The “Pieve di Santa Maria” in Arezzo (Italy). From the Laser Scanner Survey to the Knowledge of the Architectural Structure

The parish church of “Santa Maria” is considered one of the most important medieval buildings of Arezzo Although the church is attested from 11th century, it is between the 13th and 14th centuries that reached its current consistency, characterized by the particular façade with small columns on several levels and an imposing bell tower. Later, from the 16th to the 18th century, the church underwent profound transformations, that were almost completely erased by extensive restoration works in the second half of the 19th century. The architectural survey of the parish church of “Santa Maria” was carried out with a phase-shift laser scanner and a digital reflex camera (Z+F 5006h). 189 scans were performed for generating the 3D model of the church: 180 of them with high density and normal quality, lasting 5-6 minutes; the remaining ones with super high density and high quality, lasting 13-14 minutes. Vectorial drawings of plans and sections were then created from the 3D model. Thanks to laser scanner survay of the chuch, it was possible to highlight the singularity of the structure of the basilical body and the transept. The tilt of walls and columns, the variations in the thickness of the walls, the considerable deformations of some arches, the cracks and textures of the wall facing were thus shown. The information obtained attested an architectural structure created by complex construction events that over time have affected this building. The cnstructive singularities involve the medieval genesis of the building, the transformations during the following centuries and the following restoration works. These composite features are specific and common to every ancient building. This peculiar epistemological condition eschews from simplifications and requires deep and complex studies closely linked to the problems of conservation of the structures

Bulk Etch Rate Measurements and Calibrations of Plastic Nuclear Track Detectors

New calibrations of CR39 and Makrofol nuclear track detectors have been obtained using 158 A GeV Pb (82+) and In (49+) ions; a new method for the bulk etch rate determination, using both cone height and base diameter measurements was developed. The CR39 charge resolution based on the etch-pit base area measurement is adequate to identify nuclear fragments in the interval 7 <= Z/beta <= 49. For CR39 the detection threshold is at REL~50 MeV cm^2/g, corresponding to a nuclear fragment with Z/beta~7. Base cone area distributions for Makrofol foils exposed to Pb (82+) ions have shown for the first time all peaks due to nuclear fragments with Z > 50; the distribution of the etched cone heights shows well separated individual peaks for Z/beta = 78 - 83 (charge pickup). The Makrofol detection threshold is at REL 2700 MeV cm^2/g, corresponding to a nuclear fragment with Z/beta~50.Comment: 11 pages, 5 EPS figures. Submitted to Nucl. Instr. Meth.

Results of the Search for Strange Quark Matter and Q-balls with the SLIM Experiment

The SLIM experiment at the Chacaltaya high altitude laboratory was sensitive to nuclearites and Q-balls, which could be present in the cosmic radiation as possible Dark Matter components. It was sensitive also to strangelets, i.e. small lumps of Strange Quark Matter predicted at such altitudes by various phenomenological models. The analysis of 427 m^2 of Nuclear Track Detectors exposed for 4.22 years showed no candidate event. New upper limits on the flux of downgoing nuclearites and Q-balls at the 90% C.L. were established. The null result also restricts models for strangelets propagation through the Earth atmosphere.Comment: 14 pages, 11 EPS figure

New MACRO results on atmospheric neutrino oscillations

The final results of the MACRO experiment on atmospheric neutrino oscillations are presented and discussed. The data concern different event topologies with average neutrino energies of ~3 and ~50 GeV. Multiple Coulomb Scattering of the high energy muons in absorbers was used to estimate the neutrino energy of each event. The angular distributions, the L/E_nu distribution, the particle ratios and the absolute fluxes all favour nu_mu --> nu_tau oscillations with maximal mixing and Delta m^2 =0.0023 eV^2. A discussion is made on the Monte Carlos used for the atmospheric neutrino flux. Some results on neutrino astrophysics are also briefly discussed.Comment: Invited Paper at the NANP03 Int. Conf., Dubna, 200

A Complete Skull of an Early Cretaceous Sauropod and the Evolution of Advanced Titanosaurians

Advanced titanosaurian sauropods, such as nemegtosaurids and saltasaurids, were diverse and one of the most important groups of herbivores in the terrestrial biotas of the Late Cretaceous. However, little is known about their rise and diversification prior to the Late Cretaceous. Furthermore, the evolution of their highly-modified skull anatomy has been largely hindered by the scarcity of well-preserved cranial remains. A new sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Brazil represents the earliest advanced titanosaurian known to date, demonstrating that the initial diversification of advanced titanosaurians was well under way at least 30 million years before their known radiation in the latest Cretaceous. The new taxon also preserves the most complete skull among titanosaurians, further revealing that their low and elongated diplodocid-like skull morphology appeared much earlier than previously thought

Euclid preparation: XXII. Selection of Quiescent Galaxies from Mock Photometry using Machine Learning

The Euclid Space Telescope will provide deep imaging at optical and near-infrared wavelengths, along with slitless near-infrared spectroscopy, across ~15,000 sq deg of the sky. Euclid is expected to detect ~12 billion astronomical sources, facilitating new insights into cosmology, galaxy evolution, and various other topics. To optimally exploit the expected very large data set, there is the need to develop appropriate methods and software. Here we present a novel machine-learning based methodology for selection of quiescent galaxies using broad-band Euclid I_E, Y_E, J_E, H_E photometry, in combination with multiwavelength photometry from other surveys. The ARIADNE pipeline uses meta-learning to fuse decision-tree ensembles, nearest-neighbours, and deep-learning methods into a single classifier that yields significantly higher accuracy than any of the individual learning methods separately. The pipeline has `sparsity-awareness', so that missing photometry values are still informative for the classification. Our pipeline derives photometric redshifts for galaxies selected as quiescent, aided by the `pseudo-labelling' semi-supervised method. After application of the outlier filter, our pipeline achieves a normalized mean absolute deviation of ~< 0.03 and a fraction of catastrophic outliers of ~< 0.02 when measured against the COSMOS2015 photometric redshifts. We apply our classification pipeline to mock galaxy photometry catalogues corresponding to three main scenarios: (i) Euclid Deep Survey with ancillary ugriz, WISE, and radio data; (ii) Euclid Wide Survey with ancillary ugriz, WISE, and radio data; (iii) Euclid Wide Survey only. Our classification pipeline outperforms UVJ selection, in addition to the Euclid I_E-Y_E, J_E-H_E and u-I_E,I_E-J_E colour-colour methods, with improvements in completeness and the F1-score of up to a factor of 2. (Abridged)Comment: 37 pages (including appendices), 26 figures; accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Dependence of atmospheric muon flux on seawater depth measured with the first KM3NeT detection units: The KM3NeT Collaboration

KM3NeT is a research infrastructure located in the Mediterranean Sea, that will consist of two deep-sea Cherenkov neutrino detectors. With one detector (ARCA), the KM3NeT Collaboration aims at identifying and studying TeV–PeV astrophysical neutrino sources. With the other detector (ORCA), the neutrino mass ordering will be determined by studying GeV-scale atmospheric neutrino oscillations. The first KM3NeT detection units were deployed at the Italian and French sites between 2015 and 2017. In this paper, a description of the detector is presented, together with a summary of the procedures used to calibrate the detector in-situ. Finally, the measurement of the atmospheric muon flux between 2232–3386 m seawater depth is obtained

Characterisation of the Hamamatsu photomultipliers for the KM3NeT Neutrino Telescope

[EN] The Hamamatsu R12199-02 3-inch photomultiplier tube is the photodetector chosen for the first phase of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope. About 7000 photomultipliers have been characterised for dark count rate, timing spread and spurious pulses. The quantum eÿciency, the gain and the peak-to-valley ratio have also been measured for a sub-sample in order to determine parameter values needed as input to numerical simulations of the detector.The authors acknowledge the financial support of the funding agencies: Agence Nationale de la Recherche (contract ANR-15-CE31-0020), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Commission Europeenne (FEDER fund and Marie Curie Program), Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), IdEx program and UnivEarthS Labex program at Sorbonne Paris Cite (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02), France; 'Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics' funded by the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, Germany; The General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT), Greece; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita e della Ricerca (MIUR), Italy; Agence de l'Oriental and CNRST, Morocco; Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands; National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS), Romania; Plan Estatal de Investigacion (refs. FPA2015-65150-C3-1-P, -2-P and -3-P, (MINECO/FEDER)), Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence and MultiDark Consolider (MINECO), and Prometeo and Grisolia programs (Generalitat Valenciana), Spain.Aiello, S.; Akrame, SE.; Ameli, F.; Anassontzis, EG.; Andre, M.; Androulakis, G.; Anghinolfi, M.... (2018). Characterisation of the Hamamatsu photomultipliers for the KM3NeT Neutrino Telescope. Journal of Instrumentation. 13:1-17. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/13/05/P05035S11713Adrián-Martínez, S., Ageron, M., Aharonian, F., Aiello, S., Albert, A., Ameli, F., … Anghinolfi, M. (2016). Letter of intent for KM3NeT 2.0. Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics, 43(8), 084001. doi:10.1088/0954-3899/43/8/084001Adrián-Martínez, S., Ageron, M., Aharonian, F., Aiello, S., Albert, A., Ameli, F., … Anvar, S. (2014). Deep sea tests of a prototype of the KM3NeT digital optical module. The European Physical Journal C, 74(9). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-014-3056-3Adrián-Martínez, S., Ageron, M., Aharonian, F., Aiello, S., Albert, A., Ameli, F., … Anton, G. (2016). The prototype detection unit of the KM3NeT detector. The European Physical Journal C, 76(2). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3868-9Herold, B., Kalekin, O., & Reubelt, J. (2011). PMT characterisation for the KM3NeT project. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 639(1), 70-72. doi:10.1016/j.nima.2010.09.018Timmer, P., Heine, E., & Peek, H. (2010). Very low power, high voltage base for a Photo Multiplier Tube for the KM3NeT deep sea neutrino telescope. Journal of Instrumentation, 5(12), C12049-C12049. doi:10.1088/1748-0221/5/12/c12049Mollo, C. M., Bozza, C., Chiarusi, T., Costa, M., Capua, F. D., Kulikovskiy, V., … Vivolo, D. (2016). A new instrument for high statistics measurement of photomultiplier characteristics. Journal of Instrumentation, 11(08), T08002-T08002. doi:10.1088/1748-0221/11/08/t08002Adrián-Martínez, S., Ageron, M., Aiello, S., Albert, A., Ameli, F., Anassontzis, E. G., … Anton, G. (2016). A method to stabilise the performance of negatively fed KM3NeT photomultipliers. Journal of Instrumentation, 11(12), P12014-P12014. doi:10.1088/1748-0221/11/12/p12014Lubsandorzhiev, B. K., Vasiliev, R. V., Vyatchin, Y. E., & Shaibonov, B. A. J. (2006). Photoelectron backscattering in vacuum phototubes. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 567(1), 12-16. doi:10.1016/j.nima.2006.05.04

Study of the effects induced by lead on the emulsion films of the OPERA experiment

The OPERA neutrino oscillation experiment is based on the use of the Emulsion Cloud Chamber (ECC). In the OPERA ECC, nuclear emulsion films acting as very high precision tracking detectors are interleaved with lead plates providing a massive target for neutrino interactions. We report on studies related to the effects occurring from the contact between emulsion and lead. A low radioactivity lead is required in order to minimize the number of background tracks in emulsions and to achieve the required performance in the reconstruction of neutrino events. It was observed that adding other chemical elements to the lead, in order to improve the mechanical properties, may significantly increase the level of radioactivity on the emulsions. A detailed study was made in order to choose a lead alloy with good mechanical properties and an appropriate packing technique so as to have a low enough effective radioactivity.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figure