[en] Purpose of this article is to provide an overview of scientific knowledge relating to greenhouse effect and climate change highlighting the level of uncertainty. Analysis os carried out on the possible impacts that the climate change could have on the national electric power system

[en] This article is dedicated to the evaluation of external costs related to thermal power generation. The correct assessment is an important point to recognize the actual costs associated to electric power according the different technologies available

[en] The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN relies on a complex and highly distributed Trigger and Data Acquisition (TDAQ) system to gather and select particle collision data at unprecedented energy and rates. The TDAQ is composed of three levels which reduces the event rate from the design bunch-crossing rate of 40 MHz to an average event recording rate of about 200 Hz. The first part of this paper gives an overview of the operational performance of the DAQ system during 2011 and the first months of data taking in 2012. It describes how the flexibility inherent in the design of the system has be exploited to meet the changing needs of ATLAS data taking and in some cases push performance beyond the original design performance specification. The experience accumulated in the TDAQ system operation during these years stimulated also interest to explore possible evolutions, despite the success of the current design. One attractive direction is to merge three systems - the second trigger level (L2), the Event Builder (EB), and the Event Filter (EF) - within a single homogeneous one in which each processing node executes all the steps required by the trigger and data acquisition process. Appealing aspects of this design are: a simplification of the software architecture and of its configuration, a better exploitation of the computing resources, the caching of fragments already collected for L2 processing, the automated load balancing between L2 and EF selection steps, the sharing of code and services on HLT nodes. Furthermore, the full treatment of the HLT selection on a single node allows more flexible approaches, for example “incremental event building” in which trigger algorithms progressively enlarge the size of the analyzed region of interest, before requiring the building of the complete event. To spot possible limitations of the new approach and to demonstrate the benefits out-lined above, a prototype has been implemented. The preliminary measurements are positive and further tests are scheduled for the next months.

[en] Since the coming of the nuclear era a large variety of radionuclides were introduced to the environment, which could be used as tracers of different transport processes. Actually, also natural radioisotopes are used for tracing atmospheric, oceanic or biological mechanisms. In particular, the experimental study of the atmospheric dynamics can be aided by the high-sensitive detection of radionuclides such as 3H, 7Be, 14C, 36Cl, 90Sr, 129I, and 137Cs. Several techniques and methods have been applied in order to detect and follow these radionuclides, like accelerator mass spectrometry, gamma detection, neutron activation, etc. In this contribution we analyze the transport of radionuclides released into the environment due to atmospheric nuclear weapon tests, power plant accidents and nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. We focus our study on the information that can be obtained about the exchange of tropospheric air masses between the northern and southern hemisphere and on the constrains that the sensitive measurements of these radionuclides can pose on well-accepted atmospheric models

[en] ATLAS and CSM are two general-purpose experiments that will operate at the Large Hadron Collider (Lhc). The Lhc collide protons at a center-of-mass energy of 14 TeV, with a bunch-crossing rate of 40 MHz. The multi-level trigger systems of the two experiments will reduce this input rate to match the foreseen storage capability of about 100-200 Hz. This paper gives an overview of the trigger systems of the two experiments focusing on the common challenges, the complementary of the design architectures and the similarity of many implementations. Finally we report on the system deployment and commissioning and schedule plans to keep pace with the collider performance start-up.

[en] Municipal Solid Wastes (MSW) and sewage water treatment plants could sometime be responsible for the emission of bad odours in the surroundings, due to design deficiencies and/or un correct operation. Odour pollution monitoring appears to be a complex problem, for many reason, e.g. the difficulty of quantifying the public annoyance, the very low concentration of target compounds, and, at last but not least, the lack of legislation and technical standard. , In this paper, first of all, the basic concept of odour is analysed, together with is main physiological and chemical-physical features; the main target compounds for the above mentioned odour sources are then defined. Some monitoring strategies are finally proposed, with reference to some recent experiences, dealing with a MSW composting plant and a sewage water treatment plant

[en] The ATLAS detector will be exposed to proton proton collisions at a center of mass energy of 14 TeV with the bunch crossing rate of 40 MHz. A three-level trigger system has been designed to reduce this rate down to the level at which only interesting events are fully reconstructed. The level 1 trigger reduces the rate down to 75 kHz via custom-built electronics. The Region of Interest Builder delivers the Region of Interest records to the second level trigger which runs the selection algorithms with the commodity processors and brings the rate further down to ∼3.5kHz. Finally the event filter reduces the rate down to ∼200Hz for permanent storage. We review the trigger and data acquisition architecture and its in situ commissioning using almost full detectors. Results on system functionality and performance based on the cosmic data, early experience on LHC beam in 2008 and preselected simulated events are presented.

[en] Fricke-gel layer dosimeters (FGLD) and Fricke gel dosimetric catheters (FGDC) have been designed and tested with the aim of enquiring their suitability for HDR ¹⁹²Ir brachytherapy source control and for in-vivo dose verification during treatment. Anisotropy function measurements have been carried out with FGLDs in which a thin plastic tube has been placed in for the ¹⁹²Ir source insertion. FGDCs are constituted by plastic tubes (3 mm of external diameter and 13 cm of length) filled with the dosimeter-gel. Absorbed dose images and profiles were attained by means of optical analysis. Dedicated software has been developed both for achieving anisotropy function values and for obtaining reliable results in visible light absorbance measurements across the thin cylindrical dosimeters. Preparation and analysis procedures have been optimised. The results confirm that the proposed methods are very promising for HDR brachytherapy dosimetry.

[en] Full text: In the last decade, technological improvements in radiotherapy have been significant and consequently the use and importance of radiotherapy in cancer treatment have increased greatly. In brachytherapy, new possibilities have been opened by the impressive progresses in 3D imaging, by the development of sophisticated techniques for modern afterloaders and by the constantly increasing speed and capacity of computers. However, these methodological improvements require corresponding improvements in the dosimetry methods, in order to ensure that the values calculated with computer treatment planning systems, adopted in the clinical praxis, agree with the delivered dose distributions. Fricke gel-layer dosimeters (FGLD) are under study by our group as a reliable alternative to films, semiconductors arrays or thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs). In the last years, we have significantly improved this technique by defining the FGLD best chemical composition, by optimizing the image acquisition assessment and by developing a dedicated software for image analysis. In this study, experimental measurements of planar dose distributions of a clinical ¹⁹²Ir source (Microselectron HDR, Nucletron) obtained by irradiating a series of piled-up FGL dosimeters in a tissue-equivalent phantom are presented. The obtained results were in accordance to TLD measurements and to treatment planning system (Plato, Nucletron) calculations. FGLD have proven to be a reliable tool to achieve HDR brachytherapy dose distribution measurements

[en] The radionuclide 10Be is produced in the atmosphere by fragmentation reactions induced by the impact of high energy cosmic protons on N2 and O2 molecules. It arrives to the oceans through wet precipitation and it is then accumulated in deep sea sediments. Therefore, the presence of 10Be in volcanic rocks provides clear evidence that the sediments are being incorporated beneath arcs during the subduction process of the tectonics plates, since the half life of 10Be is too short (1.39 My r,) to be present in the mantle. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (A MS) is the most sensitive technique for the detection of long lived radioisotopes (or even stable nuclides), being capable of detecting one radioactive atom among 1015 of its stable isotope. The improvement of A MS over the conventional Mass Spectrometry (MS) relies on the use of the tandem accelerator, which ensures the destruction of isobar molecules at the stripper and provides high energy for the discrimination of isobar nuclides. With the purpose of estimate the amount of sediments involved in the subduction process a simply d model was used and the isotopic ratio 10Be/9Be have been measured by A MS in ash samples of three different volcanoes of South America. The measurements were performed in a 3 MV accelerator at VERA (Vienna Environ mental Research Accelerator) by using a 500 nm silicon nitride foil like passive absorber together with a switching magnet in order to reduce the isobaric interference of 10B. Besides, an ionization chamber with segmented anode at the end of the line allowed the discrimination of other interfering particles. The ratios found (10Be/9Be∼ 10-10) are one order of magnitude higher than the reported values in volcanic rocks. It could be due to atmospheric contamination of the samples with 10Be during the eruption. New measurements with samples leached with weak acids are planed to carried out using the TANDAR accelerator