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Glera vineyards from the Prosecco wine district in northern Italy have been characterised in terms of the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr isotope-ratio of musts from the 2010, 2011 and 2012 vintages, coupled with the isotopic analysis of Sr in the labile fraction of the soils of provenance. For a single vineyard, detailed Sr isotopic analyses were carried out in sequentially extracted soil fractions at three different depths, and in the grape components (skin, seeds, must and stem), in order to verify the lack of Sr isotopic fractionation within the plant. The 87 Sr/ 86 Sr in must, seeds and stem overlaps within experimental uncertainties; skins are shifted towards a lower Sr isotopic composition. A large range of Sr isotopic compositions ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr between 0.70706 and 0.71215) characterizes musts from the different vineyards, notwithstanding the relatively limited extension of the investigated geographic area. A statistically significant correspondence between the soil labile fraction and must is observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Effects of high pressure (HP) pasteurization and sterilization processes on the properties of commercial biodegradable polylactic acid (PLA), used as packaging material, have been investigated. HP treatments have been performed at pressures of 200, 500 and 700MPa on PLA pouches, containing different types of food, i.e. tap water, solid carrots, carrot juice and carrot puree. Process temperature was in the ranges 25–40 and 90–110°C, respectively for HP pasteurization and HP sterilization. To the aim of assessing the suitability of PLA film for HP treatment of packaged food, the effects of treatments have been analyzed in terms of structural/morphological changes (i.e. crystallinity, density, orientation of PLA film) and of thermodynamics and functional properties (i.e. melting and glass transition temperature, permeability and solubility of gases and of water vapor). It has been found that HP pasteurization does not affect to a significant extent any structural and functional property of the treated material relevant for food packaging applications. Conversely, HP sterilization promotes the hydrolysis of the material accompanied by an increase of crystallinity of the film and a decrease of density of the amorphous phase related to the temperature/pressure history. These effects determine an unacceptable embrittlement and opacification of the material that makes it unsuitable for HP sterilization applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The Lifus 3 loop was designed and constructed in 2001/2002 in ENEA, to evaluate the corrosion behaviour of Fusion reference structural materials, and in particular AISI 316 and Eurofer, in flowing lithium environment. To fully accomplish the experimental program originally foreseen for Lifus 3 and not respected it was decided in 2010 to build a new experimental facility, simplified from the hydraulic point of view, capable of performing the set of tests required by the IFMIF community. The operating parameters of this loop, named Lifus 6 [1], are: isothermal loop with operating temperature of 350°C, maximum velocity in the test section of about 16m/s, cold trap continuously operated to remove carbon and oxygen impurities, hot trap operated in batch to remove nitrogen ones. An integral measurement of impurities is made on line by using a resistivity meter. The Lifus 6 loop design is presented in the paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This work is devoted to a feasibility analysis for the development of fiber optic humidity sensors to be applied in high-energy physics (HEP) applications and in particular in experiments actually running at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Due to the stringent sensors requirements concerning radiation hardness capability and low temperature operation, we focus our attention on the investigation of fiber optic humidity sensors based on polyimide-coated fiber Bragg gratings (FBG). Data here reported, obtained during a wide experimental campaign carried out in the laboratories of CERN, demonstrate that the selected technological platform is able to perform relative humidity (RH) measurements with percent resolution in the temperature range −15 to 20°C as well as in presence of ionizing radiations up to 10kGy, largely outperforming conventional humidity sensors, currently employed within CERN environment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We present, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, a phase unwrapping method based on an algorithm which makes use of Green''s first identity. This method aims at recovering the correct phase information encoded in a fringe pattern after digital holography (DH) numerical processing. DH provides a quantitative measurement of the three-dimensional surface profile of objects. The information about the profile can be obtained in principle from the phase-map. However, the measured phase-map provides the actual phase values wrapped mod.2π so that an unwrapping process is required in order to reconstruct the object profile. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]