Study of the spectral properties of ELM precursors by means of wavelets

The high confinement regime (H-mode) in tokamaks is accompanied by the occurrence of bursts of MHD activity at the plasma edge, so-called edge localized modes (ELMs), lasting less than 1 ms. These modes are often preceded by coherent oscillations in the magnetic field, the ELM precursors, whose mode numbers along the toroidal and the poloidal directions can be measured from the phase shift between Mirnov pickup coils. When the ELM precursors have a lifetime shorter than a few milliseconds, their toroidal mode number and their nonlinear evolution before the ELM crash cannot be studied reliably with standard techniques based on Fourier analysis, since averaging in time is implicit in the computation of the Fourier coefficients. This work demonstrates significant advantages in studying spectral features of the short-lived ELM precursors by using Morlet wavelets. It is shown that the wavelet analysis is suitable for the identification of the toroidal mode numbers of ELM precursors with the shortest lifetime, as well as for studying their nonlinear evolution with a time resolution comparable to the acquisition rate of the Mirnov coils

Operationalizing the circular city model for naples' city-port: A hybrid development strategy

The city-port context involves a decisive reality for the economic development of territories and nations, capable of significantly influencing the conditions of well-being and quality of life, and of making the Circular City Model (CCM) operational, preserving and enhancing seas and marine resources in a sustainable way. This can be achieved through the construction of appropriate production and consumption models, with attention to relations with the urban and territorial system. This paper presents an adaptive decision-making process for Naples (Italy) commercial port's development strategies, aimed at re-establishing a sustainable city-port relationship and making Circular Economy (CE) principles operative. The approach has aimed at implementing a CCM by operationalizing European recommendations provided within both the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework-specifically focusing on goals 9, 11 and 12-and the Maritime Spatial Planning European Directive 2014/89, to face conflicts about the overlapping areas of the city-port through multidimensional evaluations' principles and tools. In this perspective, a four-step methodological framework has been structured applying a place-based approach with mixed evaluation methods, eliciting soft and hard knowledge domains, which have been expressed and assessed by a core set of Sustainability Indicators (SI), linked to SDGs. The contribution outcomes have been centred on the assessment of three design alternatives for the East Naples port and the development of a hybrid regeneration scenario consistent with CE and sustainability principles. The structured decision-making process has allowed us to test how an adaptive approach can expand the knowledge base underpinning policy design and decisions to achieve better outcomes and cultivate a broad civic and technical engagement, that can enhance the legitimacy and transparency of policies

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

A transportable strontium optical lattice clock

We report on a transportable optical clock, based on laser-cooled strontium atoms trapped in an optical lattice. The experimental apparatus is composed of a compact source of ultra-cold strontium atoms including a compact cooling laser set-up and a transportable ultra-stable laser for interrogating the optical clock transition. The whole setup (excluding electronics) fits within a volume of less than 2 m$^3$. The high degree of operation reliability of both systems allowed the spectroscopy of the clock transition to be performed with 10 Hz resolution. We estimate an uncertainty of the clock of $7\times10^{-15}$.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, to be published in Appl. Phys.

A wavelet-based method to measure the toroidal mode number of ELMs

The high confinement mode regime (H-mode) in tokamaks is accompanied by the occurrence of burst of MHD activity at the plasma edge, so-called edge localized modes (ELMs). Because of the short time scales involved in the ELM crash (on JET typically 0.2 ms), standard Fourier analysis can hardly be used to extract their toroidal mode number. On the other hand, the assessment of linear stability of ELMs with the ion drift effects included, makes the identification of their toroidal mode numbers an important issue, while an accurate comparison with the theory of nonlinear evolution of ELMs requires the knowledge of the nonlinear spectrum. Compared to Fourier analysis, wavelets are suitable to study transient events on time scales comparable to the wave period. Spectral analysis based on sinusoidal wavelet functions has been applied to study the spectral properties of magnetic perturbations associated with ELMs and with their precursors, in JET plasmas with toroidal rotation driven by unbalanced NBI. It is shown that, combining wavelet analysis with statistical two-point correlation techniques, it is possible to get information on the toroidal mode number structure of magnetic perturbations during the phases that immediately precede the ELM and during the ELM crash itself

Ternary Ca-Fe-Mg carbonates: subsolidus phase relations at 3.5GPa and a thermodynamic solid solution model including order/disorder

Subduction carries atmospheric and crustal carbon hosted in the altered oceanic crystalline basement and in pelagic sediments back into the mantle. Reactions involving complex carbonate solid solutions(s) lead to the transfer of carbon into the mantle, where it may be stored as graphite/diamond, in fluids or melts, or in carbonates. To constrain the thermodynamics and thus reactions of the ternary Ca-Mg-Fe carbonate solid solution, piston cylinder experiments have been performed in the system CaCO3-MgCO3-FeCO3 at a pressure of 3.5GPa and temperatures of 900-1,100°C. At 900°C, the system has two miscibility gaps: the solvus dolomite-calcite, which closes at X MgCO3 ~0.7, and the solvus dolomite-magnesite, which ranges from the Mg to the Fe side of the ternary. With increasing temperature, the two miscibility gaps become narrower until complete solid solutions between CaCO3-Ca0.5Mg0.5CO3 is reached at 1,100°C and between CaCO3-FeCO3 at 1,000°C. The solvi are characterized by strong compositional asymmetry and by an order-disorder mechanism. To deal with these features, a solid solution model based on the van Laar macroscopic formalism has been calculated for ternary carbonates. This thermodynamic solid solution model is able to reproduce the experimentally constrained phase relations in the system CaCO3-MgCO3-FeCO3 in a broad P-T range. To test our model, calculated phase equilibria were compared with experiments performed in carbonated mafic protolithes, demonstrating the reliability of our solid solution model at pressures up to 6GPa in complex system

The stability and melting of aragonite: An experimental and thermodynamic model for carbonated eclogites in the mantle

Subduction of calcium carbonate, sequestered in the oceanic crust by hydrothermal metamorphism and biogenic action, accounts for a significant flux of carbon into the mantle, where it contributes to the genesis of carbonatitic and silica-undersaturated melts. However, the reported phase relations in the system CaCO3, notably the transition boundary from disordered calcite (calcite V, here ccv) to aragonite (ara), vary considerably among different studies. Moreover, the thermodynamic properties of ccv and of liquid CaCO3 (CaCO3L) remain to be determined. In order to address the dearth of experimental data on phase relations, and to determine a set of internally consistent thermodynamic properties for ara, ccv and CaCO3L, multi-anvil experiments were performed at 3\u20136 GPa and 1300\u20131750 \ub0C. By re-evaluating all experimental data, the transformation of ccv-ara fits the equation Tccv-ara = 397.6 + 320.17 7 P and the melting curve Tm = 1578.9 + 139.65 7 P 12 11.646 7 P2, where pressure is in GPa and temperature in K. Thermodynamic properties retrieved for calcite V and liquid CaCO3 are used to compute phase diagrams of relevance for chemical compositions representative of eclogite heterogeneities of the astenospheric mantle, and compared with experimentally derived phase relationships. Aragonite represents a carbonate of major abundance in carbonated eclogites at high temperature, close to the solidus; its ability to fractionate REE and Ba-Sr contributes to the peculiar geochemical signatures of silica undersaturated magmas. The relatively refractory nature of aragonite impacts on our understanding of the deep carbon cycle

On the dynamics of vortex modes within magnetic islands

Recent work investigating the interaction of magnetic islands with micro-turbulence has uncovered the striking observation of large scale vortex modes forming within the island structure [W.A. Hornsby {\it et al.}, Phys. Plasmas {\bf 17} 092301 (2010)]. These electrostatic vortices are found to be the size of the island and are oscillatory. It is this oscillatory behaviour and the presence of turbulence that leads us to believe that the dynamics are related to the Geodesic Acoustic Mode (GAM), and it is this link that is investigated in this paper. Here we derive an equation for the GAM in the MHD limit, in the presence of a magnetic island modified three-dimensional axisymmetric geometry. The eigenvalues and eigenfunctions are calculated numerically and then utilised to analyse the dynamics of oscillatory large-scale electrostatic potential structures seen in both linear and non-linear gyro-kinetic simulations