High-power test results of a 3 GHz single-cell cavity

Compact, reliable and little consuming accelerators are required for the treatment of tumours with ions. TERA proposes the "cyclinac", composed of a high-frequency, fast-cycling linac which boosts the energy of the particles previously accelerated in a cyclotron. The dimensions of the linac can be reduced if high gradients are used. TERA initiated a high-gradient test program to understand the operational limit of such structures. The program foresees the design, prototyping and high-power test of several high-gradient structures operating at 3 and 5.7 GHz. The high-power tests of the 3 GHz single-cell cavity were completed in Winter 2012. The maximum BDR threshold measured for Emax of 170 MV/m and RF pulses of 2.5 \mu s was 3 x 10-6 bpp/m

Affinity and selectivity of plant proteins for red wine components relevant to color and aroma traits

The effects of fining with various plant proteins were assessed on Aglianico red wine, using both the young wine and wine aged for twelve and twenty-four months, and including wine unfined or fined with gelatin as controls. Color traits and fining efficiency were considered, along with the content of various types of phenolics and of aroma-related compounds of either varietal or fermentative origin. All agents had comparable fining efficiency, although with distinct kinetics, and had similar effects on wine color. Individual plant proteins and enzymatic hydrolyzates differed in their ability to interact with some anthocyanins, with specific proanthocyanidins complexes, and with some aroma components of fermentative origin. Changes in varietal aroma components upon fining were very limited or absent. Effects of all the fining agents tested in this study on the anthocyanidin components were most noticeable in young red wine, and decreased markedly with increasing wine ageing

Optimal self-stabilizing mobile byzantine-tolerant regular register with bounded timestamps

This paper proposes the first implementation of a self-stabilizing regular register emulated by n servers that is tolerant to both Mobile Byzantine Agents and transient failures in a round-free synchronous model. Differently from existing Mobile Byzantine Tolerant register implementations, this paper considers a weaker model where: (i) the computation of the servers is decoupled from the movements of the Byzantine agents, i.e., movements may happen before, concurrently, or after the generation or the delivery of a message, and (ii) servers are not aware of their failure state i.e., they do not know if and when they have been corrupted by a Mobile Byzantine agent. The proposed protocol tolerates (i) any finite number of transient failures, and (ii) up to f Mobile Byzantine agents. In addition, our implementation uses bounded timestamps from the Z13 domain and it is optimal with respect to the number of servers needed to tolerate f Mobile Byzantine agents in the given model (i.e., n>6f when Δ=2δ, and n>8f when Δ=δ, where Δ represents the period at which the Byzantine agents move and δ is the upper bound on the communication latency)

Linear time series modelling for groundwater level forecasting: the case study of the fractured aquifer system of Monsummano terme (central Italy)

Groundwater level, forecasting, Tuscany, Auto Regressive models (AR)

Studies on the mechanism of catalysis of iron-sulfur cluster transfer from IscU[2Fe2S] by HscA/HscB chaperones

The HscA/HscB chaperone/cochaperone system accelerates transfer of iron-sulfur clusters from the FeS-scaffold protein IscU (IscU(2)[2Fe2S], holo-IscU) to acceptor proteins in an ATP-dependent manner. We have employed visible region circular dichroism (CD) measurements to monitor chaperone-catalyzed cluster transfer from holo-IscU to apoferredoxin and to investigate chaperone-induced changes in properties of the IscU(2)[2Fe2S] cluster. HscA-mediated acceleration of [2Fe2S] cluster transfer exhibited an absolute requirement for both HscB and ATP. A mutant form of HscA lacking ATPase activity, HscA(T212V), was unable to accelerate cluster transfer, suggesting that ATP hydrolysis and conformational changes accompanying the ATP (T-state) to ADP (R-state) transition in the HscA chaperone are required for catalysis. Addition of HscA and HscB to IscU(2)[2Fe2S] did not affect the properties of the [2Fe2S] cluster, but subsequent addition of ATP was found to cause a transient change of the visible region CD spectrum, indicating distortion of the IscU-bound cluster. The dependence of the rate of decay of the observed CD change on ATP concentration and the lack of an effect of the HscA(T212V) mutant were consistent with conformational changes in the cluster coupled to ATP hydrolysis by HscA. Experiments carried out under conditions with limiting concentrations of HscA, HscB, and ATP further showed that formation of a 1:1:1 HscA-HscB-IscU(2)[2Fe2S] complex and a single ATP hydrolysis step are sufficient to elicit the full effect of the chaperones on the [2Fe2S] cluster. These results suggest that acceleration of iron-sulfur cluster transfer involves a structural change in the IscU(2)[2Fe2S] complex during the T --> R transition of HscA accompanying ATP hydrolysis