The fatty liver index (FLI) is frequently used as a non-invasive clinical marker for research, prognostic and diagnostic purposes. It is also used to stratify individuals with hepatic steatosis such ...as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and to detect the presence of type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease. The FLI is calculated using a combination of anthropometric and blood biochemical variables; however, it reportedly excludes 8.5-16.7% of individuals with NAFLD. Moreover, the FLI cannot quantitatively predict liver fat, which might otherwise render an improved diagnosis and assessment of fatty liver, particularly in longitudinal studies. We propose FLI+ using predictive regression modelling, an improved index reflecting liver fat content that integrates 12 routinely-measured variables, including the original FLI.
We evaluated FLI+ on a dataset from the UK Biobank containing 28,796 individual estimates of proton density fat fraction derived from magnetic resonance imaging across normal to severe levels and interpolated to align with the original FLI range. The results obtained for FLI+ outperform the original FLI by delivering a lower mean absolute error by approximately 47%, a lower standard deviation by approximately 20%, and an increased adjusted R2 statistic by approximately 49%, reflecting a more accurate representation of liver fat content.
Our proposed model predicting FLI+ has the potential to improve diagnosis and provide a more accurate stratification than FLI between absent, mild, moderate and severe levels of hepatic steatosis.
An experiment with a newly developed high-resolution kaon spectrometer and a scattered electron spectrometer with a novel configuration was performed in Hall C at Jefferson Lab. The ground state of a ...neutron-rich hypernucleus, (Λ)(7)He, was observed for the first time with the (e, e'K+) reaction with an energy resolution of ~0.6 MeV. This resolution is the best reported to date for hypernuclear reaction spectroscopy. The (Λ)(7)He binding energy supplies the last missing information of the A = 7, T = 1 hypernuclear isotriplet, providing a new input for the charge symmetry breaking effect of the ΛN potential.
Dynamic cerebral autoregulation (DCA) capacity along with the degree of internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis and characteristics of the plaque can also play an important role in selection of ...appropriate treatment strategy. This study aims to classify the patients with severe ICA stenosis according to preoperative state of DCA and to assess its dynamics after surgery. Thirty-five patients with severe ICA stenosis having different clinical type of disease underwent reconstructive surgery. DCA was assessed with transfer function analysis (TFA) by calculating phase shift (PS) between Mayer waves of blood flow velocity (BFV) and blood pressure (BP) before and after operation. In 18 cases, regardless of clinical type, preoperative PS on ipsilateral side was within the normal range and did not change considerably after surgery. In other 17 cases preoperative PS was reliably lower both in patients with symptomatic and asymptomatic stenosis. Surgical reconstruction led to restoration of impaired DCA evidenced by significant increase of PS in postoperative period. Our data suggest that regardless clinical type of disease various state of DCA may be present in patients with severe ICA stenosis. This finding can contribute to establishing the optimal treatment strategy, and first of all for asymptomatic patients. Patients with compromised DCA should be considered as ones with higher risk of stroke and first candidates for reconstructive surgery.
We propose to use the High Momentum Spectrometer of Hall C combined with the Neutral Particle Spectrometer (NPS) to perform high precision measurements of the Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) ...cross section using a beam of positrons. The combination of measurements with oppositely charged incident beams is the only unambiguous way to disentangle the contribution of the DVCS
2
term in the photon electroproduction cross section from its interference with the Bethe-Heitler amplitude. This provides a stronger way to constrain the Generalized Parton Distributions of the nucleon. A wide range of kinematics accessible with an 11 GeV beam off an unpolarized proton target will be covered. The
Q
2
-
dependence of each contribution will be measured independently.
We have performed a novel comparison between electron-beam polarimeters based on Møller and Compton scattering. A sequence of electron-beam polarization measurements were performed at low beam ...currents (<5 μA) during the Qweak experiment in Hall-C at Jefferson Lab. These low current measurements were bracketed by the regular high current (180 μA) operation of the Compton polarimeter. All measurements were found to be consistent within experimental uncertainties of 1% or less, demonstrating that electron polarization does not depend significantly on the beam current. This result lends confidence to the common practice of applying Møller measurements made at low beam currents to physics experiments performed at higher beam currents. The agreement between two polarimetry techniques based on independent physical processes sets an important benchmark for future precision asymmetry measurements that require sub-1% precision in polarimetry.
We report on the highest precision yet achieved in the measurement of the polarization of a low-energy, O(1GeV) , continuous-wave (CW) electron beam, accomplished using a new polarimeter based on ...electron-photon scattering, in Hall C at Jefferson Lab. A number of technical innovations were necessary, including a novel method for precise control of the laser polarization in a cavity and a novel diamond microstrip detector that was able to capture most of the spectrum of scattered electrons. The data analysis technique exploited track finding, the high granularity of the detector, and its large acceptance. The polarization of the 180−μA , 1.16-GeV electron beam was measured with a statistical precision of <1% per hour and a systematic uncertainty of 0.59%. This exceeds the level of precision required by the Qweak experiment, a measurement of the weak vector charge of the proton. Proposed future low-energy experiments require polarization uncertainty <0.4% , and this result represents an important demonstration of that possibility. This measurement is the first use of diamond detectors for particle tracking in an experiment. It demonstrates the stable operation of a diamond-based tracking detector in a high radiation environment, for two years.
Aerogel and water Čherenkov detectors were employed to tag kaons for a Λ hypernuclear spectroscopic experiment which used the (e,e′K+) reaction in experimental Hall C at Jefferson Lab (JLab E05-115). ...Fringe fields from the kaon spectrometer magnet yielded ~5 gauss at the photomultiplier tubes for these detectors. These fields, which could not be easily passively shielded, would result in a lowered kaon detection efficiency if not mitigated. A bucking coil was placed on each photomultiplier tube to actively cancel this magnetic field, thus recovering kaon detection efficiency.
•Bucking coil was developed to cancel a magnetic field for a photomultiplier tube.•A gain reduction of the PMT due to magnetic fields was carefully studied.•Bucking coil conditions were optimized to recover the gain of the PMT.•Bucking coils implemented in a hypernuclear experiment worked well.
A quite simple procedure for the generation of a polarized antiproton beam could be worked out if antiprotons are produced with some polarization. In order to investigate this possibility ...measurements of the polarization of produced antiprotons have been started at a CERN/PS test beam. The polarization will be determined from the asymmetry of the elastic antiproton scattering at a liquid hydrogen target in the CNI region for which the analyzing power is well known. The data are under analysis and an additional measurement is done in 2018. Details on the experiment and the ongoing data analysis will be given.
JLab E12-19-002 Experiment is planned to measure the Λ-binding energies of
3
Λ
H
J
π
= 1/2
+
or 3/2
+
(
T
= 0) and
4
Λ
H (1
+
) at JLab Hall C. The expected accuracy for the binding-energy ...measurement is |Δ
B
total
Λ
| ≃ 70 keV. The accurate spectroscopy for these light hypernuclei would shed light on the puzzle of the small binding energy and short lifetime of
3
Λ
H, and the chargesymmetry breaking in the ΛN interaction. We aim to perform the experiment in 2025.
The production of antiprotons is studied in view of possible polarization effects as basis for a polarized antiproton beam. If antiprotons are produced with some polarization, a quite simple ...procedure for the generation of a polarized antiproton beam could be worked out. The experiments are performed at the CERN PS test beam T11 where secondary particles with momenta around 3.5
G
e
V
/
c
are selected. The polarization analysis is performed by measuring the asymmetry of the elastic
p
̄
p
-scattering in the Coulomb-nuclear interference region. The detection system includes Cherenkov and tracking detectors for the particle identification and the 3d track reconstruction. Details on the detection system and the status of the analysis are given.