Analysis of fragmentation cross sections of GSI 2021 data for the FOOT experiment

Hadrontherapy is a medical treatment based on the use of charged particles beams accelerated towards deep-seated tumors on clinical patients. The reason why it is increasingly used is the favorable depth dose profile following the Bragg Peak distribution, where the release of dose is almost sharply focused near the end of the beam path. However, nuclear interactions between the beam and the human body constituents occur, generating nuclear fragments which modify the dose profile. To overcome the lack of experimental data on nuclear fragmentation reactions in the energy range of hadrontherapy interest, the FOOT (FragmentatiOn Of Target) experiment has been conceived with the main aim of measuring differential nuclear fragmentation cross sections with an uncertainty lower than 5\%. The same results are of great interest also in the radioprotection field, studying similar processes. Long-term human missions outside the Earth’s orbit are going to be planned in the next years, among which the NASA foreseen travel to Mars, and it is fundamental to protect astronauts health and electronics from radiation exposure .\\ In this thesis, a first analysis of the data taken at the GSI with a beam of $^{16}O$ at 400 $MeV/u$ impinging on a target of graphite ($C$) will be presented, showing the first preliminary results of elemental cross section and angular differential cross section. A Monte Carlo dataset was first studied to test the performance of the tracking reconstruction algorithm and to check the reliability of the full analysis chain, from hit reconstruction to cross section measurement. An high agreement was found between generated and reconstructed fragments, thus validating the adopted procedure. A preliminary experimental cross section was measured and compared with MC results, highlighting a good consistency for all the fragments.

End of life treatment options for bioplastics; a composting efficency case study

The constant increase in plastic production creates many problems, from its oil-based production all the way to end-of-life treatment, as the same proprieties that make plastic useful make conventional plastic into long-lasting waste that’s quickly piling up. One alternative is a different kind of plastic, bioplastic, a polymeric compound that is both functionally like synthetic plastics and largely environmentally sustainable. It is not necessarily enough to solve the plastic waste issue there's a need for effective strategies to manage bioplastic products at their end of life, to avoid undoing the reduction of environmental impact. One such treatment, unique to biodegradable bioplastics, is composting. This prompts a closer study of how efficient this process is in degrading bioplastics.