KASCADE and KASCADE-Grande were multi-detector installations to measure individual air showers of cosmic rays at ultra-high energy. Based on data sets measured by KASCADE and KASCADE-Grande, 90% C.L. ...upper limits to the flux of gamma-rays in the primary cosmic ray flux are determined in an energy range of eV. The analysis is performed by selecting air showers with a low muon content as expected for gamma-ray-induced showers compared to air showers induced by energetic nuclei. The best upper limit of the fraction of gamma-rays to the total cosmic ray flux is obtained at eV with . Translated to an absolute gamma-ray flux this sets constraints on some fundamental astrophysical models, such as the distance of sources for at least one of the IceCube neutrino excess models.
The ‘KASCADE Cosmic ray Data Centre’ is a web portal (
https://kcdc.ikp.kit.edu
), where the data of the astroparticle physics experiment KASCADE-Grande are made available for the interested public. ...The KASCADE experiment was a large-area detector for the measurement of high-energy cosmic rays via the detection of extensive air showers. The multi-detector installations KASCADE and its extension KASCADE-Grande stopped the active data acquisition in 2013 after more than 20 years of data taking. In several updates since our first release in 2013 with KCDC we provide the public measured and reconstructed parameters of more than 433 million air showers. In addition, KCDC provides meta data information and documentation to enable a user outside the community of experts to perform their own data analysis. Simulation data from three different high energy interaction models have been made available as well as a compilation of measured and published spectra from various experiments. In addition, detailed educational examples shall encourage high-school students and early stage researchers to learn about astroparticle physics, cosmic radiation as well as the handling of Big Data and about the sustainable and public provision of scientific data.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Observatory is a world-wide project for the ground-based study of the sources of the highest energy photons. By adopting telescopes of three different size ...categories it will cover the wide energy range from tens of GeV up to hundreds of TeV, limited only by the source physical properties and the gamma absorption by the extragalactic background light. The full sky coverage will be assured by two arrays, one in each hemisphere. An array of small size telescopes (SSTs), covering the highest energy region (3-100 TeV), the region most flux limited for current imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, is planned to be deployed at the southern CTA site in the first phase of the CTA project. The ASTRI collaboration has developed a prototype of a dual mirror SST equipped with a SiPM-based focal plane (ASTRI SST-2M) and has proposed to install a mini-array of nine of such telescopes at the CTA southern site (the ASTRI mini-array). In order to study the expected performance and the scientific capabilities of different telescope configurations, full Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of the shower development in the atmosphere for both gammas and hadronic background have been performed, followed by detailed simulations of the telescopes. In this work the expected performance of the ASTRI mini-array in terms of sensitivity, angular and energy resolution are presented and discussed.
Aims. We investigate the extension of the very high-energy spectral tail of the Crab Pulsar at energies above 400 GeV. Methods. We analyzed ~320 h of good-quality Crab data obtained with the MAGIC ...telescope from February 2007 to April 2014. Results. We report the most energetic pulsed emission ever detected from the Crab Pulsar reaching up to 1.5 TeV. The pulse profile shows two narrow peaks synchronized with those measured in the GeV energy range. The spectra of the two peaks follow two different power-law functions from 70 GeV up to 1.5 TeV and connect smoothly with the spectra measured above 10 GeV by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi satellite. When making a joint fit of the LAT and MAGIC data above 10 GeV the photon indices of the spectra differ by 0.5 ± 0.1. Conclusions. Using data from the MAGIC telescopes we measured the most energetic pulsed photons from a pulsar to date. Such TeV pulsed photons require a parent population of electrons with a Lorentz factor of at least 5 × 106. These results strongly suggest IC scattering off low-energy photons as the emission mechanism and a gamma-ray production region in the vicinity of the light cylinder.
This randomized, controlled study aims to evaluate the tolerability and the efficacy of curcumin in overweight subjects affected from metabolic syndrome, with a focus on impaired glucose intolerance ...and android-type fat accumulation.
Forty-four subjects, selected among those who after 30 days of diet and intervention lifestyle have shown a weight loss < 2%, have been treated for further 30 days either with curcumin complexed with phosphatidylserine in phytosome form or with pure phosphatidylserine. Outcomes concerning anthropometric measurements and body composition were analyzed at enrollment and after 30 and 60 days.
Curcumin administration increased weight loss from 1.88 to 4.91%, enhanced percentage reduction of body fat (from 0.70 to 8.43%), increased waistline reduction (from 2.36 to 4.14%), improved hip circumference reduction from 0.74 to 2.51% and enhanced reduction of BMI (from 2.10 to 6.43%) (p < 0.01 for all comparisons). Phosphatidylserine did not show any statistical significant effect. Tolerability was very good for both treatments, and no drop-out was reported.
Although preliminary, our findings suggest that a bioavailable form of curcumin is well-tolerated and can positively influence weight management in overweight people.
The nature of Dark Matter (DM) is an open issue of modern physics. Cosmological considerations and observational evidences indicate a behaviour beyond the Standard Model for feasible DM particle ...candidates. Non-baryonic DM is compatible with cold and weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) expected to have a mass in the range between ∼10 GeV and ∼100 TeV. Indirect DM searches with imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes may play a crucial role in constraining the nature of the DM particle(s) through the study of their annihilation in very high energy (VHE) gamma rays from promising targets, such as the dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies (dSphs) of the Milky Way. Here, we focus on indirect DM searches in dSphs, presenting the preliminary prospects of this research beyond the TeV mass region achievable with the ASTRI mini-array, proposed to be installed at the Cherenkov Telescope Array southern site.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) represents the next generation of ground-based instruments for very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray astronomy, aimed at improving on the sensitivity of ...current-generation experiments by an order of magnitude and providing coverage over four decades of energy. The current CTA design consists of two arrays of tens of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes, comprising Small, Medium and Large-Sized Telescopes, with one array located in each of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. To study the effect of the site choice on the overall CTA performance and support the site evaluation process, detailed Monte Carlo simulations have been performed. These results show the impact of different site-related attributes such as altitude, night-sky background and local geomagnetic field on CTA performance for the observation of VHE gamma rays.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a world-wide project to build a new generation ground-based gamma-ray instrument operating in the energy range from some tens of GeV to above 100 TeV. To ensure ...full sky coverage CTA will consist of two arrays of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs), one in the southern hemisphere and another one in the northern hemisphere. CTA has just completed the design phase and it is entering in the pre-production one that includes the development of telescope precursor mini-arrays. ASTRI is an ongoing project, to develop and install at the southern CTA site one of such mini-arrays composed by nine dual-mirror small size telescopes equipped with an innovative camera based on silicon photomultiplier sensors. The end-to-end telescope prototype, named ASTRI SST-2M, has been recently inaugurated at the Serra La Nave observing station, on Mount Etna, Italy. ASTRI SST-2M expected performance has been carefully studied using a full Monte Carlo simulation of the shower development in the atmosphere and detector response. Simulated data have been analyzed using the traditional Hillas moment analysis to obtain the expected angular and energy resolution. Simulation results, together with the comparison with the available experimental measurements, are shown.
PDF
