It is important to characterize the microorganisms involved in biodeterioration processes to understand their effects on cultural assets and to define an efficient strategy for protecting artworks, monuments, and buildings from microbiological recolonization. In this study, we analyzed the microbial communities dwelling on the verso (front) and recto (back) sides of a 17^th century easel painting attributed to Carlo Bononi, an Italian artist of the first Baroque period. Cultivable bacteria and fungi colonizing the painting were isolated and identified in order to characterize the microbial community possibly involved in deteriorating the pictorial layer of the painting. The isolated bacterial strains belonged to the Staphylococcus and Bacillus genera. Furthermore, culture-dependent techniques and SEM/EDS analyses revealed the presence of filamentous fungi of the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium, Cladosporium, and Alternaria. The chemical compositions of pigments were consistent with typical 17^th century paintings, and some of the identified pigments, namely red lac and red and yellow earths, could be exploited as nutrient sources by painting-associated microorganisms. The study also evaluated, in vitro, the potential decontaminating activity of a biocompound, containing spores of Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus pumilus, and Bacillus megaterium. The results indicated the ability of this biocompound to counteract the growth of contaminating microorganisms that are potentially dangerous to the painting, suggesting the potential use of these microorganisms to prevent biodeterioration of artworks.

The NA62 experiment at CERN has the capability to collect data in a beam-dump mode, where 400 GeV protons are dumped on an absorber. In this configuration, New Physics particles, including dark photons, dark scalars, and axion-like particles, may be produced in the absorber and decay in the instrumented volume beginning approximately 80 m downstream of the dump. A search for these particles decaying in flight to hadronic final states is reported, based on an analysis of a sample of $$1.4 \times 10^{17}$$ 1.4 × 10 17 protons on dump collected in 2021. No evidence of a New Physics signal is observed, excluding new regions of parameter spaces of multiple models.

A bstract: Results from the study of the rare decays $$ {K}^{+}\to {\pi}^{+}\nu \overline{\nu} $$ K + → π + ν ν ¯ , K ⁺ → π ⁺ μ ⁺ μ ⁻ and K ⁺ → π ⁺ γγ at the NA62 experiment at CERN are interpreted in terms of improved limits for $$ \mathcal{B}\left({K}^{+}\to {\pi}^{+}X\right) $$ B K + → π + X and coupling parameters of hidden-sector models, where X is a mediator. World-leading limits are achieved for dark photon, dark scalar and axion-like particle models.