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Low-temperature antihydrogen atoms are an effective tool to probe the validity of the fundamental laws of Physics, for example the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) for antimatter, and -generally speaking- it is obvious that colder atoms will increase the level of precision. After the first production of cold antihydrogen in 2002 [1], experimental efforts have substantially progressed, with really competitive results already reached by adapting to cold antiatoms some well-known techniques pre- viously developed for ordinary atoms. Unfortunately, the number of antihydrogen atoms that can be produced in dedicated experiments is many orders of magnitude smaller than of hydrogen atoms, so the development of novel techniques to enhance the production of antihydrogen with well defined (and possibly controlled) conditions is essential to improve the sensitivity. We present here some experimental results achieved by the AEgIS Collaboration, based at the CERN AD (Antiproton Decelerator) on the production of antihydrogen in a pulsed mode where the production time of 90% of atoms is known with an uncertainty of ~ 250 ns [2]. The pulsed antihydrogen source is generated by the charge-exchange reaction between Rydberg positronium (Ps*) and an antiproton (p¯): p¯ + Ps* → H¯* + e−, where Ps* is produced via the implantation of a pulsed positron beam into a mesoporous silica target, and excited by two consecutive laser pulses, and antiprotons are trapped, cooled and manipulated in Penning-Malmberg traps. The pulsed production (which is a major milestone for AEgIS) makes it possible to select the antihydrogen axial temperature and opens the door for the tuning of the antihydrogen Rydberg states, their de-excitation by pulsed lasers and the manipulation through electric field gradients. In this paper, we present the results achieved by AEgIS in 2018, just before the Long Shutdown 2 (LS2), as well as some of the ongoing improvements to the system, aimed at exploiting the lower energy antiproton beam from ELENA [3].

Modern physics experiments are frequently very complex, relying on multiple simultaneous events to happen in order to obtain the desired result. The experiment control system plays a central role in orchestrating the measurement setup: However, its development is often treated as secondary with respect to the hardware, its importance becoming evident only during the operational phase. Therefore, the AE g ̄ IS (Antimatter Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy) collaboration has created a framework for easily coding control systems, specifically targeting atomic, quantum, and antimatter experiments. This framework, called Total Automation of LabVIEW Operations for Science (TALOS), unifies all the machines of the experiment in a single entity, thus enabling complex high-level decisions to be taken, and it is constituted by separate modules, called MicroServices, that run concurrently and asynchronously. This enhances the stability and reproducibility of the system while allowing for continuous integration and testing while the control system is running. The system demonstrated high stability and reproducibility, running completely unsupervised during the night and weekends of the data-taking campaigns. The results demonstrate the suitability of TALOS to manage an entire physics experiment in full autonomy: being open-source, experiments other than the AE g ̄ IS experiment can benefit from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The AEg̅IS collaboration at CERN’s AD produces antihydrogen atoms in the form of a pulsed, isotropic source with a precisely defined formation time. AEg̅IS has recently undergone major upgrades to fully benefit from the increased number of colder antiprotons provided by the new ELENA decelerator and to move toward forming a horizontal beam to directly investigate the influence of gravity on the H̅ atoms, thereby probing the Weak Equivalence Principle for antimatter. This contribution gives an overview of these upgrades as well as subsequent results from the first beam times with ELENA.

This article overviews the latest progress in echocardiography in this informatic era. We will present new, different techniques available in clinical settings for qualitative and quantitative evaluation of global and regional left ventricular function, showing their helpfulness in clinical work. We will also report our personal experiences with 3-dimensional (3-D) echocardiography in quantification of left ventricular total mass and left-ventricular dysfunctional mass, and in evaluation of left-ventricular parietal stress. Finally, we will show how the organization of a modern echocardiography laboratory is changing after informatic progress: we will report our personal experiences about transmission of echocardiography data between 2 work stations, located in different places; in this way we can realize an informatic web, which can go out from the single echocardiography laboratories and move toward intradepartment and interdepartment services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on laser cooling of a large fraction of positronium (Ps) in free flight by strongly saturating the 1^{3}S-2^{3}P transition with a broadband, long-pulsed 243 nm alexandrite laser. The ground state Ps cloud is produced in a magnetic and electric field-free environment. We observe two different laser-induced effects. The first effect is an increase in the number of atoms in the ground state after the time Ps has spent in the long-lived 2^{3}P states. The second effect is one-dimensional Doppler cooling of Ps, reducing the cloud's temperature from 380(20) to 170(20) K. We demonstrate a 58(9)% increase in the fraction of Ps atoms with v&#95;{1D}<3.7×10^{4}  ms^{-1}.

Background: The endless struggle to survive has driven harmless species to evolve elaborate strategies of deceiving predators. Batesian mimicry involves imitations of noxious species' warning signals by palatable mimics. Clearwing moths (Lepidoptera: Sesiidae), incapable of inflicting painful bites or stings, resemble bees or wasps in their morphology and sometimes imitate their behaviours. An entirely unexplored type of deception in sesiids is acoustic mimicry. We recorded the buzzing sounds of two species of Southeast Asian clearwing moths, Heterosphecia pahangensis and H. hyaloptera and compared them to their visual model bee, Tetragonilla collina, and two control species of bees occurring in the same habitat. Recordings were performed on untethered, flying insects in nature., Results: Based on eight acoustic parameters and wingbeat frequencies calculated from slow-motion videos, we found that the buzzes produced by both clearwing moths highly resemble those of T. collina but differ from the two control species of bees., Conclusions: Acoustic similarities to bees, alongside morphological and behavioural imitations, indicate that clearwing moths display multimodal mimicry of their evolutionary models.

A clearwing moth with a distinct orange, black and white colour pattern was found sucking up fluids from Plecoptera (stonefly) exuviae on rocks, surrounded by water, on a river bank in Thailand. During this process, known as puddling, the sesiid ejected brown liquid, indicating that it was not imbibing water alone. The behaviour was documented via video recording. Morphological and DNA analyses indicate that the moth is a new genus and species of the tribe Osminiini and it is described herein as Aurantiosphecia piotrii genus et species nova. Two species of Aschistophleps Hampson, 1893 have been transferred to the newly established genus. The barcode sequence of the cytochrome c oxidase I gene was obtained with universal invertebrate primers after two sets of standard Lepidoptera primers failed to generate a product. Sections on behaviour, conditions of occurrence and possible mimicry models are included. The unique colouration and body posture of A. piotrii suggest that it is a braconid wasp mimic, with the mimicry model potentially also being the sesiid's parasitoid.

The Apollo butterfly, Parnassius apollo (Linnaeus), was common in Europe over 100 years ago, but currently it is considered as near threatened. Different conservation programs have promoted the persistence of this species; however, it is still endangered. An example of such programs was the action devoted to reestablish the Apollo butterfly population in Pieniny National Park (Poland) from only 20-30 individuals which had survived till the last decade of the 20th century. This reintroduction has been successful; however, unexpected developmental problems appeared. Butterflies with deformed or reduced wings became frequent in the population living in the natural habitat, and particularly among those reared under seminatural conditions (in the same environment, but fenced by a net). Until recently, reasons for these malformations remained unknown. However, reports published during last months indicated that there are genetic, biochemical, and microbiological factors contributing to this phenomenon. In the malformed individuals, lesions in the wingless gene and dysfunctions of laccase 1 and 2 were found to be significantly more frequent than in normal insects. A large fraction of butterflies with deformed or reduced wings was devoid of the prokaryotic symbiont Wolbachia, which was present in most normal individuals. Moreover, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis (Pfeiffer) Smith and Thal, and Serratia sp., bacteria pathogenic to insects, were detected in the biological material from both normal and malformed butterflies from this population. These findings are summarized and discussed in this review, in the light of conservation of insects and restitution of their populations from a low number of individuals., (© 2017 Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.)