Wildlife restoration programs depend on having animals that have evolved to handle the constraints, including disease, posed by the new environment. Grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) once ...thrived while feeding on salmon (Onchorhynchus spp.) and other foods in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, USA. Unlike Canadian and Alaskan salmon, salmon in lower latitudes often carry an encysted fluke (Nanophyetus salmincola) containing an endosymbiont (Neorickettsia spp.) that can produce a deadly disease in ursids and canids called salmon poisoning disease (SPD). Current recovery plans for grizzly bears in the North Cascades of Washington and the mountains of central Idaho, where infected salmon currently occur, call for using bears from several interior populations. We hypothesized that such bears with no history of salmon consumption will be sensitive to SPD. To test that idea, we fed a limited amount of fresh Chinook salmon (O. tshawytscha) harvested from rivers draining the east and west sides of the Cascades to 11 captive grizzly bears in which both parents were from populations with no history of SPD. We detected N. salmincola ova in the feces, and 8 bears exhibited typical SPD symptoms, which included decreased or no appetite, lethargy, vomiting, and diarrhea. We identified N. helminthoeca and Stellantchasmus falcatus (SF) agent (Neorickettsia sp.) in the salmon, but only SF agent occurred in the sick bears. Stellantchasmus falcatus agent is a relatively new arrival in the Pacific Northwest. Because of the severity of the disease and the potential for mortality without treatment, additional studies should be conducted to determine the distribution and prevalence of SF agent in salmon and kokanee (O. nerka) in the recovery area, develop a serum antibody test that could be used to determine exposure of bears to SF agent, and use that test to determine if grizzly bears or American black bears (U. americanus) currently living in the Pacific Northwest have been infected and recovered. If either of the latter have occurred, SPD may not prevent the successful restoration of grizzly bears where SF agent-infected salmon will be consumed.
Background: Despite the high prevalence of hypovitaminosis D in children and adolescents worldwide, the impact of vitamin D deficiency on skeletal health is unclear.
Methods: One hundred seventy-nine ...girls, ages 10–17 yr, were randomly assigned to receive weekly oral vitamin D doses of 1,400 IU (equivalent to 200 IU/d) or 14,000 IU (equivalent to 2,000 IU/d) in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, 1-yr protocol. Areal bone mineral density (BMD) and bone mineral content (BMC) at the lumbar spine, hip, forearm, total body, and body composition were measured at baseline and 1 yr. Serum calcium, phosphorus, alkaline phosphatase, and vitamin D metabolites were measured during the study.
Results: In the overall group of girls, lean mass increased significantly in both treatment groups (P ≤ 0.05); bone area and total hip BMC increased in the high-dose group (P < 0.02). In premenarcheal girls, lean mass increased significantly in both treatment groups, and there were consistent trends for increments in BMD and/or BMC at several skeletal sites, reaching significance at lumbar spine BMD in the low-dose group and at the trochanter BMC in both treatment groups. There was no significant change in lean mass, BMD, or BMC in postmenarcheal girls.
Conclusions: Vitamin D replacement had a positive impact on musculoskeletal parameters in girls, especially during the premenarcheal period.
The CUPID-Mo experiment at the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane (France) is a demonstrator for CUPID, the next-generation ton-scale bolometric 0νββ experiment. It consists of a 4.2 kg array of 20 ...enriched Li2 100MoO4 scintillating bolometers to search for the lepton-number-violating process of 0νββ decay in 100Mo. With more than one year of operation (100Mo exposure of 1.17 kg × yr for physics data), no event in the region of interest and, hence, no evidence for 0νββ is observed. We report a new limit on the half-life of 0νββ decay in 100Mo of T1/2 > 1.5 × 1024 yr at 90% C.I. The limit corresponds to an effective Majorana neutrino mass ⟨m β β⟩ < (0.31 –0.54 ) eV, dependent on the nuclear matrix element in the light Majorana neutrino exchange interpretation.
Precise characterization of detector time resolution is of crucial importance for next-generation cryogenic-bolometer experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay, such as CUPID, in order ...to reject background due to pileup of two-neutrino double-beta decay events. In this paper, we describe a technique developed to study the pileup rejection capability of cryogenic bolometers. Our approach, which consists of producing controlled pileup events with a programmable wave-form generator, has the benefit that we can reliably and reproducibly control the time separation and relative energy of the individual components of the generated pileup events. The resulting data allow us to optimize and benchmark analysis strategies to discriminate between individual and pileup pulses. We describe a test of this technique performed with a small array of detectors at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, in Italy; we obtain a 90% rejection efficiency against pulser-generated pileup events with rise time of ~15ms down to time separation between the individual events of about 2ms.
Abstract
Random coincidences of events could be one of the main sources of background in the search for neutrino-less double-beta decay of
$$^{100}$$
100
Mo with macro-bolometers, due to their modest ...time resolution. Scintillating bolometers as those based on Li
$$_2$$
2
MoO
$$_4$$
4
crystals and employed in the CROSS and CUPID experiments can eventually exploit the coincident fast signal detected in a light detector to reduce this background. However, the scintillation provides a modest signal-to-noise ratio, making difficult a pile-up pulse-shape recognition and rejection at timescales shorter than a few ms. Neganov–Trofimov–Luke assisted light detectors (NTL-LDs) offer the possibility to effectively increase the signal-to-noise ratio, preserving a fast time-response, and enhance the capability of pile-up rejection via pulse shape analysis. In this article we present: (a) an experimental work performed with a Li
$$_2$$
2
MoO
$$_4$$
4
scintillating bolometer, studied in the framework of the CROSS experiment, and utilizing a NTL-LD; (b) a simulation method to reproduce, synthetically, randomly coincident two-neutrino double-beta decay events; (c) a new analysis method based on a pulse-shape discrimination algorithm capable of providing high pile-up rejection efficiencies. We finally show how the NTL-LDs offer a balanced solution between performance and complexity to reach background index
$$\sim $$
∼
$$10^{-4}$$
10
-
4
counts/keV/kg/year with 280 g Li
$$_2$$
2
MoO
$$_4$$
4
(
$$^{100}$$
100
Mo enriched) bolometers at 3034 keV, the Q
$$_{\beta \beta }$$
β
β
of the double-beta decay, and target the goal of a next generation experiment like CUPID.
The epidemiology of facial injuries varies based on lifestyle, cultural background and socioeconomic status in different countries and geographic zones. This study evaluated the epidemiology of ...maxillofacial fractures and treatment plans in hospitalized patients in Northeast of Iran (2015-2016).
In this retrospective study, the medical records of 502 hospitalized patients were evaluated in the Department of Maxillofacial Surgery in Kamyab Hospital in Mashhad, Iran. The type and cause of fractures and treatment plans were recorded in a checklist. Data were analyzed with Mann-Whitney test, chi-squared test and Fisher's exact test, using SPSS 21.
The majority of patients were male (80.3%). Most subjects were in 20-30-year age range (43.2%). The fractures were mostly caused by accidents, particularly motorcycle accidents (MCAs), and the most common site of involvement was the body of the mandible. There was a significant association between the type of treatment and age. In fact, the age range of 16-59 years underwent open reduction internal fixation (ORIF) more than other age ranges (P=0.001). Also, there was a significant association between gender and fractures (P=0.002).
It was concluded that patient age and gender and trauma significantly affected the prevalence of maxillofacial traumas, fracture types and treatment plans. This information would be useful for making better health policy strategies.
The CUPID Collaboration is designing a tonne-scale, background-free detector to search for double beta decay with sufficient sensitivity to fully explore the parameter space corresponding to the ...inverted neutrino mass hierarchy scenario. One of the CUPID demonstrators, CUPID-Mo, has proved the potential of enriched Li
2
100
MoO
4
crystals as suitable detectors for neutrinoless double beta decay search. In this work, we characterised cubic crystals that, compared to the cylindrical crystals used by CUPID-Mo, are more appealing for the construction of tightly packed arrays. We measured an average energy resolution of (
6.7
±
0.6
) keV FWHM in the region of interest, approaching the CUPID target of 5 keV FWHM. We assessed the identification of
α
particles with and without a reflecting foil that enhances the scintillation light collection efficiency, proving that the baseline design of CUPID already ensures a complete suppression of this
α
-induced background contribution. We also used the collected data to validate a Monte Carlo simulation modelling the light collection efficiency, which will enable further optimisations of the detector.
Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) is a yet unobserved nuclear process that would demonstrate Lepton number violation, a clear evidence of beyond standard model physics. The process two neutrino ...double beta decay (2νββ) is allowed by the standard model and has been measured in numerous experiments. In this Letter, we report a measurement of 2νββ decay half-life of 100Mo to the ground state of 100Ru of 7.07±0.02(stat)±0.11(syst)×1018 yr by the CUPID-Mo experiment. With a relative precision of ±1.6% this is the most precise measurement to date of a 2νββ decay rate in 100Mo. In addition, we constrain higher-order corrections to the spectral shape, which provides complementary nuclear structure information. We report a novel measurement of the shape factor ξ3,1=0.45±0.03(stat)±0.05(syst) based on a constraint on the ratio of higher-order terms from theory, which can be reliably calculated. This is compared to theoretical predictions for different nuclear models. Finally, we also extract the first value for the effective axial vector coupling constant obtained from a spectral shape study of 2νββ decay.
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