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An array of 2424 2.6 m-long, 15 mm-diameter mylar straw tubes, arranged in two axial and four stereo layers, has been assembled. The array covers a cylindrical tracking surface of 18 m 2 and provides coordinate measurement in the drift direction and along the wire. A correction of the systematic effects which are introduced by gravitational sag and electrostatics, thus dominating the detector performance especially with long straws, allows to determine wire position from drift-time distribution. The correction has been applied to reach a space resolution of 40 μm with DME, 100 μm with Ar+C 2 H 6 , and 100–200 μm with CO 2 . Such a resolution is the best ever obtained for straws of these dimensions. A study of the gas leakage for the straw system has been performed, and results are reported. The array is being commissioned as a subdetector of the FINUDA spectrometer, and tracking performances are being studied with cosmic rays.

The commissioning of the control system is proceeding together with the commissioning of the LISA injector. In this paper we discuss the aspects of the control system evidenced during the first months of operation with emphasis on its advantages and limits. We believe this system to be a good solution for medium size accelerator with limited manpower, especially when flexibility is needed.

The fiber optic technology has been used to build a transmitter-receiver system capable of delivering channeltron or PM tube signals through a few hundred meter span. The intrinsic immunity of optical fibers to e.m. noise has been used to reduce noise problems in an experimental apparatus equipped with two electrostatic analyzers for coincidence (e, 2e) spectroscopy. A coincidence energy separation spectrum of He, used for calibration of the apparatus energy scale, has been measured using fiber optic links instead of coaxial cables. The system was completely built using cheap and easily available commercial components. The results show that fiber optic links could become a viable technique for noise reduction, high voltage decoupling and low temperature calorimeters signal transfer.

The possibility of using glass spark counters as active detectors in a Pb-sampling digital calorimeter for low energy γ range has been investigated in the framework of the DAΦNE Φ factory. The energy response and resolution using photons ranging between 40 and 80 MeV have been measured.

MARCO is a knowledge-based user interface for commissioning and operating modern accelerators and storage rings. Its purpose is to provide a model-referenced graphical interface system between the users and the machine. It allows access to modeling and simulation codes that are used in the design of the machine. It can be used to predict the effects of a change of parameters on the beam, or to compare the predicted with the measured effects. The design and prototype development of MARCO using HyperCard will be described in this paper.

The NEMO.RD Project is a feasibility study of a km 3 underwater telescope for high energy astrophysical neutrinos to be located in the Mediterranea Sea. At present this study concerns: i) Monte Carlo simulation study of the capabilities of various arrays of phototubes in order to determine the detector geometry that can optimize performance and cost; ii) design of low power consumption electronic cards for data acquisition and transmission to shore; iii) feasibility study of mechanics, deployment, connection and maintenance of such a detector in collaboration with petrol industries having experience of undersea operations; iv) oceanographic exploration of various sites in search for the optimal one. A brief report on the status of points i) and iv) is presented here.

An asynchronous data transmission optical network using single-mode fibers and capable of transmitting frequencies of a few Gbit/s at distances of tens of kilometers is presented. This network (or part of it) is of interest for application in particle physics.

DANTE (DAΦNE new tools environment) is the control system for the DAΦNE Φ-factory under construction at the Frascati National Laboratories of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN). The main design goal has been to keep the software simple and easy to debug. Commercial components have been used whenever possible, with a preference for widely diffused and well established products, as opposed to“standards”. Macintosh computers are used throughout the system and LabVIEW has been chosen as development environment. We strongly oppose the “start from scratch” philosophy.

PORFIDO (Physical Oceanography by RFID Outreach) is a system designed to be installed in the optical modules of the NEMO experiment and possibly, in future underwater neutrino telescopes to gather oceanographic data with a minimum of disturbance to the main project and a very limited budget. The system gathers oceanographic data (temperature, etc.) from passive RFID tags (WISPs) attached to the outside of the NEMO optical modules with an RF reader situated inside the glass sphere, without the need of connectors or penetrators, which are very expensive and offer low reliability. Ten PORFIDOs will be deployed with the NEMO Phase 2 tower in 2011.

The control system for LISA (INFN-LNF Frascati) is based on relatively short but very fast parallel buses. The high bandwidth available makes it possible to build a system where a central VME processor controls all data exchange in both directions. Data are continuously and autonomously read by the central processor from the hardware interfaces and stored in a central memory. Commands are passed in the opposite direction under operator control. Measurements of data flow rates show this system to be viable for small machines.

sites other than colon/rectum after mCRC diagnosis. By anatomic locations, 17.6% of patients had major surgeries on liver or lung (13.4% on liver and 4.9% on lung); and 32.3% had major surgeries on all other anatomic sites. Major surgeries on colon or rectum occurred in 35.9% of patients (32.9% on colon and 4.1% on rectum). Conclusions: Major surgeries are highly prevalent in patients with mCRC from this commercially insured population after mCRC diagnosis. This might have implications for anticancer drug therapy in mCRC patients.

Total cross sections for reactions e+e−→π+π−π0, π+π−π0, 2π+2π−π0, 2π+2π−2π0, 3π+3π− have been measured in the total c.m. energy range 1.42–2.20 GeV. Partial R=σhad/σσ+μ− values for two and four produced charged pions, and cross sections for positive and negative G-parity states are also reported.

If the cathode of a proportional wire device is made out of a suitably resistive material, it is possible to detect induced pulses using pick-up electrodes outside the device itself. Tests have been made on proportional tubes with helical delay lines, strips, or plates as pick-up electrodes. This method simplifies design and construction of pick-up electrodes, and furthermore allows unusual electrode arrangements.

Fiber optics have become in the last few years an extremely attractive method of data transfer. A short review of their properties and of their applications is given, together with some feelings from personal experience of the author.

Resistive tubes in the limited streamer mode with 1 cm granularity are described. Owing to resistive cathode transparency, both coordinates of a tube layer are readout by two sets of pickup strips. A graded cathode drift chamber with about 100 μm accuracy on both coordinates of the wire plane has been developed. It is again based on resistive cathode transparency, with external orthogonal strip readout, to which the charge centroid method is applied.

We present a study of the basic properties of tubes with thick sense wires (40–200 μm) operated in the limited streamer mode. The pulse shape, singles rate, detection efficiency and dead time are discussed, together with the influence of various parameters such as wire diameter, tube shape and dimensions, gas mixtures. The cathode material may be either conductive or resistive for multicoordinate readout. Preliminary results are shown on the possibility to use resistive plastics as cathode. The results of the study show the possibility to operate limited streamer tubes in a wide range of geometrical parameters, always maintaining their basic features, i.e. high reliability, easy construction, low cost of both detectors and readout electronics.

We have searched for possible narrow resonances produced in the reaction e + e − → hadrons, at Adone, in the mass interval. 1.45–1.92 GeV. Within the present statistics, no evidence has been found. We obtain an upper limit on the energy integrated resonant cross section of about 6% of the corresponding J/ψ(3.1) value.

CANDI2 is an intelligent CAMAC Crate Controller which implements high resolution color graphics and is intended to be easy to use in a laboratory environment for both data acquisition and process control.

The cross section for the reaction e + e - →π + π - π + π - has been measured at the e + e - storage ring Adone, in the to tal c.m. energy range 1.42–2.20 GeV. The peak and the following descent of the ϱ′(1600) resonance is observed. Using also lower energy data, and assuming that only one resonant amplitude contributes to the observed cross section, the parameters of the ϱ′(1600) are deduced.

A multiware detector consisting of an array of cubic sensitive cells operated in the limited streamer mode is presented. It should exhibit improved electromagnetic shower detection properties, due to soft electron absorption caused by its geometry.

Possible technical solutions to the problem of high speed data links between laboratories are presented. Long distance networks (WAN), ranging from tens to hundreds of kilometers, offer a variety of possibilities, from standard 64 Kbit/s connections to optical fiber links and radio or satellite Mbit channels. Short range (up to 2–3 km) communications are offered by many existing LAN (local area network) standards (e.g. Ethernet [1]) up to 10 Mbit/s. The medium distance range (around 10 km) can be covered by high performance fiber optic links and the now emerging MAN (metropolitan area network) protocols. A possible area of application is between the Gran Sasso Tunnel Laboratory, the outside installations and other Italian and foreign laboratories.

We are implementing an Ethernet interface for our intelligent CAMAC crate controller, CANDI 2, to connect it to the Ethernet Network which will tie together all of the Frascati National Laboratories computing facilities. We feel that Local Area Networks can add a lot of power and flexibility to a multicrate CAMAC installation.

We have built an intelligent controller for acquisition and pre-elaboration of data coming from the read-out electronics of streamer tube calorimeters. Its main features are very short acquisition time and low costs.