Search results for "Planetary Science"

Reproducibility of evoked and induced MEG responses to proprioceptive stimulation of the ankle joint

2022

Cortical processing of proprioceptive afference can be investigated by examining phase locked evoked and induced responses in cortical signals to passive movement stimuli. Reproducibility of evoked and induced responses has been studied using electroencephalography (EEG), but proprioceptive domain has received little attention. It is unclear whether evoked and induced responses to proprioceptive stimulation arising from the lower limbs are reproducible using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Nineteen healthy volunteers (18 right-foot dominant, 36.1 ± 6.6 yr, 7 females) were measured in two MEG sessions separated by 9 ± 5 days in which their right ankle was rotated intermittently using a pneumat…

How modeling helps in developing self-sovereign identity governance framework: An experience report

2022

Digital Identity has become a topic that attracts the attention of researchers due to the enormous number of services that have been provided online recently. Researchers face many obstacles regarding the security, privacy, and utility of digital identity. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) ecosystems provide a solution for digital identity, in addition to providing a decentralized human-centric paradigm that enables users to own and control their identity. Governance framework (GF) is a key challenge in building SSI ecosystems for two reasons. First, the GF needs to address various aspects such as user needs, standards, laws, and business requirements in an ecosystem. Second, the ecosystem cons…

Motivation and Preferences of Visitors in the Bohemian Paradise UNESCO Global Geopark

2021

There are some localities in the Bohemian Paradise Geopark that suffer from temporal overtourism in the high season. On the other hand, more than half of the geopark is not so often visited by tourists, although very attractive geosites can be found there too. In the most visited localities, nature is damaged due to overloading of the tourist infrastructure, while elsewhere there is pressure driven by municipalities to increase the number of tourists. For this reason, we organized a large questionnaire survey in summer 2020, which aimed to reveal the motivation of visitors of the geopark and their preferences regarding the places visited. The questionnaire combined several research methods:…

Archaeometric Characterisation of Decorated Pottery from the Archaeological Site of Villa dei Quintili (Rome, Italy): Preliminary Study

2019

This work focused on the study of decorated pottery dated back to the 16th century from the Roman archaeological site of Villa dei Quintili, a monumental complex located in the south-eastern part of Rome (Italy). A minero-petrographic and geochemical study was undertaken to analyse five archaeological samples in order to define textural features and raw materials used for their production, along with the chemical and physical composition of the superficial decorative glazed coatings. For this purpose, different analytical methods were used, such as polarising optical microscope (POM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), micro-Raman spectroscopy, X-Ray fluorescence (XRF), and electron microprobe analys…

The renaissance of tramways and urban redevelopment in France

2017

Abstract Tramways have made a remarkable comeback in France since the 1980s. An organization of public transport based on the decentralized administration system set up in the early 1980s has allowed local urban authorities to make their own choices to develop public transport networks in the context of automobile domination. As in many other countries, worries about fossil fuel dependency and demands concerning sustainable urban development appear as strong elements in favour of urban light rail. However, in France, tramways are not just technical solutions for traffic congestion, they have also become a symbol of a cultural mutation in urban development planning. Coupled with a national p…

Neurobiology and the development of human morality: evolution, culture and wisdom

2016

SPI/INTEGRAL in-flight performance

2003

The SPI instrument has been launched on-board the INTEGRAL observatory on October 17, 2002. SPI is a spectrometer devoted to the sky observation in the 20 keV-8 MeV energy range using 19 germanium detectors. The performance of the cryogenic system is nominal and allows to cool the 19 kg of germanium down to 85 K with a comfortable margin. The energy resolution of the whole camera is 2.5 keV at 1.1 MeV. This resolution degrades with time due to particle irradiation in space. We show that the annealing process allows the recovery of the initial performance. The anticoincidence shield works as expected, with a low threshold at 75 keV, reducing the GeD background by a factor of 20. The digital …

Long-term monitoring of the TeV emission from Mrk 421 with the ARGO-YBJ experiment

2011

ARGO-YBJ is an air shower detector array with a fully covered layer of resistive plate chambers. It is operated with a high duty cycle and a large field of view. It continuously monitors the northern sky at energies above 0.3 TeV. In this paper, we report a long-term monitoring of Mrk 421 over the period from 2007 November to 2010 February. This source was observed by the satellite-borne experiments Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and Swift in the X-ray band. Mrk 421 was especially active in the first half of 2008. Many flares are observed in both X-ray and gamma-ray bands simultaneously. The gamma-ray flux observed by ARGO-YBJ has a clear correlation with the X-ray flux. No lag between the X-r…

Spatially Resolved Broadband Synchrotron Emission from the Nonthermal Limbs of SN1006

2018

We present ~400ks NuSTAR observations of the northeast (NE) and southwest (SW) non-thermal limbs of the Galactic SNR SN1006. We discovered three sources with X-ray emission detected at >50keV. Two of them are identified as background AGN. We extract the NuSTAR spectra from a few regions along the non-thermal limbs and jointly analyze them with the XMM-Newton spectra and the radio data. The broad-band radio/X-ray spectra can be well described with a synchrotron emission model from a single population of CR electrons with a power law energy distribution and an exponential cutoff. The power law index of the electron particle distribution function (PDF) is ~1.88-1.95 for both the NE and SW l…

Discovery of slow X-ray pulsations in the high-mass X-ray binary 4U 2206+54

2008

Context. The source 4U 2206+54 is one of the most enigmatic high-mass X-ray binaries. In spite of intensive searches, X-ray pul- sations have not been detected in the time range 10−3–103 s. A cyclotron line at ∼30 keV has been suggested by various authors but never detected with significance. The stellar wind of the optical companion is abnormally slow. The orbital period, initially reported to be 9.6 days, disappeared and a new periodicity of 19.25 days emerged. Aims. The main objective of our RXTE monitoring of 4U 2206+54 is to study the X-ray orbital variability of the spectral and timing parameters. The new long and uninterrupted RXTE observations allow us to search for long (∼1 h) puls…