Il restauro dell’impianto idraulico della grotta degli Animali, a Castello

The Grotto of the Animals in the garden of Castello was famous for its water features: tens of jets hidden among the stones in the vault and in the floor. To obtain this effect, the structure conceals a complex hydraulic system now investigated with a laser scanner survey that highlighted the path of the ancient pipelines above and around the grotto. The research has contributed to the project of conservation of the monument and to the reactivation of the hydraulic system. When the floor of the terrace above the grotto was covered with paving stones during the Lorraine era the earthenware conduction network, the sandstone fittings and the lead piping, which probably no longer worked at the time, were concealed once and for all. As a consequence, a fundamental component of the sixteenth-century hydraulic system was lost.After a first, initial phase in which the various internal decorations were secured and restored, a series of investigations and progressive inspections were initiated in order to carefully bring to light the whole hydraulic system and its layout above the vaults of the grotto. The aim was then to understand how it originally worked and to assess whether the water features could be reactivated as possible solutions for the grotto's roof in relation to the current layout of the Appennino level. As Giorgio Vasari wrote, the water falling inside the grotto ‘sounds sweet to the ear and is beautiful to the eye’. Therefore, so as to restore a fundamental element of the Grotto of the Animals, the next task was to figure out how to reactivate the hydraulic system in the extrados. First of all, after a series of cautious tests, the narrow lead pipes threading through the vaults, blocked by encrustations, deposits and materials that had hardened in time, were reopened by making perforations from the inside. Instead of replicating the sixteenth-century loop system, a different method was adopted to conduct the water to the rainfall nozzles. Every nozzle inside the grotto was given new autonomous and independent tubing connected to new collectors in the side ducts of the grotto to conduct the water. As a result, precise checks can be made of the water pressure and the system is easy to maintain

Laser scanning and modelling of barely visible features: the survey of the Grotto of the Animals at the Villa of Castello (Florence)

The deep fusion of natural and artificial elements typical of Italian Renaissance gardens is particularly evident in the park of Villa di Castello and in the Grotto of the Animals, also called Grotto of the Flood. The soil slope is the essential element of a huge underlying hydraulic machine and it is the result of extensive earthworks which led to the construction of the big retaining wall limiting the grotto and the adjacent fountains. Hence, this grotto represents only the visible part of a mechanism running all around it. It is formed by a single chamber vaulted and covered with sponge-like stones, as well as decorations made of pebbles and shells. The space is divided into three wings, with big marble basins at their end. Over them there are reliefs of animals made of different stones and marbles. Animals recur also in the compositions of fish and shellfish decorating the side basins and in the bronze birds currently kept in the Museo del Bargello. The name “Grotto of the Flood” comes from the water feature that characterised this place: visitors were surprised by tens of jets hidden among the stones in the vault and in the floor. To obtain this effect, the whole grotto is surrounded by multi-storey tunnels, hiding the hydraulic system and people activating the mechanisms. Research agreements were drawn up between the Special Superintendence for the Historical, Artistic and Ethnoanthropological Heritage, the Florence museums group and the GeCO Lab, for the realization of the survey presented in this paper. The task of the GeCO Lab was thus identifying the best solutions to check the spatial relations between the grotto and the area above, as well as the geometric and functional connections between the building and the ancient hydraulic system, composed by pipes and nozzles concealed between the stones. Besides, the overall survey was intended as a documentation of the on-going restoration work

Report from Working Group 3: Beyond the standard model physics at the HL-LHC and HE-LHC

This is the third out of five chapters of the final report [1] of the Workshop on Physics at HL-LHC, and perspectives on HE-LHC [2]. It is devoted to the study of the potential, in the search for Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics, of the High Luminosity (HL) phase of the LHC, defined as $3$ ab$^{-1}$ of data taken at a centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV, and of a possible future upgrade, the High Energy (HE) LHC, defined as $15$ ab$^{-1}$ of data at a centre-of-mass energy of 27 TeV. We consider a large variety of new physics models, both in a simplified model fashion and in a more model-dependent one. A long list of contributions from the theory and experimental (ATLAS, CMS, LHCb) communities have been collected and merged together to give a complete, wide, and consistent view of future prospects for BSM physics at the considered colliders. On top of the usual standard candles, such as supersymmetric simplified models and resonances, considered for the evaluation of future collider potentials, this report contains results on dark matter and dark sectors, long lived particles, leptoquarks, sterile neutrinos, axion-like particles, heavy scalars, vector-like quarks, and more. Particular attention is placed, especially in the study of the HL-LHC prospects, to the detector upgrades, the assessment of the future systematic uncertainties, and new experimental techniques. The general conclusion is that the HL-LHC, on top of allowing to extend the present LHC mass and coupling reach by $20-50\%$ on most new physics scenarios, will also be able to constrain, and potentially discover, new physics that is presently unconstrained. Moreover, compared to the HL-LHC, the reach in most observables will, generally more than double at the HE-LHC, which may represent a good candidate future facility for a final test of TeV-scale new physics

Exome sequencing identifies rare damaging variants in ATP8B4 and ABCA1 as novel risk factors for Alzheimers Disease

The genetic component of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been mainly assessed using Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), which do not capture the risk contributed by rare variants. Here, we compared the gene-based burden of rare damaging variants in exome sequencing data from 32,558 individuals —16,036 AD cases and 16,522 controls— in a two-stage analysis. Next to known genes TREM2, SORL1 and ABCA7, we observed a significant association of rare, predicted damaging variants in ATP8B4 and ABCA1 with AD risk, and a suggestive signal in ADAM10. Next to these genes, the rare variant burden in RIN3, CLU, ZCWPW1 and ACE highlighted these genes as potential driver genes in AD-GWAS loci. Rare damaging variants in these genes, and in particular loss-of-function variants, have a large effect on AD-risk, and they are enriched in early onset AD cases. The newly identified AD-associated genes provide additional evidence for a major role for APP-processing, Aβ-aggregation, lipid metabolism and microglial function in AD

Exome sequencing identifies rare damaging variants in ATP8B4 and ABCA1 as risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the leading cause of dementia, has an estimated heritability of approximately 70%1. The genetic component of AD has been mainly assessed using genome-wide association studies, which do not capture the risk contributed by rare variants2. Here, we compared the gene-based burden of rare damaging variants in exome sequencing data from 32,558 individuals—16,036 AD cases and 16,522 controls. Next to variants in TREM2, SORL1 and ABCA7, we observed a significant association of rare, predicted damaging variants in ATP8B4 and ABCA1 with AD risk, and a suggestive signal in ADAM10. Additionally, the rare-variant burden in RIN3, CLU, ZCWPW1 and ACE highlighted these genes as potential drivers of respective AD-genome-wide association study loci. Variants associated with the strongest effect on AD risk, in particular loss-of-function variants, are enriched in early-onset AD cases. Our results provide additional evidence for a major role for amyloid-β precursor protein processing, amyloid-β aggregation, lipid metabolism and microglial function in AD

The Zeus Vertex and Forward Muon Detector Readout Electronics.

The readout electronics for the Vertex and Forward Muon detectors of the ZEUS experiment at HERA is presented. The system architecture, based on a multilevel modular hierarchical structure, and the system performance are outlined