103 research outputs found
Status of CORSIKA simulation set for the SST-2M single prototype. (3 October 2011)
No full textStatus of CORSIKA simulations for the SST-2M single prototype.
The document is part of the ASTRI work package “WP-3300: Prototype end-to-end calibration”.The document is part of the ASTRI work package “WP-3300: Prototype end-to-end calibration”
The ASTRI SST-2M Prototype: Reference Guide to the Operational Procedures.
No full textThis document is meant to be the first and very preliminary draft for the operational procedures of the single ASTRI SST-2M prototype telescope, hereafter named ASTRI prototype. Its content, discussed with all the ASTRI Teams, will eventually contribute to the definition of the Operation User Manual that will be delivered in the framework of the ACST (ASTRI Core Software Team). The document provides a description of the basic steps that are needed to operate the telescope safely and correctly, from the start-up, through the data-taking procedure, to the shutdown of the system. The specific procedures that must be followed before, during, and after the regular data-taking, as well as those aimed at performing some special technical operations (which are not required during normal data-taking), are presented in a discursive way as well as under Use Case format
Strategy implementation for the CTA Atmospheric monitoring program
No full textThe Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation facility of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. It reaches unprecedented sensitivity and energy resolution in very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. CTA detects Cherenkov light emitted within an atmospheric shower of particles initiated by cosmic-gamma rays or cosmic rays entering the Earth's atmosphere. From the combination of images the Cherenkov light produces in the telescopes, one is able to infer the primary particle energy and direction. A correct energy estimation can be thus performed only if the local atmosphere is well characterized. The atmosphere not only affects the shower development itself, but also the Cherenkov photon transmission from the emission point in the particle shower, at about 10-20 km above the ground, to the detector. Cherenkov light on the ground is peaked in the UV-blue region, and therefore molecular and aerosol extinction phenomena are important. The goal of CTA is to control systematics in energy reconstruction to better than 10%. For this reason, a careful and continuous monitoring and characterization of the atmosphere is required. In addition, CTA will be operated as an observatory, with data made public along with appropriate analysis tools. High-level data quality can only be ensured if the atmospheric properties are consistently and continuously taken into account. In this contribution, we concentrate on discussing the implementation strategy for the various atmospheric monitoring instruments currently under discussion in CTA. These includes Raman lidars and ceilometers, stellar photometers and others available both from commercial providers and public research centers
Current psoriasis treatments in an Italian population and their association with socio-demographical and clinical features
No full text""BACKGROUND: Patient adherence is a key element for therapeutic success and represents a major concern for all healthcare professionals.. . OBJECTIVE: Aim of our study was to assess the frequency of use of treatments currently available for psoriasis and its association with specific socio-demographical and clinical variables.. . METHODS: The study population consisted of 1689 patients, aged 12-85 years. Information concerning socio-demographical variables, clinical features and the type of current treatment was collected. Items on patients' satisfaction of current treatments and of dermatologist-patient relationship were also included. The chi-squared test was used to estimate the association between the categorical variables, whereas Wilcoxon and Kruskal-Wallis tests were applied to the interval and ordinal variables. The Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel chi-squared trend test was used to evaluate the degree of satisfaction related to dermatologist-patient relationship.. . RESULTS: Of the 1689 psoriatic patients, 54.1% did not use any treatments and 45.9% used at least one treatment. The use of drugs was significantly associated exclusively to severity of disease and affected body surface area. Systemic therapies, both traditional treatments and biological agents, were mainly used in patients with disease duration >10 years and disease severity. Treatment adherence was significantly associated to the degree of patient's satisfaction of his\\\/her relationship with the dermatologist. Alternative treatment such as over the counter medications and acupuncture were used by 33% of patients.. . CONCLUSION: The majority of psoriatic patients do not use any treatments. However, treatment adherence significantly increases when dermatologists clarify the treatment schedule, inform patients and meet the patients' needs.. . "
ASTRI for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
No full textThe Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the largest ground-based observatory operating in the very-high-energy gamma-ray (20 GeV - 300 TeV) range. It will be based on more than one hundred telescopes, located at two sites (northern and southern hemispheres). The energy coverage, in the southern CTA array, will extend up to hundreds of TeV thanks to 70 small size telescopes (SST), with primary mirrors of about 4 meters in diameter and large field of view of the order of 9 degrees. It is proposed that one of the first sets of precursors for the CTA SSTs array will be represented by nine ASTRI telescopes. Their prototype, named ASTRI SST-2M, is installed in Italy. It is currently completing the overall commissioning before entering the science verification phase that will performed observing bright TeV sources as Crab Nebula, Mrk421 and Mrk 501 cross-checking the prototype performance with the Monte Carlo predictions. ASTRI telescopes are characterized by a dual-mirror optical design based on the Schwarzschild- Couder (SC) configuration. The focal-plane camera is curved in order to fit the ideal prescription for the SC design and the sensors are small size silicon photomultipliers read-out by a fast front-end electronics. The telescope prototype installed in Italy, has been developed by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, INAF, following an end-to-end approach that comprises all aspects from the design, construction and implementation of the entire hardware and software system to the final scientific products. All parts of the system have been designed to comply with the CTA requirements. A collaborative effort, addressed to the implementation of the first ASTRI telescopes for the CTA southern site, is now on-going led by INAF with the Universidade de Sao Paulo (Brazil), the North-West University (South Africa) and the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics
corsika_e2e.csh: a flexible driver for CORSIKA. A User’s Guide (v 1.3)
No full textThis document reports on the characteristics of corsika_e2e.csh [v3.0@2014-01-13], a driver to the CORSIKA simulations, developed at INAF/IASF-Palermo to generate sets of Cherenkov events needed to the study and definition of the SST-2M telescope prototype in the framework of the ASTRI program.The document is part of the ASTRI work package “WP-3300: Prototype end-to-end calibration
Calibration of the Cherenkov Telescope Array
No full textThe construction of the Cherenkov Telescope Array is expected to start soon.
We will present the baseline methods and their extensions currently foreseen to
calibrate the observatory. These are bound to achieve the strong requirements
on allowed systematic uncertainties for the reconstructed gamma-ray energy and
flux scales, as well as on the pointing resolution, and on the overall duty
cycle of the observatory. Onsite calibration activities are designed to include
a robust and efficient calibration of the telescope cameras, and various
methods and instruments to achieve calibration of the overall optical
throughput of each telescope, leading to both inter-telescope calibration and
an absolute calibration of the entire observatory. One important aspect of the
onsite calibration is a correct understanding of the atmosphere above the
telescopes, which constitutes the calorimeter of this detection technique. It
is planned to be constantly monitored with state-of-the-art instruments to
obtain a full molecular and aerosol profile up to the stratosphere. In order to
guarantee the best use of the observation time, in terms of usable data, an
intelligent scheduling system is required, which gives preference to those
sources and observation programs that can cope with the given atmospheric
conditions, especially if the sky is partially covered by clouds, or slightly
contaminated by dust. Ceilometers in combination with all-sky-cameras are
plannned to provide the observatory with a fast, online and full-sky knowledge
of the expected conditions for each pointing direction. For a precise
characterization of the adopted observing direction, wide-field optical
telescopes and Raman Lidars are planned to provide information about the
height-resolved and wavelength-dependent atmospheric extinction, throughout the
field-of-view of the cameras
How Much “Fuzzy” Has Been (and Is) My Life? A Few Impressions from a Physicist Debated between Experiments and Data Analysis of High-Energy Astrophysics
No full textFuzzy Mathematical Morphology: Concepts and Applications
No full textthis paper the basic concepts of the mathematical morphology and of the possibility theory are briefly illustrated, together with their suggested integration. Some applications to astronomical images are also shown. A more detailed description of MM and its recent development in the binary and gray-level images can be found in the referenced papers and therein. Preprint submitted to Elsevier Preprint 11 July 2 Mathematical Morphology - Basic Concepts Mathematical morphology was firstly developed for binary scenes. Both the image and the structuring element are seen as sets and the Minkowski addition and subtraction, + and -, are the basic operations. The primitive morphological operator is the erosion performed by means of a structuring element which could be a small standard shape as a square, a rhombus or a circle. The basic operation is the translation SE x of the structuring element SE onto the imag
ASTRI SST-2M Data Challenge: TC-01 – A Simplified Test Case
No full textThe goal of this document is to provide a simplified scheme of the flow of the ASTRI SST-2M data from the BEE down to the following data/logical levels
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