SUMMARY
We present new absolute archaeointensity data from six archaeological sites situated in the Okayama Prefecture, Japan. The materials studied are well-dated fragments from pottery, ceramic ...coffins and haniwa artefacts. Their ages range from 160 AD to 675 AD, covering the Late Yayoi and Kofun periods. Rock magnetic experiments suggest the presence of magnetite and/or Ti-magnetite as the main carrier of the remanence, with a possible minor contribution of higher coercivity minerals. After thermal demagnetization experiments, the most magnetically stable samples were selected for archaeointensity analysis performed following the double-heating method proposed by Thellier and modified by Coe. Partial thermoremanent magnetization (pTRM) checks and pTRM tail-checks were performed for monitoring possible chemical alterations during heating. All measurements were corrected for both anisotropy and cooling-rate effects. Successful archaeointensity determinations, following rigorous selection criteria, were obtained for samples from all the investigated archaeological sites. Compared with literature data from Japan, the new high-quality data show significantly lower intensity values. They also reveal possible fast secular variation changes during the Late Yayoi period and very weak geomagnetic intensity field around 630 AD. Such values offer evidence of a possible recurrence of weak intensity field in East Asia, suggesting an ancient recurrence of the West Pacific Anomaly. The new data might change the archaeomagnetic field models interpretations in the area, even though more data are still necessary to better understand the secular variation in Japan and the temporal evolution of the geomagnetic field's behaviour in East Asia.
The dyers of the past exploited a number of natural dyestuffs and dyeing procedures to obtain countless beautiful colours. It is hard to disclose which dyestuff has been used to dye a historical or ...an archaeological textile through non-invasive analytical techniques; therefore invasive analytical strategies, which require sampling, are generally employed to face this task.
Some useful indication may nevertheless derive from the electronic transitions of dyes supported on the fibres and the signals can be easily recorded by reflectance spectroscopy in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The use of portable instruments equipped with fibre optics allows operation in-situ directly on the surface of the samples, through a non-invasive approach which is particularly suitable for the inspection of historical or archaeological samples.
In this paper, the strong and weak points of visible fibre optics reflectance spectroscopy are discussed, in order to highlight its possible application as a first non-invasive step of a multi-technique analytical strategy devoted to the recognition of natural dyestuffs in ancient textile artefacts.
Visible fibre optics reflectance spectra were collected from a large set of reference samples (wool and silk) coloured through various dyestuffs and dyeing procedures, in order to identify the signals of the coloured species that impregnate the fibres.
The position of minimum, maximum and inflection points in the reflectance spectra was evaluated and critically discussed, in order to identify the signals which are not contingent to dyeing procedures or to the fibre typology, and that can be therefore confidently used for analytical purposes.
In particular, wavelength intervals were defined, in which the characteristic signals of the investigated dyestuffs (indigo, woad, Saxon blue, logwood, cochineal, madder, brazilwood, old fustic, weld, turmeric and saffron) are expected. It emerged that visible fibre optics reflectance spectroscopy is poorly selective for yellow dyes based on curcumins and flavonoids, while it generally succeeds in detecting the other dyestuffs considered herein.
The information obtained from the reference sample set was then exploited to analyze an embroidered cloth dated from the seventeenth century. Preliminary information obtained via visible fibre optics reflectance spectroscopy was confirmed, or integrated, by the results obtained through liquid chromatography coupled with diode-array detection and mass spectrometry on extracts obtained from some coloured threads sampled from the historical cloth.
Display omitted
► The paper focuses on dyestuffs recognition in valuable historical textiles. ► Spectral features of dyes for different fibres and dyeing procedures are discussed. ► The most selective signals of the dyes are highlighted. ► The information obtained from a non-invasive preliminary inspection is reported.
The present work focuses on majolica objects from the collection of the museum of ceramic in Ascoli Piceno (Italy). The scientific investigation was performed on fragments detached from seven ...maiolicas attributed to the Castelli production (Abruzzi region) and one majolica from the Ascoli Piceno production (Marche region). The Castelli artifacts (late sixteenth–early eighteenth century) belong to the decorated style known as “
compendiario.
” The piece from Ascoli Piceno recalls the decoration style of the other considered objects and is attributable to the “Paci” manufacture (first half of the nineteenth century). The selected objects were investigated by fiber optics reflectance spectroscopy, micro-X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy coupled with electron-dispersive X-ray spectrometry. The ceramic bodies of all objects are calcareous, whereas the glazes are lead-alkali type opacified by tin dioxide. Blue and purplish-red decorations were obtained by cobalt and manganese compounds dissolved in the glaze, respectively. Yellow and orange decorations were obtained by particles of lead antimonate and hematite. Finally, black decorations were obtained using compounds rich in manganese and iron. The study contributes to knowledge on the production of Castelli ceramics and presents first archaeometric data on the maiolica production from Ascoli Piceno. The scientific examination highlights continuity with the Renaissance production, and the joint contribution of the three analytical techniques suggests distinctive features among different productions, thus integrating and refining the information obtained by the art-historical study.
The AGATA tracking detector array represents a significant improvement over previous Compton suppressed arrays. The construction of AGATA led to numerous technological breakthroughs in order to meet ...the requirements and the challenges of building a mobile detector across Europe. This paper focuses on the design and implementation of the data acquisition system responsible of the readout and control of the germanium detectors of AGATA. Our system is highly versatile, capable of instrumenting AGATA and seamlessly adapting it to various configurations with a wide range of ancillary detectors and/or spectrometers. It consists of three main components: an autonomous and independent infrastructure, a dedicated application core ensuring overall consistency, and a high-performance software package providing a fully integrated data flow management including the setting-up, the supervision and the slow control of the instrument. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the system’s design and performance, particularly under high-counting rate conditions.
Progress in the design and construction of SPES at INFN-LNL Bisoffi, G.; Prete, G.; Andrighetto, A. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms,
06/2016, Letnik:
376
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
INFN-LNL is constructing an ISOL (Isotope Separation On Line) facility delivering neutron rich ion beams at 10AMeV or beyond, making use of the linear accelerator ALPI as the secondary accelerator. ...The facility includes a direct ISOL target based on UCx and able to reach 1013fissions/s. In parallel, an applied physics facility will be developed, with applications in medicine and neutron production. The SPES project is a national facility, approved and funded. Commissioning with the first exotic species is expected in 2019. The primary accelerator is a commercial cyclotron, which will send a 40MeV, 200μA proton beam onto an UCx target, connected to SIS, PIS and LIS ion sources. The extracted beam is purified through a Low Resolution Mass Separator (LMRS, i.e. a Wien filter and a dispersive dipole), a beam cooler and a High Resolution Mass Separator (HRMS) and sent to an ECR charge breeder to boost the exotic beam charge state. The highly charged exotic beam is further separated in a MRMS (Medium Resolution Mass Separator) and injected into a 100% duty cycle RFQ and into the existing superconducting linac ALPI, which will be refurbished and upgraded to be an efficient exotic beam accelerator. The upgrade of ALPI will give ∼10AMeV energy to 132Sn19+, taken as the reference ion beam. The paper presents the status of the design and construction of the SPES facility.
In this work we present the architecture and results of a fully digital Front End Electronics (FEE) read out system developed for the GALILEO array. The FEE system, developed in collaboration with ...the Advanced Gamma Tracking Array (AGATA) collaboration, is composed of three main blocks: preamplifiers, digitizers and preprocessing electronics. The slow control system contains a custom Linux driver, a dynamic library and a server implementing network services. This work presents the first results of the digital FEE system coupled with a GALILEO germanium detector, which has demonstrated the capability to achieve an energy resolution of 1.53 0 / 00 at an energy of 1.33 MeV, similar to the one obtained with a conventional analog system. While keeping a good performance in terms of energy resolution, digital electronics will allow to instrument the full GALILEO array with a versatile system with high integration and low power consumption and costs.
Fifteen fragments of glazed pottery were studied by scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy‐dispersive X‐ray analysis (SEM–EDS). The fragments, dated from between the 11th and the 12th ...centuries, are part of a group excavated at ancient Bust and Lashkar‐i Bazar (southern Afghanistan) and belonging to the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza. All the samples are characterized by highly calcareous bodies, and all of them but one is coated with a transparent lead glaze; the last fragment is, instead, coated with a turquoise opaque lead–alkali glaze. With three exceptions, the studied fragments show underglaze decorations featuring white, red, green or black motifs applied on to a white, red or black engobe; one of the remaining glazes is applied on to a monochrome white slip and the other two directly on to the ceramic body. Optical microscopy and SEM images show that engobes and decorations were obtained by deposition of differently coloured clayey slips, the composition of which was characterized by EDS analyses. In particular, black engobes and decorative motifs were obtained by recourse to manganese and iron compounds or to chromium, magnesium and iron compounds; it appears that both possibilities could be exploited for obtaining different decorative motifs on the same object.
While in the business world the cloud paradigm is typically implemented purchasing resources and services from third party providers (e.g. Amazon), in the scientific environment there's usually the ...need of on-premises IaaS infrastructures which allow efficient usage of the hardware distributed among (and owned by) different scientific administrative domains. In addition, the requirement of open source adoption has led to the choice of products like OpenStack by many organizations. We describe a use case of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) which resulted in the implementation of a unique cloud service, called 'Cloud Area Padovana', which encompasses resources spread over two different sites: the INFN Legnaro National Laboratories and the INFN Padova division. We describe how this IaaS has been implemented, which technologies have been adopted and how services have been configured in high-availability (HA) mode. We also discuss how identity and authorization management were implemented, adopting a widely accepted standard architecture based on SAML2 and OpenID: by leveraging the versatility of those standards the integration with authentication federations like IDEM was implemented. We also discuss some other innovative developments, such as a pluggable scheduler, implemented as an extension of the native OpenStack scheduler, which allows the allocation of resources according to a fair-share based model and which provides a persistent queuing mechanism for handling user requests that can not be immediately served. Tools, technologies, procedures used to install, configure, monitor, operate this cloud service are also discussed. Finally we present some examples that show how this IaaS infrastructure is being used.
Microwave-assisted micellar extraction (MAME) has been tested for the recovery of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) present in samples of marine sediments. An aqueous solution of the nonionic ...surfactant polyoxyethylene(23)dodecyl ether (Brij 35) was employed as the extracting medium. The proposed approach showed recovery efficiencies comparable to those afforded by the Soxhlet technique with organic solvents, but a neat reduction of the extraction times and a better reproducibility were observed. A MAME-based protocol was successfully applied for the analysis of a certified sample.
The restoration of a Greek black‐figure amphora provided an opportunity to study the provenance and production technology of the vase. The composition of the ceramic body, determined by inductively ...coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP–OES), matches that of Attic products. Investigation by X‐ray diffraction and reflectance spectroscopy suggests a maximum firing temperature around 900°C and a body re‐oxidation temperature around 800°C, respectively. The morphology and composition of black, red and dark red surface areas were studied by scanning electron microscopy and X‐ray energy‐dispersive analysis; the black areas show the features of a typical well‐vitrified black gloss, while the red areas were most probably obtained by simple burnishing of the body; the dark red additions, on the other hand, are the likely result of a partial re‐oxidation of a clay–ochre mixture.
PDF
