M31 Pixel Lensing PLAN Campaign: MACHO Lensing and Self Lensing Signals

We present the final analysis of the observational campaign carried out by the PLAN (Pixel Lensing Andromeda) collaboration to detect a dark matter signal in form of MACHOs through the microlensing effect. The campaign consists of about 1 month/year observations carried out during 4 years (2007-2010) at the 1.5m Cassini telescope in Loiano ("Astronomical Observatory of BOLOGNA", OAB) plus 10 days of data taken in 2010 at the 2m Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) monitoring the central part of M31 (two fields of about 13'x12.6'). We establish a fully automated pipeline for the search and the characterization of microlensing flux variations: as a result we detect 3 microlensing candidates. We evaluate the expected signal through a full Monte Carlo simulation of the experiment completed by an analysis of the detection efficiency of our pipeline. We consider both "self lensing" and "MACHO lensing" lens populations, given by M31 stars and dark matter halo MACHOs, in the M31 and the Milky Way (MW), respectively. The total number of events is compatible with the expected self-lensing rate. Specifically, we evaluate an expected signal of about 2 self-lensing events. As for MACHO lensing, for full 0.5 (0.01) solar mass MACHO halos, our prediction is for about 4 (7) events. The comparatively small number of expected MACHO versus self lensing events, together with the small number statistics at disposal, do not enable us to put strong constraints on that population. Rather, the hypothesis, suggested by a previous analysis, on the MACHO nature of OAB-07-N2, one of the microlensing candidates, translates into a sizeable lower limit for the halo mass fraction in form of the would be MACHO population, f, of about 15% for 0.5 solar mass MACHOs.Comment: ApJ accepted, 13 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

ICF-VR: uno strumento di valutazione e progettazione educativa per persone anziane o con disabilità accolte in residenze socio-sanitarie e socioassistenziali

L’articolo illustra il percorso di ricerca che ha portato allo sviluppo degli strumenti di valutazione denominati ICF-VR (Vita Residenziale), rivolti a persone anziane o con gravi disabilità, accolte in strutture sanitarie e socio-sanitarie. Gli strumenti consentono di elaborare la progettazione educativa e assistenziale a partire da un profilo biopsicosociale di funzionamento e di valutarne gli outcome. A guida della progettazione è stato definito un modello di qualità di vita nelle strutture residenziali composto da cinque dimensioni, che vengono monitorate attraverso gli strumenti ICF-VR

SLOTT--AGAPE Project

SLOTT-AGAPE (Systematic Lensing Observation at Toppo Telescope - Andromeda Gravitational Pixel lensing Experiment) is a new collaboration project among international partners from England, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland that intends to perform microlensing observation by using M31 as target. The MACHOs search is made thanks to the pixel lensing technique