Study for a Real-Time Alert System for Multi-Messenger Astronomy with the KM3NeT/ARCA Neutrino Telescope

The detection of a flux of high-energy neutrinos has open a new observation window on the high-energy Universe. The KM3NeT project aims to build a network of neutrino detectors in the Mediterranean Sea: ORCA, to be installed close to the Southern French coast and dedicated mainly to study the neutrino mass hierarchy; ARCA, which represents the northern counterpart of IceCube, the largest neutrino telescope presently in data taking. In the Phase-2 configuration, ARCA will be made of 230 vertical structures, called Detection Units, each hosting 18 Digital Optical Modules, and will occupy 1 cubic kilometre. Each DOM hosts 31 PMTs for detecting the Cherenkov light emitted along the path of relativistic charged particles in sea water. The sensors are continuously stressed by light sources, such as 40K beta decay and bioluminescence, in the underwater environment, requiring the use of an on-line filtering system, called TriDAS, which is also discussed. The ARCA detector is suited to be part of a global network of observatories that perform multi-messenger astrophysical and astronomy studies. The Astrophysical Neutrino Trigger System, ANTS, presented and described in this thesis, aims to perform a very fast on-line track reconstruction to drive follow-up observations by other observatories in a multi-messenger context, for neutrino induced muons in the the energy range 10 TeV < E < 10 PeV. The capabilities of ANTS, in terms of reconstruction efficiency, purity of the reconstructed sample, angular resolution, and processing speed, are discussed

POSIX access to remote storage via OpenID Connect

INFN-CNAF is one of the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (WLCG) Tier-1 data centers, providing support in terms of computing, networking, storage resources and services also to a wide variety of scientific collaborations, ranging from physics to bioinformatics and industrial engineering [1]. Recently, several collaborations working with our data center have developed computing and data management workflows that require access to S3 storage services and/or the integration with POSIX capabilities. Nevertheless, the access to the data must be regulated by federated authentication and authorization mechanisms, such as OpenID Connect (OIDC), which is largely adopted by communities like WLCG [2] and within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) [3]. In the present work, the possibility to regulate POSIX access by integrating JSON Web Token (JWT) [4] authentication, provided by INDIGO-IAM as Identity Provider [5], with solutions based on S3 (for object storage) and WebDAV (for hierarchical storage) protocols has been evaluated an related results have been reported. In such respect, a comparison between the performance yielded by S3 and WebDAV protocols has been carried out within the same distributed environment with the aim to better identify the solution most suitable for the different use cases

Indignation for moral violations suppresses the tongue motor cortex: preliminary TMS evidence

Abstract We commonly label moral violations in terms of 'disgust', yet it remains unclear whether metaphorical expressions linking disgust and morality are genuinely shared at the cognitive/neural level. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), we provide new insights into this debate by measuring motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) from the tongue generated by TMS over the tongue primary motor area (tM1) in a small group of healthy participants presented with vignettes of moral transgressions and non-moral vignettes. We tested whether moral indignation, felt while evaluating moral vignettes, affected tM1 excitability. Vignettes exerted a variable influence on MEPs with no net effect of the moral category. However, in accordance with our recent study documenting reduced tM1 excitability during exposure to pictures of disgusting foods or facial expressions of distaste, we found that vignettes of highly disapproved moral violations reduced tM1 excitability. Moreover, tM1 excitability and moral indignation were linearly correlated: the higher the moral indignation, the lower the tM1 excitability. Respective changes in MEPs were not observed in a non-oral control muscle, suggesting a selective decrease of tM1 excitability. These preliminary findings provide neurophysiological evidence supporting the hypothesis that morality might have originated from the more primitive experience of oral distaste

Fractional exclusion statistics applied to relativistic nuclear matter

The effect of statistics of the quasiparticles in the nuclear matter at extreme conditions of density and temperature is evaluated in the relativistic mean-field model generalized to the framework of the fractional exclusion statistics (FES). In the model, the nucleons are described as quasiparticles obeying FES and the model parameters were chosen to reproduce the ground state properties of the isospin-symmetric nuclear matter. In this case, the statistics of the quasiparticles is related to the strengths of the nucleon-nucleon interaction mediated by the neutral scalar and vector meson fields. The relevant thermodynamic quantities were calculated as functions of the nucleons density, temperature and fractional exclusion statistics parameter $\alpha$. It has been shown that at high temperatures and densities the thermodynamics of the system has a strong dependence on the statistics of the particles. The scenario in which the nucleon-nucleon interaction strength is independent of the statistics of particles was also calculated, but it leads in general to unstable thermodynamics.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

Retrofitting partial oxyfuel and Integrated Ca-Looping technologies to an existing cement plant: a case study

The present document describes the potential retrofit of an existing cement plant with carbon capture technologies applied in two sequential steps. The pathway proposed consists in a first retrofit through partial oxyfuel followed by the integrated calcium looping (CaL) technology. This kind of applications may represent a promising strategy for the decarbonization route in the cement sector without introducing chemical solvents or special components, in particular for existing cement kilns that may need to be revamped. The cement plant selected for this study is the 0.5 Mtcem/y Colleferro facility owned by Italcementi-HeidelbergCement. This study analyses the mass & energy balances of the partial oxyfuel, and the integrated CaL process retrofitted to the existing cement plant. The results of the two CCS technologies are then compared in terms of CO2 emission reduction and energy consumption with the reference plant without CO2 capture. The scope of this analysis is to evaluate the impact of carbon capture technologies on the cement production process. The process simulation software Aspen Plus V10.0® has been employed to develop the model for the three different plant configurations (i.e., the base case w/o carbon capture, the partial oxyfuel mode, and the integrated CaL). The base case has been validated using field measurements coming directly from the Colleferro plant. From this process flow model, the two CCS technologies have been developed according to the specific process requirements. Results show that a maximum reduction in CO2 emissions of 92.4% is possible with the integrated CaL, while the partial oxyfuel enables to capture 71.7% of the CO2 generated in the plant

Support for experiments at INFN-T1

The Italian WLCG Tier-1 located in Bologna and managed by INFN-CNAF has a long tradition in supporting several research communities in the fields of High-Energy Physics, Astroparticle Physics, Gravitational Waves, Nuclear Physics and others, to which provides computing resources in the form of batch computing, both HPC, HTC and Cloud, and storage. Although the LHC experiments at CERN represent the main users of the Tier-1 resources, an increasing number of communities and experiments are also being supported in all of their computing activities. Due to this demanding user base, an efficient support system is needed in order to assure a smooth and appropriate exploitation of the computing infrastructure. In this framework, such a role is played by the Tier-1 User Support group, which acts as the entry point for services, support requests, and problem reports. The group makes use of multiple systems to meet the different needs and specificities of the supported experiments. Moreover, the group continuously maintains detailed knowledge base in the form of an on-line user guide and develops tools to advertise specific information about the services available to the communities in a form that is easy to access and use. The communication channels are represented by ticketing systems and also by mailing lists used for a more direct communication, allowing to promptly notify maintenance interventions, downtimes and more in general all the new features and services provided by the center. In this paper, the ticketing systems, tools, platforms and services that User Support offers, and the internal organization of the department will be described. Future workflow plans in view of the DATACLOUD project, which will require an increasing effort, will also be presented

Best practice for AO NIR observations with PISCES at LBT

The Adaptive Optics Scientific Working Group of the Large Binocular Telescope produced this document. It was distributed accompanying the LBT call for the Science Verification and Science Demonstration time in 2011 and 2012. It is also available following this link: https://wiki.lbto.org/AdaptiveOptics/AOGuidelinesThis document describes the best practices for imaging with PISCES+FLAO@LBT, emphasizing the main differences with common Near InfraRed (NIR) imaging. This document is based on the experience made on the first run of the PISCES+FLAO @ LBT commissioning that did not cover all the possible aspects

Toward large diffraction limited space telescopes with the Latt lightweight active primary

The design of large segmented mirrors, actively controlled both in shape and in differential piston, is one of the challenges space optics is facing, driven by the needs of the astronomical community