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ELENA APRILE TO RECEIVE 2019 BERKELEY PRIZE FOR THE RESULTS OF XENON1T AT THE NATIONAL LABORATORIES OF GRAN SASSO

elena luke The leader of the most sensitive dark-matter experiment conducted to date will receive the 2019 Lancelot M. Berkeley – New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy. The Berkeley prize is bestowed annually since 2011 by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and supported by a grant from the New York Community Trust. Elena Aprile will give her prize lecture on Thursday afternoon, 10 January 2019, during the 233rd AAS meeting at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center in downtown Seattle. Elena Aprile, Professor of Physics at Columbia University in New York City, is being honored with the 2019 Berkeley prize for her leadership of the XENON project and its groundbreaking search for the weakly interacting massive particles (“WIMPs”) thought to make up the mysterious dark matter that appears to provide most of the universe’s gravitational pull. With its multiton liquid-xenon detector, XENON1T - at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, LNGS in Italy, which is operated by the INFN - is currently the world’s most sensitive direct experimental search for dark matter. Aprile and her colleagues are narrowing the range of allowable particle masses and interaction strengths. WIMPs have almost nowhere left to hide, causing physicists and astronomers to rethink the nature of dark matter and to wonder if the particles might be much less massive than originally thought. Elena Aprile founded the XENON Dark Matter Collaboration in 2002 and has served as its scientific spokesperson ever since; her international team includes more than 165 scientists and students representing 24 nationalities and 21 institutions.

NUCLEAR PHYSICS REVEAL A HIDDEN LADY IN THE PAINTING “THE PASTON TREASURE"

1. PT Paston Treasure web Hidden in a painting for almost four centuries and visible for the first time in an image obtained with a special mobile scanner called LANDIS-X created by researchers of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) and National Council for Research (CNR). We are speaking of a female figure painted and then covered, probably a member of the family depicted in the painting “The Paston Treasure”, an important painting of English art history commissioned by Sir William Paston to an itinerant Flemish painter in the seventeenth century. An exhibition dedicated to the painting will open on 23 June next at the Norwich Castle Museum, in England, to which the work belongs and where the analysis took place (www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk). The discovery was made by a team of researchers from the INFN National Laboratories of the South and from IBAM CNR who, flew to Norwich to study the work in preparation for its restoration, precisely because of the large size of the canvas and the consequent difficulty in moving it. "Despite the important dimensions of the painting, the real-time imaging technique of the LANDIS-X scanner (technique called realtime macro XRF imaging) has allowed us to fully document the work" comments Claudia Caliri of the Southern National Laboratories of INFN. "Through the images of the elemental distributions obtained during the measurements it was possible to know the nature of the pigments used by the artist and study his creative process." Dr Francesca Vanke, Keeper of Art and Curator of Decorative Art at Norwich Castle Museum, and curator of the exhibition at Norwich, added: “These extraordinary images provided by the Italian researchers made it possible for us to completely reconstruct all the pictorial layers and restore the work to its original composition. The images highlighted the pictorial details of the woman including her face, the fact that she was wearing a red dress and appears to have what seem to be leaves placed decoratively in her hair. The analyses The researchers photographed "The Paston Treasure" with the innovative LANDIS-X scanner designed and developed in the Laboratory of Non Destructive Analysis in situ (Landis) INFN National Laboratories of the South whose name it bears. The laboratory is part of the INFN network for cultural heritage CHNET. “LANDIS-X is the only ultra-rapid mobile X-ray fluorescence scanning system based on real-time technology (called real-time macro XRF imaging) able to provide restorers and art historians live images of the distribution of pigments on the pictorial surface at very high resolution (up to 30 microns). The results obtained made it possible to study the pictorial process of the Dutch itinerant artist and to verify the state of conservation of the work” comments Paolo Romano of IBAM CNR. The hidden lady In particular, for the first time it was possible to highlight the pictorial details (face, hairstyle and clothing) of a female figure, probably another member of the Paston family – previously painted, but not visible in the final pictorial composition. The images provided by the researchers made it possible to completely reconstruct all the pictorial layers and restore the work to its original composition. The hidden lady was painted under the diamond shaped clock in the upper right hand of the painting. The woman could have been the portrait of a real person, an allegorical figure, or a mixture of both. If she was meant to be, or was based upon, a real person, the most probable candidate is Lady Margaret Paston, (d. 1669) née Hewitt, William Paston’s second wife, whom he married in 1640. The pigment palette But the hidden face of a woman is not the only important detail that emerged from studying the painting. The X-ray images (corresponding to 6 million measurements taken on the painting in 16 hours) made it possible to identify the pigment palette typical of the Flemish period, based on the use of cobalt enamel, copper resin, vermilion red, tin yellow, orpiment and ochre. The work The painting, commissioned by Sir William Paston to an itinerant Flemish painter, is one of the first examples in the history of English art to represent the opulence and wealth accumulated by the noble families of the time, allegorically describing their very transience and fleetingness. The work, a large oil painting (240x165 cm), is a true socio-cultural narrative fresco of the seventeenth century and belongs to the permanent collection of the British Norwich Castle Museum. The documentary Thanks to the acquisition of these images, it was possible to film a short documentary entitled "The Paston Treasure: A Painting Like No Other" which, through a technical analysis and the images provided by our researchers, explains to the public how the work was created, helping to solve the fascinating enigmas and changes of mind that the artist's hand disseminated in the painting. Only in English https://britishart.yale.edu/paston-treasure-painting-no-other

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATION: THE 9TH EDITION OF ERICE SCIENCE JOURNALISM SCHOOL STARTS TODAY

IMG 2154 fbThe 9th edition of the Erice International School of Science Journalism (EISSJ) started today, June 25 . The school offers every year 35 scholarships to young science journalists and communicators. The 2018 edition focuses on the theme "What’s Next: Challenges and Opportunities for Tomorrow’s Fundamental Physics". It is taking place between June 25 to 29 in Erice, the evocative town that hosts the Ettore Majorana Centre for Science Culture.
The Erice International Science Journalism School is a summer school organised by the Ettore Majorana Centre with the support of Centro Fermi, the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, and, of the Italian science magazine "Le Scienze". The course is taught in English and includes both lectures and interactive laboratories held by international experts in scientific research, journalism and communications; from Marica Branchesi, GSSI and INFN researcher and among the TIME 100 most influential people 2018 list, to Robin McKie, British journalist that writes for “The Guardian” and “The Observer”.
The school can be followed on social media with the hashtag #EriceSJ2018 and on the official Facebook and Twitter accounts, @ISSJC and @EriceSchool respectively.

FULL SPEED AHEAD EUCLID: TOWARDS THE STUDY OF THE DARK UNIVERSE

euclid artist 640 On 14 June in the ThalesAlenia Space facility in Turin, the avionic model (AVM) of the Near Infrared Spectro Photometer (NISP) was delivered, the “eye” in the infrared, which will join the one in the visible (VIS) in helping the Euclid space mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) to study the Dark Universe with levels of precision never reached before. The aim of Euclid is to create a super-detailed map of the distribution and the evolution of dark matter and dark energy in the Universe. AVM is the first fully functioning system of the electronic part of the “infrared eye” NISP and it makes it possible to check that the instrument is working properly, starting from commands sent from Earth, down to receiving scientific data, after processing by the on-board computer and by the two software systems. The AVM is completely “made in Italy” and Italy, in the guise of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), is involved in the Euclid mission under numerous aspects: both with making the subsystems of the on-board instruments and with responsibility for management of the Earth Segment and the survey, but also with important roles in managing technical and scientific aspects of the mission. More than two hundred Italian scientists are involved in Euclid, coming from the INAF (National Institute of Astrophysics), INFN and several Universities. The avionic model AVM, delivered in mid-June, consists of various instruments. Apart from the series of simulators of the detectors, motors and the thermal control system of the NISP, the system includes two control units, with software created by INAF installed: the Instrument Control Unit (ICU) and the control and management unit of the data from the detectors, the Data Processing Unit (DPU), made by the Italian company OHB and financed by the ASI. The AVM model of NISP was assembled in the INFN laboratories and those of the University of Padua, with the involvement of the whole INAF and INFN team. The subsystems were then tested, thanks to software developed by INFN research groups, with the support of CNAF, the INFN national centre of information and telematics technology. After successful completion of the testing, the ESA has approved the delivery of the first working model to Thales Alenia Space of Turin, who are responsible for producing the Euclid satellite, which will use it for verifying communications between the satellite itself and the NISP instrument. Over two hundred Italian scientists are involved in Euclid, belonging to INAF (the Institutes of IAPS, OAS Bologna and IASF Milan and the Astronomical Observatories of Bologna, Brera, Padua, Rome, Turin and Trieste), to the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (sections of Bologna, Padua, Lecce, Milan and Rome1) and to a number of Universities (University of Bologna, University of Ferrara, La Sapienza of Rome, Roma Tre University, University of Tor Vergata, University of Trieste, SISSA of Parma and the CISAS of the University of Padua).

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DESIGN E REALIZZAZIONE
Coordinamento Grafico Uff. Comunicazione F. Cuicchio
Powered by Multimedia Service
REDAZIONE CONTENUTI
Coordinamento Uff. Comunicazione E. Cossi
Realizzazione testi Ufficio Comunicazione

LNF-INFN Servizi di Calcolo
SERVIZIO SISTEMA INFORMATIVO TECNOLOGIE E PORTALE WEB