Outreach and educational activities within the EEE cosmic ray network

The Extreme Energy Events (EEE) network consists in a sparse array of telescopes based on Multigap Resistive Plate Chambers, installed in high school buildings all over the Italian territory and at CERN. Besides the many research activities concerned with extensive air shower detection, long distance correlation studies and additional physics results obtained during the last decade, the EEE project is extensively employed for educational and outreach activities, constituting a unique opportunity to promote a fruitful and close collaboration between students, high-school teachers and researchers. The involvement is at all levels, from the construction of the chambers during short stages at CERN over the past 15 years, with the participation of several hundred high-school students and teachers, to the installation, monitoring and data taking with the telescopes by high-school teams, to masterclasses, physics lectures, data analysis sessions and joint discussions on the results and their interpretation. Recent developments of the EEE network led to the installation and use of additional detectors in the Arctic region and on board of sailing ships, to measure the cosmic ray flux over large latitude intervals. Periodical remote and in presence (pre-Covid era) meetings allowed in these years a large participation (several thousand people) from the high-school community to the EEE activities. National and local outreach initiatives in cosmic ray physics are also carried out around Italy by the EEE network, as a contribution to the dissemination of science among young people. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Outreach for Science Facilities: Armagh Observatory and Planetarium's programme for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

We describe an outreach programme being delivered by the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium (AOP) for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). Founded in 1790 and with a rich astronomical heritage, AOP today combines the research and education arms of our organisation to bring a research-informed outreach programme to the public, most often through our planetarium-related activities. We have developed and written, in-house, a short full dome planetarium show ("Exploring the High-Energy Universe”) that describes the science of gamma-ray astronomy and introduces the CTA as the first ground-based gamma-ray observatory open to the whole scientific community. In parallel, we are engaged in developing a series of short videos to introduce the scientists and the science of the UK CTA consortium, again designed for public audiences. These videos can be accessed through our social media channels. Delivery of such outreach programme in bite-sized pieces is an essential element in attracting and engaging audiences. We explain how we have developed the skill set to do this in our Education Team at AOP whilst our facility has been closed for the past year, a result of the Covid-pandemic. There is also scope in extending these concepts for providing outreach support for other science facilities. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Single‐Use Technology in Biopharmaceutical Manufacture and Beyond

The Wave 20 developed by Vijay Singh and Marcel Röll has given rise to numerous single-use bioreactors and devices. The launch of the first wave-mixed bioreactor in the late 1990s was one of the most important milestones in single-use technology. Thus, in new facilities, single-use technology may increasingly become the standard for the production of pre- and clinical samples, as well as commercial biotechnological products. [Extracted from the article]

Editorial to the Special Issue: “High-Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy: Results on Fundamental Questions after 30 Years of Ground-Based Observations”

In the presence of other particles, photons or magnetic fields, cosmic rays lose energy by emitting gamma rays and other carriers of astrophysical information, such as neutrinos. The combined observation of these probes, whose origin is closely linked, make up the multi-messenger astronomy framework, of which gamma-rays are the key ingredient. Since the discovery of the first TeV-emitting source a little over 30 years ago, ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, and in particular the imaging air-Cherenkov technique (IACT), has been a major actor in the many revolutions witnessed in the field of astro-particle physics. Cosmology and cosmic ray physics are discussed by L. Tibaldo, D. Gaggero and P. Martin in “Gamma Rays as Probes of Cosmic-Ray Propagation and Interactions in Galaxies” [8], by A. Franceschini in “Photon–Photon Interactions and the Opacity of the Universe in Gamma Rays” [9] and by R. Alves Batista and A. Saveliev in “The Gamma-ray Window to Intergalactic Magnetism” [10], reporting on the limits obtained with gamma-rays in the intergalactic magnetic field. [...]IACTs have proven to be great probes of fundamental physics topics, specially dark matter (DM) searches.

Current Issues in Combating Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Threats to Empower Sustainability: A Systematic Review

Featured ApplicationPotential application in innovations and management sciences, strategy for sustainable development.Combating chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats with novel solutions reduces disasters and accident risks and, at the same time, aids sustainability. This research aims to identify the innovations in combating CBRN threats and verify how they fall within the scope of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The study relies on mixed-method research, including bibliometrics and text-mining used to identify clusters, most frequent words, and codes. The material for the research was 156 publications from the Scopus database from 2017 to April 2022. From the analytical process, textual data served as the indicators of the innovations’ directions driven by SDGs. The research results indicated that innovations for combating CBRN threats support sustainability mainly in health and environmental areas, specifically in: SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being;SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation;SDG 14: Life Below Water;SDG 15: Life On Land. The research contributes to the landscape of innovations serving sustainable development. Further studies may focus on narrower perspectives, such as environmental protection and health innovations. There can also be concerns about the dark side of CBRN innovations and technologies of dual use.

Comparison of image enhancement techniques and CNN models for COVID-19 classification using chest x-rays images

This paper compares two image enhancement techniques with five convolutional neural network (CNN) models to classify Covid-19 chest x-ray images. a contrast limited adaptive histogram (CLAHE) and gamma correction which is method to improve image histogram are compared with the original chest x-ray image. We use five publicly available pre-trained CNN models to detect COVID-19: MobileNet, MobileNetV2, DenseNet169, DenseNet201, and ResNet50V2. Our procedure was validated using the COVID-19 radiography database, which is a freely accessible resource. MoblileNet with gamma correction is well-suited for COVIC-19 classification, achieving an accuracy score of 87.53 percent on the first epoch and 95.46 percent after training 100 epochs with the shortest computation time. © 2022 IEEE.

Nano-Glass Composite Scintillators: Opportunities and Challenges

Scintillators as the core materials of radiation detection play an important role in industrial nondestructive testing, medical imaging, high energy physics and safety inspection, etc.. Theexisting scintillator research faces both opportunities and challenges, especially in the context of COVID-19 pandemic period. It is of great practical significance to develop cost-effective scintillators and optimize their overall performance. The nano-glass composites (i.e., glass ceramics) have some advantages like high emission efficiency of scintillator crystals, simple preparation and low cost as an effective star scintillator. Based on the different luminescence centers, such scintillators can be broadly divided into rare-earth element ions doped or rare-earth-free luminescent nanocrystals embedded materials. This review represented recent development on the preparation of these materials, the relationship between the types of nanocrystals and their luminescence properties, and the potential applications of these materials in high-energy X-ray and gamma-ray detection. In addition, the existing problems in the research were discussed and the future development direction of nano-glass composite scintillators was also prospected. © 2022, Editorial Department of Journal of the Chinese Ceramic Society. All right reserved.

Effects of the 3DP process parameters on mechanical properties of polylactic acid part used for medical purposes

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate effect of infill density, fabricated built orientation and dose of gamma radiation to mechanical tensile and compressive properties of polylactic acid (PLA) part fabricated by fused deposit modelling (FDM) technique for medical applications.Design/methodology/approachPLA specimens for tensile and compressive tests were fabricated using FDM machine. The specimens geometry and test method were referred to ASTM D638 and ASTM D695, respectively. Three orientations under consideration were flat, edge and upright, whereas the infill density ranged from 0 to 100%. The gamma radiation dose used to expose to specimens was 25 kGy. The collected data included stress and strain, which was used to find mechanical properties, i.e. yield strength, ultimate tensile strength (UTS), fracture strength, elongation at yield, elongation at UTS and elongation at break. The t-test was used to access the difference in mechanical properties.FindingsCompressive mechanical properties is greater than tensile mechanical properties. Increasing number of layer parallel to loading direction and infill density, it enhances the material property. Upright presents the lowest mechanical property in tensile test, but greatest in compressive test. Upright orientation should not be used for part subjecting to tensile load. FDM is more proper for part subjecting to compressive load. FDM part requires undergoing gamma ray for sterilisation, the infill density no less than 70 and 60% should be selected for part subjecting to tensile and compressive load, respectively.Originality/valueThis study investigated all mechanical properties in both tension and compression as well as exposure to gamma radiation. The results can be applied in selection of FDM parameters for medical device manufacturing.