The MODULAr project foresees the exploitation of a new liquid Argon imaging detector, of at least 20 kt fiducial mass, to be operated in a shallow depth location under the Gran Sasso Mountain. It will be devoted to study neutrino oscillations with an optimized off-axis CNGS neutrino beam. Cosmic neutrinos as well as proton decay will also be addressed. The MODULAr detector will vastly inherit from the technology developed for ICARUS-T600. However, such an increase in the volume over the current ICARUS-T600 needs to be carefully considered. It is concluded that a single, huge volume is an inoperable and uneconomical solution for many reasons. A very large mass is best realized with a modular set of many identical, independent units, each of about 5 kt, ``cloning'' the basic technology of the ICARUS-T600. Several of such modular units will be assembled to reach at least 20 kt as initial sensitive volume. The increase of the active volume of about one order of magnitude with respect to the ICARUS-T600 detector requires some specific R&D activity, which will be implemented in a ∼ 360 ton prototype unit (SLICE) of reduced length.

The paper is considering an opportunity for the CERN/GranSasso (CNGS) neutrino complex, concurrent time-wise with T2K and NOvA projects, with the aim of improving the sensitivity on v(mu) <-> v(e) theta(13) mixing angle by nearly an order of magnitude with respect to T2K expectations. The experiment is based on approximate to 20 kt fiducial volume LAr-TPC, following very closely the technology developed for the ICARUS-T600.The present preliminary proposal, called MODULAr, is focused on the following three main activities, for which we seek an extended international collaboration:(1) The neutrino beam from the CERN 400 GeV proton beam and an optimized horn focussing, eventually with an increased intensity in the framework of the LHC accelerator improvement programme.(2) A new experimental area LNGS-B, of at least 50,000 m(3) at 10 km off-axis from the main laboratory, eventually upgradable to larger sizes. A location is under consideration at about 1.2 km equivalent water depth. The bubble chamber like imaging and the very fine calorimetry of the LAr-TPC detector will ensure the best background recognition not only from the off-axis neutrinos from the CNGS but also for proton decay and cosmic neutrinos.(3) A new LAr Imaging detector, at least initially with about 20 kt fiducial mass, realised with a modular set of four identical, but independent units, each of about 5 kt, "cloning" the basic technology of the T600. Further phases may foresee extensions of MODULAr to a mass required by the future physics goals.Compared with large water Cherenkov (T2K) and fine grained scintillators (NOvA), the LAr-TPC offers a higher detection efficiency for a given mass and lower backgrounds, since virtually all channels may be unambiguously recognized. In addition to the search for 013 oscillations and CP violation, it would be possible to collect a large number of accurately identified cosmic ray neutrino events and perform search for proton decay in the exotic channels. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The platinum metals depleted in the earth's crust are relative to their cosmic abundance; concentration of these elements in sediments may thus indicate influxes of extraterrestrial material. Analysis of these parameters are done easily by Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) and comparative results with ICP-MS technique show a good match. Results, adjust parameters and limits of this method will be displayed in tables.

In a low background detector high contamination of U, Th and K in the materials used couldn't be accepted. All materials furnished should be tested and measures optioned have a sensibility of 10−11−10−12g/g. Such measures need an adequate irradiation time and flux. An optimum cooling time and other parameters should be optimised in order to reach the goal. Analysis are made by Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) while analysis of the natural gamma activity are made by long time measures in a low background detector.

The counterfeit of a product, in this case a type of cheese, is an economic damage for the trade-mark product. An identification of the product itself by quantification of trace elements could be done. Nuclear techniques are useful and give good results. Some elements are connected to the process so different productions could be identified. Thirty elements and 160 spectrums are analysed. The samples of the same kind of cheese come from different countries and different Italian producers (15 different productions).

Examples are given which prove the ICARUS detector quality through relevant physics mea- surements. We study the µ decay energy spectrum from a sample of stopping µ events acquired during

A procedure to filter the ICARUS digitized data is presented. The final multi-kiloton detector will provide raw data at a rate of the order of 100 Gbytes/s and therefore a crucial element of the acquisition chain will be the on-line data reduction system. A filter has been developed to process the signals and to tag the meaningful data. The hit detection efficiency has been evaluated on a sample of signals obtained from cosmic rays events in the 3 t ICARUS prototype. Its robustness has been tested also on simulated events with different signal to noise ratio. The hit finder hardware implementation is also presented.

The ICARUS project aims at the realisation of a large liquid argon TPC to be run at the Underground Laboratories of Gran Sasso in Italy. An intense R&D activity has put on firm grounds this new detector technology and experimentally confirmed its feasibility on a few ton scale. Based on these solid achievements, the collaboration is now confident of being able to build and safely operate a multi-kton detector. The reseach program of the experiment involves the systematic study of a wide spectrum of physical phenomena covering many orders of magnitude in the energy deposited in the detector: from the few MeV of solar neutrino interactions, to the about one GeV of the proton decay and atmospheric neutrinos, up to the higher energies of neutrinos from accelerators.