The action of UV-C against covid19

The research about the action of ultraviolet radiation against covid19 arrived at an interesting conclusion: the team, leaded by Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica and Università Statale di Milano and with the collaboration of Istituto nazionale dei tumori and Irccs, has provided the first experimental data about the high germicidal power of ultraviolet rays against Sars-Cov-2.
Andrea Bianco, head of the astronomers' team, says to MediaINAF (Google Translate):

We have seen very distinct behaviors. At the lowest concentration, we had to wait six days for the virus to replicate and infect cells without being subjected to UV-C illumination. In the intermediate concentration, which we took as a reference, already with the lowest dose of irradiation, after 24 hours we had a reduction of a factor greater than 1000. Waiting longer, we saw that the virus no longer grows back, that is, it is no longer able to replicate itself: it is said that it has been completely inhibited. While in the highest concentration, at the lowest dose of irradiation, at the beginning there is a fairly significant decrease in the amount of active virus but after it goes back up, which means that the virus has been inactivated but the concentration is so high that it is able to restart (because it has not been completely inhibited). When we gave him the second dose - 16.7 mJ / cm² - it was seen that it is sufficient to completely inhibit him : even after 72 hours he is unable to "regain his strength". In this high concentration of the virus, therefore, this aspect emerged: at low doses I can have a significant decrease in the active virus but he is still able to infect the cells, so after a certain time he restarts with his activity.

But:

Going from Uv-A to Uv-C the danger for man increases, in the sense that Uv-C radiation causes mutations, therefore increases the probability of having skin cancers considerably. So much so that, by law, the maximum dose of Uv-C that one can take daily is very low. Uv-B and Uv-A are much less so, so much so that we tan, protecting ourselves with creams to avoid the risk of cancer and skin rashes. The risk is there but with much less probability.

Bianco, A., Biasin, M., Pareschi, G., Cavalleri, A., Cavatorta, C., Fenizia, C., ... & Saulle, I. (2020). UV-C irradiation is highly effective in inactivating and inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 replication. medRxiv. doi:10.1101/2020.06.05.20123463

The potential virucidal effects of UV-C irradiation on SARS-CoV-2 were experimentally evaluated for different illumination doses and virus concentrations (1000, 5, 0.05 MOI). Both virus inactivation and replication inhibition were investigated as a function of these parameters. At a virus density comparable to that observed in SARS-CoV-2 infection, an UV-C dose of just 3.7 mJ/cm2 was sufficient to achieve a 3-log inactivation, and complete inhibition of all viral concentrations was observed with 16.9 mJ/cm2. These results could explain the epidemiological trends of COVID-19 and are important for the development of novel sterilizing methods to contain SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Nicastro, F., Sironi, G., Antonello, E., Bianco, A., Biasin, M., Brucato, J. R., ... & Trabattoni, D. (2020). Modulation of COVID-19 Epidemiology by UV-B and-A Photons from the Sun. medRxiv. doi:10.1101/2020.06.03.20121392

It is well known that 200-290 nm ultraviolet photons (hereinafter UV-C radiation) photo-chemically interacts with DNA and RNA and are endowed with germicidal properties that are also effective on viruses. Fortunately, Solar UV-C photons of this wavelength are filtered out by the Ozone layer of the upper Atmosphere, at around 35 km. Softer UV photons from the Sun with wavelengths in the range 290-320 nm (UV-B) and 320-400 nm (UV-A), however, do reach the Earth s surface. The effect of these photons on Single- and Double-Stranded RNA/DNA viruses and the possible role they play on the seasonality of epidemics, are nevertheless little studied and highly debated in alternative or complementarity to other environmental causes. Notably though, the effects of both direct and indirect radiation from the Sun needs to be considered in order to completely explain the effects of UV radiations in life processes (with e.g. the UV virucidal effect enhanced in combination to the concomitant process of water droplets depletion because of Solar heat). Herein we present a number of concurring circumstantial evidence suggesting that the evolution and strength of the recent Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-Cov-2) pandemics, might be have been modulated by the intensity of UV-B and UV-A Solar radiation hitting different regions of Earth during the diffusion of the outbreak between January and May 2020. Out findings, if confirmed by more in depth data analysis and modeling of the epidemics, which includes Solar modulation, could help in designing the social behaviors to be adopted depending on season and environmental conditions.

Using ultraviolet radiation against SARS-CoV-2

Alessio Zanuta

Astrophisicts of Brera's Astronmical Observatory in Milano are collaborating with researchers at Milano University are developing and testing ultraviolet devices for air disinfection and inactivation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The italian science magazine, Media INAF, has interviewed Alessio Zanuta. Here there is the english tranlsation. In the post I extracted an interesting quote:

(...) we are developing new ideas for fighting the virus in terms of disinfection
First of all by conducting targeted studies to understand how it behaves and which are in weak points of this virus if subjected to radiation. We speak above all of ultraviolet rays, and we wonder if they are effective in inactivating it, at what wavelengths, how long exposure it takes, and what doses. While there is a large literature on how Uv rays - especially the most energetic ones (the so-called Uv-C rays) - have effective sanitizing effects also on viruses, currently specific information on the doses necessary to specifically annihilate the Sars-Cov-2 virus is lacking responsible for the current pandemic. This bibliography information is missing right now, either because the virus is new, or because the similarities with other types of viruses are labile. After collecting all the necessary data, we aim to develop devices useful for disinfection. Furthermore, the idea that even less energetic rays, those emitted by the Sun and which are not absorbed by the atmosphere, can have a disinfectant effect, with important epidemiological consequences and with interesting information to manage the so-called "Phase 2" in return from the lockdown. In the summer, there could be a drop in infections, also thanks to greater illumination by the Sun.

Buzz Aldrin: from Milano to Mars

Yesterday Buzz Aldrin was in Milano for the Wired Next Fest. The conference room was full of people, and I cannot enter in it. So I see Buzz's conference from the large screen outside in front of the stage. Even if mediated in this way, I could perceive the power of the character, the charisma, the magnetism of a man who goes by now for the nineties but who is not tired yet to point his eyes to the sky. Towards Mars, for precision!

Magical modular furniture

#MIT #design #furniture #technology #Milano

Transform is a magical, modular furniture developed by MIT:

The work is comprised of three dynamic shape displays that move more than one thousand pins up and down in realtime to transform the tabletop into a dynamic tangible display. The kinetic energy of the viewers, captured by a sensor, drives the wave motion represented by the dynamic pins.
The motion design is inspired by the dynamic interactions among wind, water and sand in nature, Escher’s representations of perpetual motion, and the attributes of sand castles built at the seashore. TRANSFORM tells the story of the conflict between nature and machine, and its reconciliation, through the ever-changing tabletop landscape.

They came in Italy during the last design week, but I was busy at school, so I cannot go to see the exhibition and I had to settle with the videos:

It's a hard life...

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(via Wired)

Milano street art: Albert Einstein

posted by @ulaulaman #AlbertEinstein #StreetArt #Milano

In Paolo Sarpi, a street of Milano, there is a street artist who sketches a lot of subject (for example Iron Man or this iconic space monkey). In particular today I find a beautiful reproduction of the most famous photograph about Albert Einstein:

(photo 1 | photo 2)

On Einstein's 72nd birthday on March 14, 1951, UPI photographer Arthur Sasse was trying to persuade him to smile for the camera, but having smiled for photographers many times that day, Einstein stuck out his tongue instead. This photograph became one of the most popular ever taken of Einstein, often used in merchandise depicting him in a lighthearted sense. Einstein enjoyed this photo and requested UPI to give him nine copies for personal use, one of which he signed for a reporter.
Source: Wikipedia

Sulmondo, the nick of the street artists, add only one little detail to the original photo!

A trip to the aquarium

posted by @ulaulaman about #MediterraneanSea #Aquarium #Milano #ClimateChange

Yesterday I gone to the Civic Aquarium of Milano. It was a very interesting tour, between aquariums and the reconstructed natural habitats. In particular I shotted a video of the tropical fishes (I used Giochi di luce - Game of light - by Andrea Carri like soundtrack):

Near to the acquarium there is a poster about the tropicalisation of the mediterranean sea:

Calculating machines

posted by @ulaulaman about the italian exhibition dedicated to #AlanTuring

The Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in Milano was founded 60 years ago on the 15th February and yesterday this birthday was celebrated with a free admission from 14:30 until 23:30. Inside the museum you can participate in various interactive laboratories usually offered to visitors and visit exhibitions presented in the rooms of the Museum. While some of the exhibits are permanent, such as the one dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, others are temporary, such as the one dedicated to Alan Turing, which centenary was celebrated during the last year.
The exhibit occupies three small rooms, nothing incredibly wide or long to see, but certainly very interesting. The exhibition, in fact, tells about the evolution of calculating machines, starting from pascaline by Pascal until you reach the final room, explicitly dedicated to the great British mathematician and logician, where thanks to some infographics, the life of Turing is telled to the visitors. Meanwhile on the wall a series of videos posted to YouTube and dedicated to the great scientist are projected.
To complete the room there is also an Enigma machine:

The Enigma machine was patented in 1918 by the German Arthur Scherbius which takes and expand the operating principle of the Italian Leon Battista Alberti's cipher disk.
Created to facilitate the encryption of communications in the financial and commercial, it was officially presented to the Berne International Postal Congress in 1923. Continuously improved, it is adopted first by the German navy and later by the army to make secret military communications. Easy to use, it enjoys a solid reputation as indecipherable that it ensure the wide diffusion.
Enigma is based on the whole system of secrecy of Nazi Germany. The attempt to break the cipher is one of the most famous stories of counterintelligence of the twentieth century. The first attempts are due to the Polish Marian Rejewski but with the capture of the specimen aboard the German submarine U-boat 110, which is able to provide important information to the team of scientists at Bletchley Park, working night and day to this purpose. Alan Turing is among these. Thanks to his skills as a mathematician and cryptographer, Turing can make an electromechanical computer, The Bombs, ables to perform the task with a remarkably efficient. Subsequently he developed a more powerful computer, Colossus, that at the end of the war will be destroyed on the orders of Winston Churchill, and its existence is only made ​​public uprisings years after the end of the war.

In the gallery below there are the photos I took during the visit to the museum:

Martin Rees: From Big Bang to the Biospheres

posted by @ulaulaman about #MartinRees #BigBang #universe #astronomy

In order to celebrate the anniversary the first observation from x-ray astonomy, the Brera's Astronomical Observatory in Milano organized the international congress X-ray Astronomy: toward the next 50 years!
To the edge of the scientific congress, the organization propose also some public events, starting from the first day, the 1st october, with a talk by the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees.

From Big Bang to the Biospheres is a great journey in the story of the astronomy, the older science, starting from Galileo Galilei, with the invention of the telescope, and Isaac Newton, with the page from Principia about the escape velocity from Earth.

We immediatly jump to the space exploration, with the launch of the Sputnik and the Time's cover dedicated to the first man in space: Yuri Gagarin. Of course also a bit homage to the first man on Moon: Neil Armstrong.

The exploration of space continued with the satellites mission: the european Mars Express, with its spectacular images, and the last Mars' rover, Curiosity.
And after the exploration of Jupiter's satellites (Io, Europa), it arrives Cassini with its spectacular shots, in particular the Sun eclipsed by Saturn and the Huygens descending and landing on Titan.

Robots explore solar system but will follow people!

The next step in our research is to find planets beyond our Solar System: in order to perform this quest we could use two methods: the gravitational lens and the transition.
Using the first method we found 555 planets, Jupiter- and Saturn-like, but if we want to find Earth-like planets we must use the transition method, and this is the reason of the design and launch of Kepler mission.
Also the exploration with telescope could be most useful for our purpouse. We can use space telescopes, like the famouse Hubble Space Telescope, or the Earth telescopes, like the ESO's Extremely Large Telescope, that will be the greatest telescope on the planet!
With the telescopes we can observe a lot of space objects, like supernovae. The first observation of these wonderful explosions is dued by chinese astronomers, but only with Fred Hoyle we have a really powerfull theory about these objects and the nuclear interactions involving in it.
These interstellar explotions are very important in the diffusion of the heavy chemichal elements in the universe, but there are other spectacular interactions like galaxies collisions, that could be described thanks to computer simulations:

The invisible universe

posted by @ulaulaman about #x-ray #astronomy #riccardogiacconi #universe #exhibition #milano

Today will be open in Milano an exhibition about the x-ray astronomy in order to celebrate the discover of the first cosmic x-ray source in 1962. And today I try to resume the story of this research.
The beginning of this branch of the astronomy is in 1946 when Bruno Rossi, who has worked with Enrico Fermi during Manhattan project, started to deal with physics of cosmic rays while teaching at MIT about X-ray. In 1958, with the birth of the American Science & Enginnering (AS&E), Bruno Rossi joined it as chairman of the board of directors and scientific advisor and a year later he called to work even Riccardo Giacconi. One of the first experimental successes includes the launch of the first rocket equipped with detectors for X-rays in 1962. The team of this project as well as Giacconi included, Herb Gursky, Frank Paolini, and Bruno Rossi. With this mission, it was reported the first cosmic X-ray source outside the sun, Scorpius X-1 in the constellation Scorpius.^{(1, 2)}
The uniqueness of the observations of Scorpius X-1 is due mainly to its properties. In fact, while the X-radiation from the sun has an intensity that is approximately 10^-6 times than visible light, Scorpius X-1 has a X-brightness that is 10³ times higher than its same brightness in the visible light. It was subsequently discovered that its intrinsic brightness is 10³ times that of the Sun!⁽¹⁾
There was therefore in front of the discovery of new celestial objects, which had X-rays produced in different physical processes compared to the processes made in the laboratories of the Earth, since their efficiency (99.9%) was unmatched!⁽¹⁾
1960s were, therefore, rich for X-rockets into space, but for the very first X-satellite was launched only in 1970 thanks to a new group leaded by Giacconi⁽¹⁾:
The X-ray astronomy achieved great success with the launch of the first satellite dedicated to X-rays, Uhuru, launched in 1970, with it performed an initial mapping of the X-ray sources in space. It was discovered that the universe is full of objects that emit X-rays, from the black holes to the pulsars, to the binary stars. In fact after this mission, the X-ray astronomy assumes an important role between the international scientific community. It soon became clear that, in order to better understand the secrets of the sky, instead of simply detecting the X-rays, it would be useful to make observations with a telescope sensitive to X-rays. The development of this telescope began with the entry into AS&E team of Giuseppe Vaiana, who leaded the program about the solar X-ray astronomy and the construction of the first telescope. In 1973, Skylab was launched, the U.S. space laboratory directed by Vaiana, that, in addition to various scientific experiments, carried on the observation of the Sun and the corona in X-rays. In 1978 it was sent into orbit the Einstein Observatory, the first X-ray space telescope. The important discoveries of the ROSAT and Chandra followed.⁽²⁾
One of the successive results of astronomy X, always signed Giacconi, in this case with Ethan Schreier, was the discovery of an X-ray source around Cen X-3⁽¹⁾.

Very important discoveries of Uhuru, however, were mainly those concerning the existence of neutron stars and binary systems consisting of a visible star and an unseen companion, a black hole⁽¹⁾!

David Merritt and June Barrow-Green at Milano

The next Monday (28/05/2012) will be a great day for science in Italy. Indeed the astrophysicist David Merritt and the mathematician June Barrow-Green will be at Milano for two distinct talks.
Merritt will be at the Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera for the following talk:

Relativistic Dynamics at the Centers of Galaxies (h 14:00)

Encounters between stars and stellar remnants at the centers of galaxies drive many important processes, including generation of gravitational waves via extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs). The fact that these encounters take place near a supermassive black hole (SMBH) turns out to be important for two reasons: (1) The orbital motion is quasi-Keplerian, so that correlations are maintained for much longer than in purely random encounters. (2) Relativity affects the motion, through mechanisms like precession of the periapse and frame-dragging. The interplay between these processes is just now beginning to be understood, based on N-body simulations that contain a post-Newtonian representation of relativistic dynamics. A key result is that relativity can be important even for orbits that extend outward to a substantial fraction of the SMBH influence radius, by destroying the long-term correlations that would otherwise drive the evolution. I will discuss this work and its implications for the EMRI problem, for experimental tests of theories of gravity, and for the long-term evolution of SMBHs and galactic nuclei.⁽¹⁾

And June Barrow-Green will be at Mathematics Department "Federigo Enriques" with the talk Poincaré and the three body problem.⁽²⁾ (h 16:30)
The problem was stated by Poincaré in 1890 with the following quotation:

I consider three masses, the first very large, the second small but finite, the third infinitely small; I assume that the first two each describe a circle around their common centre of gravity and that the third moves in the plane of these circles. An example would be the case of a small planet perturbed by Jupiter, if the eccentricity of Jupiter and the inclination of the orbits are disregarded.⁽³⁾

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(1) From inSPIRE I found the following paper, Towards relativistic orbit fitting of Galactic center stars and pulsars (arXiv), that seems about the subject of the thalk.
(2) From the introduction of Oscar II's prize competition and the error in Poincaré's memoir on the three body problem by June Barrow-Green:

In the autumn of 1890 Henri Poincaré's memoir on the three body problem was published in the journal Acta Mathematica as the winning entry in the international prize competition sponsored by Oscar II, King of Sweden and Norway, to mark his 60th birthday on January 21, 1889. Today, Poincaré's published memoir is renowned for containing the first mathematical description of chaotic behavior in a dynamical system. Correspondence preserved at the Institut Mittag-Leffler reveals that the competition was beleaguered by difficulties throughout. In particular, it has emerged that only weeks before the prize-winning memoir was due to be published, Poincaré discovered an error in his work which forced him to make very substantial changes. Indeed it was only as a result of correcting the error that he discovered the existence of what today are known as homoclinic points. This paper is an account of the troubled history of the competition together with an explanation of the error in Poincaré's memoir.

(3) Quotation extracted from Poincaré and the Three Body Problem

Earlth and Moonch

This beautiful shot (via Universe Today) is the Cygnus Constellation. The photographer is Marco T., italian, and you can see others great photos on his flickr account.
But this beautiful shot is the better introduction to Earlth and Moonch, a animated short by Dei Gaztelumendi I see the short in Italy, during the Milano Film Festival, and in the worlds of Gaztelumendi is a reflession about Earth, ecology and our future.