The New Control System for the Vacuum of ISOLDE

The On-Line Isotope Mass Separator (ISOLDE) is a facility dedicated to the production of radioactive ion beams for nuclear and atomic physics. From ISOLDE vacuum sectors to the pressurized exhaust gas storage tanks there are up to five stages of pumping for a total of more than one hundred pumps including turbo-molecular, cryogenic, dry, membrane and oil pumps. The ISOLDE vacuum control system is critical; the volatile radioactive elements present in the exhaust gases and the high and ultra high vacuum pressure specifications require a complex control and interlock system. This paper describes the reengineering of the control system developed using the CERN UNICOS-CPC framework. An additional challenge has been the usage of the UNICOS-CPC in a vacuum domain for the first time. The process automation provides multiple operating modes (rough pumping, bake-out, high vacuum pumping, regeneration for cryo-pumped sectors, venting, etc). The control system is composed of local controllers driven by PLC (logic, interlocks) and a SCADA application (operation, alarms monitoring and diagnostics)

Recommissioning of the COLDEX experiment at CERN

COLDEX (COLD bore EXperiment), installed in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at CERN, is a test vacuum sector used in 2001-2004 to validate the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) cryogenic vacuum system with LHC type proton beams. In the framework of the R&D for the High Luminosity upgrade of the LHC (HL-LHC), COLDEX has been re-commissioned in 2014. The objective is the validation of the performance of amorphous carbon (a-C) coating at cryogenic temperature with LHC type beams. The existing COLDEX Cu beam screen has been therefore dismounted and carbon coated, while a complete overhaul of the vacuum, cryogenic and control systems has been carried out. This contribution describes the phases of recommissioning, reviews the current experimental set-up and gives an overview of the possible measurements with COLDEX, in view of its HL-LHC experimental program

Role of NF-Y in In Vivo Regulation of the γ-Globin Gene

The duplicated CCAAT box is required for γ gene expression. We report here that the transcriptional factor NF-Y is recruited to the duplicated CCAAT box in vivo. A mutation of the duplicated CCAAT box that severely disrupts the NF-Y binding also reduces the accessibility level of the γ gene promoter, affects the assembly of basal transcriptional machinery, and increases the recruitment of GATA-1 to the locus control region (LCR) and the proximal promoter and the recruitment of transcription cofactor CBP/p300 to the LCR. These findings suggest that recruitment of NF-Y to the duplicated CCAAT box plays a role in the chromatin opening of the γ gene promoter as well as in the communication between the γ gene promoter and the LCR