Improving natural risk management by means of virtual surveys through hazardous volcanic contexts by using Augmented and Virtual Reality

To ensure an efficient natural risk management, we need an in-depth understanding and assessment of risk as well as the adoption of effective prevention measures. Modern techniques such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) offer the opportunity to explore our environment for professional as well as educational purposes, conveying useful information not only to scientists, but also to at-risk populations. “Virtual navigation on volcanoes by Augmented Reality and 3D-headset” was a geoevent we organized in the framework of the 6th edition of the Italian “Settimana del Pianeta Terra” (Week of Planet Earth) in October 2018. The geoevent featured AR and Virtual Reality exhibits, highlighting the benefits of these tools in applications for Earth monitoring, also with positive contributions in mitigation actions to reduce the impact of natural hazards. We proposed virtual 3D models of volcanic regions in Iceland and Italy (at Etna volcano), which guided the visitors in a virtual survey through hazardous contexts like landslide prone areas and fault zones. The event was supported as part of the 3DTeLC project funded through the Erasmus+ Key Action 2 Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education scheme (Project Reference: 2017-1-UK01-KA203-036719).3DTeLC project funded through the Erasmus+ Key Action 2 Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education scheme (Project Reference: 2017-1-UK01-KA203-036719)PublishedVienna, Austria1TM. Formazion

Towards coordinated site monitoring and common strategies for mitigation of Radio Frequency Interference at the Italian radio telescopes

We present a project to implement a national common strategy for the mitigation of the steadily deteriorating Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) situation at the Italian radio telescopes. The project involves the Medicina, Noto, and Sardinia dish antennas and comprised the definition of a coordinated plan for site monitoring as well as the implementation of state-of-the-art hardware and software tools for RFI mitigation. Coordinated monitoring of frequency bands up to 40 GHz has been performed by means of continuous observations and dedicated measurement campaigns with fixed stations and mobile laboratories. Measurements were executed on the frequency bands allocated to the radio astronomy and space research service for shared or exclusive use and on the wider ones employed by the current and under-development receivers at the telescopes. Results of the monitoring campaigns provide a reference scenario useful to evaluate the evolution of the interference situation at the telescopes sites and a case series to test and improve the hardware and software tools we conceived to counteract radio frequency interference. We developed a multi-purpose digital backend for high spectral and time resolution observations over large bandwidths. Observational results demonstrate that the spectrometer robustness and sensitivity enable the efficient detection and analysis of interfering signals in radio astronomical data. A prototype off-line software tool for interference detection and flagging has been also implemented. This package is capable to handle the huge amount of data delivered by the most modern instrumentation on board of the Italian radio telecsopes, like dense focal plane arrays, and its modularity easen the integration of new algorithms and the re-usability in different contexts or telescopes.Comment: 39 pages, 10 Figures and 7 Tables. INAF Technical Report n. 149 (2022). http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12386/3208

Report attività di didattica e divulgazione INAF-IRA 2021

In questo documento sono riportate e descritte le attività di Didattica e Divulgazione (D&D) dell'INAF - Istituto di Radioastronomia svolte nel 2021. Le attività includono la progettazione di contenuti, la curatela e gestione del Centro Visite “Marcello Ceccarelli”, l’organizzazione di eventi in collaborazione con enti territoriali, nazionali e internazionali, la gestione amministrativa e finanziaria, la formazione di studenti e giovani collaboratori e la gestione degli accessi esterni per riprese video e servizi fotografici presso la Stazione Radioastronomica di Medicina (BO)

REPORT 2022 DELLE ATTIVITÀ DI DIDATTICA E DIVULGAZIONE INAF - IRA

L'Istituto di Radioastronomia (IRA) dell’Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) è impegnato nella diffusione delle proprie attività presso le scuole e il pubblico, attraverso le visite guidate alle Stazioni Radioastronomiche di Medicina (BO) e Noto (SR) e la partecipazione alla realizzazione di mostre, eventi, ecc. Le attività di Didattica e Divulgazione IRA includono la progettazione di contenuti, la curatela e gestione del Centro Visite “Marcello Ceccarelli”, l’organizzazione di eventi in collaborazione con enti territoriali, nazionali e internazionali, la gestione amministrativa e finanziaria, la formazione di nuovo personale. In questo documento sono riportate le attività svolte nel 2022

Insights into the high-energy γ-ray emission of Markarian 501 from extensive multifrequency observations in the Fermi era

We report on the γ-ray activity of the blazar Mrk 501 during the first 480 days of Fermi operation. We find that the average Large Area Telescope (LAT) γ-ray spectrum of Mrk 501 can be well described by a single power-law function with a photon index of 1.78 ± 0.03. While we observe relatively mild flux variations with the Fermi-LAT (within less than a factor of two), we detect remarkable spectral variability where the hardest observed spectral index within the LAT energy range is 1.52 ± 0.14, and the softest one is 2.51 ± 0.20. These unexpected spectral changes do not correlate with the measured flux variations above 0.3 GeV. In this paper, we also present the first results from the 4.5 month long multifrequency campaign (2009 March 15-August 1) on Mrk 501, which included the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), Swift, RXTE, MAGIC, and VERITAS, the F-GAMMA, GASP-WEBT, and other collaborations and instruments which provided excellent temporal and energy coverage of the source throughout the entire campaign. The extensive radio to TeV data set from this campaign provides us with the most detailed spectral energy distribution yet collected for this source during its relatively low activity. The average spectral energy distribution of Mrk 501 is well described by the standard one-zone synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) model. In the framework of this model, we find that the dominant emission region is characterized by a size ≲0.1 pc (comparable within a factor of few to the size of the partially resolved VLBA core at 15-43 GHz), and that the total jet power (≃1044 erg s-1) constitutes only a small fraction (∼10-3) of the Eddington luminosity. The energy distribution of the freshly accelerated radiating electrons required to fit the time-averaged data has a broken power-law form in the energy range 0.3 GeV-10 TeV, with spectral indices 2.2 and 2.7 below and above the break energy of 20 GeV. We argue that such a form is consistent with a scenario in which the bulk of the energy dissipation within the dominant emission zone of Mrk 501 is due to relativistic, proton-mediated shocks. We find that the ultrarelativistic electrons and mildly relativistic protons within the blazar zone, if comparable in number, are in approximate energy equipartition, with their energy dominating the jet magnetic field energy by about two orders of magnitude. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society

Lesione ulcerativa della mucosa orale: diagnosi di un caso clinico.

Le stomatopatie possono avere manifestazioni cliniche differenziabili, ma in alcuni casi sono sovrapponibili. In quest’ultima evenienza la diagnostica differenziale ha un ruolo di primo piano al fine di giungere ad una corretta diagnosi e quindi ad un corretto management terapeutico. Da questo punto di vista le classificazioni delle stomatopatie devono consentire un percorso diagnostico razionale. I metodi classificativi non vanno considerati come meri elenchi ma devono consentire ai clinici un linguaggio comune ed un algoritmo diagnostico ragionato e quindi corretto. Gli autori presentano un suggestivo caso clinico di lesione ulcerativa della mucosa orale che a prima impressione poteva indurre ad una diagnosi di malignità, viceversa una accurata raccolta anamnestica ed una ragionata visita specialistica hanno indotto i clinici ad una diagnosi di ulcera traumatica. La rimozione dei fattori causali ha consentito la risoluzione del caso clinico con la completa guarigione