•Biosphere reserves consist of core, buffer and transition zones.•The buffer can have important complementary value, but this needs testing.•The buffer complements the core by adding unrepresented ...ecological environments.•Conservation management should not be restricted to the core.
Biosphere reserves (BRs) are areas of high biodiversity value that promote conservation and sustainable development. BRs consist of core, buffer, and transition zones. Buffer zones are where human and ecological activities overlap, and are key functional spaces that can have important complementarity value. We test this using ground-living arthropods in the highly biodiverse Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve in South Africa. We use generalized dissimilarity modelling to describe the compositional dissimilarity of assemblages as a function of environmental correlates between pairs of survey sites. Transformed spatial predictors were used as surrogates for biodiversity to assess complementarity. Important correlates of arthropod species turnover were related to mesoclimate, fire history, and geology. Buffer areas had important complementary value. Current habitat transformation across core and buffer zones does not change this, as results were the same when removing all transformed areas from the analyses. Important areas in buffer zones that increased local representativeness coincided with areas of increased intra-annual temperature variability. Orchards in transformed areas also influenced arthropod diversity in adjacent natural vegetation by <1km from orchard edges. This edge effect influenced both core and buffer sites due to the lack of a continuous buffer, indicating that the buffer zone is important for protecting the core. As fire management is an important correlate of arthropod turnover here, the complementary value of the buffer zone can have a strong temporal dimension. Given the important complementary value of the buffer zone, conservation management should not be restricted to core areas only, especially when maximising local representativeness.
The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) is a 1-ton scale bolometric experiment. The CUORE detector is an array of 988 TeO
2
crystals arranged in a cylindrical, compact, and ...granular structure of 19 towers. These detectors will need a base temperature lower than 10 mK in order to meet the performance specifications. To cool the CUORE detector, a large cryogen free cryostat with five pulse tubes and one custom designed high power dilution refrigerator has been designed. The three vessels that form the outer shell of the CUORE cryostat were produced in 2012 and are now assembled in the Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS). We report here the detailed description of the 4 K outer cryostat for the CUORE experiment together with the results of the validation tests done at the production site in 2012 and of the first commissioning to 4 K at LNGS in 2013.
This paper describes the design, construction principles and operations of the distillation and stripping pilot plants tested at the Daya Bay Neutrino Laboratory, with the perspective to adapt these ...processes, system cleanliness and leak-tightness standards to the final full scale plants to be used for the purification of the liquid scintillator of the JUNO neutrino detector. The main goal of these plants is to remove radio impurities from the liquid scintillator while increasing its optical attenuation length. Purification of liquid scintillator will be performed with a system combining alumina oxide, distillation, water extraction and steam (or N2 gas) stripping. Such a combined system will aim at obtaining a total attenuation length greater than 20 m @430 nm, and a bulk radiopurity for 238U and 232Th in the 10−15÷ 10−17 g/g range. The pilot plants commissioning and operation have also provided valuable information on the degree of reliability of their main components, which will be particularly useful for the design of the final full scale purification equipment for the JUNO liquid scintillator. This paper describes two of the five pilot plants since the Alumina Column, fluorescent material mixing and the Water Extraction plants are being developed by the Chinese part of the collaboration.
This article maintains that it is the social context, as much as, and sometimes more than the physical condition, that largely structures and limits the lives of people with albinism. It deals with ...albinism from a sociological, rather than a medical perspective. Viewed as such the problems experiencing by affected people stem primarily not from their physical differences but from the way others respond to those differences and from the social and physical environments they have to cope with. The article is based on a study of 32 children with albinism from a special school in the Limpopo province. Educational, health and social problems, attitude and perceptions about albinism were tested by way of structured interviews. The data reveal an acute lack of information about the causes and consequences of albinism. It projects it as a condition still deeply immersed in myths and superstition resulting in the stigmatizing and rejection of affected people. It also discloses a physical environment which is preventing rather than supporting people with albinism from reaching their potential. It calls for a reorientation in dealing with albinism--away from just medical intervention to treating it as a social construct requiring a holistic approach.
The CUORE experiment is the world's largest bolometric experiment. The detector consists of an array of 988 TeO2 crystals, for a total mass of 742 kg. CUORE is presently taking data at the Laboratori ...Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy, searching for the neutrinoless double beta decay of 130Te. A large custom cryogen-free cryostat allows reaching and maintaining a base temperature of ~10 mK, required for the optimal operation of the detector. This apparatus has been designed in order to achieve a low noise environment, with minimal contribution to the radioactive background for the experiment. In this paper, we present an overview of the CUORE cryostat, together with a description of all its sub-systems, focusing on the solutions identified to satisfy the stringent requirements. We briefly illustrate the various phases of the cryostat commissioning and highlight the relevant steps and milestones achieved each time. Finally, we describe the successful cooldown of CUORE.
The genetic condition albinism has a high frequency among the Sotho people of northern South Africa. Affected children have pale hair, eyes and skin—a dramatic contrast to the normal dark ...pigmentation. Their visual performance is poor and many attend special schools for the visually impaired. Children with albinism experience problems that are, on the one hand, physiological, and, on the other, social-psychological and educational in nature. In this self-report study 38 children at a rural special school described their eye and skin problems, a direct result of their lack of pigmentation, as well as strategies they adopted to manage their condition. A further section of the study deals with the social adaptation difficulties experienced by these children. The questionnaire tested for local belief systems about albinism and how these impact on the socialization of children with albinism. The intervention strategy proposed in this study is based on the assumption that any attempt to address both the health and social problems should be of a holistic, interactionist nature, and be based on the values and belief systems of the local community. In addressing the physical problems, the proposed intervention programme focuses on sensible sun protection habits from a young age and the active participation of the children. To alleviate the social problems a team (interactionist) approach including children, teachers, parents, health officials and the wider community is recommended.
The FAMU experiment at RIKEN-RAL is a muonic atom experiment with the aim to determine the Zemach radius of the proton by measuring the 1s hyperfine splitting in muonic hydrogen. The activity of the ...FAMU Collaboration in the years 2015-2023 enabled the final optimisation of the detector-target setup as well as the gas working condition in terms of temperature, pressure and gas mixture composition. The experiment has started its data taking in July 2023. The status of the detector setup for the 2023 experimental runs, for the beam characterisation and muonic X-ray detection in the 100-200 keV energy range, is presented and discussed.
The past few decades have seen major developments in the design and operation of cryogenic particle detectors. This technology offers an extremely good energy resolution - comparable to semiconductor ...detectors - and a wide choice of target materials, making low temperature calorimetric detectors ideal for a variety of particle physics applications. Rare event searches have continued to require ever greater exposures, which has driven them to ever larger cryogenic detectors, with the CUORE experiment being the first to reach a tonne-scale, mK-cooled, experimental mass. CUORE, designed to search for neutrinoless double beta decay, has been operational since 2017 at a temperature of about 10 mK. This result has been attained by the use of an unprecedentedly large cryogenic infrastructure called the CUORE cryostat: conceived, designed and commissioned for this purpose. In this article the main characteristics and features of the cryogenic facility developed for the CUORE experiment are highlighted. A brief introduction of the evolution of the field and of the past cryogenic facilities are given. The motivation behind the design and development of the CUORE cryogenic facility is detailed as are the steps taken toward realization, commissioning, and operation of the CUORE cryostat. The major challenges overcome by the collaboration and the solutions implemented throughout the building of the cryogenic facility will be discussed along with the potential improvements for future facilities. The success of CUORE has opened the door to a new generation of large-scale cryogenic facilities in numerous fields of science. Broader implications of the incredible feat achieved by the CUORE collaboration on the future cryogenic facilities in various fields ranging from neutrino and dark matter experiments to quantum computing will be examined.
This paper describes the design, construction principles and operations of the distillation and stripping pilot plants tested at the Daya Bay Neutrino Laboratory, with the perspective to adapt this ...processes, system cleanliness and leak-tightness to the final full scale plants that will be used for the purification of the liquid scintillator used in the JUNO neutrino detector. The main goal of these plants is to remove radio impurities from the liquid scintillator while increasing its optical attenuation length. Purification of liquid scintillator will be performed with a system combining alumina oxide, distillation, water extraction and steam (or N2 gas) stripping. Such a combined system will aim at obtaining a total attenuation length greater than 20 m at 430 nm, and a bulk radiopurity for 238U and 232Th in the 10-15 to 10-17 g/g range. The pilot plants commissioning and operation have also provided valuable information on the degree of reliability of their main components, which will be particularly useful for the design of the final full scale purification equipment for the JUNO liquid scintillator. This paper describe two of the five pilot plants since the Alumina Column, Fluor mixing and the Water Extraction plants are in charge of the Chinese part of the collaboration.
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