The ALICE Zero Degree Calorimeters

In the ALICE experiment at Cern LHC, a set of hadron calorimeters will be used to determine the centrality of the Pb-Pb collision. The spectator protons and neutrons, will be separated from the ion beams, using the separator magnet (D1) of the LHC beam optics and respectively detected by a proton (ZP) and a neutron (ZN) "Zero-degree Calorimeter" (ZDC). The detectors will be placed in front of the separator D2 magnet, 115 meters away from the beam intersection point. The ZDCs are quartz-fiber spaghetti calorimeters that exploit the Cherenkov light produced by the shower particles in silica optical fibers.This technique offers the advantages of high radiation hardness (up to several Grad), fast response and reduced lateral dimension of the detectable shower. In addition, quartz-fiber calorimeters are intrinsically insensitive to radio-activation background, which produces particles below the Cherenkov threshold.The ALICE ZDC should have an energy resolution comparable with the intrinsic energy fluctuations, which range from about 20 0.000000or central events to about 5 0.000000or peripheral ones, according to simulations that use HIJING as event generator. The fiber-to-absorber filling ratio must be chosen as a good compromise between the required energy resolution and the fiber cost.The design of the proposed calorimeter will be discussed, together with the expected performances. Whenever possible, the simulated results will be compared with the experimental ones, obtained with the built prototypes and with the NA50 ZDC, which can be considered as a working prototype for the ALICE neutron calorimeter

VET students into technology companies: a microlearning digital course to train critical thinking skills

This microlearning course is designed to support VET graduates or students, especially those with fewer opportunities, who join a technology company at the beginning of their professional career. It has been developed within the framework of the Erasmus + project “VET STUDENTS İNTO TECHNOLOGY COMPANİES: A VET students mobility network in the technological sector through a virtual environment with specific materials for critical thinking”. This is an intiative co-financed by the Erasmus + Programme, with a personalized digital course format, to take into account both the previous training of the VET student or graduate and the type of company they will join. The course has in its sights to develop in the VET student the specific competences required by the technology company to address the problems typical of fields of leading technology innovation, as well as fitting in multidisciplinary teams. To do this, this course generates an innovative methodology in which the education itinerary is built based on previous knowledge of the student and the needs and work field of the technology company. Besides its contents strengthen critical thinking as an essential mechanism for work in both dynamic and technology sectors. For that purpose, the student is asked a series of questions in the form of problems that, in addition to being related to the study plans of VET studies, require for their solution the search for information, its analysis and many times the making of a decision or adopting a personal position on it. We aim with our training projects, within the Erasmus + program, to convince students that they are capable of going further and further in the development of their professional skills being the technology sector an acceptable option for them, making their work increasingly valuable for their inclusion, for their own personal development, for that of the company in which they work and for society. But for this certain skills are required, and one of the most important is learning to learn autonomously and to accurately analyse the information received and the decisions that are made from it. It is generally true that the problems that one encounters in professional practice are not going to be the ones that you were taught in your VET studies. Vocational training has to head for equipping students with the necessary tools to face the new problems that they will face in their job and to grow professionally every day. We intend to show how valuable critical thinking skills are in analysing our way of thinking and making decisions. In this paper we present examples of the exercises included in the course, how their approach and the processes that have led to a solution relate with the standards of critical thinking and the different levels of help that are offered to the student for their solution. The course is accessible from a digital educational software “ON YOUR SIDE: VIRTUAL ASSISTANT FOR EUROPEAN MOBILITIES IN TECHNOLOGICAL CENTERS” developed in the framework of this Erasmus+ project in order to develop cooperative work between students with fewer opportunities doing their internships in technology companies and their inclusion in new job posts. We will also present this software in a very summarized way in this article.This work has been funded by the Erasmus + program within the 2019-1-ES01-KA202-064569 project, Spanish Service for the Internationalization of Education (SEPIE