Algae-based biorefinery concept. An LCI analysis for a theoretical plant

Both micro and macro algae have a potential to be a valuable feedstock for biorefineries. The theoretical impact assessment of this kind of plant can be carried out through an LCA, which is a key tool in order to evaluate the potential environmental impact of a process throughout its entire life cycle. Hence, it is a priority to perform an LCI with the aim of gathering all the data and simulating all the unit process of a theoretical biorefinery. The Inventory ensures to obtain a simple and immediate way to represent several aspects of a biorefinery, e.g. productivity, environmental pressures, required resources in terms of raw materials and energy. One of the main aspects clearly shown in this study is the significant environmental pressures due to the cultivation and harvesting steps, for which it is desirable to consider a biomass collection from the environment, especially from areas where eutrophication phenomena are particularly recurrent. Another conclusion drawn from the study is that the total plant production per year appears very limited, if compared to any conventional refinery. The following approach can also provide a starting data set to perform a first approximate economic analysis of the costs/gains of the outlined project, and it could be used as a first concept design for the project development of a real plant

Dynamics of the Tippe Top via Routhian Reduction

We consider a tippe top modeled as an eccentric sphere, spinning on a horizontal table and subject to a sliding friction. Ignoring translational effects, we show that the system is reducible using a Routhian reduction technique. The reduced system is a two dimensional system of second order differential equations, that allows an elegant and compact way to retrieve the classification of tippe tops in six groups as proposed in [1] according to the existence and stability type of the steady states.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, added reference. Typos corrected and a forgotten term in de linearized system is adde

Beam test calibration of the balloon-borne imaging calorimeter for the CREAM experiment

CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass) is a multi-flight balloon mission designed to collect direct data on the elemental composition and individual energy spectra of cosmic rays. Two instrument suites have been built to be flown alternately on a yearly base. The tungsten/Sci-Fi imaging calorimeter for the second flight, scheduled for December 2005, was calibrated with electron and proton beams at CERN. A calibration procedure based on the study of the longitudinal shower profile is described and preliminary results of the beam test are presented.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. To be published in the Proceedings of 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2005), Pune, India, August 3-10, 200

INFN Camera demonstrator for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array is a world-wide project for a new generation of ground-based Cherenkov telescopes of the Imaging class with the aim of exploring the highest energy region of the electromagnetic spectrum. With two planned arrays, one for each hemisphere, it will guarantee a good sky coverage in the energy range from a few tens of GeV to hundreds of TeV, with improved angular resolution and a sensitivity in the TeV energy region better by one order of magnitude than the currently operating arrays. In order to cover this wide energy range, three different telescope types are envisaged, with different mirror sizes and focal plane features. In particular, for the highest energies a possible design is a dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder optical scheme, with a compact focal plane. A silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) based camera is being proposed as a solution to match the dimensions of the pixel (angular size of ~ 0.17 degrees). INFN is developing a camera demonstrator made by 9 Photo Sensor Modules (PSMs, 64 pixels each, with total coverage 1/4 of the focal plane) equipped with FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy) Near UltraViolet High Fill factor SiPMs and Front-End Electronics (FEE) based on a Target 7 ASIC, a 16 channels fast sampler (up to 2GS/s) with deep buffer, self-trigger and on-demand digitization capabilities specifically developed for this purpose. The pixel dimensions of $6\times6$ mm$^2$ lead to a very compact design with challenging problems of thermal dissipation. A modular structure, made by copper frames hosting one PSM and the corresponding FEE, has been conceived, with a water cooling system to keep the required working temperature. The actual design, the adopted technical solutions and the achieved results for this demonstrator are presented and discussed.Comment: In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1508.0589

Galileo, the European GNSS program, and LAGEOS

With the ASI-INFN project “ETRUSCO-2 (Extra Terrestrial Ranging to Unified Satellite COnstellations-2)” we have the opportunity to continue and enhance the work already done with the former ETRUSCO INFN experiment. With ETRUSCO (2005-2010) the SCF LAB (Satellite/lunar laser ranging Characterization Facility LABoratory) team developed a new industry-standard test for laser retroreflectors characterization (the SCF-Test). This test is an integrated and concurrent thermal and optical measurement in accurately laboratory-simulated space environment. In the same period we had the opportunity to test several flight models of retroreflectors from NASA, ESA and ASI. Doing this we examined the detailed thermal behavior and the optical performance of LAGEOS (Laser GEOdynamics Satellites) cube corner retroreflectors and many others being used on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) constellations currently in orbit, mainly GPS, GLONASS and GIOVE-A/GIOVE-B (Galileo In Orbit Validation Element) satellites, which deploy old-generation aluminium back-coated reflectors; we also SCFTested for ESA prototype new-generation uncoated reflectors for the Galileo IOV (In-Orbit Validation) satellites, which is the most important result presented here. ETRUSCO-2 inherits all this work and a new lab with doubled instrumentation (cryostat, sun simulator, optical bench) inside a new, dedicated 85m2 class 10000 (or better) clean room. This new project aims at a new revision of the SCF-Test expressly conceived to dynamically simulate the actual GNSS typical orbital environment, a new, reliable Key Performance Indicator for the future GNSS retroreflectors payload. Following up on this and using LAGEOS as a reference standard target in terms of optical performances, the SCF LAB research team led by S. Dell’Agnello is designing, building and testing a new generation of GNSS retroreflectors array (GRA) for the new European GNSS constellation Galileo

MOONLIGHT: A NEW LUNAR LASER RANGING RETROREFLECTOR AND THE LUNAR GEODETIC PRECESSION

Since the 1970s Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) to the Apollo Cube Corner Retroreflector (CCR) arrays (developed by the University of Maryland, UMD) supplied almost all significant tests of General Relativity (Alley et al., 1970; Chang et al., 1971; Bender et al.,1973): possible changes in the gravitational constant, gravitational self-energy, weak equivalence principle, geodetic precession, inverse-square force-law. The LNF group, in fact, has just completed a new measurement of the lunar geodetic precession with Apollo array, with accuracy of 9 × 10−3, comparable to the best measurement to date. LLR has also provided significant information on the composition and origin of the moon. This is the only Apollo experiment still in operation. In the 1970s Apollo LLR arrays contributed a negligible fraction of the ranging error budget. Since the ranging capabilities of ground stations improved by more than two orders of magnitude, now, because of the lunar librations, Apollo CCR arrays dominate the error budget. With the project MoonLIGHT (Moon Laser Instrumentation for General relativity High-accuracy Tests), in 2006 INFN-LNF joined UMD in the development and test of a new-generation LLR payload made by a single, large CCR (100mm diameter) unaffected by the effect of librations. With MoonLIGHT CCRs the accuracy of the measurement of the lunar geodetic precession can be improved up to a factor 100 compared to Apollo arrays. From a technological point of view, INFN-LNF built and is operating a new experimental apparatus (Satellite/lunar laser ranging Characterization Facility, SCF) and created a new industry-standard test procedure (SCF-Test) to characterize and model the detailed thermal behavior and the optical performance of CCRs in accurately laboratory-simulated space conditions, for industrial and scientific applications. Our key experimental innovation is the concurrent measurement and modeling of the optical Far Field Diffraction Pattern (FFDP) and the temperature distribution of retroreflector payloads under thermal conditions produced with a close-match solar simulator. The apparatus includes infrared cameras for non-invasive thermometry, thermal control and real-time payload movement to simulate satellite orientation on orbit with respect to solar illumination and laser interrogation beams. These capabilities provide: unique pre-launch performance validation of the space segment of LLR/SLR (Satellite Laser Ranging); retroreflector design optimization to maximize ranging efficiency and signal-to-noise conditions in daylight. Results of the SCF-Test of our CCR payload will be presented. Negotiations are underway to propose our payload and SCF-Test services for precision gravity and lunar science measurements with next robotic lunar landing missions. In particular, a scientific collaboration agreement was signed on Jan. 30, 2012, by D. Currie, S. Dell’Agnello and the Japanese PI team of the LLR instrument of the proposed SELENE-2 mission by JAXA (Registered with INFN Protocol n. 0000242-03/Feb/2012). The agreement foresees that, under no exchange of funds, the Japanese single, large, hollow LLR reflector will be SCF-Tested and that MoonLIGHT will be considered as backup instrument

MOONLIGHT: A NEW LUNAR LASER RANGING RETROREFLECTOR AND THE LUNAR GEODETIC PRECESSION

Since the 1970s Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) to the Apollo Cube Corner Retroreflector (CCR) arrays (developed by the University of Maryland, UMD) supplied almost all significant tests of General Relativity (Alley et al., 1970; Chang et al., 1971; Bender et al.,1973): possible changes in the gravitational constant, gravitational self-energy, weak equivalence principle, geodetic precession, inverse-square force-law. The LNF group, in fact, has just completed a new measurement of the lunar geodetic precession with Apollo array, with accuracy of 9 × 10−3, comparable to the best measurement to date. LLR has also provided significant information on the composition and origin of the moon. This is the only Apollo experiment still in operation. In the 1970s Apollo LLR arrays contributed a negligible fraction of the ranging error budget. Since the ranging capabilities of ground stations improved by more than two orders of magnitude, now, because of the lunar librations, Apollo CCR arrays dominate the error budget. With the project MoonLIGHT (Moon Laser Instrumentation for General relativity High-accuracy Tests), in 2006 INFN-LNF joined UMD in the development and test of a new-generation LLR payload made by a single, large CCR (100mm diameter) unaffected by the effect of librations. With MoonLIGHT CCRs the accuracy of the measurement of the lunar geodetic precession can be improved up to a factor 100 compared to Apollo arrays. From a technological point of view, INFN-LNF built and is operating a new experimental apparatus (Satellite/lunar laser ranging Characterization Facility, SCF) and created a new industry-standard test procedure (SCF-Test) to characterize and model the detailed thermal behavior and the optical performance of CCRs in accurately laboratory-simulated space conditions, for industrial and scientific applications. Our key experimental innovation is the concurrent measurement and modeling of the optical Far Field Diffraction Pattern (FFDP) and the temperature distribution of retroreflector payloads under thermal conditions produced with a close-match solar simulator. The apparatus includes infrared cameras for non-invasive thermometry, thermal control and real-time payload movement to simulate satellite orientation on orbit with respect to solar illumination and laser interrogation beams. These capabilities provide: unique pre-launch performance validation of the space segment of LLR/SLR (Satellite Laser Ranging); retroreflector design optimization to maximize ranging efficiency and signal-to-noise conditions in daylight. Results of the SCF-Test of our CCR payload will be presented. Negotiations are underway to propose our payload and SCF-Test services for precision gravity and lunar science measurements with next robotic lunar landing missions. In particular, a scientific collaboration agreement was signed on Jan. 30, 2012, by D. Currie, S. Dell'Agnello and the Japanese PI team of the LLR instrument of the proposed SELENE-2 mission by JAXA (Registered with INFN Protocol n. 0000242-03/Feb/2012). The agreement foresees that, under no exchange of funds, the Japanese single, large, hollow LLR reflector will be SCF-Tested and that MoonLIGHT will be considered as backup instrument

‘What are you going to do, confiscate their passports?’ Professional perspectives on cross-border reproductive travel

Objective: This article reports findings from a UK-based study which explored the phenomenon of overseas travel for fertility treatment. The first phase of this project aimed to explore how infertility clinicians and others professionally involved in fertility treatment understand the nature and consequences of cross-border reproductive travel. Background: There are indications that, for a variety of reasons, people from the UK are increasingly travelling across national borders to access assisted reproductive technologies. While research with patients is growing, little is known about how ‘fertility tourism’ is perceived by health professionals and others with a close association with infertility patients. Methods: Using an interpretivist approach, this exploratory research included focussed discussions with 20 people professionally knowledgeable about patients who had either been abroad or were considering having treatment outside the UK. Semi-structured interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and subjected to a thematic analysis. Results: Three conceptual categories are developed from the data: ‘the autonomous patient’; ‘cross-border travel as risk’, and ‘professional responsibilities in harm minimisation’. Professionals construct nuanced, complex and sometimes contradictory narratives of the ‘fertility traveller’, as vulnerable and knowledgeable; as engaged in risky behaviour and in its active minimisation. Conclusions: There is little support for the suggestion that states should seek to prevent cross-border treatment. Rather, an argument is made for less direct strategies to safeguard patient interests. Further research is required to assess the impact of professional views and actions on patient choices and patient experiences of treatment, before, during and after travelling abroad

Engineering simulations of a super-complex cultural heritage building: Ica Cathedral in Peru

The Cathedral of Ica, Peru, is one of the four prototype buildings involved in the ongoing Seismic Retrofitting Project, initiative of the Getty Conservation Institute. The complex historical building, which was heavily damaged by earthquakes in 2007 and 2009, can be divided into two substructures: an external masonry envelope and an internal timber frame built by a construction method known as quincha technique. This study makes use of the information available in literature and the results obtained from experimental campaigns performed by Pontificia Universidad Catlica del PerA and University of Minho. Nonlinear behaviour of masonry is simulated in the numerical models by considering specified compressive and tensile softening behaviour, while isotropic homogeneous and linear behaviour is adopted for modelling timber with appropriate assumptions on the connections. A single representative bay was initially studied by performing linear elastic analysis and verifying the compliance with the various criteria specified by the applicable normative to discuss the actual failure of Ica Cathedral. Afterwards, the structural behaviour of the two substructures composing the Cathedral is evaluated independently. Finally, the interaction of these two substructures is investigated by performing structural analysis on the entire structure of Ica Cathedral. Several structural analysis techniques, including eigenvalue, nonlinear static and dynamic analyses, are performed in order to: (1) evaluate the dominant mode shapes of the structure; (2) validate the numerical models by reproducing the structural damage observed in situ; (3) estimate the structural performance; and (4) identify the main failure mechanisms.This work was carried out with funding from the Getty Seismic Retrofitting Project under the auspices of the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI). This work is also partially financed by FEDER funds through the Competitivity Factors Operational Programme-COMPETE and by national funds through FCT-Foundation for Science and Technology within the scope of the projects POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007633 and PTDC/ECM-EST/2777/2014.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Large-bandwidth two-color free-electron laser driven by a comb-like electron beam

We discuss a two-color SASE free-electron laser (FEL) amplifier where the time and energy separation of two separated radiation pulses are controlled by manipulation of the electron beam phase space. Two electron beamlets with adjustable time and energy spacing are generated in an RF photo-injector illuminating the cathode with a comb-like laser pulse followed by RF compression in the linear accelerator. We review the electron beam manipulation technique to generate bunches with time and energy properties suitable for driving two-color FEL radiation. Experimental measurements at the SPARC-LAB facility illustrate the flexibility of the scheme for the generation of two-color FEL spectr