Garigliano nuclear power plant: seismic evaluation of the turbine building

The Italian Garigliano Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) started its energy production in 1963. At present it is in the decommissioning stage. In order to get a proper management of the radioactive waste that will be produced during the dismantling operations it has been considered convenient to convert the turbine building of the plant into a temporary waste repository. This decision posed a remarkable seismic safety assessment issue. As a matter of fact, the challenge was to extend, in satisfactory safety conditions, the use of an important facility that has reached the end of its designed lifetime and to have this extended use approved by nuclear safety agencies. In this context many tasks have been accomplished, of which the most important are: (a) a new appraisal of site seismic hazard; (b) the execution of many investigations and testing on the construction materials; (c) the set up of a detailed 3D finite element model including the explicit representation of foundation piles and soil; (d) consideration of soil structure kinematic and dynamic nteraction effects. This paper describes the adopted seismic safety assessment criteria which are based on a performance objectives design approach. While performance based design is the approach currently recommended by European Regulations to manage seismic risk and it is fully incorporated in the Italian code for conventional buildings, bridges and plants, NPP are not explicitly considered. Therefore it was necessary to delineate a consistent interpretation of prescribed rules in order to properly select the maximum and operating design earthquakes on one side and corresponding acceptable limit states on the other side. The paper further provides an outline of the numerical analyses carried out, of the main results obtained and of the principal retrofitting actions that will be realized

Assessing Nurse Director Self Perceptions of their Readiness for High-Performing Leadership

The role of the nurse leader is crucial to the success of any healthcare organization. Recognition of the importance of a high performing leadership style and measuring the characteristics to better understand the interpretation and influence of the leadership success is paramount. There is limited research on the nurse leader perception of themselves and the journey to evolve to a higher level of development. Magnet Recognition® has been a major influence in recognizing the critical role of transformational level of nursing leadership performance. This project was aimed to engage nurse directors (NDs) to participate in a self-evaluation and collect baseline leadership assessment information using the Nelson and Burns Framework for High Performance Programming (HPP) Model (Appendix A) to evaluate each of the Magnet® Model components.One leadership performance metric was identified to determine if there is a relationship between self-reported high performing leadership and registered nurse turnover rate. A correlational design using a self-reported survey with convenience sampling was used for this quantitative study

Gaucher Disease and Myelofibrosis: A Combined Disease or a Misdiagnosis?

Background: Gaucher disease (GD) and primary myelofibrosis (PMF) share similar clinical and laboratory features, such as cytopenia, hepatosplenomegaly, and marrow fibrosis, often resulting in a misdiagnosis. Case Report: We report here the case of a young woman with hepatosplenomegaly, leukopenia, and thrombocytopenia. Based on bone marrow (BM) findings and on liver biopsy showing extramedullary hematopoiesis, an initial diagnosis of PMF was formulated. The patient refused stem cell transplantation from an HLA-identical sibling. Low-dose melphalan was given, without any improvement. Two years later, a BM evaluation showed Gaucher cells. Low glucocerebrosidase and high chitotriosidase levels were indicative for GD. Molecular analysis revealed N370S/complex I mutations. Enzyme replacement therapy with imiglucerase was commenced, resulting in clinical and hematological improvements. Due to an unexpected and persistent organomegaly, PMF combined with GD were suspected. JAK2V617F, JAK2 exon 12, MPL, calreticulin, and exon 9 mutations were negative, and BM examination showed no marrow fibrosis. PMF was excluded. Twenty years after starting treatment, the peripheral cell count and liver size were normal, whereas splenomegaly persisted. Conclusion: In order to avoid a misdiagnosis, a diagnostic algorithm for patients with hepatosplenomegaly combined with cytopenia is suggested

Path integrals and degrees of freedom in many-body systems and relativistic field theories

The identification of physical degrees of freedom is sometimes obscured in the path integral formalism, and this makes it difficult to impose some constraints or to do some approximations. I review a number of cases where the difficulty is overcame by deriving the path integral from the operator form of the partition function after such identification has been made.Comment: 15 pages, volume in honor of prof.Yu.A.Simono

Towards an optical potential for rare-earths through coupled channels

The coupled-channel theory is a natural way of treating nonelastic channels, in particular those arising from collective excitations, defined by nuclear deformations. Proper treatment of such excitations is often essential to the accurate description of reaction experimental data. Previous works have applied different models to specific nuclei with the purpose of determining angular-integrated cross sections. In this work, we present an extensive study of the effects of collective couplings and nuclear deformations on integrated cross sections as well as on angular distributions in a consistent manner for neutron-induced reactions on nuclei in the rare-earth region. This specific subset of the nuclide chart was chosen precisely because of a clear static deformation pattern. We analyze the convergence of the coupled-channel calculations regarding the number of states being explicitly coupled. Inspired by the work done by Dietrich \emph{et al.}, a model for deforming the spherical Koning-Delaroche optical potential as function of quadrupole and hexadecupole deformations is also proposed. We demonstrate that the obtained results of calculations for total, elastic and inelastic cross sections, as well as elastic and inelastic angular distributions correspond to a remarkably good agreement with experimental data for scattering energies above around a few MeV.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to the proceedings of the XXXVI Reuni\~ao de Trabalho de F\'{\i}sica Nuclear no Brasil (XXXVI Brazilian Workshop on Nuclear Physics), held in Maresias, S\~ao Paulo, Brazil in September 2013, which should be published on AIP Conference Proceeding Series. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1311.1115, arXiv:1311.042

Cetomedizzazione e nuove polarit\ue0

Il saggio riflette sull'evoluzione dei ceti medi nell'Italia contemporanea e in particolare sui nuovi fenomeni di pauperizzazione che si riflettono un generalizzato scivolamento verso il basso nella stratificazione sociale. Con il supporto di una analisi empirica dei mutamenti recenti intervenuti nella distribuzione dei redditi, il saggio giunge alla conclusione di un incremento della distanza sociale tra ceti produttivi e redditieri, a fronte di una convergenza nei processi di impoverimento che interessano sia i ceti medi dipendenti, sia quelli imprenditoriali.The crisis shapes societies all over Europe, triggering mobility processes due to general socioeconomic downgrading, as well producing socio-cultural changing, for instance, modifying self class positioning. The article explores such aspects in Italian society, where, almost since the Sixties, the labour market, acting positively as a factor of income redistribution, has been the main economic function underlying the process of "middle-class-ing" of society (De Rita, 1996; Bagnasco, 2003; De Rita and Galdo, 2011), promoting the social encounter between the raising of condition for lower classes and the sliding of the upper classes, more and more focused on consumption and less culturally able to influence the political and institutional decision-making. Nowadays, such "middle-class-ing" trends (interpretable partly as a failure, partly as a renounce of the bourgeoisie to lead as an effective ruling class), have shifted, due to socioeconomic difficulties, to a sort of "working-class-ing" (Diamanti, 2011) interesting an increasing part of the entrepreneurship, where many middle-small business owners feel much closer in terms of social positioning to their employees, workers or craftsmen, because they share with them risks and uncertainty. Nonetheless, especially the working and middle class, more and more less supported by the welfare in the prolonged crisis, are suffering a progressive worsening of socioeconomic conditions. Using datasets from Banca d\u2019Italia, the contribution observe such trends of social mobility since the beginning of the crisis in 2008, observing the evolution in income, property and consumption behaviors from the perspective of the different labour market positions

3C 33: another case of photoionized soft X-ray emission in radio galaxies

All the observations available in the Chandra and XMM-Newton archives have been used to investigate the X-ray spectral properties of 3C 33. In this paper is presented a complete X-ray analysis of the nuclear emission of this narrow line radio galaxy. The broad band spectrum of 3C 33 is complex. The hard part resembles that of Seyfert 2 galaxies, with a heavily obscured nuclear continuum (N_H~10^23 cm^-2) and a prominent Fe Kalpha line. This represents the nuclear radiation directly observed in transmission through a cold circumnuclear gas. On the other hand an unabsorbed continuum plus emission lines seem to fit well the soft part of the spectrum (0.5-2 keV) suggesting that the jet does not significantly contribute to the X-ray emission. We discuss the possible collisional or photoionized origin of the gas that emits the soft X-ray lines. Our results, strengthened by optical spectroscopy favor the photoionization scenario.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&