Astro Particle Physics from Space

We review how some open issues on Astro Particle physics can be studied by space born experiments in a complementary way to what is being done at underground and accelerators facilitiesComment: 18 pages, 12 figures, Invited Talk at the ESO-CERN-ESA Symposium on Astronomy, Cosmology and Fundamental Physics, March 4-7 2002, Garching, German

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS): search for antimatter and dark matter on the International Space Station

The AMS is a state of the art detector for extraterrestrial study of antimatter, matter and missing matter. After a precursor flight on STS91 in May 1998, AMS will be installed on the International Space Station where it will operate for three years. In this paper the AMS experiment is described and is physics potential reviewed.Comment: Invited talk to S. Miniato 1997, to be published on N.I.M., 8 pages 7 figures, LATEX, espcvc2.sty include

The Capabilities of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer as GeV Gamma-rays Detector

The modeled performance of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) as a high-energy (0.3 to 100 GeV) gamma-ray detector is described, and its gamma-ray astrophysics objectives are discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Invited talk at the Workshop on "GeV-TeV Gamma-Ray Astrophysics", 13-16 August 1999, Snowbird, Uta

The MEMS project

We report on the results of the first three years of the INFN/FBK-irst “MEMS Project”, a program aiming to develop innovative silicon-based radiation detectors using MEMS-like technologies

An infrared origin of leptonic mixing and its test at DeepCore

Fermion mixing is generally believed to be a low-energy manifestation of an underlying theory whose energy scale is much larger than the electroweak scale. In this paper we investigate the possibility that the parameters describing lepton mixing actually arise from the low-energy behavior of the neutrino interacting fields. In particular, we conjecture that the measured value of the mixing angles for a given process depends on the number of unobservable flavor states at the energy of the process. We provide a covariant implementation of such conjecture, draw its consequences in a two neutrino family approximation and compare these findings with current experimental data. Finally we show that this infrared origin of mixing will be manifest at the Ice Cube DeepCore array, which measures atmospheric oscillations at energies much larger than the tau lepton mass; it will hence be experimentally tested in a short time scale.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure; version to appear in Int.J.Mod.Phys.

Orthoptera in the far side of the world: the southernmost new genus of Phaneropterinae, and the ecology of some Subantarctic Orthoptera

A survey on orthoptera in the transition zone between the Patagonian and Subantarctic regions of Argentina, along the Atlantic coast, was conducted to improve knowledge on these insects, which in these extreme areas have evolved into peculiar species, indicative to understand the biogeographical limits of this order of insects. New data have emerged on highly specialized genera such as Bufonacris and Astroma while other more generalist genera such as Sinipta have shown considerable expansion southwards, probably favoured by warmer climatic conditions. A new genus and species are described here for the first time: Caimanellus gen. nov. with the species Caimanellus australis sp. nov., at present the southernmost representative of the Phaneropterinae ever recorded. More general considerations on the evolution of the distributional limits of this large group of orthopterans are here discusse

Analysis of NOAA particle data and correlations to seismic activity

Abstract. A decade of NOAA-15 particle flux data offers an opportunity to test claims of correlations between seismic activity and effects on the ionosphere. Over the last two decades, potentially interesting observations in the ionosphere-magnetosphere transition region have been investigated. Specifically these consists of anomalous particle fluxes detected by several space experiments and correlated with the earthquake occurrence. These particle fluxes are characterised by anomalous short-term and sharp increases in high energy particle counting rates, referred to as particle bursts. In this work, more general rules for particle bursts selection have been defined and tested on the NOAA database, for particles inside and outside the South Atlantic Anomaly region. The whole period of ten years burst activity from NOAA-15 database is reported. Data from four satellites, NOAA-15, 16, 17 and 18, were analyzed during periods of solar quiet activity in connection with strong earthquakes, revealing presence of bursts detected on more than one satellite close to the time of the same seismic events. This preliminary study presented here concentrates on periods of major Indonesian earthquakes from 1998 to date, including Sumatra event M=9, during which geomagnetic Ap index was less than 16 and with no sudden ionospheric disturbances. During this period particle burst temporal distributions have shown some correspondence with earthquake times. The limits of the analysis presented in this papers are discussed as well as prospects for future work