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Ecosystem Accounting for Marine-Based Tourism provided by Posidonia oceanica in Italy
No full text<p>This work presents the first ecosystem accounts for Marine-Based Tourism (MBT) in Italy.<br>\nWe develop a methodological approach to connect biophysical and economic information required to fill ecosystem accounting supply and use tables. Coherent with the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA)<br>\nframework, this approach starts by estimating the extent and the condition of marine ecosystems, showing the urgency in improving the availability, organisation and accessibility of biophysical data. This work provides valuable insights into understanding<br>\nMBT from an ecosystem accounting perspective. We focus on the Posidonia oceanica and its role in the MBT sector in Italy, providing a physical quantification of such contribution and converting this flow into monetary terms. Our findings show that such<br>\nhabitat significantly contributes to the tourism sector, resulting in exchange values of MBT of €6 million in 2019 and €3.7 million in 2021.</p>
1876-1881: Domenico Lovisato and the geology of Calabria (southern Italy)
No full text<p>Celebrating the centennial of Domenico Lovisato’s death (1842-1916), this paper highlights the role played by this eminent Italian<br>\ngeologist as a pioneer for the geological knowledge of Calabria region (Southern Italy), a geologically complex area which became the subject of a long-lasting and still continuing debate.<br>\nLovisato spent only few years in Calabria (1876-1878) teaching as high school professor of mathematics; this period marked a turning point for his scientific growth representing a switch for his career from avocational to full-time geologist. This experience granted him the involvement in the academic career, with the enrollment in the University of Sassari and Cagliari as Professor of Mineralogy and Geology (from 1878 until his death, in 1916). Lovisato must be acknowledged as the author of the first 1:50,000 geological map of the Calabria region. As such, he should be mentioned for his ethic approach towards environment, anticipating the catastrophic effect of natural phenomena and the modern concepts of geoethic.</p>
Instrumental Monitoring of a Slow-Moving Landslide in Piedmont (Northwest Italy) for the Definition of Rainfall Thresholds
No full text<p>The prediction and prevention of landslide hazard is a challenging topic involving the assessment and quantitative evaluation of several elements: geological and geomorphological setting, rainfalls, and ground motion. This paper presents the multi-approach investigation of the Nevissano landslide (Asti Province, Piedmont, NW Italy). It shows a continuous and slow movement, alongside few paroxysmal events, the last recorded in 2016. The geological and geomorphological models were defined through a field survey. An inventory of the landslide’s movements and rainfall records in the period 2000–2016 was performed, respectively, through archive investigations and the application of “Moving Sum of Daily Rainfall” method, allowing for the definition of rain thresholds for the landslide activation (105 mm and 193 mm, respectively, in 3 and 30 days prior to the event). The displacements over the last 8 years (2016–2023) were monitored through an innovative in-continuum monitoring inclinometric system and Earth Observation (EO) data (i.e., relying on Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar, or InSAR data): it gave the opportunity to validate the rainfall thresholds previously defined. This study aims to provide information to public authorities for the appropriate management of the site. Moreover, the proposed workflow could be adopted as a guideline for investigating similar situations.</p>
The Urban Geo-climate Footprint approach: Enhancing urban resilience through improved geological conceptualisation
No full text<p>Urban resilience is critical to allow cities to withstand the challenges of the 21st Century. One factor that is often overlooked in such assessments is the role of the subsurface. A novel methodology called the Urban Geo-climate Footprint (UGF) has been developed to classify cities quickly and comprehensively from geological and climatic perspectives. The method operates on the fundamental assumption that cities with similar geologicalgeographical settings will face similar challenges, due to both common geological issues and associated climate impacts. The UGF approach has been applied to 41 European cities in collaboration with 17 Geological Surveys of Europe, the results of the UGF analysis are presented along with a regional classification of the geological resilience indicators. The UGF tool provides a semi-quantitative representation of the pressures driven by geological and climatic complexity for the cities presented, providing for a first time such classification of the urban environment. The advantage of this methodology lies in increasing awareness among non-experts and decision-makers of the interplay between geological settings, climate change pressures, and anthropogenic activities.<br>\nFurthermore, it facilitates the exchange best practices among city planners to increase resilience, supporting knowledge based decision making to promote actions and policies, that enhance geoscience-informed climate justice.</p>
Optimal Operation of Cryogenic Calorimeters Through Deep Reinforcement Learning
No full textCryogenic phonon detectors with transition-edge sensors achieve the best sensitivity to sub-GeV/c dark matter interactions with nuclei in current direct detection experiments. In such devices, the temperature of the thermometer and the bias current in its readout circuit need careful optimization to achieve optimal detector performance. This task is not trivial and is typically done manually by an expert. In our work, we automated the procedure with reinforcement learning in two settings. First, we trained on a simulation of the response of three Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers (CRESST) detectors used as a virtual reinforcement learning environment. Second, we trained live on the same detectors operated in the CRESST underground setup. In both cases, we were able to optimize a standard detector as fast and with comparable results as human experts. Our method enables the tuning of large-scale cryogenic detector setups with minimal manual interventions
Analytical methods in Celestial Mechanics: satellites' stability and galactic billiards
Get PDF<p>In this paper, two models of interest for Celestial Mechanics are presented and<br>\nanalysed, using both analytic and numerical techniques, from the point of view<br>\nof the possible presence of regular and/or chaotic motion, as well as the stability<br>\nof the considered orbits.<br>\nThe first model, presented in a Hamiltonian formalism, can be used to describe<br>\nthe motion of a satellite around the Earth, taking into account both the nonspherical<br>\nshape of our planet and the third-body gravitational influence of Sun<br>\nand Moon. Using semi-analytical techniques coming from Normal Form and<br>\nNekhoroshev theories it is possible to provide stability estimates for the orbital<br>\nelements of its geocentric motion.<br>\nThe second dynamical system presented can be used as a simplified model to<br>\ndescribe the motion of a particle in an elliptic galaxy having a central massive<br>\ncore, and is constructed as a refraction billiard where an inner dynamics, induced<br>\nby a Keplerian potential, is coupled with an external one, where a harmonic<br>\noscillator-type potential is considered. The investigation of the dynamics is carried<br>\non by using tools of ODEs’ theory and is focused on studying the trajectories’<br>\nproperties in terms of periodicity, stability and, possibly, chaoticity.</p>
Results on elastic cross sections in proton–proton collisions at <math altimg="si1.svg"><msqrt><mrow><mi>s</mi></mrow></msqrt><mo linebreak="goodbreak" linebreakstyle="after">=</mo><mn>510</mn></math> GeV with the STAR detector at RHIC
No full textWe report results on an elastic cross section measurement in proton–proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy s=510 GeV, obtained with the Roman Pot setup of the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The elastic differential cross section is measured in the four-momentum transfer squared range 0.23≤−t≤0.67 GeV<sup>2</sup>. This is the only measurement of the proton-proton elastic cross section in this t range for collision energies above the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) and below the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) colliders. We find that a constant slope B does not fit the data in the aforementioned t range, and we obtain a much better fit using a second-order polynomial for B(t). This is the first measurement below the LHC energies for which the non-constant behavior B(t) is observed. The t dependence of B is also determined using six subintervals of t in the STAR measured t range, and is in good agreement with the phenomenological models. The measured elastic differential cross section dσ/dt agrees well with the results obtained at s=540 GeV for proton–antiproton collisions by the UA4 experiment. We also determine that the integrated elastic cross section within the STAR t-range is σelfid=462.1±0.9(stat.)±1.1(syst.)±11.6(scale)μb
Measurement of forward charged hadron flow harmonics in peripheral PbPb collisions at <math><mrow><msqrt><msub><mi>s</mi><mrow><mi>N</mi><mi>N</mi></mrow></msub></msqrt><mo>=</mo><mn>5.02</mn><mspace width="0.16em"/><mi>TeV</mi></mrow></math> with the LHCb detector
No full textFlow harmonic coefficients, vn, which are the key to studying the hydrodynamics of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in heavy-ion collisions, have been measured in various collision systems and kinematic regions and using various particle species. The study of flow harmonics in a wide pseudorapidity range is particularly valuable to understand the temperature dependence of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio of the QGP. This paper presents the first LHCb results of the second- and the third-order flow harmonic coefficients of charged hadrons as a function of transverse momentum in the forward region, corresponding to pseudorapidities between 2.0 and 4.9, using the data collected from PbPb collisions in 2018 at a center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The coefficients measured using the two-particle angular correlation analysis method are smaller than the central-pseudorapidity measurements at ALICE and ATLAS from the same collision system but share similar features
SPT clusters with DES and HST weak lensing. I. Cluster lensing and Bayesian population modeling of multiwavelength cluster datasets
No full textWe present a Bayesian population modeling method to analyze the abundance of galaxy clusters identified by the South Pole Telescope (SPT) with a simultaneous mass calibration using weak gravitational lensing data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We discuss and validate the modeling choices with a particular focus on a robust, weak-lensing-based mass calibration using DES data. For the DES Year 3 data, we report a systematic uncertainty in weak-lensing mass calibration that increases from 1% at z=0.25 to 10% at z=0.95, to which we add 2% in quadrature to account for uncertainties in the impact of baryonic effects. We implement an analysis pipeline that joins the cluster abundance likelihood with a multiobservable likelihood for the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, optical richness, and weak-lensing measurements for each individual cluster. We validate that our analysis pipeline can recover unbiased cosmological constraints by analyzing mocks that closely resemble the cluster sample extracted from the SPT-SZ, SPTpol ECS, and SPTpol 500d surveys and the DES Year 3 and HST-39 weak-lensing datasets. This work represents a crucial prerequisite for the subsequent cosmological analysis of the real dataset