I will be adding interesting information, topics, webpages, articles, books etc. that I find useful in my line of teaching and research (in random order). As a general policy, (a) only free software will be listed, (b) no links will be provided for any software whatsoever and (c) regarding books, no suggestion of on-line libraries suspect for copyright infringement will take place.
http://iaea.org : The International Atomic Energy Agency
http://www.world-nuclear.org : The official web site of the World Nuclear Association
http://www.nucleartourist.com : Virtual Nuclear Tourist Site
http://www.wise-uranium.org : WISE Uranium Project (World Information Service on Energy Uranium Project)
http://www.ictp.it : Check ICTP Scientific Calendar and apply for free specialized postgraduate seminars
http://www.gaec.gr: The Greek Atomic Energy Commission
http://nuclpart.phys.uoa.gr/HNPS/: The Hellenic Nuclear Physics Society
http://www.eastelectronics.gr: Great audiovisual and other kind of electronics service and repairs; also, hand made high-end amplifiers (in Ampelokipoi, Athens, Greece)
If you are missing old style .bat scripts for DOS, use AUTOIT instead and be happy again. Windows environment manipulation commands and other goodies available.
Tired of commercially available super software for media burning? An alternative for you may be IMGBURN.
DVD Flick lets you compose and burn your DVD videos out of clips of various formats.
http://bookboon.com/en/textbooks: A quite big -and as it seems legitimate- collection of books in freely downloadable electronic form. Enjoy.
http://www.oecd-nea.org/dbprog/: A big collection of available computer codes, mostly suitable for Nuclear Engineering problems. The vast majority of the codes can be given in source form. To obtain code copies for free, one's country has to be an OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD-NEA) subscriber. If this is the case, then contact your respective country liaison to ask for a code that interests you. For GREECE, the liaison is Prof. S.E. Simopoulos. He can be reached through ses at nuclear dot ntua dot gr. Along with your submitted request pls provide a valid affiliation to a recognized university or research center in order to avoid code usage authorization problems.
http://www-rsicc.ornl.gov/: The collection of computer codes within the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory Data Base, the so called Radiation Safety Information Computational Center (RSICC). The collection is quite similar to that of OECD-NEA (see above). The codes are rather suitable for Nuclear Engineering problems. The vast majority of the codes can be given in source form. To obtain code copies for a fee, one has to register with the RSICC customer service. Registration is free of charge. Code requests are subject to review in terms of user affiliation and motivation. Fees are rendered as somewhat high.
A presentation with facts and plausible scenarios regarding the Fukushima Accident. Prepared by Dr. Matthias Braun, AREVA (~9 MB, download)
A former student of mine is the master mind behind this blog: Miskatonic Institute of Technology and this website: http://www.numca.gr. There you can find your way around custom made flight simulator consoles for a reasonable price. Let him know that the present site tipped you off.
In case that you are seriously fed up with the ribbon menu layout in MS Office 2010, there exist these nice people at addintools.com, who have actually worked out a classic menu for MS Office 2010. They provide a free classic menu for Home and Student MS Office 2010 Suites covering WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT and ONENOTE. This free menu can be also installed for MS Office 2010 Pro Plus provided that you are using it as an individual in your home (non-commercial) personal computer. Please, be kind and observe all terms and conditions of this free software. If you need to have a classic menu for more applications within your MS Office Suite (e.g. additionally for ACCESS), then you will have to purchase the full add-in. Same applies, if you need to employ classic menu in your professional working environment. Price seems quite reasonable though. If your MS Windows installation is in a language other than English, the product installer might not like it very much. In my case (MS Windows Vista Home, Greek), the installer text was produced in Chinese (!). However, one can manage. The add-in worked as expected.
In case that you are looking for a simple radioactive isotopes electronic library with elementary capabilities (decay constants, disintegration calculations, emitted alpha, beta and photon energies along with intensities etc.), there exists a free one called RadDecay and it covers more than 3000 isotopes details. This library was designed for the MS Windows Operating System by authors involved in radioactivity science. To my knowledge it comes in two free versions, which I will call "the old" and "the new" respectively. To run the old version, one may use this zip file. To run the new version, one may use this zip file. (I personally prefer the old version; its layout seems to be more of my liking). However, there are two catches: (a) No liability whatsoever for the program operation, use of the data, accuracy of the data, loss of information, or anything else is accepted by me or the authors (who are actually unknown to me); the library versions in question, seem to be more suitable merely for educational and demonstration purposes, and (b) Place the library executable as close to your root directory as possible (that is C:\); there have been cases that calling the executable from a shortcut never succeeded because it was located too deep in the computer path. Please, pay attention that the "old" version will not execute in any 64 bit MS Windows operating systems, since this was originally designed to be a 16 bit application. If there are compatibility problems encountered in your MS Windows installations, run the library executable in a compatibility mode that suits you best. Hint 1: Google search for RadDecay, to find comments, other free versions and extra goodies, if any. Hint 2: Current up-to-date RadDecay version is produced, maintained and sold as a commercial and certified product by Grove Software; Grove Software seems to also own the rights of certain older versions.
http://www.upv.es/cherne/: The CHERNE Radiological and Nuclear Engineering Education Cooperation Network. NED-NTUA is one of the total 17 International Partners. The 8th CHERNE Workshop was organized by NED-NTUA in May 2012 (http://cherne2012.ntua.gr/)
Mr. Evangelos Alexopoulos, Electrical Engineer NTUA, is a maintenance expert for Hewlett Packard laser and A3 deskjet printers. Reasonable prices and in-calls for most of everyday maintenance cases. He is an exceptional professional, always on time, with friendly attitude and he also provides invaluable advise for running your equipment efficiently. Reach him at + 3 0 6 9 3 2 2 7 9 1 7 3
At http://www.netlib.org/f2c one may download the f2c utility source packages and libraries mainly for the LINUX Operating System. This utility converts source code originally developed with the FORTRAN programming language into structured C source. Prepackaged binaries of f2c exist for several LINUX distributions, in case that you are not that willing to compile and install the whole thing yourself. Under the same link one may also find f2c binaries for MS-DOS and MS-Windows 32 bit.
Starting from MS Windows Vista and on, a user may get the opportunity to choose the display language of his / her MS Operating System either during installation or even later on, following "Control Panel > Region and Language > Keyboards and Languages > Display Language". Under "Display Language" one is offered more languages or the choice to install / uninstall. It seems also possible that more languages could be part of the optional Operating Systems updates. However, these procedures are not available for more basic MS Windows versions, like Vista (Starter - Home Basic - Home Premium - Business) and Windows 7 (Starter - Home Basic - Home Premium - Professional), or in general for Vista and Windows 7 versions specifically tailored and pre-installed for brand desktop and laptop PCs. To the best of my knowledge, Enterprise and Ultimate editions come fully configured and do not present this insufficiency. The problem is pronounced when, for example, one ends up buying a PC, which was not of his / her absolute choice or came second-hand. To deal with it, here is what to do: (a) Download the display language manager called Vistalizator, (b) Download the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) that is wanted / needed - be careful to choose the correct MUI for the Operating System installed, (c) Download -if necessary- the Language Interface Pack (LIP) that is wanted / needed and depends on the chosen MUI, (d) Run Vistalizator and add the wished display language -it is best if you choose "internal installation" and (e) Reboot. Please, pay attention to the following: (1) This is not an official Microsoft procedure, therefore, TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK, (2) It is highly probable that, after the display language installation, Windows Update interface, would be messed-up. To deal with it, first reboot a couple of times, (3) If this does not fix the problem, try to reinstall the Windows Update Manager, (4) Even with a seemingly correctly operating Windows Update interface, updates may be not correctly downloaded or installed. In this case try to install the "Update Readiness Tool" Hotfix KB947821 available from Microsoft. Be aware to download the correct Hotfix version for your system, if available. Do not use a Hotfix designed for other systems. This Hotfix installation may seem stalling, however, be patient, the time it takes usually depends on the size and the details of your system. Finally, since there might already exist within the altered system software updates or Service Packs that are display language dependent, this could prevent Windows Update from working properly. To fix this issue, take the following steps: (i) uninstall .NET Framework SP, (ii) reinstall .NET Framework SP using Windows Update, (iii) check if Windows Update suggested updates, that would not install, already exist in the system, (iv) in this case, download standalone installers for these updates from Microsoft Download Center and execute one by one; pay attention to select the correct language for these standalone executables. After completing this procedure your Windows Update interface should function as it used to. This information was published in November 2012 and may not be valid for future time instances.
Depending on the edition and version of an MS Windows Operating System, there seem to exist instances, when East Asian keyboards layouts (Japanese, Korean and various Chinese in particular) get automatically activated (or self-installed as per the jargon), especially if one needs to change between keyboards originally selected from within "Control Panel > Region and Language > Keyboards and Languages > Change Keyboards" (e.g. between English / Greek). These unwanted keyboards may or may not show among the selected keyboards list. To fix the problem, do as it follows: (a) If these unwanted keyboards do show in the list, select "Remove", (b) Go "Start > Control Panel > Administrative tools > System configuration > Startup tab", (c) Uncheck all items called "Microsoft Office IMEI 2010" that have the paths
c:/program files/common files/microsoft/ime14/shared/imeklmg.exe /uninstall /CHS /log
c:/program files/common files/microsoft/ime14/shared/imeklmg.exe /uninstall /JPN /log
and
c:/program files/common files/microsoft/ime14/shared/imeklmg.exe /uninstall /KOR /log
under the "command" column. (d) Finally, reboot your system.
It is often necessary to obtain original (x,y) data from graphs, e.g. from scanned scientific plots, when data values are not available. GetData Graph Digitizer allows to freely, easily and effectively get the numbers in such cases.