No abstract available

[en] The ATLAS experiment is one of the multi-purpose experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), constructed to study elementary particle interactions in collisions of high-energy proton beams. Twelve different sub-detectors as well as the common experimental infrastructure are supervised by the Detector Control System (DCS). The DCS enables equipment supervision of all ATLAS sub-detectors by using a system of more that 130 server machines running the industrial SCADA product PVSS. This highly distributed system reads, processes and archives of the order of 10⁶ operational parameters. Higher level control system layers allow for automatic control procedures, efficient error recognition and handling, and manage the communication with external systems such as the LHC. First, this contribution describes the status of the ATLAS DCS and the experience gained during the LHC commissioning and the first physics data taking operation period. Secondly, the future evolution and maintenance constraints for the coming years and the LHC high luminosity upgrades are outlined. (authors)

[en] The distribution of radionuclides in soils has been investigated by low-level gamma spectrometry. Four forest sites of different soil types and local vegetation located in Saxony, Germany at Lausnitz, Colditz and two sections at Olbernhau were chosen. For each section thin-layer sampling was applied. The analysed radioisotopes included artificial, cosmogenic and natural nuclides. The radionuclide migration in the investigated soils was found to be governed by the chemical conditions of the layer.

[en] The ATLAS experiment at CERN is one of the four Large Hadron Collider experiments. The Detector Control System (DCS) of ATLAS is responsible for the supervision of the detector equipment, the reading of operational parameters, the propagation of the alarms and the archiving of important operational data in a relational database (DB). DCS Data Viewer (DDV) is an application that provides access to the ATLAS DCS historical data through a web interface. Its design is structured using a client-server architecture. The pythonic server connects to the DB and fetches the data by using optimized SQL requests. It communicates with the outside world, by accepting HTTP requests and it can be used stand alone. The client is an AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) interactive web application developed under the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) framework. Its web interface is user friendly, platform and browser independent. The selection of metadata is done via a column-tree view or with a powerful search engine. The final visualization of the data is done using java applets or java script applications as plugins. The default output is a value-over-time chart, but other types of outputs like tables, ascii or ROOT files are supported too. Excessive access or malicious use of the database is prevented by a dedicated protection mechanism, allowing the exposure of the tool to hundreds of inexperienced users. The current configuration of the client and of the outputs can be saved in an XML file. Protection against web security attacks is foreseen and authentication constrains have been taken into account, allowing the exposure of the tool to hundreds of users world wide. Due to its flexible interface and its generic and modular approach, DDV could be easily used for other experiment control systems.

[en] The aim of the present work is to evaluate the influence of pedochemical parameters on the distribution of radionuclides in forest soils. Investigations were carried out by low-level gamma spectrometry on profiles sampled at intensively monitored sites (Level II program) in forestry. These monitored sites are part of the european forestry environmental program exploring the conditions and development of forestry ecosystems. An extensive data base is available for these places collected over more then twenty years . For the measurements sampling sites of different soil types and local vegetation located in Saxony, Germany were chosen. At each profile layers of 30 x 30 cm² area and 1 cm thickness were taken from the surface litter down to about 50 cm depth. The analysed radionuclides included artificial nuclides from the fallout after nuclear weapons tests in the fifties and sixties and after the Chernobyl accident ( ¹³⁷Cs, ¹³⁴Cs, ¹²⁵Sb, ²⁴¹Am - daughter of ²⁴¹Pu - and ²⁰⁷Bi), the cosmogenic ⁷Be as well as members of the natural decay series of ²³⁸U (e.g. ²³⁸U, ²²⁶Ra, ²¹⁰Pb) and ²³²Th ( ²²⁸Ra and ²²⁸Th). From the measurements the following conclusions can be drawn: Regardless of the geological background the nuclides ²⁴¹Am, ²⁰⁷Bi and ¹²⁵Sb and the excess ²¹⁰Pb remain in soil layers with high organic content (O- horizon, Ah-horizon). Their distributions can be used for age determinations in these horizons. Comparison between the results of the different methods are presented and discussed. The mobility of ¹³⁴Cs and ¹³⁷Cs is apparently higher. Whereas the Cs nuclides originating from the Chernobyl accident are detectable mainly in the Of-Oh horizons, ¹³⁷Cs from the nuclear weapons fallout is found from the A horizons down to the C-horizon. Uptake of Cs by plants controls its behaviour in the surface layers. Disequilibria between Uranium and Radium are obvious in the Of, Oh- as well as in the Bs horizons. They reflect uranium accumulation by degraded plant material and Radium transport, respectively. On the other hand, varying ratios between ²²⁶Ra ( ²³⁸U-series) and ²²⁸Ra ( ²³²Th-series) are detected and discussed. (author)

[en] This paper describes a new approach for generic design and efficient development of OPC UA servers. Development starts with creation of a design file, in XML format, describing an object-oriented information model of the target system or device. Using this model, the framework generates an executable OPC UA server application, which exposes the per-design OPC UA address space, without the developer writing a single line of code. Furthermore, the framework generates skeleton code into which the developer adds the required target device/system integration logic. This approach allows both developers unfamiliar with the OPC UA standard, and advanced OPC UA developers, to create servers for the systems they are experts in while greatly reducing design and development effort as compared to developments based purely on COTS OPC UA toolkits. Higher level software may further benefit from the explicit device model by using the XML design description as the basis for generating client connectivity configuration and server data representation. Moreover, having the XML design description at hand facilitates automatic generation of validation tools. In this contribution, the concept and implementation of this framework named quasar (acronym for quick OPC UA server generation framework) is detailed along with examples of actual production-level usage in the detector control system of the ATLAS experiment at CERN and beyond. (author)

[en] The pulsar wind nebulae (PWN) around the Vela and PSR B1706-44 pulsars have been observed in 2003 and 2004 with the H.E.S.S. Cherenkov telescopes. No evidence of a γ-ray emission from either source is seen and upper limits on the integrated flux are reported

[en] The ATLAS experiment at CERN is one of the four Large Hadron Collider experiments. DCS Data Viewer (DDV) is a web interface application that provides access to historical data of ATLAS Detector Control System (DCS) parameters written to the database (DB). It has a modular and flexible design and is structured using a client-server architecture. The server can be operated stand alone with a command-line interface to the data while the client offers a user friendly, browser independent interface. The selection of the meta-data of DCS parameters is done via a column-tree view or with a powerful search engine. The final visualisation of the data is done using various plug-ins such as 'value over time' charts, data tables, raw ASCII or structured export to ROOT. Excessive access or malicious use of the database is prevented by dedicated protection mechanisms, allowing the exposure of the tool to hundreds of inexperienced users. The meta-data selection and data output features can be used separately by XML configuration files. Security constraints have been taken into account in the implementation allowing the access of DDV by collaborators worldwide. (authors)

[en] The ATLAS experiment is one of the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, constructed to study elementary particle interactions in collisions of high-energy proton beams. The individual detector components as well as the common experimental infrastructure are supervised by the Detector Control System (DCS). The DCS enables equipment supervision using operator commands, reads, processes and archives the operational parameters of the detector, allows for error recognition and handling, manages the communication with external control systems, and provides a synchronization mechanism with the physics data acquisition system. Given the enormous size and complexity of ATLAS, special emphasis was put on the use of standardized hardware and software components enabling efficient development and long-term maintainability of the DCS over the lifetime of the experiment. Currently, the DCS is being used successfully during the experiment commissioning phase

[en] The H.E.S.S. experiment is a next-generation imaging atmospheric Cherenkov detector with a ∼1% Crab flux sensitivity for gamma-rays above 100 GeV. The full 4-telescope array has been operational since December 2003. The three young pulsars, Crab, Vela, and PSR B1706-44, are among the six pulsars whose pulsed emission has been detected up to energies of several GeV by EGRET. These pulsars have been selected for H.E.S.S. observations on grounds of their high rank in apparent spin-down luminosity Esd/d2 and observability for the H.E.S.S. array. No pulsed emission was found and flux upper limits are given