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An editorial is presented which discusses the highlights of the Second Joint Italian-Pakistani Workshop on Relativistic Astrophysics held at ICRANet in Pescara, Italy in July 2009. The workshop was dedicated to astrophysicist John Archibald Wheeler, who died on April 13, 2008. The authors provided information on the life of Wheeler and his contributions in the study of general relativity.

In this paper we describe a new computing system array, designed, built and now used at the Space Astrophysics and Planetary Institute (IAPS) in Rome, Italy, for the INTEGRAL Space Observatory scientific data analysis. This new system has become necessary in order to reduce the processing time of the INTEGRAL data accumulated during the more than 9 years of in-orbit operation. In order to fulfill the scientific data analysis requirements with a moderately limited investment the starting approach has been to use a 'cluster' array of commercial quad-CPU computers, featuring the extremely large scientific and calibration data archive on line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The MIllimetric Sardinia radio Telescope Receiver based on Array of Lumped elements KIDs, MISTRAL, is a cryogenic W-band (77–103 GH) LEKID camera which will be integrated at the Gregorian focus of the 64 m aperture Sardinia Radio Telescope, in Italy, in Autumn 2022. This instrument, thanks to its high angular resolution ( ∼ 13 arcsec ) and the wide instantaneous field of view ( ∼ 4 arcmin ), will allow continuum surveys of the mm-wave sky with a variety of scientific targets, spanning from extragalactic astrophysics to solar system science. In this contribution, we will describe the design of the MISTRAL camera, with a particular focus on the optimisation and test of a prototype of the focal plane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]