Use of Recycling-Glass for Porcelain Production

High additives of grinded recycling-glass lowers the firing temperature of porcelain down to 1100°C. Α slip casting and a press mass were developed. Thereby the amount of glassy phase in the porcelain body rises. With thermal quenching methods it is possible to bring compressive stresses in the surface and so increase the strength of porcelain. The amount of stress in the two phase system mullite-glass was calculated by FEM methods. The strength was measured with a bending method. These stresses were compared with the experimental increase of strength of about 30 4 0 %. Because of the high amount of glassy phase in the vitreous silicate ceramics also chemical strengthening through ion-exchange is possible. Here, a strength increase of 80 % could be achieved

Upgrade of the Cold Electronics of the ATLAS HEC Calorimeter for sLHC

The signal amplification and summation electronics of the ATLAS Hadronic End-cap Calorimeter (HEC) is operated at the circumference of the HEC calorimeters inside the cryostats in liquid argon. The present electronics is designed to operate at irradiation levels expected for the LHC. For operation at the sLHC the irradiation levels are expected to be a factor 10 higher, therefore a new electronic system might be needed. The technological possibilities are investigated. From irradiation tests of the present HEC electronics it is known that it will operate up to a dose of 55 kGy of ionizing radiation and up to a neutron fluence of 3 * 10**14 n/cm**2, where it shows some degradation of performance. This matches well the requirements of up to 1.5 * 10**13 n/cm**2 for 10 years of LHC operation, including safety factors. For a subsequent sLHC running phase with 10 times higher expected irradiation levels, a more radiation hard HEC electronics will be needed. Therefore generic studies of different technologies have been carried out at the transistor level to understand the radiation hardness up to integrated neutron fluxes of ~2*10**16 n/cm**2 and the behaviour during operation at cryogenic temperatures. The S-parameter technique has been used to monitor the performance e.g. of gain and linearity during irradiation at room temperature. In addition, DC measurements before and after irradiation have been compared. Results of these tests and of accompanying noise tests are reported. In addition, results of S-parameter measurements will be reported operating the transistors in liquid nitrogen. Conclusions are drawn and the potential is assessed on the viability of using the tested technologies for carrying out the design of new HEC cold electronics for the sLHC

Design and Tests of the Silicon Sensors for the ZEUS Micro Vertex Detector

To fully exploit the HERA-II upgrade,the ZEUS experiment has installed a Micro Vertex Detector (MVD) using n-type, single-sided, silicon micro-strip sensors with capacitive charge division. The sensors have a readout pitch of 120 micrometers, with five intermediate strips (20 micrometer strip pitch). The designs of the silicon sensors and of the test structures used to verify the technological parameters, are presented. Results on the electrical measurements are discussed. A total of 1123 sensors with three different geometries have been produced by Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. Irradiation tests with reactor neutrons and Co-60 photons have been performed for a small sample of sensors. The results on neutron irradiation (with a fluence of 1 x 10^{13} 1 MeV equivalent neutrons / cm^2) are well described by empirical formulae for bulk damage. The Co-60 photons (with doses up to 2.9 kGy) show the presence of generation currents in the SiO_2-Si interface, a large shift of the flatband voltage and a decrease of the hole mobility.Comment: 33 pages, 25 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in NIM

Events with Isolated Charged Leptons and Large Missing Transverse Momentum at HERA

Striking events with isolated charged leptons, large missing transverse momentum and large transverse momentum of the hadronic final state were observed at the electron proton collider HERA in a data sample corresponding to a luminosity of about 130 pb-1. The H1 collaboration observed 11 events with isolated electrons or muons and with transverse momentum above 25 GeV. Only 3.4+-0.6 events were expected from Standard Model (SM) processes. Six of these events have a transverse momentum of greater than 40 GeV, while 1.3+-0.3 events were expected. The ZEUS collaboration observed good agreement with the SM. However, ZEUS found two events with a similar event topology, but tau leptons instead of electrons or muons in the final state. Only 0.2+-0.05 events were expected from SM processes. For various hypotheses the compatibility of the experimental results was investigated with respect to the SM and with respect to possible explanations beyond the SM. Prospects for the high-luminosity HERA-II data taking period are given

Freezing and chemical preservatives alter the stable isotope values of carbon and nitrogen of the Asiatic clam (Corbicula fluminea)

We tested the impacts of most common sample preservation methods used for aquatic sample materials on the stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen in clams, a typical baseline indicator organism for many aquatic food web studies utilising stable isotope analysis (SIA). In addition to common chemical preservatives ethanol and formalin, we also assessed the potential impacts of freezing on δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values and compared the preserved samples against freshly dried and analysed samples. All preservation methods, including freezing, had significant impacts on δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values and the effects in general were greater on the carbon isotope values (1.3-2.2% difference) than on the nitrogen isotope values (0.9-1.0% difference). However, the impacts produced by the preservation were rather consistent within each method during the whole 1 year experiment allowing these to be accounted for, if clams are intended for use in retrospective stable isotope studies

Beam Test of Silicon Strip Sensors for the ZEUS Micro Vertex Detector

For the HERA upgrade, the ZEUS experiment has designed and installed a high precision Micro Vertex Detector (MVD) using single sided micro-strip sensors with capacitive charge division. The sensors have a readout pitch of 120 microns, with five intermediate strips (20 micron strip pitch). An extensive test program has been carried out at the DESY-II testbeam facility. In this paper we describe the setup developed to test the ZEUS MVD sensors and the results obtained on both irradiated and non-irradiated single sided micro-strip detectors with rectangular and trapezoidal geometries. The performances of the sensors coupled to the readout electronics (HELIX chip, version 2.2) have been studied in detail, achieving a good description by a Monte Carlo simulation. Measurements of the position resolution as a function of the angle of incidence are presented, focusing in particular on the comparison between standard and newly developed reconstruction algorithms.Comment: 41 pages, 21 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in NIM

Measurement of shower development and its Moli\`ere radius with a four-plane LumiCal test set-up

A prototype of a luminometer, designed for a future e+e- collider detector, and consisting at present of a four-plane module, was tested in the CERN PS accelerator T9 beam. The objective of this beam test was to demonstrate a multi-plane tungsten/silicon operation, to study the development of the electromagnetic shower and to compare it with MC simulations. The Moli\`ere radius has been determined to be 24.0 +/- 0.6 (stat.) +/- 1.5 (syst.) mm using a parametrization of the shower shape. Very good agreement was found between data and a detailed Geant4 simulation.Comment: Paper published in Eur. Phys. J., includes 25 figures and 3 Table

Repetitive Exposure to Bacteriophage Cocktails against Pseudomonas aeruginosa or Escherichia coli Provokes Marginal Humoral Immunity in Naïve Mice

Phage therapy of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is of great interest due to the rising incidence of multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens. However, natural or therapy-induced immunity against therapeutic phages remains a potential concern. In this study, we investigated the innate and adaptive immune responses to two different phage cocktails targeting either Pseudomonas aeruginosa or Escherichia coli—two VAP-associated pathogens—in naïve mice without the confounding effects of a bacterial infection. Active or UV-inactivated phage cocktails or buffers were injected intraperitoneally daily for 7 days in C57BL/6J wild-type mice. Blood cell analysis, flow cytometry analysis, assessment of phage distribution and histopathological analysis of spleens were performed at 6 h, 10 days and 21 days after treatment start. Phages reached the lungs and although the phage cocktails were slightly immunogenic, phage injections were well tolerated without obvious adverse effects. No signs of activation of innate or adaptive immune cells were observed; however, both active phage cocktails elicited a minimal humoral response with secretion of phage-specific antibodies. Our findings show that even repetitive injections lead only to a minimal innate and adaptive immune response in naïve mice and suggest that systemic phage treatment is thus potentially suitable for treating bacterial lung infections

Development of novel low-mass module concepts based on MALTA monolithic pixel sensors

The MALTA CMOS monolithic silicon pixel sensors has been developed in the Tower 180 nm CMOS imaging process. It includes an asynchronous readout scheme and complies with the ATLAS inner tracker requirements for the HL-LHC. Several 4-chip MALTA modules have been built using Al wedge wire bonding to demonstrate the direct transfer of data from chip-to-chip and to read out the data of the entire module via one chip only. Novel technologies such as Anisotropic Conductive Films (ACF) and nanowires have been investigated to build a compact module. A lightweight flex with 17 {\mu}m trace spacing has been designed, allowing compact packaging with a direct attachment of the chip connection pads to the flex using these interconnection technologies. This contribution shows the current state of our work towards a flexible, low material, dense and reliable packaging and modularization of pixel detectors.Comment: 5 pages + 1 page references,8 figure