NEW RESULTS FOR DAMA/LIBRA-PHASE2
The international collaboration DAMA, operating at the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories, recently shared the first results obtained with the DAMA/LIBRA-Phase2 device. The experimental approach employed by the experiment is based on the study of the model independent markings of the annual modulation of dark matter’s signal, consequent to the Earth’s movement with respect to the dark matter particles in the galactic halo. DAMA/LIBRA-Phase2 is a detector equipped with an extremely radiopure device, whose sensitive part is a modular structure of 25 detectors of scintillating thallium-doped sodium iodide. The recent results are based on data acquired on 6 independent annual cycles and confirm the evidence of a signal that meets the requirements of an annual modulation marking, with a high level of confidence (9.5 sigma) in the energy region of the software threshold between 1 keV to 6 keV. Furthermore, by combining the experimental data, a confidence level equal to 12.9 sigma was reached in the energy region between 2 and 6 keV, where the data are also available from the earlier experiments DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA-Phase1. The Researchers of this collaboration have therefore explained that the measured modulation parameters are consistent with those expected for dark matter particles; that there are no available systematic effects or competing processes able to quantitatively account for the amplitude observed and to simultaneously satisfy all the requirements of the marking; that the model independent result is compatible with a wide zoology of theoretical and phenomenological models.
The NA62 experiment at CERN has recently presented its latest results at the Moriond Electroweak 2018 conference. The results concern a very rare event: the decay of the charged K-meson into a pion and two neutrinos. The interest in extremely rare or even "forbidden" decays is motivated by the fact that these processes allow energy scales even much higher than those directly accessible to the most powerful particle colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, to be indirectly probed. The study of these decays could therefore open a window in the near future on physics beyond the Standard Model. Moreover, the results just presented by NA62 are also interesting because they demonstrate the effectiveness of the new technique, called "in flight", used by the experiment to investigate these K-meson decays. In the coming years, this will allow the elusive process to be studied with a precision never achieved before. According to theoretical predictions, the charged K-meson decays into a pion and two neutrinos only in a very small fraction of cases. To understand the extreme rarity of this process, the Standard Model foresees, with considerable precision, that only eight decays of this type must occur every one hundred billion decays of the K-meson. In numerous theories that aim to overcome the Standard Model, the fraction of events expected for this decay is instead significantly different: therefore, a sufficiently precise measure could highlight the presence of what physicists call New Physics. The results obtained so far, at this level of statistical precision, are compatible with the Standard Model predictions.
A team of researchers from INFN and the University of Ferrara has analysed the "Paolo e Francesca" painting by Gaetano Previati, among the most famous works of the artist, currently exhibited at Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. The analysis work, presented at the International Exhibition of Restoration, was performed with the technique of digital radiography with a scanner for in situ radiographic diagnostics, built and designed thanks to the collaboration between the Department of Physics and Earth Sciences of the University of Ferrara and the INFN Ferrara section. The hidden story of the painting emerges from the more than 1,000 digital x-rays taken. Thanks to these analyzes it was, in fact, possible to bring to light the first draft of the work, which reveals details hidden in the painting, such as the different position of the face of Francesca, initially painted by Previati with the head reclined backwards. The change is very evident because the first draft of the face of the young girl, subsequently abandoned and covered, is perfectly recognisable thanks to the radiopacity of the pigments used that are still under the painting's surface. The analyses were conducted as part of the activities of the cultural heritage network INFN-CHNet (Cultural Heritage Network). The scientific diagnostic program was carried out in collaboration with the National Institute of Optics of the CNR, which performed imaging diagnostics in infrared and ultraviolet fluorescence. The interpretation of the scientific diagnostics, which have already been used in the restoration of the work, represents an important element for a historical-artistic investigation of early twentieth century art. 
The Italian physicists Gianluigi Fogli, former professor of theoretical physics at the University of Bari, and Eligio Lisi, head of research at the INFN Bari Section, have been awarded the prestigious international 2017 Bruno Pontecorvo Prize, awarded annually by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) of Dubna. The award ceremony will take place in Dubna next September. The jury of the prize, chaired by Alexander Olshevskiy and consisting of Samoil Bilenky (2002 Pontecorvo Prize winner), Luciano Maiani (2014 Pontecorvo Prize winner), Arthur McDonald (2004 Pontecorvo Prize winner and 2015 Nobel Prize winner) and Yoichiro Suzuki (2010 Pontecorvo Prize winner), awarded the prize to Gianluigi Fogli and Eligio Lisi "for their pioneering contribution to the development of global analysis of neutrino oscillation data from different experiments”. The award-winning results of Fogli and Lisi cover more than two decades of theoretical and phenomenological research, aimed at analysing in detail the phenomena of neutrino oscillation in an increasingly wide range of experimental data (solar, atmospheric, reactor, accelerator neutrinos, etc.). This analysis made it possible to determine certain parameters of the so-called Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (PMNS) matrix with increasing accuracy and to estimate others still unknown. One of the major results obtained concerns the first estimate of the smallest element of the PMNS matrix (the theta-13 corner) a few years before its experimental discovery, which took place in the period 2011-2012, subject of the previous 2016 Pontecorvo Prize.
The Italian Roberto Carlin, INFN researcher and professor at the University of Padua, was appointed as the new international spokesperson of the CMS scientific collaboration and will lead the experiment from September 2018, taking over from the American Joel Butler, to August 2020. Roberto Carlin’s appointment brings to three out of four the number of Italian researchers heading CERN’s LHC large experiments: in addition to him, in charge of CMS, Federico Antinori and Giovanni Passaleva head, respectively, ALICE and LHCb. Whilst Simone Giani coordinates the TOTEM collaboration, a smaller experiment compared to the four giants, but it is equally fundamental to the results that CERN is obtaining in terms of understanding the infinitely small universe.
