Design, construction, and beam tests of a rotatable collimator prototype for high-intensity and high-energy hadron accelerators

A rotatable-jaw collimator design was conceived as a solution to recover from catastrophic beam impacts which would damage a collimator at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) or its High-Luminosity upgrade (HL-LHC). One such rotatable collimator prototype was designed and built at SLAC and delivered to CERN for tests with LHC-type circulating beams in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). This was followed by destructive tests at the dedicated High Radiation to Materials (HiRadMat) facility to validate the design and rotation functionality. An overview of the collimator design, together with results from tests without and with beam are presented

Acoustic measurements in the collimation region of the LHC

The LHC accelerator at CERN has the most advanced collimation system ever being installed. The collimators intercept unavoidable particle losses and therefore are essential to avoid beam induced quenches of the superconducting magnets. In addition, they provide passive machine protection against mis-kicked beams. During material robustness tests on a LHC collimator prototype in 2004 and 2006, vibration and acoustic measurements have shown that a beam impact detection system should be feasible using accelerometers and microphones as sensors in the LHC. Recently, such sensors have been installed close to the primary collimators in the LHC tunnel. First analyses of raw data show that the system is sensitive enough to detect beam scraping on collimators. Therefore, the implementation of a sophisticated acoustic monitoring system is under investigation. It may be useful not only to detect beam impacts on primary collimators in case of failure, but also to derive further information on beam losses that occur during regular operation. This paper gives an overview on the recent installation, results of the acoustic measurements made at the LHC, and future plans.peer-reviewe

Education and inequality in Finland, Spain and Brazil

Production of INCASI Project H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015 GA 691004Finland, Spain and Brazil are three very internally complex and heterogeneous realities, with contradictions and permanent reforms to their education systems. In a first quantitative approach each country can be placed in a continuum of the education system that goes from most successful in terms of reaching a high level of education all across the population, in conditions of equity and facilitating youths' incorporation into the labour market, to least successful, with Finland and Brazil occupying either end of the spectrum respectively and Spain occupying an intermediate situation. Although there are differences, they share certain tensions in their respective education systems. On the one hand, about the conception of education, ranging from more utilitarian, human capital theories, to the more humanist and civic-minded perspective. On the other hand, the challenge of comprehensiveness between an academic and a vocational path. In addition, there is also the challenge of improving the education level of the population while also improving equality. The tensions differ from country to country, since their education traditions and cooperation and conflict strategies between the education agents, with varying levels of resources and different alliances with political actors vary, as does the social consensus

Collimation for the LHC high intensity beams

The unprecedented design intensities of the LHC require several important advances in beam collimation. With its more than 100 collimators, acting on various planes and beams, the LHC collimation system is the biggest and most performing such system ever designed and constructed. The solution for LHC collimation is explained, the technical components are introduced and the initial performance is presented. Residual beam leakage from the system is analysed. Measurements and simulations are presented which show that collimation efficiencies of better than 99.97 % have been measured with the 3.5 TeV proton beams of the LHC, in excellent agreement with expectations.peer-reviewe

An Alternative Myoelectric Pattern Recognition Approach for the Control of Hand Prostheses: A Case Study of Use in Daily Life by a Dysmelia Subject

The functionality of upper limb prostheses can be improved by intuitive control strategies that use bioelectric signals measured at the stump level. One such strategy is the decoding of motor volition via myoelectric pattern recognition (MPR), which has shown promising results in controlled environments and more recently in clinical practice. Moreover, not much has been reported about daily life implementation and real-time accuracy of these decoding algorithms. This paper introduces an alternative approach in which MPR allows intuitive control of four different grips and open/close in a multifunctional prosthetic hand. We conducted a clinical proof-of-concept in activities of daily life by constructing a self-contained, MPR-controlled, transradial prosthetic system provided with a novel user interface meant to log errors during real-time operation. The system was used for five days by a unilateral dysmelia subject whose hand had never developed, and who nevertheless learned to generate patterns of myoelectric activity, reported as intuitive, for multi-functional prosthetic control. The subject was instructed to manually log errors when they occurred via the user interface mounted on the prosthesis. This allowed the collection of information about prosthesis usage and real-time classification accuracy. The assessment of capacity for myoelectric control test was used to compare the proposed approach to the conventional prosthetic control approach, direct control. Regarding the MPR approach, the subject reported a more intuitive control when selecting the different grips, but also a higher uncertainty during proportional continuous movements. This paper represents an alternative to the conventional use of MPR, and this alternative may be particularly suitable for a certain type of amputee patients. Moreover, it represents a further validation of MPR with dysmelia cases

Remote Estimation of Collimator Jaw Damages With Sounds Measurements During Beam Impacts

Irregular hits of high-intensity LHC beams on collimators can lead to severe damage of the collimator jaws. The identification of damaged collimator jaws by observation of beam measurements is challenging: online loss measurements at the moment of the impacts can be tricky and degradation of the overall performance from single collimator damage can be difficult to measure. Visual inspections are excluded because collimator jaws are enclosed in vacuum tanks without windows. However, the sound generated during the beam impact can be used to give an estimate of the damage level. In 2012, high-intensity beam comparable to a full nominal LHC bunch at 7 TeV was shot on a tertiary type LHC collimator at the HiRadMat test facility at CERN. The paper presents results from sound recordings of this experiment

Diamond Particle Detector Properties during High Fluence Material Damage Tests and their Future Applications for Machine Protection in the LHC

Experience with LHC machine protection (MP) during the last three years of operation shows that the MP systems sufficiently protect the LHC against damage in case of failures leading to beam losses with a time constant exceeding 1ms. An unexpected fast beam loss mechanism, called UFOs [1], was observed, which could potentially quench superconducting magnets. For such fast losses, but also for better understanding of slower losses, an improved understanding of the loss distribution within a bunch train is required [2]. Diamond particle detectors with bunch-by-bunch resolution and high dynamic range have been developed and successfully tested in the LHC and in experiments to quantify the damage limits of LHC components. This paper will focus on experience gained in use of diamond detectors. The properties of these detectors were measured during high-fluence material damage tests in CERN’s Hi-RadMat facility. The results will be discussed and compared to the cross-calibration with FLUKA simulations. Future applications of these detectors in the LHC to understand beam losses and to improve the protection against fast particle losses will be discussed