The Energy Problem

A brief general picture of the world, european and italian energy situations is made, analyzing several different energy sources and paying attention to the relations energy-quality of life, energy-environment and energy-health. Then will be discussed fossil fuels, renewable energies, the role of electric energy, nuclear energy, energy savings, the greenhouse effect, a possible sustainable development, the hydrogen economy and the risk and its perception. Then follow the conclusions and perspectives.

The Standard Model of Particle Physics. Neutrino Oscillations

The Standard Model (SM) of Particle Physics was tested to great precision by experiments at the highest energy colliders (LEP, Hera, Tevatron, SLAC). The only missing particle is the Higgs boson, which will be the first particle to be searched for at the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The SM anticipated that there are 3 types of left handed neutrinos. Experiments on atmospheric and solar neutrinos (made in Japan, Italy, Canada, Russia and the US) have shown the existence of neutrino oscillations, which imply that neutrinos have very small mass differences and violate the conservation of individual leptonic numbers. Neutrino oscillations were verified in long baseline neutrino experiments (in Japan and in the USA); and cosmology has given reasonably precise indications on the sum of the neutrino masses. In this general lecture will be summarized some of the main properties of the SM and some of the main results obtained in the field and the experiments in preparation. Some of the main open questions will be briefly discussed.

Atmospheric neutrino and Long Baseline neutrino experiments

The results obtained by several experiments on atmospheric neutrino oscillations are summarized and discussed. Then the results obtained by different long baseline neutrino experiments are considered. Finally conclusions and perspectives are made.

Rising Total Hadron-Hadron Cross Sections

A historical summary is made on the measurements concerning the rising total hadron-hadron cross sections at high energies. The first part of this paper concerns the total cross section measurements performed at the Brookhaven, Serpukhov and Fermilab fixed target accelerators; then the measurements at the CERN Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR), and at the CERN and at the Tevatron Fermilab proton-antiproton colliders; finally the cosmic ray measurements at even higher energies. A short discussion on Conclusions and Perspectives follows.