Mapping accessibility for earthquake hazard response in the historic urban centre of Bucharest

Planning for post-disaster accessibility is essential for the provision of emergency and other services to protect life and property in impacted areas. Such planning is particularly important in congested historic districts where narrow streets and at-risk structures are more common and may even prevail. Indeed, a standard method of measuring accessibility, through the use of isochrones, may be particularly inappropriate in these congested historic areas. Bucharest, Romania, is a city with a core of historic buildings and narrow streets. Furthermore, Bucharest ranks second only to Istanbul among large European cities in terms of its seismic risk. This paper provides an accessibility simulation for central Bucharest using mapping and geographic information system (GIS) technologies. It hypothesizes that all buildings in the risk 1 class would collapse in an earthquake of a similar magnitude to those of 1940 and 1977. The authors then simulate accessibility impacts in the historic centre of Bucharest, such as the isolation of certain areas and blockages of some street sections. In this simulation, accessibility will be substantially compromised by anticipated and extensive building collapse. Therefore, policy makers and planners need to fully understand and incorporate the serious implications of this compromised accessibility when planning emergency services and disaster recovery responses

Comparative analysis of the language attitudes of students in Compulsory Secondary Education in the Franja of Aragon and Catalonia

Este estudio analiza comparativamente las actitudes lingüísticas de dos territorios vecinos multilingües de España: Cataluña y Aragón, con políticas lingüísticas diferentes. Así, Cataluña reconoce la co-oficialidad del castellano y del catalán y ha implantado un sistema educativo bilingüe, mientras que en Aragón sólo el castellano tiene carácter oficial y la enseñanza en catalán es opcional. Para comparar las actitudes lingüísticas de los alumnos de secundaria en los dos contextos, 154 alumnos de un centro de Lleida y 195 de un centro de Fraga respondieron a una serie de cuestionarios. Los resultados mostraron que los estudiantes aragoneses tienen actitudes más favorables hacia el castellano, mientras que a los jóvenes catalanes les gustaba el castellano y el catalán por igual. Entre los posibles factores analizados, como el nivel sociocultural, el nivel socio-profesional, la condición lingüística de la familia y la asistencia a las clases optativas de catalán en el caso de los alumnos aragoneses, sólo este último se encontró que mejoraba las actitudes hacia el catalán.This study performs a comparative analysis of language attitudes in two multilingual neighboring territories in Spain, Catalonia and Aragon, with different language policies. Thus, Catalonia recognizes the co-officiality of Spanish and Catalan and has implemented a bilingual educational system, while in Aragon only Spanish has official status and education in Catalan is optional. In order to compare the language attitudes held by secondary education students in the two contexts, 154 students from a center in Lleida (Catalonia) and 195 students from a center in Fraga (Aragón) answered a series of questionnaires. The results showed that Aragonese students have more favorable attitudes towards Spanish, while Catalan youngsters equally liked Spanish and Catalan. Among the possible factors analysed, such as sociocultural level, socioprofessional level, family language condition, and assistance at optional Catalan classes in case of the Aragonese students, only the latter was found to improve attitudes towards Catalan.Este trabajo es gracias a la concesión de una ayuda del Institut d’Estudis Catalans, un proyecto de investigación nacional y una subvención financiada por el Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España (Ref. EDU2017-82479-R & IJCI2016-28250) y la Agencia para la Gestión de la Universidad y Becas de Investigación - AGAUR de la Generalitat de Cataluña (Ref. SGR 322 2017

Design, Performance and Calibration of the CMS Forward Calorimeter Wedges

We report on the test beam results and calibration methods using charged particles of the CMS Forward Calorimeter (HF). The HF calorimeter covers a large pseudorapidity region (3\l |\eta| \le 5), and is essential for large number of physics channels with missing transverse energy. It is also expected to play a prominent role in the measurement of forward tagging jets in weak boson fusion channels. The HF calorimeter is based on steel absorber with embedded fused-silica-core optical fibers where Cherenkov radiation forms the basis of signal generation. Thus, the detector is essentially sensitive only to the electromagnetic shower core and is highly non-compensating (e/h \approx 5). This feature is also manifest in narrow and relatively short showers compared to similar calorimeters based on ionization. The choice of fused-silica optical fibers as active material is dictated by its exceptional radiation hardness. The electromagnetic energy resolution is dominated by photoelectron statistics and can be expressed in the customary form as a/\sqrt{E} + b. The stochastic term a is 198% and the constant term b is 9%. The hadronic energy resolution is largely determined by the fluctuations in the neutral pion production in showers, and when it is expressed as in the electromagnetic case, a = 280% and b = 11%

Design, Performance, and Calibration of CMS Hadron-Barrel Calorimeter Wedges

Extensive measurements have been made with pions, electrons and muons on four production wedges of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) hadron barrel (HB) calorimeter in the H2 beam line at CERN with particle momenta varying from 20 to 300 GeV/c. Data were taken both with and without a prototype electromagnetic lead tungstate crystal calorimeter (EB) in front of the hadron calorimeter. The time structure of the events was measured with the full chain of preproduction front-end electronics running at 34 MHz. Moving-wire radioactive source data were also collected for all scintillator layers in the HB. These measurements set the absolute calibration of the HB prior to first pp collisions to approximately 4%

Synchronization and Timing in CMS HCAL

The synchronization and timing of the hadron calorimeter (HCAL) for the Compact Muon Solenoid has been extensively studied with test beams at CERN during the period 2003-4, including runs with 40 MHz structured beam. The relative phases of the signals from different calorimeter segments are timed to 1 ns accuracy using a laser and equalized using programmable delay settings in the front-end electronics. The beam was used to verify the timing and to map out the entire range of pulse shapes over the 25 ns interval between beam crossings. These data were used to make detailed measurements of energy-dependent time slewing effects and to tune the electronics for optimal performance

Design, Performance, and Calibration of the CMS Hadron-Outer Calorimeter

The CMS hadron calorimeter is a sampling calorimeter with brass absorber and plastic scintillator tiles with wavelength shifting fibres for carrying the light to the readout device. The barrel hadron calorimeter is complemented with an outer calorimeter to ensure high energy shower containment in the calorimeter. Fabrication, testing and calibration of the outer hadron calorimeter are carried out keeping in mind its importance in the energy measurement of jets in view of linearity and resolution. It will provide a net improvement in missing \et measurements at LHC energies. The outer hadron calorimeter will also be used for the muon trigger in coincidence with other muon chambers in CMS

Energy Response and Longitudinal Shower Profiles Measured in CMS HCAL and Comparison With Geant4

The response of the CMS combined electromagnetic and hadron calorimeter to beams of pions with momenta in the range 5-300 GeV/c has been measured in the H2 test beam at CERN. The raw response with the electromagnetic compartment calibrated to electrons and the hadron compartment calibrated to 300 GeV pions may be represented by sigma = (1.2) sqrt{E} oplus (0.095) E. The fraction of energy visible in the calorimeter ranges from 0.72 at 5 GeV to 0.95 at 300 GeV, indicating a substantial nonlinearity. The intrinsic electron to hadron ratios are fit as a function of energy and found to be in the range 1.3-2.7 for the electromagnetic compartment and 1.4-1.8 for the hadronic compartment. The fits are used to correct the non-linearity of the e pi response to 5% over the entire measured range resulting in a substantially improved resolution at low energy. Longitudinal shower profile have been measured in detail and compared to Geant4 models, LHEP-3.7 and QGSP-2.8. At energies below 30 GeV, the data, LHEP and QGSP are in agreement. Above 30 GeV, LHEP gives a more accurate simulation of the longitudinal shower profile