Prototype 9.7 m Schwarzschild-Couder telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: status of the optical system

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an international project for a next-generation ground-based gamma ray observatory, aiming to improve on the sensitivity of current-generation experiments by an order of magnitude and provide energy coverage from 30 GeV to more than 300 TeV. The 9.7m Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) candidate medium-size telescope for CTA exploits a novel aplanatic two-mirror optical design that provides a large field of view of 8 degrees and substantially improves the off-axis performance giving better angular resolution across all of the field of view with respect to single-mirror telescopes. The realization of the SC optical design implies the challenging production of large aspherical mirrors accompanied by a submillimeter-precision custom alignment system. In this contribution we report on the status of the implementation of the optical system on a prototype 9.7 m SC telescope located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona.Comment: Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2017), Busan, Korea. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1709.0348

How To Make A Pie: Reproducible Research for Empirical Economics & Econometrics

Empirical economics and econometrics (EEE) research now relies primarily on the application of code to datasets. Handling the workflow linking datasets, programs, results and finally manuscript(s) is essential if one wish to reproduce results, which is now increasingly required by journals and institutions. We underline here the importance of “reproducible research” in EEE and suggest three simple principles to follow. We illustrate these principles with good habits and tools, with particular focus on their implementation in most popular software and languages in applied economics

How To Make A Pie: Reproducible Research for Empirical Economics & Econometrics

Empirical economics and econometrics (EEE) research now relies primarily on the application of code to datasets. Handling the workflow linking datasets, programs, results and finally manuscript(s) is essential if one wish to reproduce results, which is now increasingly required by journals and institutions. We underline here the importance of “reproducible research” in EEE and suggest three simple principles to follow. We illustrate these principles with good habits and tools, with particular focus on their implementation in most popular software and languages in applied economics

Construction of a Schwarzschild-Couder telescope as a candidate for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: status of the optical system

We present the design and the status of procurement of the optical system of the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder telescope (pSCT), for which construction is scheduled to begin in fall at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona, USA. The Schwarzschild-Couder telescope is a candidate for the medium-sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array, which utilizes imaging atmospheric Cherenkov techniques to observe gamma rays in the energy range of 60Gev-60TeV. The pSCT novel aplanatic optical system is made of two segmented aspheric mirrors. The primary mirror has 48 mirror panels with an aperture of 9.6 m, while the secondary, made of 24 panels, has an diameter of 5.4 m. The resulting point spread function (PSF) is required to be better than 4 arcmin within a field of view of 6.4 degrees (80% of the field of view), which corresponds to a physical size of 6.4 mm on the focal plane. This goal represents a challenge for the inexpensive fabrication of aspheric mirror panels and for the precise alignment of the optical system as well as for the rigidity of the optical support structure. In this submission we introduce the design of the Schwarzschild-Couder optical system and describe the solutions adopted for the manufacturing of the mirror panels and their integration with the optical support structure.Comment: In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1508.0589

The role of short-term memory and visuo-spatial skills in numerical magnitude processing: evidence from Turner syndrome

Peer reviewe

IgG autoantibody to brain beta tubulin III associated with cytokine cluster-II discriminate cerebral malaria in central India

We investigated the significance of these self-reactive antibodies in clinically well-defined groups of P. falciparum infected patients manifesting mild malaria (MM), severe non-cerebral malaria (SM), or cerebral malaria (CM) and in control subjects from Gondia, a malaria epidemic site in central India using quantitative immunoprinting and multivariate statistical analyses. A two-fold complete-linkage hierarchical clustering allows classifying the different patient groups and to distinguish the CM from the others on the basis of their profile of IgG reactivity to brain proteins defined by PANAMA Blot. We identified beta tubulin III (TBB3) as a novel discriminant brain antigen in the prevalence of CM. In addition, circulating IgG from CM patients highly react with recombinant TBB3. Overall, correspondence analyses based on singular value decomposition show a strong correlation between IgG anti-TBB3 and elevated concentration of cluster-II cytokine (IFNγ, IL1β, TNFα, TGFβ) previously demonstrated to be a predictor of CM in the same populatio

Investigating the TeV Morphology of MGRO J1908+06 with VERITAS

We report on deep observations of the extended TeV gamma-ray source MGRO J1908+06 made with the VERITAS very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray observatory. Previously, the TeV emission has been attributed to the pulsar wind nebula (PWN) of the Fermi-LAT pulsar PSR J1907+0602. We detect MGRO J1908+06 at a significance level of 14 standard deviations (14 sigma) and measure a photon index of 2.20 +/- 0.10_stat +/- 0.20_sys. The TeV emission is extended, covering the region near PSR J1907+0602 and also extending towards SNR G40.5--0.5. When fitted with a 2-dimensional Gaussian, the intrinsic extension has a standard deviation of sigma_src = 0.44 +/- 0.02 degrees. In contrast to other TeV PWNe of similar age in which the TeV spectrum softens with distance from the pulsar, the TeV spectrum measured near the pulsar location is consistent with that measured at a position near the rim of G40.5--0.5, 0.33 degrees away.Comment: To appear in ApJ, 8 page

Very-high-energy observations of the binaries V 404 Cyg and 4U 0115+634 during giant X-ray outbursts

Transient X-ray binaries produce major outbursts in which the X-ray flux can increase over the quiescent level by factors as large as $10^7$. The low-mass X-ray binary V 404 Cyg and the high-mass system 4U 0115+634 underwent such major outbursts in June and October 2015, respectively. We present here observations at energies above hundreds of GeV with the VERITAS observatory taken during some of the brightest X-ray activity ever observed from these systems. No gamma-ray emission has been detected by VERITAS in 2.5 hours of observations of the microquasar V 404 Cyg from 2015, June 20-21. The upper flux limits derived from these observations on the gamma-ray flux above 200 GeV of F $< 4.4\times 10^{-12}$ cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ correspond to a tiny fraction (about $10^{-6}$) of the Eddington luminosity of the system, in stark contrast to that seen in the X-ray band. No gamma rays have been detected during observations of 4U 0115+634 in the period of major X-ray activity in October 2015. The flux upper limit derived from our observations is F $< 2.1\times 10^{-12}$ cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ for gamma rays above 300 GeV, setting an upper limit on the ratio of gamma-ray to X-ray luminosity of less than 4%.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa