Extruded scintillator for the Calorimetry applications

An extrusion line has been installed and successfully operated at FNAL (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) in collaboration with NICADD (Northern Illinois Center for Accelerator and Detector Development). This new Facility will serve to further develop and improve extruded plastic scintillator. Recently progress has been made in producing co-extruded plastic scintillator, thus increasing the potential HEP applications of this Facility. The current R&D work with extruded and co-extruded plastic scintillator for a potential ALICE upgrade, the ILC calorimetry program and the MINERvA experiment show the attractiveness of the chosen strategy for future experiments and calorimetry. We extensively discuss extruded and co-extruded plastic scintillator in calorimetry in synergy with new Solid State Photomultipliers. The characteristics of extruded and co-extruded plastic scintillator will be presented here as well as results with non-traditional photo read-ou

Mean Field Theory of Sandpile Avalanches: from the Intermittent to the Continuous Flow Regime

We model the dynamics of avalanches in granular assemblies in partly filled rotating cylinders using a mean-field approach. We show that, upon varying the cylinder angular velocity $\omega$, the system undergoes a hysteresis cycle between an intermittent and a continuous flow regimes. In the intermittent flow regime, and approaching the transition, the avalanche duration exhibits critical slowing down with a temporal power-law divergence. Upon adding a white noise term, and close to the transition, the distribution of avalanche durations is also a power-law. The hysteresis, as well as the statistics of avalanche durations, are in good qualitative agreement with recent experiments in partly filled rotating cylinders.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX 3.0, postscript figures 1, 3 and 4 appended

Flux front penetration in disordered superconductors

We investigate flux front penetration in a disordered type II superconductor by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of interacting vortices and find scaling laws for the front position and the density profile. The scaling can be understood performing a coarse graining of the system and writing a disordered non-linear diffusion equation. Integrating numerically the equation, we observe a crossover from flat to fractal front penetration as the system parameters are varied. The value of the fractal dimension indicates that the invasion process is described by gradient percolation.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Public awareness on natural and technological hazards as a key for safety: the BeSafeNet initiative contribution.

Natural and technological hazards cause great human and economic losses. Furthermore, as happened with the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami in 2011, natural hazards can trigger technological accidents, introducing an additional negative effect on people and environment and requiring a more comprehensive risk assessment and emergency planning. If we cannot prevent many of these hazards, we can try to minimize their potential consequences, in particular by informing people about the nature of hazard and its possible consequences for specific regions. General public behavior is an important factor in the success of any planning and providing it with clear explanations of all pertinent aspect of hazards is a prerequisite to foster a culture of safety supporting the necessary preventive actions.The BeSafeNet initiative, promoted by the EUR-OPA Major Hazards Agreement of the Council of Europe, has as a main aim, to better protect people from hazards through better informing them on the causes and the consequences of natural and technological hazards. Distributing widely such knowledge will help people to better understand the potential risks and consequently to better protect themselves against them

Environmental and social impact assessment of optimized post-tensioned concrete road bridges

[EN] Most of the definitions of sustainability include three basic pillars: economic, environmental, and social. The economic pillar has always been evaluated but not necessarily in the sense of economic sustainability. On the other hand, the environmental pillar is increasingly being considered, while the social pillar is weakly developed. Focusing on the environmental and social pillars, the use of methodologies to allow a wide assessment of these pillars and the integration of the assessment in a few understandable indicators is crucial. This article is structured into two parts. In the first part, a review of life cycle impact assessment methods, which allow a comprehensive assessment of the environmental and social pillars, is carried out. In the second part, a complete environmental and social sustainability assessment is made using the ecoinvent database and ReCiPe method, for the environmental pillar, and SOCA database and simple Social Impact Weighting method, for the social pillar. This methodology was used to compare three optimized bridges: two box-section post-tensioned concrete road bridges with a variety of initial and maintenance characteristics, and a pre-stressed concrete precast bridge. The results show that there is a high interrelation between the environmental and social impact for each life cycle stage.This research was funded by the Ministerio de Economia, Ciencia y Competitividad and FEDER funding grant number [BIA2017-85098-R]Penades-Pla, V.; Martínez-Muñoz, D.; García-Segura, T.; Navarro, IJ.; Yepes, V. (2020). Environmental and social impact assessment of optimized post-tensioned concrete road bridges. Sustainability. 12(10):4265-01-4265-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12104265S4265-014265-18121