48 research outputs found
Expected performance of a Laue lens based on bent crystals
In the context of the LAUE project devoted to build a long focal length
focusing optics for soft gamma-ray astronomy (70/100 keV to 600 keV), we
present results of simulation of a Laue lens, based on bent crystals in
different assembling configurations (quasi-mosaic and reflection-like
geometries). The main aim is to significantly overcome the sensitivity limits
of the current generation of gamma-ray telescopes and improve the imaging
capability.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, presented at the Space Telescopes and
Instrumentation Symposium 2012: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray Conference.
Published in Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 8443, id. 844331-844331-7 (2012
Bent crystal selection and assembling for the LAUE project
For the first time, with the Laue project, bent crystals are being used for
focusing photons in the 80-300 keV energy range. The advantage is their high
reflectivity and better Point Spread Function with respect to the mosaic flat
crystals. Simulations have already shown their excellent focusing capability
which makes them the best candidates for a Laue lens whose sensitivity is also
driven by the size of the focused spot. Selected crystals are Germanium
(perfect, (111)) and Gallium Arsenide (mosaic, (220)) with 40 m curvature
radius to get a spherical lens with 20 m long focal length. A lens petal is
being built. We report the measurement technique by which we are able to
estimate the exact curvature of each tile within a few percent of uncertainty
and their diffraction efficiency. We also discuss some results.Comment: 9 pages, 15 figures, SPIE conference vol. 8861 (2013
Results of the simulations of the petal/lens as part of the LAUE project
In the context of the LAUE project for focusing hard X-/gamma rays, a petal
of the complete lens is being assembled at the LARIX facility in the Department
of Physics and Earth Science of the University of Ferrara. The lens petal
structure is composed of bent Germanium and Gallium Arsenide crystals in
transmission geometry. We present the expectations derived from a mathematical
model of the lens petal. The extension of the model for the complete LAUE
project in the 90 -- 600 keV energy range will be discussed as well. A
quantitative analysis of the results of these simulations is also presented.Comment: 12 pages, 26 figures, SPIE optics + Photonics conference 2013, Vol:
886
Cosmological constraints from low redshift 21 cm intensity mapping with machine learning
The future 21 cm intensity mapping observations constitute a promising way to
trace the matter distribution of the Universe and probe cosmology. Here we
assess its capability for cosmological constraints using as a case study the
BINGO radio telescope, that will survey the Universe at low redshifts (). We use neural networks (NNs) to map summary statistics, namely, the
angular power spectrum (APS) and the Minkowski functionals (MFs), calculated
from simulations into cosmological parameters. Our simulations span a wide grid
of cosmologies, sampled under the CDM scenario, {}, and
under an extension assuming the Chevallier-Polarski-Linder (CPL)
parameterization, {}. In general, NNs trained over APS
outperform those using MFs, while their combination provides 27% (5%) tighter
error ellipse in the plane under the CDM scenario (CPL
parameterization) compared to the individual use of the APS. Their combination
allows predicting and with 4.9% and 1.6% fractional errors,
respectively, which increases to 6.4% and 3.7% under CPL parameterization.
Although we find large bias on estimates, we still predict with
24.3% error. We also confirm our results to be robust to foreground
contamination, besides finding the instrumental noise to cause the greater
impact on the predictions. Still, our results illustrate the capability of
future low redshift 21 cm observations in providing competitive cosmological
constraints using NNs, showing the ease of combining different summary
statistics.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figure
The role of autophagy in resistance to targeted therapies
Autophagy is a self-degradative cellular process, involved in stress response such as starvation, hypoxia, and oxidative stress. This mechanism balances macro-molecule recycling to regulate cell homeostasis. In cancer, autophagy play a role in the development and progression, while several studies describe it as one of the key processes in drug resistance. In the last years, in addition to standard anti-cancer treatments such as chemotherapies and irradiation, targeted therapy became one of the most adopted strategies in clinical practices, mainly due to high specificity and reduced side effects. However, similar to standard treatments, drug resistance is the main challenge in most patients. Here, we summarize recent studies that investigated the role of autophagy in drug resistance after targeted therapy in different types of cancers. We highlight positive results and limitations of pre-clinical and clinical studies in which autophagy inhibitors are used in combination with targeted therapies. Refereed/Peer-reviewe
Pentose phosphate pathway inhibition induce Endoplasmic Reticulum stress and autophagy
Pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) is a major glucose catabolism pathway that supplies the cell with a reduced form of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) and ribose-5-phosphate. NADPH is necessary for the detoxification of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reductive biosynthesis. A key player in this pathway is the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) that reduces NADP+ to NADPH, oxidizes glucose-6-phosphate and prevents ROS accumulation. Here, we show that the natural molecule 3,4’,5-trihydroxystilbene-3-β-d-glucoside (Polydatin) inhibits glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD). As expected, G6PD inhibition causes an imbalance in NADP+/NADPH ratio, leading to a redox imbalance, followed by Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) stress, autophagy, cell cycle block and apoptosis. we have demonstrated a link between G6PD inhibition and ER stress, showing that Unfolded Protein Response mediator such as PERK and IRE-1 have a key role in inducing autophagy and apoptosis after PPP block. Moreover, combination of PPP inhibition with autophagy inhibitors, such as chloroquine, strongly potentiate cytotoxicity on cancer cells, evidencing the role of autophagy as an escaping mechanism. This results shows that double inhibition of PPP and autophagy may be an affective therapeutic strategy against cancer
Testing synchrotron models and frequency resolution in BINGO 21 cm simulated maps using GNILC
To recover the 21 cm hydrogen line, it is essential to separate the
cosmological signal from the much stronger foreground contributions at radio
frequencies. The BINGO radio telescope is designed to measure the 21 cm line
and detect BAOs using the intensity mapping technique. This work analyses the
performance of the GNILC method, combined with a power spectrum debiasing
procedure. The method was applied to a simulated BINGO mission, building upon
previous work from the collaboration. It compares two different synchrotron
emission models and different instrumental configurations, in addition to the
combination with ancillary data to optimize both the foreground removal and
recovery of the 21 cm signal across the full BINGO frequency band, as well as
to determine an optimal number of frequency bands for the signal recovery. We
have produced foreground emissions maps using the Planck Sky Model, the
cosmological Hi emission maps are generated using the FLASK package and thermal
noise maps are created according to the instrumental setup. We apply the GNILC
method to the simulated sky maps to separate the Hi plus thermal noise
contribution and, through a debiasing procedure, recover an estimate of the
noiseless 21 cm power spectrum. We found a near optimal reconstruction of the
Hi signal using a 80 bins configuration, which resulted in a power spectrum
reconstruction average error over all frequencies of 3%. Furthermore, our tests
showed that GNILC is robust against different synchrotron emission models.
Finally, adding an extra channel with CBASS foregrounds information, we reduced
the estimation error of the 21 cm signal. The optimisation of our previous
work, producing a configuration with an optimal number of channels for binning
the data, impacts greatly the decisions regarding BINGO hardware configuration
before commissioning.Comment: Submitted to A&
The BINGO Project IX: Search for Fast Radio Bursts -- A Forecast for the BINGO Interferometry System
The Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) from Integrated Neutral Gas
Observations (BINGO) radio telescope will use the neutral Hydrogen emission
line to map the Universe in the redshift range , with
the main goal of probing BAO. In addition, the instrument optical design and
hardware configuration support the search for Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). In this
work, we propose the use of a BINGO Interferometry System (BIS) including new
auxiliary, smaller, radio telescopes (hereafter \emph{outriggers}). The
interferometric approach makes it possible to pinpoint the FRB sources in the
sky. We present here the results of several BIS configurations combining BINGO
horns with and without mirrors ( m, m, and m) and 5, 7, 9, or 10 for
single horns. We developed a new {\tt Python} package, the {\tt FRBlip}, which
generates synthetic FRB mock catalogs and computes, based on a telescope model,
the observed signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) that we used to compute numerically
the detection rates of the telescopes and how many interferometry pairs of
telescopes (\emph{baselines}) can observe an FRB. FRBs observed by more than
one baseline are the ones whose location can be determined. We thus evaluate
the performance of BIS regarding FRB localization. We found that BIS will be
able to localize 23 FRBs yearly with single horn outriggers in the best
configuration (using 10 outriggers of 6 m mirrors), with redshift ; the full localization capability depends on the number and the type of
the outriggers. Wider beams are best to pinpoint FRB sources because potential
candidates will be observed by more baselines, while narrow beams look deep in
redshift. The BIS can be a powerful extension of the regular BINGO telescope,
dedicated to observe hundreds of FRBs during Phase 1. Many of them will be well
localized with a single horn + 6 m dish as outriggers.(Abridged)Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables, submitted to A&