Energy and angular momentum sharing in dissipative collisions

Primary and secondary masses of heavy reaction products have been deduced from kinematics and E-ToF measurements, respectively, for the direct and reverse collisions of 93Nb and 116Sn at 25 AMeV. Light charged particles have also been measured in coincidence with the heavy fragments. Direct experimental evidence of the correlation of energy-sharing with net mass transfer has been found using the information from both the heavy fragments and the light charged particles. The ratio of Hydrogen and Helium multiplicities points to a further correlation of angular momentum sharing with net mass transfer.Comment: 21 pages, 20 figures. Submitted to European Physics Journal

Dietary Nitrate: Effects on the health of weaning pigs and Antimicrobial activity on seven probiotic Bifidobacterium spp. strains

The potential role of nitrite as an antimicrobial substance in the stomach may be of some importance in the ecology of the gastrointestinal tract and in host physiology. It has been shown that nitrite, under the acidic conditions of the stomach, may kill gut pathogens like Salmonella enteritidis, Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, and Yersinia enterocolitica, whereas acid alone has only a bacteriostatic effect. An in vivo study was conducted in order to assess the effects of dietary nitrate on microbiota and on the health of the gut (particularly in the stomach and small intestine). 96 weaning pigs were fed a diet containing high nitrate levels (15 mg and 150 mg) and then challenged with Salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium. Differences in composition of the gut microbiota were assessed by analysing samples from the pigs: To date analysis of 48 pigs has been completed.. Preliminary results demonstrated no effect on the population densities of microbial groups either from the challenge or from nitrate intake. However, increasing the time from challenge decreased either the counts of LAB in the stomach and jejunum or of clostridia in the stomach. Bifidobacteria also decreased in the stomach contents as nitrate supplementation increased. Supplementing the feedstuff with high dietary nitrate intake and then challenging with Salmonella did not affect the gastric pH or the degree of ulceration in the pigs. The synergistic bactericidal effects of pH, nitrite and thiocyanate on seven probiotic Bifidobacterium spp. strains were also investigated in an in vitro study. The results of the in vitro study demonstrated that an inhibitory effect exists on the seven probiotic bifidobacteria investigated with an exposure longer than 2 hours and pH values < 5.0. Addition of thiocyanate also increased the susceptibility of the tested strains. In this in vitro study, the most resistant strains at all conditions were B. animalis subsp. lactis Ra 18 and P32 and B. choerinum Su 877, Su 837 and Su 891

A Computer Aided Detection system for mammographic images implemented on a GRID infrastructure

The use of an automatic system for the analysis of mammographic images has proven to be very useful to radiologists in the investigation of breast cancer, especially in the framework of mammographic-screening programs. A breast neoplasia is often marked by the presence of microcalcification clusters and massive lesions in the mammogram: hence the need for tools able to recognize such lesions at an early stage. In the framework of the GPCALMA (GRID Platform for Computer Assisted Library for MAmmography) project, the co-working of italian physicists and radiologists built a large distributed database of digitized mammographic images (about 5500 images corresponding to 1650 patients) and developed a CAD (Computer Aided Detection) system, able to make an automatic search of massive lesions and microcalcification clusters. The CAD is implemented in the GPCALMA integrated station, which can be used also for digitization, as archive and to perform statistical analyses. Some GPCALMA integrated stations have already been implemented and are currently on clinical trial in some italian hospitals. The emerging GRID technology can been used to connect the GPCALMA integrated stations operating in different medical centers. The GRID approach will support an effective tele- and co-working between radiologists, cancer specialists and epidemiology experts by allowing remote image analysis and interactive online diagnosis.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the 13th IEEE-NPSS Real Time Conference 2003, Montreal, Canada, May 18-23 200

Particle and light fragment emission in peripheral heavy ion collisions at Fermi energies

A systematic investigation of the average multiplicities of light charged particles and intermediate mass fragments emitted in peripheral and semiperipheral collisions is presented as a function of the beam energy, violence of the collision and mass of the system. The data have been collected with the "Fiasco" setup in the reactions 93Nb+93Nb at 17, 23, 30, 38AMeV and 116Sn+116Sn at 30, 38AMeV. The midvelocity emission has been separated from the emission of the projectile-like fragment. This last component appears to be compatible with an evaporation from an equilibrated source at normal density, as described by the statistical code Gemini at the appropriate excitation energy. On the contrary, the midvelocity emission presents remarkable differences for what concerns both the dependence of the multiplicities on the energy deposited in the midvelocity region and the isotopic composition of the emitted light charged particles.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, Revtex

Space and Time pattern of mid-velocity IMF emission in peripheral heavy-ion collisions at Fermi energies

The emission pattern in the V_perp - V_par plane of Intermediate Mass Fragments with Z=3-7 (IMF) has been studied in the collision 116Sn + 93Nb at 29.5 AMeV as a function of the Total Kinetic Energy Loss of the reaction. This pattern shows that for peripheral reactions most of IMF's are emitted at mid-velocity. Coulomb trajectory calculations demonstrate that these IMF's are produced in the early stages of the reaction and shed light on geometrical details of these emissions, suggesting that the IMF's originate both from the neck and the surface of the interacting nuclei.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, RevTex 3.1, submitted to Phys. Rev. Letter

The TNG Near Infrared Camera Spectrometer

NICS (acronym for Near Infrared Camera Spectrometer) is the near-infrared cooled camera-spectrometer that has been developed by the Arcetri Infrared Group at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, in collaboration with the CAISMI-CNR for the TNG (the Italian National Telescope Galileo at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain). As NICS is in its scientific commissioning phase, we report its observing capabilities in the near-infrared bands at the TNG, along with the measured performance and the limiting magnitudes. We also describe some technical details of the project, such as cryogenics, mechanics, and the system which executes data acquisition and control, along with the related software.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, compiled with A&A macros. A&A in pres

Recent experimental results in sub- and near-barrier heavy ion fusion reactions

Recent advances obtained in the field of near and sub-barrier heavy-ion fusion reactions are reviewed. Emphasis is given to the results obtained in the last decade, and focus will be mainly on the experimental work performed concerning the influence of transfer channels on fusion cross sections and the hindrance phenomenon far below the barrier. Indeed, early data of sub-barrier fusion taught us that cross sections may strongly depend on the low-energy collective modes of the colliding nuclei, and, possibly, on couplings to transfer channels. The coupled-channels (CC) model has been quite successful in the interpretation of the experimental evidences. Fusion barrier distributions often yield the fingerprint of the relevant coupled channels. Recent results obtained by using radioactive beams are reported. At deep sub-barrier energies, the slope of the excitation function in a semi-logarithmic plot keeps increasing in many cases and standard CC calculations over-predict the cross sections. This was named a hindrance phenomenon, and its physical origin is still a matter of debate. Recent theoretical developments suggest that this effect, at least partially, may be a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle. The hindrance may have far-reaching consequences in astrophysics where fusion of light systems determines stellar evolution during the carbon and oxygen burning stages, and yields important information for exotic reactions that take place in the inner crust of accreting neutron stars.Comment: 40 pages, 63 figures, review paper accepted for EPJ

Exploring the performance of the spectrometer prisma in heavy zirconium and xenon mass regions

We present results from two recent runs which illustrate the performance of the PRISMA spectrometer in the proximity of the upper limit of its operational interval, namely 96Zr + 124Sn at Elab = 500 MeV and 136Xe + 208Pb at Elab = 930 MeV. In the latter run, the γ array CLARA also allowed us to identify previously unknown γ transitions in the nuclides 136Cs and 134I

N and Z odd-even staggering in Kr + Sn collisions at Fermi energies

The odd-even staggering of the yield of final reaction products has been studied as a function of proton (Z) and neutron (N) numbers for the collisions 84 Kr+112 Sn and 84 Kr+124 Sn at 35 MeV/nucleon, in a wide range of elements (up to Z ~ 20). The experimental data show that staggering effects rapidly decrease with increasing size of the fragments. Moreover the staggering in N is definitely larger than the one in Z. Similar general features are qualitatively reproduced by the GEMINI code. Concerning the comparison of the two systems, the staggering in N is in general rather similar, being slightly larger only for the lightest fragments produced in the n-rich system. In contrast the staggering in Z, although smaller than that in N, is sizably larger for the n-poor system with respect to the n-rich one.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, Revtex forma