Gamma dose from activation of internal shields in IRIS reactor

The International Reactor Innovative and Secure is a modular pressurised water reactor with an integral design. This means that all the primary system components, such as the steam generators, pumps, pressuriser and control rod drive mechanisms, are located inside the reactor vessel, which requires a large diameter. For the sake of better reliability and safety, it is desirable to achieve the reduction of vessel embrittlement as well as the lowering of the dose beyond the vessel. The former can be easily accomplished by the presence of a wide downcomer, filled with water, which surrounds the core region, while the latter needs the presence of additional internal shields. An optimal shielding configuration is under investigation, for reducing the ex-vessel dose due to activated internals and for limiting the amount of the biological shielding. MCNP 4C calculations were performed to evaluate the neutron and the gamma dose during operation and the 60Co activation of various shields configurations. The gamma dose beyond the vessel from activation of its structural components was estimated in a shutdown condition, with the Monte Carlo code FLUKA 2002 and the MicroShield software. The results of the two codes are in agreement and show that the dose is sufficiently low, even without an additional shield.     

Suslin’s algorithms for reduction of unimodular rows

A well-known lemma of Suslin says that for a commutative ring $A$ if $(v_1\left(X\right),\dots ,v_n\left(X\right))\in {\left(A\left[X\right]\right)}^n$ is unimodular where $v_1$ is monic and $n\ge 3$, then there exist ${\gamma }_1,\dots ,{\gamma }_{\ell }\in E_{n-1}\left(A\left[X\right]\right)$ such that the ideal generated by $\mathrm{Res}(v_1,e_1.{\gamma }_1{}^t(v_2,\dots ,v_n)),\dots ,\mathrm{Res}(v_1,e_1.{\gamma }_{\ell }{}^t(v_2,\dots ,v_n))$ equals $A$. This lemma played a central role in the resolution of Serre’s Conjecture. In the case where $A$ contains a set $E$ of cardinality greater than $deg{v}_1+1$ such that $y-y^{\prime }$ is invertible for each $y\ne y^{\prime }$ in $E$, we prove that the ${\gamma }_i$ can simply correspond to the elementary operations $L_1\to L_1+y_i{\sum }_{j=2}^{n-1}{u}_{j+1}{L}_j$, $1\le i\le \ell =deg{v}_1+1$, where $u_1{v}_1+\cdots +u_n{v}_n=1$. These efficient elementary operations enable us to give new and simple algorithms for reducing unimodular rows with entries in $K[X_1,\dots ,X_k]$ to ${}^t(1,0,\dots ,0)$ using elementary operations in the case where $K$ is an infinite field. Another feature of this paper is that it shows that the concrete local–global principles can produce competitive complexity bounds.     

Reliability analysis of fault tolerant pipeline ring networks

In this paper the application of software implemented voting (ring structures) to pipeline networks is presented. The TMR characterization of the ring is extended to various topologies such as trees, cascade and locally voted pipelines. Both the aspects of reliability and data flow are analyzed in detail.     

Healing DNA Self-Assemblies Using Punctures

In self-assembly, individual components (commonly referred to as tiles) have sufficient infor mation to build templates for structures such as lat tices for two-dimensional scaffolds. Tile sets that can heal (fully or partially) an erroneous DNA assembly have been proposed. Healing requires growth to be restarted such that erroneous tiles can be removed and the correct tiles can bind to the aggregate. Punctures have been proposed for this purpose; in this paper, a puncture is intentionally induced in the self-assembly to restart the growth process. The goal of this paper is to characterize an intentionally induced puncture (and its relevant properties) on an erroneous tile site in the grown crystal as part of a healing process. This allows to propagate any newly generated error away from the source of growth (i.e. the seed tile), such that self-assembly can continue along specific directions. Different types of puncture are considered with respect to healing and related features, such as growth direction, error and aggregate types. Punctures are analyzed using a new characterization and metric; different tile sets are investigated in detail for healing of a DNA self-assembly.

Gelcasting of dense and porous ceramics by using a natural gelatine

An improved gel-casting procedure was successfully exploited to produce porous ceramic bodies having controlled porosity features in terms of mean pore size, total pore volume as well as pore geometry. The gel-casting process in which a natural gelatine for food industry is used as gelling agent was firstly set-up to prepare dense alumina and zirconia components. Then, commercial PE spheres, sieved to select proper dimensional ranges, were added to the starting slurries as pore-forming agent. Both alumina and zirconia porous bodies were then produced, having a porosity ranging between 40 and 50 vol%. The fired components were characterised by spherical pores surrounded by highly dense ceramic walls and struts, having a homogeneous and fine microstructure. Their mean pore size was directly dependent on the sieved fraction of the starting PE spheres selected as pore-forming phase.     

Lactic acid bacteria biodiversity in Italian marinated seafood salad and their interactions on the growth of Listeria monocytogenes

The aim of this research was to study the biodiversity of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in marinated seafood salad (pH 5.0) and their interaction on the growth of Listeria monocytogenes. LAB were highly present in the samples considered in this study, reaching values of 8.0 log cfu/g at the end of product’s shelf-life. A high biodiversity in terms of LAB species and strains was detected by means of RAPD–PCR within the 171 bacterial isolates collected. Among them Lactobacillus curvatus, Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis and Enterococcus were present in all the salad batches considered. Three challenge tests against L. monocytogenes were carried out in order to assess the growth of this pathogen in the presence of dominant populations of LAB. L. monocytogenes tended to decrease in time, suggesting that a stable concentration of LAB inhibits the development of this pathogenic micro-organism.     

Machine Precision Evaluation of Singular and Nearly Singular Potential Integrals by Use of Gauss Quadrature Formulas for Rational Functions

A new technique for machine precision evaluation of singular and nearly singular potential integrals with 1/R singularities is presented. The numerical quadrature scheme is based on a new rational expression for the integrands, obtained by a cancellation procedure. In particular, by using library routines for Gauss quadrature of rational functions readily available in the literature, this new expression permits the exact numerical integration of singular static potentials associated with polynomial source distributions. The rules to achieve the desired numerical accuracy for singular and nearly singular static and dynamic potential integrals are presented and discussed, and several numerical examples are provided.     

Onion under Microscope: An in-depth analysis of the Tor Web

World Wide Web - Tor is an open source software that allows accessing various kinds of resources, known as hidden services, while guaranteeing sender and receiver anonymity. Tor relies on a free,...