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Abstract The Aria cryogenic distillation plant, located in Sardinia, Italy, is a key component of the DarkSide-20k experimental program for WIMP dark matter searches at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy. Aria is designed to purify the argon, extracted from underground wells in Colorado, USA, and used as the DarkSide-20k target material, to detector-grade quality. In this paper, we report the first measurement of argon isotopic separation by distillation with the 26 m tall Aria prototype. We discuss the measurement of the operating parameters of the column and the observation of the simultaneous separation of the three stable argon isotopes: $${}^{36}\hbox {Ar}$$ 36 Ar , $${}^{38}\textrm{Ar}$$ 38 Ar , and $${}^{40}\textrm{Ar}$$ 40 Ar . We also provide a detailed comparison of the experimental results with commercial process simulation software. This measurement of isotopic separation of argon is a significant achievement for the project, building on the success of the initial demonstration of isotopic separation of nitrogen using the same equipment in 2019.

The seismic event of 6 April 2009 has inevitably left its mark on the history of the entire territory of L'Aquila (Italy), completely devastating the town and much of the province. Within such frantic and extensive reconstruction activity, the resulting construction works could not but draw attention to some issues of fundamental importance such as coordinated planning, safety, respect for the rules and above all the rebirth of the territory. This research is aimed at drawing up the site plan for Fossa, a municipality in the Province of L'Aquila and not far from the region capital of Abruzzo, Italy. The main objective is to create a monitoring standard by means of a dedicated sensors network and detailed strategies in order to coordinate, guide and support the single actions of intervention through design behaviours and highly technological tools. The Plan is configured as a tool for participatory planning, with the active involvement of planners, companies and citizens, whose common goal is the preservation of the identity of locations, the mitigation of seismic risk and the enhancement of the cultural heritage of the Municipality of Fossa. Implementation of this work is the application of technological systems for construction site monitoring: a concrete response to the growing demand for organized management of the construction process on site and safety in the workplace can be achieved through the use of systems and rational control and management procedures that include the use of innovative technologies.

To implement the protocol contrasting the diffusion of Covid-19, the employer is required, to ensure the safety and health of the worker at work, to adopt measures related to the control of body temperature (with respect for privacy), the minimum distance during work and all other activities such as breaks, canteen breaks, access to toilets, in addition to the adoption of specifically developed safety procedures, such as e.g. the use of man-down detection devices. In this context, the project aims to illustrate a system able of providing support in the safeguarding of workers' health on construction sites. This system, based on information received from sensors capable of identifying workers' positions (e.g., if less than 1m away) and their vital parameters (e.g., body temperature, gasped breathing), as well as moving objects inside the construction site area (e.g., to check if a worker is passing under a moving crane), will raise early alerts directly to the workers and/or to the central software, with respect for privacy, to immediately activate all the necessary measures to mitigate the risk. The system, based on the data communicated by the various sensors, will store and process them for the purpose of extracting useful information for risk management. The proposed system configured itself as a new product taking advantage from a high Technology Readiness Level maturated from the Smart Safety Belt already developed by some of the authors.

In this paper a current mode very low voltage (LV) (1V) and low power (LP) (21 µW) differential difference second generation current conveyor (CCII) is presented. The circuit is developed by applying the current sensing technique to a fully balanced version of a differential difference amplifier (DDA) so to design a suitable LV LP integrated version of the so-called differential difference CCII (DDCCII). Post-layout results, using a 0.18µm SMIC CMOS technology, have shown good general circuit performances making the proposed circuit suitable for fully integration in battery portable systems as, for examples, fully differential Sallen-Key bandpass filter.

Abstract  A new current mode building block named voltage and current gain second generation current conveyor (VCG-CCII) is introduced. The voltage and current buffers of the standard CCII are replaced by voltage and current amplifiers with tunable gains so to obtain an extremely flexible and versatile building block. The VCG-CCII can be used in place of the standard CCII in impedance conversion applications so to utilize only one active component. A circuit implementation in a standard 0.35 μm CMOS process is presented and used to multiply, as an example, a 10 pF capacitor by a factor tunable from 1 up to about 3100, achieving a capacitance multiplication for more than 6 decades frequency range (from 0.15 to 865 KHz for the highest multiplication factor). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]