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Astronomy at school: An educational proposal to experience physics in high school
Get PDFAstronomy is a valuable tool for introducing young people to scientific disciplines and physics in particular. In addition to arousing curiosity, in fact, it allows numerous physics topics to be addressed: from the concept of field and force to the laws of dynamics, from Kepler’s laws to optics, from nuclear physics to relativity. In this article we present a physics course aimed at high-school students and which covers the treatment of some topics in astronomy. The course, which lasted a total of 20 hours, was highly appreciated by the participants
CKM measurements and CP violation in charm and beauty at LHCb
No full textThe excellent LHCb detector and data quality enable numerous measurements with world-leading precision and searches in various decays. The latest results on the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements and CP violation in charm and beauty decays at the LHCb experiment are presented, including the first observation of a nonzero mass difference in the D0 meson system, a more precise measurement of yCP , a new measurement of the CKM unitarity triangle γ and the latest γ combination with all LHCb measurements from both charm and beauty sectors, as well as two searches of CP violation in baryon decays
LUXE: A new experiment to study non-perturbative QED
No full textLaser Und XFEL Experiment (LUXE) is a new High Energy and
Laser Physics experiment planned to be installed in DESY. It will study the interactions of a very intense Laser beam with the high-energy, high-quality electron beams from the European XFEL accelerator, to measure characteristics of non-perturbative quantum electrodynamics
The road (not) taken. Reconstructing pre-modern roads in Viabundus. Methods and opportunities
Get PDFThe Viabundus pre-modern street map attempts to show medieval and early modern traffic connections. However, mapping medieval and pre-modern land routes comes with methodological challenges which are reflected upon in this paper. The reconstruction is based on written and archaeological sources, historical maps, and establishments of traffic infrastructure. Correlating the data with the origin places and finding places of pilgrim badges shows the research potential of the endeavor, as the simple co-visualization of the data already provides interesting connecting points
The Roman limes in Germania Inferior: a GIS application for the reconstruction of landscape
Get PDFThe Roman Limes represents the border line of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent in the 2nd century AD. It stretched over 5,000 km from the Atlantic coast of northern Britain, through Europe to the Black Sea, and from there to the Red Sea and across North Africa to the Atlantic coast. The remains of the Limes today consist of vestiges of built walls, ditches, forts, fortresses, watchtowers and civilian settlements. The limes system is focused both on the presence of natural physical barriers, such as the Rhine and Danube rivers in Europe and the Sahara Desert in North Africa, either on the presence of fortified sections such as the Hadrian's wall or the Germanic-Rhaetian limes. The latter two are the best preserved and studied section. However, the limes sections in which natural barriers were exploited to mark the boundary of the area under Roman control are less well known. Over the past two decades considerable progress has been made in the knowledge of limes areas such as the Rhine sector. In this area the river was exploited as a natural barrier, and control of the area was based on the presence of two larger legionary camps around which, along the southern course of the Rhine, small auxiliary camps gravitated. Only some of these encampments have been investigated and their position confirmed by archaeological excavations. The position of the other encampments is still speculated and awaiting verification. In this contribution, in order to verify the position of these hypothetical forts, through GIS systems a visibility analysis and path distance analysis was carried out based on the location of certain sites and taking into account the ancient road routes and the geomorphology of the soil
How to reconstruct the human mobility in mountainous area. A case from North-Eastern Italy
Get PDFThe aim of this research is to define a new methodology in order to reconstruct the historical human mobility network in mountain areas in a perspective of ‘longue durée’. Through the match of different types of data, in particular historical and archaeological sources, the analysis of environmental features and the application of a series of algorithms on a GIS platform, we produced a series of maps of possible mobility networks. The comparison between them and with the historical cartography emphasizes both continuities and breaks over time and outlines the reliability of the elaborations obtained. Our focus is a small region in the North-Eastern Italy, called Feltrino (BL), on a time frame from the Bronze Age to the modern times
Defining Southern Etruria Final Bronze Age settlement models using an integrated GIS and Machine Learning approach
Get PDFThis research aims to use quantitative and repeatable GIS techniques, as well as Machine Learning algorithms, to study the settlement patterns in Southern Etruria during the final phase of the Bronze Age (1150-950/925 BC). The region of Southern Etruria is located in present-day Latium, Tuscany, and Umbria. The study, which includes 166 settlements, focuses on identifying the morphological characteristics of these settlements by means of raster analysis. Using a Machine Learning approach, the research will compare real settlements with random points within the region to understand the specific characteristics of the settlement pattern in the landscape. The study will also examine the use of feature selection and features importance methods to select the most significant features of a multivariate dataset
Structured illumination generation with an integrated optical chip
Get PDFStructured illumination is a widely used technique in fluorescence microscopy that allows for super-resolution imaging. In this paper, a brief introduction to the topic will be presented, together with a compact and integrated optical device that can generate and spatially translate a structured light pattern suitable for SIM microscopy. The device uses optical waveguides and directional couplers
made with femtosecond laser micromachining. The beams are directed through an optical coupler to create the illumination pattern after interfering. The phase of the
beams in the waveguides can be adjusted using thermal phase-shifters so that it is possible to shift the illumination pattern over the field of view of the microscope, enabling the acquisition of multiple phase images for SIM reconstruction without the need for additional optical elements. The effectiveness of the device is demonstrated
by showing its use in a commercially available inverted microscope for superresolution imaging of Bovine Pulmonary Artery Endothelial Cells (BPAE Line) deposited on a commercial glass slide
Logic circuits and optical circuits: A teaching learning sequence to build quantum computation for high school students
Get PDFThe possibility to realize experimental devices from the circuit representation of protocols and algorithms for quantum computation and quantum information is embedded in their mathematical formulation, and such opportunity
becomes extremely relevant in a teaching context where the formal logical aspect need to be supported by ideal physical realizations. We present a part of the teaching learning sequence constructed for this purpose and the first outcomes of two experiments conducted by teachers from the Liceo Volta in Castel San Giovanni and Liceo Scientifico Gramsci in Florence. The approach followed aims to build a useful dialectic between diagrammatic representations and ideal experimental setups with optical devices, involving students through inquiry-based teaching strategies with the goal of promoting understanding and construction of the formal language and logic of quantum protocols
Deuterium burning measurement at LUNA and its astrophysical and nuclear implications
Get PDFThe D(p,γ) 3He reaction is responsible for the deuterium destruction during the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and affects the primordial deuterium abundance. This latter is sensitive to fundamental cosmological parameters such as
the baryon density and the effective number of relativistic species. In this paper, we describe the most precise direct measurement of the D(p,γ) 3He reaction in the BBN energy range (Ecm = 30–280 keV) at the LUNA (Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics) facility in Gran Sasso National Laboratories. Experimental results, cosmological consequences, and future prospects are reported here