The rupestrian churches in the monastery of Geghard, Armenia

The monastery of Geghard is of particular importance, as it is the only consecrated monument in Armenia to be half built and half carved into the rock. Probably founded in the first centuries its maximum expansion had in the thirteenth century, and from that moment it is as if it had almost crystallized in its ancient appearance. In the year 2000 UNESCO included it in the World Heritage sites. This multidisciplinary research group saw its great potential and took it as a case study, starting from digital surveying, in parallel with the historical-artistic investigation. In this paper we want to expose the first elaborations and the first observations arising from the recent survey campaign, the first cognitive stage prior to the subsequent ‘in-depth’ processing of the data

Association of kidney disease measures with risk of renal function worsening in patients with type 1 diabetes

Background: Albuminuria has been classically considered a marker of kidney damage progression in diabetic patients and it is routinely assessed to monitor kidney function. However, the role of a mild GFR reduction on the development of stage 653 CKD has been less explored in type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients. Aim of the present study was to evaluate the prognostic role of kidney disease measures, namely albuminuria and reduced GFR, on the development of stage 653 CKD in a large cohort of patients affected by T1DM. Methods: A total of 4284 patients affected by T1DM followed-up at 76 diabetes centers participating to the Italian Association of Clinical Diabetologists (Associazione Medici Diabetologi, AMD) initiative constitutes the study population. Urinary albumin excretion (ACR) and estimated GFR (eGFR) were retrieved and analyzed. The incidence of stage 653 CKD (eGFR < 60 mL/min/1.73 m2) or eGFR reduction > 30% from baseline was evaluated. Results: The mean estimated GFR was 98 \ub1 17 mL/min/1.73m2 and the proportion of patients with albuminuria was 15.3% (n = 654) at baseline. About 8% (n = 337) of patients developed one of the two renal endpoints during the 4-year follow-up period. Age, albuminuria (micro or macro) and baseline eGFR < 90 ml/min/m2 were independent risk factors for stage 653 CKD and renal function worsening. When compared to patients with eGFR > 90 ml/min/1.73m2 and normoalbuminuria, those with albuminuria at baseline had a 1.69 greater risk of reaching stage 3 CKD, while patients with mild eGFR reduction (i.e. eGFR between 90 and 60 mL/min/1.73 m2) show a 3.81 greater risk that rose to 8.24 for those patients with albuminuria and mild eGFR reduction at baseline. Conclusions: Albuminuria and eGFR reduction represent independent risk factors for incident stage 653 CKD in T1DM patients. The simultaneous occurrence of reduced eGFR and albuminuria have a synergistic effect on renal function worsening

Measurement of the low-energy antitriton inelastic cross section

In this Letter, the first measurement of the inelastic cross section for antitriton–nucleus interactions is reported, covering the momentum range of 0.8 ≤ p < 2.4 GeV/c. The measurement is carried out using data recorded with the ALICE detector in pp and Pb–Pb collisions at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon of 13 TeV and 5.02 TeV, respectively. The detector material serves as an absorber for antitriton nuclei. The raw yield of (anti)triton nuclei measured with the ALICE apparatus is compared to the results from detailed ALICE simulations based on the GEANT4 toolkit for the propagation of (anti)particles through matter, allowing one to quantify the inelastic interaction probability in the detector material. This analysis complements the measurement of the inelastic cross section of antinuclei up to A=3 carried out by the ALICE Collaboration, and demonstrates the feasibility of the study of the isospin dependence of inelastic interaction cross section with the analysis techniques presented in this Letter

Measurement of anti-3He nuclei absorption in matter and impact on their propagation in the Galaxy

In our Galaxy, light antinuclei composed of antiprotons and antineutrons can be produced through high-energy cosmic-ray collisions with the interstellar medium or could also originate from the annihilation of dark-matter particles that have not yet been discovered. On Earth, the only way to produce and study antinuclei with high precision is to create them at high-energy particle accelerators. Although the properties of elementary antiparticles have been studied in detail, the knowledge of the interaction of light antinuclei with matter is limited. We determine the disappearance probability of anti-3He when it encounters matter particles and annihilates or disintegrates within the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider. We extract the inelastic interaction cross section, which is then used as an input to the calculations of the transparency of our Galaxy to the propagation of anti-3He stemming from dark-matter annihilation and cosmic-ray interactions within the interstellar medium. For a specific dark-matter profile, we estimate a transparency of about 50%, whereas it varies with increasing anti-3He momentum from 25% to 90% for cosmic-ray sources. The results indicate that anti-3He nuclei can travel long distances in the Galaxy, and can be used to study cosmic-ray interactions and dark-matter annihilation

Measurement of beauty-strange meson production in Pb–Pb collisions at sNN=5.02TeV via non-prompt Ds + mesons

The production yields of non-prompt D_s^+ mesons, namely D_s^+ mesons from beauty-hadron decays, were measured for the first time as a function of the transverse momentum (pT) at midrapidity (|y| phi pi+, with phi -> K+ K-, in the 4 < pT < 36 GeV/c and 2 < pT < 24 GeV/c intervals for the 0–10% and 30–50% centrality classes, respectively. The measured yields of non-prompt D_S^+ mesons are compared to those of prompt D_s^+ and non-prompt D0 mesons by calculating the ratios of the production yields in Pb–Pb collisions and the nuclear modification factor RAA. The ratio between the RAA of non-prompt D_s^+ and prompt D_s^+ mesons, and that between the RAA of non-prompt D_s^+ and non-prompt D0 mesons in central Pb–Pb collisions are found to be on average higher than unity in the 4 < pT < 12 GeV/c interval with a statistical significance of about 1.6 sigma and 1.7 sigma, respectively. The measured RAA ratios are compared with the predictions of theoretical models of heavy-quark transport in a hydrodynamically expanding QGP that incorporate hadronisation via quark recombination

First measurement of coherent ρ0 photoproduction in ultra-peripheral Xe–Xe collisions at √sNN = 5.44 TeV

The first measurement of the coherent photoproduction of ρ0 vector mesons in ultra-peripheral Xe–Xe collisions at sNN=5.44 TeV is presented. This result, together with previous HERA γp data and γ–Pb measurements from ALICE, describes the atomic number (A) dependence of this process, which is particularly sensitive to nuclear shadowing effects and to the approach to the black-disc limit of QCD at a semi-hard scale. The cross section of the Xe+Xe→ρ0+Xe+Xe process, measured at midrapidity through the decay channel ρ0→π+π−, is found to be dσ/dy=131.5±5.6(stat.)−16.9+17.5(syst.) mb. The ratio of the continuum to resonant contributions for the production of pion pairs is also measured. In addition, the fraction of events accompanied by electromagnetic dissociation of either one or both colliding nuclei is reported. The dependence on A of cross section for the coherent ρ0 photoproduction at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon of the γA system of WγA,n=65 GeV is found to be consistent with a power-law behaviour σ(γA→ρ0A)∝Aα with a slope α=0.96±0.02(syst.). This slope signals important shadowing effects, but it is still far from the behaviour expected in the black-disc limit.publishedVersio

First Measurement of Antideuteron Number Fluctuations at Energies Available at the Large Hadron Collider

The first measurement of event-by-event antideuteron number fluctuations in high energy heavy-ion collisions is presented. The measurements are carried out at midrapidity (1?1 < 0.8) as a function of collision centrality in Pb-Pb collisions atv (NN)-N-s= 5.02 TeV using the ALICE detector. A significant negative correlation between the produced antiprotons and antideuterons is observed in all collision centralities. The results are compared with a state-of-the-art coalescence calculation. While it describes the ratio of higher order cumulants of the antideuteron multiplicity distribution, it fails to describe quantitatively the magnitude of the correlation between antiproton and antideuteron production. On the other hand, thermal-statistical model calculations describe all the measured observables within uncertainties only for correlation volumes that are different with respect to those describing proton yields and a similar measurement of net-proton number fluctuations

Modification of charged-particle jets in event-shape engineered Pb-Pb collisions at √SNN=5.02 TeV

Charged-particle jet yields have been measured in semicentral Pb–Pb collisions at center-of-mass energy per nucleon–nucleon collision sNN=5.02 TeV with the ALICE detector at the LHC. These yields are reported as a function of the jet transverse momentum, and further classified by their angle with respect to the event plane and the event shape, characterized by ellipticity, in an effort to study the path-length dependence of jet quenching. Jets were reconstructed at midrapidity from charged-particle tracks using the anti-kT algorithm with resolution parameters R = 0.2 and 0.4, with event-plane angle and event-shape values determined using information from forward scintillating detectors. The results presented in this letter show that, in semicentral Pb–Pb collisions, there is no significant difference between jet yields in predominantly isotropic and elliptical events. However, out-of-plane jets are observed to be more suppressed than in-plane jets. Further, this relative suppression is greater for low transverse momentum (&lt; 50 GeV/c) R = 0.2 jets produced in elliptical events, with out-of-plane to in-plane jet-yield ratios varying up to 5.2σ between different event-shape classes. These results agree with previous studies indicating that jets experience azimuthally anisotropic suppression when traversing the QGP medium, and can provide additional constraints on the path-length dependence of jet energy loss

Towards the understanding of the genuine three-body interaction for p–p–p and p–p–Λ\Lambda

Three-body nuclear forces play an important role in the structure of nuclei and hypernuclei and are also incor- porated in models to describe the dynamics of dense baryonic matter, such as in neutron stars. So far, only indirect mea- surements anchored to the binding energies of nuclei can be used to constrain the three-nucleon force, and if hyperons are considered, the scarce data on hypernuclei impose only weak constraints on the three-body forces. In this work, we present the first direct measurement of the p–p–p and p–p–Lambda systems in terms of three-particle correlation functions car- ried out for pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV. Three-particle cumulants are extracted from the correlation functions by applying the Kubo formalism, where the three-particle inter- action contribution to these correlations can be isolated after subtracting the known two-body interaction terms. A nega- tive cumulant is found for the p–p–p system, hinting to the presence of a residual three-body effect while for p–p–Lambda the cumulant is consistent with zero. This measurement demon- strates the accessibility of three-baryon correlations at the LHC