The scattering of spinning test particles by a Schwarzschild black hole is studied. The motion is described according to the Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon model for extended bodies in a given gravitational background field. The equatorial plane is taken as the orbital plane, the spin vector being orthogonal to it with constant magnitude. The equations of motion are solved analytically in closed form to first-order in spin and the solution is used to compute corrections to the standard geodesic scattering angle as well as capture cross section by the black hole.

The explicit analytical computation of first-order metric perturbations in black hole spacetimes is described in the case of a perturbing mass moving on an equatorial circular orbit. The perturbation equations can be separated into an angular part and a radial part. The latter satisfies a single inhomogeneous radial Schrödingerlike equation with a Dirac-delta singular source term, whose solutions are built up through Green's function techniques. Various types of approximate analytical homogeneous solutions (and corresponding Green's functions) can be constructed: Post-Newtonian solutions (expanded in powers of 1=c), Mano-Suzuki-Takasugi solutions (expanded in series of hypergeometric functions), Wentzel-Kramers- Brillouin (WKB) solutions (large l expansion). The perturbed black-hole metric constructed by suitably combining these different kind of solutions can then be used to compute, in analytical form, gauge-invariant quantities. These include several "potentials" entering the effective-one-body formalism (shortly reviewed here). The latter formalism is a new way of describing the gravitational interaction of two masses which has played a crucial role in the recent detection of gravitationalwaves.

Deviation and precession effects of a bunch of spinning particles in the field of a weak gravitational plane wave are studied according to the Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon (MPD) model. Before the passage of the wave the particles are at rest with an associated spin vector aligned along a given direction with constant magnitude. The interaction with the gravitational wave causes the particles to keep moving on the 2-plane orthogonal to the direction of propagation of the wave, with the transverse spin vector undergoing oscillations around the initial orientation. The transport equations for both the deviation vector and spin vector between two neighboring world lines of such a congruence are then solved by a suitable extension of the MPD model off the spinning particle's world line. In order to obtain measurable physical quantities a "laboratory" is set up by constructing a Fermi coordinate system attached to a reference world line. The exact transformation between TT coordinates and Fermi coordinates is derived too.

MIPAS on ENVISAT performed almost continuous and global measurements of atmospheric temperature and composition from June 2002 to April 2012. These data are very useful for understanding atmosphere climatology from the upper troposphere to the mesosphere, including trends in composition and variability, as a reference for middle atmosphere ozone and general circulation as well as improvement of tropospheric composition retrievals. The ESA Level 2 processor, based on the Optimized Retrieval Model (ORM), originally designed for the Near Real Time analysis and developed by an European Consortium led by IFAC, is currently improved and used for the reanalysis of the full MIPAS mission. The maintenance and the upgrade of the ESA processor are made in the frame of the MIPAS Quality Working Group, where a fruitful collaboration among Level 1, Level 2 and validation teams is exploited. This collaboration is essential to improve the accuracy of the products and their characterization. This paper is meant to describe the most recent upgrades in the MIPAS processor, in particular the full mission was recently reprocessed with L1 V7 and L2 V7 processors, containing significant improvements with respect to previous version 6, and further improvements are in preparation, that will be collected in version 8 of the ESA processor. The improvements include both L1 and L2 processors, as well as the auxiliary data. In the L1 processor the correction of the instrumental drift caused by the ageing of the detectors has been implemented in order to reduce the non negligible systematic error in the trend estimation. Furthermore, the measured daily gain instead of the weekly gain is now used for the radiometric calibration that allows to better take account for the discontinuities in the gain that occasionally occur in MIPAS band B. Improvements in the L2 processor include a different approach for retrieving atmospheric continuum, the use of an a posteriori regularization with altitude dependent constraint, a better approach for handling interfering species, a reduced bias in CFC-11, the handling of horizontal inhomogeneities and the use of ECMWF altitude/pressure relation to determine more accurate altitudes. Improvements in the auxiliary data consist in the use of microwindows with larger information content, an improved spectroscopic database and diurnally varying climatological dataset. Furthermore, additional species are provided in the new processors, leading to a total of 22 retrieved species by the L2 version 8 processor. Each of these changes has a different impact on the Level 2 products. The individual contributions, as well as the cumulative effects, will be evaluated with a comparison with previous versions of MIPAS products and corresponding results of validation. Improvements in the trend determination will also be evaluated, as well as the quality of the new retrieved species.

Carbon tetrachloride (CCl?) is a strong ozone-depleting atmospheric gas regulated by the Montreal protocol. Recently it received increasing interest because it was found that at the surface its atmospheric concentration declines with a rate almost three times smaller than its lifetime-limited rate. Indeed there is a discrepancy between atmospheric observations and the estimated distribution based on the reported production and consumption (the so called "mystery of CCl?"). We use for the first time the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) measurements to estimate CCl? distribution, its trend, and atmospheric lifetime in the upper troposphere / lower stratosphere (UTLS) region. In particular, here we use MIPAS product generated with Version 7 of the Level 2 algorithm operated by the European Space Agency. The CCl? zonal means show features typical of long-lived species of anthropogenic origin that are destroyed primarily in the stratosphere: larger amounts are found in the troposphere, monotonically decreasing with altitude. We calculate CCl? trends as a function of both latitude and altitude: negative trends are found at all latitudes in the UTLS, apart from a region in the Southern mid-latitudes between 50 and 10 hPa where the trend is slightly positive. At the lowest altitudes sounded by the MIPAS scan we find trend values consistent with those determined on the basis of long-term ground-based measurements. CCl? global average lifetime of 46(38 - 60) years has been estimated using the tracer-tracer linear correlations approach and the CFC-11 as the reference tracer. This estimated value is consistent with the most recent literature result of 44(36 - 58) years.

The workshop Mathematical Approach to Climate Change Impacts (MAC2I) has been styled to drive the attention within Italian academy and public research institutions towards applied mathematics research in environmental problems related to climate change. A number of renowned specialists delivered plenary lectures to introduce the hottest issues, contributed talks were selected in order to exemplify recent successful mathematical developments in this applicative field and two tutorials introduced the mathematical modelling tools to approach clue subjects. The program has been structured into four thematic sessions, respectively glaciology, hydrology, ecosystem science and environmental monitoring. Panel discussions and brain-storming were included as an opportunity for the emergence of new ideas in the right atmosphere to foster scientific international collaborations. The workshop, appropriate also within a PhD course program, was conceived in the context of the excellence project of applied mathematics MATH-TECH, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) awarded to the Institute for Applied Mathematics (IAC) "M. Picone" of the National Research Council (CNR) and to the Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica (INDAM) (2015-2017).

The melting of glaciers coming with climate change threatens the heritage of the last glaciation of Europe likely contained in subglacial lakes in Greenland and Svalbard, which look fated to disappear. This aspect urges specialists to focus their studies (theoretical, numerical and on-field) on such fascinating objects. Along this line we have approached the validation of the conjecture of the existence of a subglacial lake beneath the Amundsenisen Plateau at South-Spitzbergen, Svalbard, where Ground Penetrating Radar measurements have revealed several flat signal spots, sign of the presence of a body of water. The whole investigation aspects and tools, mathematical modeling and numerical simulation procedure, the computational algorithm and the numerical results obtained on the real study case, have been sketched at workshop time, and the decision has been discussed to undertake drilling operations above the presumed ice/water front, where subglacial lake water bio-chemicals might be traceable. This investigation is a follow-up of the multi and interdisciplinary research activities based at the Arctic Station ''Dirigibile Italia'', coordinated by the ''Dipartimento Scienze del Sistema Terra e Tecnologie per l'Ambiente'' of CNR (I) and of the transnational project 'SvalGlac - Sensitivity of Svalbard Glaciers to Climate Change' funded by ESF-ERANET PolarClimate Consortium (PNRA for Italy).

We give a general inequality for the total variation distance between a Poisson distributed random variable and a first order stochastic integral with respect to a point process with stochastic intensity, constructed by embedding in a bivariate Poisson process. We apply this general inequality to first order stochastic integrals with respect to a class of nonlinear Hawkes processes, which is of interest in queueing theory, providing explicit bounds for the Poisson approximation, a quantitative Poisson limit theorem, confidence intervals and asymptotic estimates of the moments.

We give general bounds in the Gaussian and Poisson approximations of innovations (or Skorohod integrals) defined on the space of point processes with Papangelou conditional intensity. We apply the general results to Gibbs point processes with pair potential and determinantal point processes. In particular, we provide explicit error bounds and quantitative limit theorems for stationary, inhibitory and finite range Gibbs point processes with pair potential and beta-Ginibre point processes.

In this paper we analyze least recently used (LRU) caches operating under the shot noise requests model (SNM). The SNM was recently proposed in [S. Traverso et al., ACM Comput. Comm. Rev., 43 (2013), pp. 5-12] to better capture the main characteristics of today's video on demand traffic. We investigate the validity of Che's approximation [H. Che, Y. Tung, and Z. Wang, IEEE J. Selected Areas Commun., 20 (2002), pp. 1305-1314] through an asymptotic analysis of the cache eviction time. In particular, we provide a law of large numbers, a large deviation principle, and a central limit theorem for the cache eviction time, as the cache size grows large. Finally, we derive upper and lower bounds for the "hit" probability in tandem networks of caches under Che's approximation.

We provide a Clark-Ocone formula for square-integrable functionals of a general temporal point process satisfying only a mild moment condition, generalizing known results on the Poisson space. Some classical applications are given, namely a deviation bound and the construction of a hedging portfolio in a pure-jump market model. As a more modern application, we provide a bound on the total variation distance between two temporal point processes, improving in some sense a recent result in this direction.

In this work a two level heuristic algorithm is described for a nearly real-time multi-vehicle many-to-many Dial-A-Ride Problem (DARP). This algorithm is ready to support a Demand Responsive Transportation System in which we face the problem of quickly evaluate a good-quality schedule for the vehicles and provide fast response to the users. The insertion heuristic is double dynamic nearly real-time and the objective function is to minimize the variance between the requested and scheduled time of pickup and delivery. In the first level, after a customer web-request, the heuristic returns an answer about the possibility to insert the request into the accepted reservations, and therefore in a vehicle schedule, or reject the request. In the second level, during the time elapsed between a request and the following, and after a reshuffling of the order of the incoming accepted requests, the same heuristic works for the whole set of accepted requests, trying to optimize the solution. We intensively tested the algorithm with a requests-generating software that has allowed us to show the competitive advantage of this web-based architecture.

The geometry of passive tracer trajectories is studied in two different types of rotating turbulent flows; rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection (RBC; experiments and direct numerical simulations) and rotating electromagnetically forced turbulence (EFT; experiments). This geometry is fully described by the curvature and torsion of trajectories, and from these geometrical quantities we can subtract information on the typical flow structures at different rotation rates. Previous studies, focusing on nonrotating homogeneous isotropic turbulence (HIT), show that the probability density functions (PDFs) of curvature and torsion reveal pronounced power laws. However, the set-ups studied here involve inhomogeneous turbulence, and in RBC the flow near the horizontal plates is definitely anisotropic. We investigate how the typical shapes of the curvature and torsion PDFs, including the pronounced scaling laws, are influenced by this level of anisotropy and inhomogeneity and how this effect changes with rotation. A first effect of rotation is observed as a shift of the curvature and torsion PDFs towards higher values in the case of RBC and towards lower values in the case of EFT. This shift is related to the length scale of typical vortical structures that decreases with rotation in RBC, but increases with rotation in EFT, explaining the opposite shifts of the curvature (and torsion) PDFs. A second remarkable observation is that in RBC the HIT scaling laws are always recovered, as long as the boundary layer (BL) is excluded. This suggests that these scaling laws are very robust and hold as long as we measure in the turbulent bulk. In the BL of the RBC cell, however, the scaling deviates from the HIT prediction for lower rotation rates. This scaling behavior is found to be consistent with the coupling between the boundary layer dynamics and the bulk flow, which changes under rotation. In particular, it is found that the active coupling of the Ekman-type boundary layer with the bulk flow suppresses anisotropy in the BL region for increasing rotation rates.

This study shows the land cover mapping accuracy retrievable by the TASI-600 thermal airborne multispectral sensor and describes some of the classification results tested on the thermal preprocessed data for a rural area. In the paper is provided an overview of the principal TASI-600 characteristics, i.e. 32 spectral bands in the 8.0-11.5 ?m spectral range, and land cover classification performances. A full assessment of the TASI-600 spectral bands has been also obtained by ranking them in order to understanding their role in land cover classification. Results accuracies have been validated using available ground truth. The study highlights that the new generation of multi/hyperspectral thermal sensors opens up interesting opportunities for accurate land cover classification.

We propose a mathematical model for the transport of DNA plasmids from the extracellular matrix up to the cell nucleus. The model couples two phenomena: the electroporation process, describing the cell membrane permeabilization to plasmids and the intracellular transport enhanced by the presence of microtubules. Numerical simulations of cells with arbitrary geometry, in 2D and 3D, and a network of microtubules show numerically the importance of the microtubules and the electroporation on the effectiveness of the DNA transfection, as observed by previous biological data. The paper proposes efficient numerical tools for forthcoming optimized procedures of cell transfection.

The effects of a nonminimally coupled curvature-matter model of gravity on a perturbed Minkowski metric are presented. The action functional of the model involves two functions $f^1(R)$ and $f^2(R)$ of the Ricci scalar curvature $R$. This work expands upon previous results, extending the framework developed there to compute corrections up to order $O\left(1\slash c^4\right)$ of the 00 component of the metric tensor. It is shown that additional contributions arise due to both the non-linear form $f^1(R)$ and the nonminimal coupling $f^2(R)$, including exponential contributions that cannot be expressed as an expansion in powers of $1/r$. Some possible experimental implications are assessed with application to perihelion precession.

The theoretical understanding of Gartner's "hype curve" is an interesting open question in deciding the strategic actions to adopt in presence of an incoming technology. In order to describe the hype behaviour quantitatively, we propose a mathematical approach based on a rate equation, similar to that used to describe quantum level transitions. The model is able to describe the hype curve evolution in many relevant conditions, which can be associated to various market parameters. Different hype curves, describing the time evolution of a new technology market penetration, are then obtained within a single coherent mathematical approach. We have also used our theoretical model to describe the time evolution of the number of scientific publications in different fields of scientific research. Data are well described by our model, so we present a statistical analysis and forecasting potentiality of our approach. We note that the hype peak of inflated expectations is very smooth in the case of scientific publications, probably due to the high level of awareness and the deep preliminary understanding which is necessary to carry on a research project. Our model is anyway flexible enough to describe many patterns of increasing interest on a new idea, leading to a hype behaviour or other time evolution.

Hypomorphic mutations in DNA-methyltransferase DNMT3B cause majority of the rare disorder Immunodeficiency, Centromere instability and Facial anomalies syndrome cases (ICF1). By unspecified mechanisms, mutant-DNMT3B interferes with lymphoid-specific pathways resulting in immune response defects. Interestingly, recent findings report that DNMT3B shapes intragenic CpG-methylation of highly-transcribed genes. However, how the DNMT3B-dependent epigenetic network modulates transcription and whether ICF1-specific mutations impair this process remains unknown. We performed a transcriptomic and epigenomic study in patient-derived B-cell lines to investigate the genome-scale effects of DNMT3B dysfunction. We highlighted that altered intragenic CpG-methylation impairs multiple aspects of transcriptional regulation, like alternative TSS usage, antisense transcription and exon splicing. These defects preferentially associate with changes of intragenic H3K4me3 and at lesser extent of H3K27me3 and H3K36me3. In addition, we highlighted a novel DNMT3B activity in modulating the self-regulatory circuit of sense-antisense pairs and the exon skipping during alternative splicing, through interacting with RNA molecules. Strikingly, altered transcription affects disease relevant genes, as for instance the memory-B cell marker CD27 and PTPRC genes, providing us with biological insights into the ICF1-syndrome pathogenesis. Our genome-scale approach sheds light on the mechanisms still poorly understood of the intragenic function of DNMT3B and DNA methylation in gene expression regulation.

Active research in nanotechnology contemplates the use of nanomaterials for environmental engineering applications. However, a primary challenge is understanding the effects of nanomaterial properties on industrial device performance and translating unique nanoscale properties to the macroscale. One emerging example consists of graphene oxide (GO) membranes for separation processes. Thus, here we investigate how individual GO properties can impact GO membrane characteristics and water permeability. GO chemistry and morphology were controlled with easy-to-implement photoreduction and sonication techniques and were quantitatively correlated, offering a valuable tool for accelerating characterization. Chemical GO modification allows for fine control of GO oxidation state, allowing control of GO architectural laminate (GOAL) spacing and permeability. Water permeability was measured for eight GOALs characterized by different GOAL chemistry and morphology and indicates that GOAL nanochannel height dictates water transport. The experimental outputs were corroborated with mesoscale water transport simulations of relatively large domains (thousands of square nanometers) and indicate a no-slip Darcy-like behavior inside the GOAL nanochannels. The experimental and simulation evidence presented in this study helps create a clearer picture of water transport in GOAL, and can be used to rationally design more effective and efficient GO membranes.

Significant improvements in the computational performance of the lattice-Boltzmann (LB) model, coded in FORTRAN90, were achieved through application of enhancement techniques. Applied techniques include optimization of array memory layouts, data structure simplification, random number generation outside the simulation thread(s), code parallelization via OpenMP, and intra- and inter-timestep task pipelining. Effectiveness of these optimization techniques was measured on three benchmark problems: (i) transient flow of multiple particles in a Newtonian fluid in a heterogeneous fractured porous domain, (ii) thermal fluctuation of the fluid at the sub-micron scale and the resultant Brownian motion of a particle, and (iii) non-Newtonian fluid flow in a smooth-walled channel. Application of the aforementioned optimization techniques resulted in an average 21x performance improvement, which could significantly enhance practical uses of the LB models in diverse applications, focusing on the fate and transport of nano-size or micron-size particles in non-Newtonian fluids. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.