019 onboard the ISS, we will report on the comparison between TurLab and ISS measurements in view of future experiments at TurLab. Moreover, in the forthcoming months we will start testing the trigger logic of the EUSO-SPB2 mission. We report also on the plans and status for this purpose