Using data measured by the KASCADE-Grande air shower array, an upper limit to the flux of ultra-high energy gamma-rays in the primary cosmic-ray flux is determined. KASCADE-Grande measures the ...electromagnetic and muonic components for individual air showers in the energy range from 10 PeV up to 1 EeV. The analysis is performed by selecting air showers with low muon contents. A preliminary result on the 90% C.L. upper limit to the relative intensity of gamma-ray with respect to cosmic ray primaries is presented and compared with limits reported by other measurements.
► Using muon tracking we study muon production heights in cosmic ray air showers. ► The sensitivity of this quantity to the primary particle mass and energy is shown. ► The validity of hadronic ...interaction models used in simulations is discussed. ► An estimate of the cosmic ray mass composition in the studied energy range is given
A large area (128
m
2) muon tracking detector, located within the KASCADE experiment, has been built with the aim to identify muons (
E
μ
>
0.8
GeV) and their angular correlation in extensive air showers by track measurements under 18 r.l. shielding. Orientation of the muon track with respect to the shower axis is expressed in terms of the radial and tangential angles, which are the basic tools for all muon investigations with the tracking detector. By means of triangulation the muon production height is determined. Distributions of measured production heights are compared to CORSIKA shower simulations. Analysis of these heights reveals a transition from light to heavy cosmic ray primary particles with increasing shower energy in the energy region of the ‘Knee’ of the cosmic ray spectrum
The energy reconstruction at KASCADE-Grande is based on a combination of the shower size and the total muon number, which are both estimated for each individual air shower event. We present ...investigations where we employed a second method to reconstruct the primary energy using S(500), which are the charged particle densities inferred with the KASCADE-Grande detector at a distance of 500 m from the shower axis. We considered the attenuation of inclined showers by applying the “Constant Intensity Cut” method and we employed a simulation-derived calibration to convert the recorded S(500) into primary energy. We observed a systematic shift in the S(500)-derived energy compared with previously reported results obtained using the standard reconstruction technique. However, a comparison of the two methods based on simulated and measured data showed that this shift only appeared in the measured data. Our investigations showed that this shift was caused mainly by the inadequate description of the shape of the lateral density distribution in the simulations.
Nanoscale assemblies are a unique class of materials, which can be synthesized from inorganic, polymeric or biological building blocks. The multitude of applications of this class of materials ranges ...from solar and electrical to uses in food, cosmetics and medicine. In this review, we initially highlight characteristic features of polymeric nanoscale assemblies as well as those built from biological units (lipids, nucleic acids and proteins). We give special consideration to protein nanoassemblies found in nature such as ferritin protein cages, bacterial microcompartments and vaults found in eukaryotic cells and designed protein nanoassemblies, such as peptide nanofibres and peptide nanotubes. Next, we focus on biomedical applications of these nanoscale assemblies, such as cell targeting, drug delivery, bioimaging and vaccine development. In the vaccine development section, we report in more detail the use of virus-like particles and self-assembling polypeptide nanoparticles as new vaccine delivery platforms.
The purpose of this study was to determine how often physician-performed high-resolution sonography can detect nonpalpable breast lesions not revealed by mammography. A sonographic classification ...scheme was tested for its accuracy in predicting malignancy of incidentally detected breast lesions.
Six thousand one hundred thirteen asymptomatic women with breast density grades 2-4 and 687 patients with palpable or mammographically detected breast masses underwent sonography as an adjunct to mammography. All sonographically detected, clinically and mammographically occult breast lesions that were not simple cysts were prospectively classified into benign, indeterminate, or malignant categories. Diagnoses were confirmed by sonographically guided fine-needle aspiration or core needle biopsy.
In 6113 asymptomatic women, 23 malignancies in 21 patients were detected with sonography only (prevalence, 0.31%). Five additional malignant lesions were found in patients with a malignant (n = 3) or a benign (n = 2) palpable or mammographically detected index lesion. The mean size of invasive malignancies detected only by sonography was 9.1 mm, which was not significantly different from the mean size of invasive cancers detected by mammography (p = .07). The sensitivity of the prospective sonographic classification for malignancy was 100%, and the specificity was 33.5%.
The use of high-resolution sonography as an adjunct to mammography in women with dense breasts may lead to detection of a significant number of otherwise occult malignancies that are no different in size from nonpalpable mammographically detected lesions. Prospective classification of these lesions based on sonographic characteristics results in a significant reduction in number of unnecessary biopsies performed.
•Anhedonia is present in many different psychiatric disorders.•Anhedonia has been associated with abnormal reward-related striatal dopamine functioning.•This study tested whether transdiagnostic ...anhedonia expression mapped onto striatal volume.•Our findings suggest volumetric abnormalities in the putamen and cerebellum as a common neural substrate of anhedonia severity that cut across psychiatric entities.
Anhedonia has been associated with abnormal reward-related striatal dopamine functioning in patients with different psychiatric disorders. Here, we tested whether anhedonia expression mapped onto striatal volume across several psychiatric diagnoses.
T1-weighted images from 313 participants including 89 healthy controls (HC), 22 patients with opioid use disorder (OUD), 50 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), 45 patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD), 49 patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP), 43 patients with cocaine use disorder (CUD) and 15 patients with schizophrenia (SZ) were included. Anhedonia was assessed with subscores of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and/or the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS). Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was conducted for identifying dimensional symptom-structure associations using region of interest (ROI, dorsal and ventral striatum) and whole-brain analyses, as well as for group comparisons of striatal volume.
ROI analyses revealed significant negative relationships between putamen volume and BDI and SANS anhedonia scores across OUD, MDD, BPD, CUD and SZ patients (n = 175) and MDD, FEP and SZ patients (n = 114), respectively. Whole-brain VBM analyses confirmed these associations and further showed negative relationships between anhedonia severity and volume of the bilateral cerebellum. There were group differences in right accumbens volume, which however were not related to anhedonia expression across the different diagnoses.
Our findings indicate volumetric abnormalities in the putamen and cerebellum as a common neural substrate of anhedonia severity that cut across psychiatric entities.
Simulating hydrological processes within the (semi-)arid region of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), Australia, is very challenging specially during droughts. In this study, we investigate whether ...integrating remotely sensed terrestrial water storage changes (TWSC) from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission into a global water resources and use model enables a more realistic representation of the basin hydrology during droughts. For our study, the WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model (WGHM), which simulates the impact of human water abstractions on surface water and groundwater storage, has been chosen for simulating compartmental water storages and river discharge during the so-called ‘Millennium Drought’ (2001–2009). In particular, we test the ability of a parameter calibration and data assimilation (C/DA) approach to introduce long-term trends into WGHM, which are poorly represented due to errors in forcing, model structure and calibration. For the first time, the impact of the parameter equifinality problem on the C/DA results is evaluated. We also investigate the influence of selecting a specific GRACE data product and filtering method on the final C/DA results. Integrating GRACE data into WGHM does not only improve simulation of seasonality and trend of TWSC, but also it improves the simulation of individual water storage components. For example, after the C/DA, correlations between simulated groundwater storage changes and independent in-situ well data increase (up to 0.82) in three out of four sub-basins. Declining groundwater storage trends - found mainly in the south, i.e. Murray Basin, at in-situ wells - have been introduced while simulated soil water and surface water storage do not show trends, which is in agreement with existing literature. Although GRACE C/DA in MDB does not improve river discharge simulations, the correlation between river storage simulations and gauge-based river levels increases significantly from 0.15 to 0.52. By adapting the C/DA settings to the basin-specific characteristics and reducing the number of calibration parameters, their convergence is improved and their uncertainty is reduced. The time-variable parameter values resulting from C/DA allow WGHM to better react to the very wet Australian summer 2009/10. Using solutions from different GRACE data providers produces slightly different C/DA results. We conclude that a rigorous evaluation of GRACE errors is required to realistically account for the spread of the differences in the results.
•GRACE assimilation/calibration improves trend and seasonal groundwater simulations.•In-situ observations confirm groundwater decline within MDB from 2003 to 2009.•Using basin-specific attributes improves streamflow and groundwater simulations.•Reducing number of calibrated parameters avoids equifinality and improves results.•Temporal variable parameters improve hydrological response to climatic changes.
KCDC - The KASCADE Cosmic-ray Data Centre Haungs, A; Blumer, J; Fuchs, B ...
Journal of physics. Conference series,
08/2015, Letnik:
632, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
KCDC, the 'KASCADE Cosmic-ray Data Centre', is a web portal, where data of astroparticle physics experiments will be made available for the interested public. The KASCADE experiment, financed by ...public money, was a large-area detector for the measurement of high-energy cosmic rays via the detection of air showers. KASCADE and its extension KASCADE-Grande stopped finally the active data acquisition of all its components including the radio EAS experiment LOPES end of 2012 after more than 20 years of data taking. In a first release, with KCDC we provide to the public the measured and reconstructed parameters of more than 160 million air showers. In addition, KCDC provides the conceptional design, how the data can be treated and processed so that they are also usable outside the community of experts in the research field. Detailed educational examples make a use also possible for high-school students and early stage researchers.
Drawing upon a variety of existing maps, data and information, a new Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD) has been created. The combination of best available sources for lakes and wetlands on a ...global scale (1:1 to 1:3 million resolution), and the application of Geographic Information System (GIS) functionality enabled the generation of a database which focuses in three coordinated levels on (1) large lakes and reservoirs, (2) smaller water bodies, and (3) wetlands. Level 1 comprises the shoreline polygons of the 3067 largest lakes (surface area ≥50 km
2) and 654 largest reservoirs (storage capacity ≥0.5 km
3) worldwide, and offers extensive attribute data. Level 2 contains the shoreline polygons of approx. 250,000 smaller lakes, reservoirs and rivers (surface area ≥0.1 km
2), excluding all water bodies of level 1. Finally, level 3 represents lakes, reservoirs, rivers, and different wetland types in the form of a global raster map at 30-second resolution, including all water bodies of levels 1 and 2.
In a validation against documented data, GLWD proved to represent a comprehensive database of global lakes ≥1 km
2 and to provide a good representation of the maximum global wetland extent. GLWD-1 and GLWD-2 establish two global polygon maps to which existing lake registers, compilations or remote sensing data can be linked in order to allow for further analyses in a GIS environment. GLWD-3 may serve as an estimate of wetland extents for global hydrology and climatology models, or to identify large-scale wetland distributions and important wetland complexes.
Abstract
Within this work, we demonstrate a method for the etch-less, additive microfabrication of TiO
2
thin film layers on top of the medical implant material titanium grade 23. A combination of ...common UV-lithographic microfabrication and a subsequent anodic oxidation process allows the direct additive fabrication of microstructured oxide layers on top of the bulk base material without the use of any additional preparation or etching step. Titanium grade 23 samples were firstly prepared by grinding and polishing to achieve an adequate surface finish for UV lithography. Photoresist was applied to the samples and lithographically structured using line patterns with lateral sizes ranging from 1.5 up to 50
µ
m. The samples were then anodically oxidized within a H
2
SO
4
containing electrolyte and the resist patterns could successfully be copied into the resulting oxide layers. The presented method allows cost-effective and fast microfabrication of structured oxide thin film layers while protecting the underlying bulk material from hazardous etching media, often containing hydrofluoric acid, enabling novel implant coating designs and fabrication concepts for future works.
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