Writing Narratives for the Crime Reduction Toolkit

This document provides step-by-step guidance, agreed by the What Works Centre for Crime Reduction (WWCCR), on the style, format and content required for the narratives on the Crime Reduction Toolkit. These narratives are based on the EMMIE framework (Johnson et al., 2015) which, amongst other things, provides a method for critically appraising systematic reviews and meta-analyses in crime reduction

Updating the Crime Reduction Toolkit: A report and manual

The Crime Reduction Toolkit (CRT) is an online repository of narrative summaries of systematic reviews on crime reduction. This report details the methods used to update the CRT, outlining the systematic process and the numbers of records/items dealt with at each stage

The Swift-BAT hard X-ray sky monitoring unveils the orbital period of the HMXB IGR J16493-4348

IGR J16493-4348 is a supergiant high mass X-ray binary discovered by INTEGRAL in 2004. The source is detected at a significance level of $\sim21$ standard deviations in the Swift-BAT survey data collected during the first 54 months of the Swift mission. The timing analysis reveals an orbital period of $\sim$6.78 days and the presence of a full eclipse of the compact ob\ ject. The dynamical range (variability up to a factor $\sim$20) observed during the BAT monitoring suggests that IGR J16493-4348 is a wind-fed system. The derived semi-major axis of the binary system is \sim55 R_{\sun} with an orbit eccentr\ icity lower than 0.15.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

The Swift-BAT survey reveals the orbital period of three high-mass X-ray binaries

A growing number of previously hidden Galactic X-ray sources are now detected with recent surveys performed by the Integral and Swift satellites. Most of these new sources eluded past surveys due to their large local X-ray extinction and consequent low soft X-ray flux. The Swift-BAT performs daily monitoring of the sky in an energy band (15-150 keV) which is only marginally affected by X-ray extinction, thus allowing for the search of long periodicities in the light curve and identification of the nature of the X-ray sources. We performed a period search using the folding technique in the Swift-BAT light curves of three Integral sources: IGR J05007-7047, IGR J13186-6257 and IGR J17354-3255. Their periodograms show significant peaks at 30.77$\pm$0.01 d, 19.994$\pm$0.01 d and 8.448$\pm$0.002 d, respectively. We estimate the significance of these features from the chi squared distribution of all the trials, finding a probability less than 1.5$\times10^{-4}$ that the detections occurred due to chance. We complement our analysis with the study of their broadband X-ray emission. We identify the periodicities with the orbital periods of the sources. The periods are typical for the wind accretors X-ray binaries and we support this identification showing that also their energy spectra are compatible with an X-ray spectral emission characteristic of high-mass X-ray binaries. The spectrum of IGR J05007-704 that resides in the Large Magellanic Cloud, does not show any intrinsic local absorption, whereas the spectra of the Galactic sources IGR J17354-3255 and IGR J13186-6257 may be affected by a local absorber. The folded light curve for IGR J13186-6257 suggests a possible Be companion star.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures. Accepted for publication in A&

The deep look onto the hard X-ray sky: The Swift - INTEGRAL X-ray (SIX) survey

The super-massive black-holes in the centers of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are surrounded by obscuring matter that can block the nuclear radiation. Depending on the amount of blocked radiation, the flux from the AGN can be too faint to be detected by currently flying hard X-ray (above 15 keV) missions. At these energies only ~1% of the intensity of the Cosmic X-ray Background (CXB) can be resolved into point-like sources that are AGNs. In this work we address the question of the undetected sources contributing to the CXB with a very sensitive and new hard X-ray survey: the SIX survey that is obtained with the new approach of combining the Swift/BAT and INTEGRAL/IBIS X-ray observations. We merge the observations of both missions. This enhances the exposure time and reduces systematic uncertainties. As a result we obtain a new survey over a wide sky area of 6200 deg^2 that is more sensitive than the surveys of Swift/BAT or INTEGRAL/IBIS alone. Our sample comprises 113 sources: 86 AGNs (Seyfert-like and blazars), 5 galaxies, 2 clusters of galaxies, 3 Galactic sources, 3 previously detected unidentified X-ray sources, and 14 unidentified sources. The scientific outcome from the study of the sample has been properly addressed to study the evolution of AGNs at redshift below 0.4. We do not find any evolution using the 1/V_max method. Our sample of faint sources are suitable targets for the new generation hard X-ray telescopes with focusing techniques.Comment: ApJS accepte

The Palermo Swift-BAT Hard X-ray Catalogue. II- Results after 39 months of sky survey

We present the Palermo Swift-BAT hard X-ray catalogue obtained from the analysis of the the data relative to the first 39 months of the Swift mission. We have developed a dedicated software to perform data reduction, mosaicking and source detection on the BAT survey data. We analyzed the BAT dataset in three energy bands (14-150 keV, 14-30 keV, 14-70 keV), obtaining a list of 962 detections above a significance threshold of 4.8 standard deviations. The identification of the source counterparts was pursued using three strategies: cross-correlation with published hard X-ray catalogues, analysis of field observations of soft X-ray instruments, cross-correlation with the SIMBAD databases. The survey covers 90% of the sky down to a flux limit of 2.5x10E-11 erg/cm2/s and 50% of the sky down to a flux limit of 1.8x10E-11 erg/cm2/s in the 14-150 keV band. We derived a catalogue of 754 identified sources, of which ~69% are extragalactic, ~27% are Galactic objects, ~4% are already known X-ray or gamma ray emitters whose nature has not been determined yet. The integrated flux of the extragalactic sample is ~1% of the Cosmic X-ray background in the 14-150 keV range.Comment: Final version for pubblication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. 24 pages, 11 figures and 2 tables. The catalog is also available online at http://bat.ifc.inaf.i

Adding Another Dimension to Small Satellite Constellations

Satellite constellations for Earth Observation almost invariably use duplicates of the same satellites to provide higher temporal resolution or greater coverage. The value of Big Data applications often depend on the fusing of different sensor information. If instead constellation satellites are equipped with a variety of sensors, these can be configured to provide more complex data products. Flexibility and in orbit rearrangement can create a range of systems that can be configured on-demand to address a range of new applications. Small satellites and sensor capability have only recently advanced far enough to make such a systems financially viable. Key challenges in such systems are optimising the composition of the constellation with different sensors or capabilities in addressing different applications, and developing methods for fusing non-contemporaneous information to build capabilities that can only be achieved through a distributed system

Unveiling the nature of INTEGRAL objects through optical spectroscopy. IX. 22 more identifications, and a glance into the far hard X-ray Universe

(Abridged) Since its launch in October 2002, the INTEGRAL satellite has revolutionized our knowledge of the hard X-ray sky thanks to its unprecedented imaging capabilities and source detection positional accuracy above 20 keV. Nevertheless, many of the newly-detected sources in the INTEGRAL sky surveys are of unknown nature. The combined use of available information at longer wavelengths (mainly soft X-rays and radio) and of optical spectroscopy on the putative counterparts of these new hard X-ray objects allows us to pinpoint their exact nature. Continuing our long-standing program that has been running since 2004, and using 6 different telescopes of various sizes, we report the classification through optical spectroscopy of 22 more unidentified or poorly studied high-energy sources detected with the IBIS instrument onboard INTEGRAL. We found that 16 of them are active galactic nuclei (AGNs), while the remaining 6 objects are within our Galaxy. Among the identified extragalactic sources, 14 are Type 1 AGNs; of these, 6 lie at redshift larger than 0.5 and one has z = 3.12, which makes it the second farthest object detected in the INTEGRAL surveys up to now. The remaining AGNs are of type 2, and one of them is a pair of interacting Seyfert 2 galaxies. The Galactic objects are identified as two cataclysmic variables, one high-mass X-ray binary, one symbiotic binary and two chromospherically active stars. We thus still find that AGNs are the most abundant population among hard X-ray objects identified through optical spectroscopy. Moreover, we note that the higher sensitivity of the more recent INTEGRAL surveys is now enabling the detection of high-redshift AGNs, thus allowing the exploration of the most distant hard X-ray emitting sources and possibly of the most extreme blazars.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, 8 tables, accepted for publication on Astronomy & Astrophysics, main journa

Assessment of hydropyrolysis as a method for the quantification of black carbon using standard reference materials

A wide selection of thermal, chemical and optical methods have been proposed for the quantification of black carbon (BC) in environmental matrices, and the results to date differ markedly depending upon the method used. A new approach is hydropyrolysis (hypy), where pyrolysis assisted by high hydrogen pressures (150 bar) facilitates the complete reductive removal of labile organic matter, so isolating a highly stable portion of the BC continuum (defined as BChypy). Here, the potential of hypy for the isolation and quantification of BC is evaluated using the 12 reference materials from the International BC Ring Trial, comprising BC-rich samples, BC-containing environmental matrices and BC-free potentially interfering materials. By varying the hypy operating conditions, it is demonstrated that lignocellulosic, humic and other labile organic carbon material (defined as non-BChypy) is fully removed by 550 °C, with hydrogasification of the remaining BChypy not commencing until over 575 °C. The resulting plateau in sample mass and carbon loss is apparent in all of the environmental samples, facilitating BC quantification in a wide range of materials. The BChypy contents for all 12 ring trial samples fall within the range reported in the BC inter-comparison study, and systematic differences with other methods are rationalised. All methods for BC isolation, including hypy are limited by the fact that BC cannot be distinguished from extremely thermally mature organic matter; for example in high rank coals. However, the data reported here indicates that BChypy has an atomic H/C ratio of less than 0.5 and therefore comprises a chemically well-defined polyaromatic structure in terms of the average size of peri-condensed aromatic clusters of >7 rings (24 carbon atoms), that is consistent across different sample matrices. This, together with the sound underlying rationale for the reductive removal of labile organic matter, makes hypy an ideal approach for matrix independent BC quantification. The hypy results are extremely reproducible, with BChypy determinations from triplicate analyses typically within ±2% across all samples, limited mainly by the precision of the elemental analyser