Used for both proton decay searches and neutrino physics, large water Cherenkov (WC) detectors have been very successful tools in particle physics. They are notable for their large masses and charged ...particle detection capabilities. While current WC detectors reconstruct charged particle tracks over a wide energy range, they cannot efficiently detect neutrons. Gadolinium (Gd) has the largest thermal neutron capture cross section of all stable nuclei and produces an 8 MeV gamma cascade that can be detected with high efficiency. Because of the many new physics opportunities that neutron tagging with a Gd salt dissolved in water would open up, a large-scale R&D program called EGADS was established to demonstrate this technique’s feasibility. EGADS features all the components of a WC detector, chiefly a 200-ton stainless steel water tank furnished with 240 photo-detectors, DAQ, and a water system that removes all impurities from water while keeping Gd in solution. In this paper we discuss the milestones towards demonstrating the feasibility of this novel technique, and the features of EGADS in detail.
Unexpected torrential rains have occurred recently due to global warming. There is "limits of public help" in such a disaster. Therefore, "self-help" and "mutual help" become more important to ...protect lives. Improving these helps enhances disaster resilience. The purpose of this research is to propose initiatives utilizing geospatial information in recovery and rehabilitation phases and to indicate the effects of using geospatial information in the initiatives. The initiatives have conducted for rehabilitation in Toho village, which was damaged by the Northern Kyushu Heavy Rainfall Disaster in July 2017. One initiative is formulating a rehabilitation plan. Meetings are held to reflect residents' opinions to the plan; using the map is useful to collect and share the opinions. Residents could discuss concrete future visions by using a map, and the rehabilitation plan reflected the opinions of residents could be published. The other initiative is Risk Communication. Many kinds of geospatial information are collected in it, and the Risk Map is published. The map shows the dangerous places and evacuation sites, and residents could understand their location, then the map enhanced disaster resilience.
We have studied surface structural change of supported Pd metal nanoparticles caused by CO adsorption and following temperature increase by using in situ and time-resolved X- ray absorption fine ...structure technique with dispersive optics. CO adsorption on Pd metal nanoparticles at room temperature shows two types of adsorption behavior and the less stable CO which brings about surface expansion of Pd metal nanoparticles is desorbed just after temperature increase. Pd carbide layer is created at around 350 °C by CO decomposition, which was clearly detected by the elongation of Pd-Pd interatomic distance and the increase of Debye-Waller factor and third cumulant.
A new interfacial fracture test method was developed for measuring the mixed-mode interfacial fracture toughness of thermal barrier coated material over a wide range of loading phase angles. The ...principle of this developed method is based on peeling the coating from the substrate due to compressive loading to the coating edge, as forming a shear loading to the interface, and slinging loading such as beam bending, as normal loading to the interface. The complete closed form of the energy release rate and associated complex stress intensity factor for our testing method is shown. An yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) coating, which was sprayed thermally on Ni-based superalloy, was tested using the testing device developed here.
The results showed that the energy release rate for the coating-interfacial crack increased with loading phase angle, which is defined by tan
−1 for a ratio of stress intensity factor
K
2 to
K
1. It was noticed that the interfacial energy release rate increasing with mode II loading could be mainly associated with the contact shielding effect due to crack surface roughness rubbing together.
A Si(111) winged crystal has been designed to minimize anticlastic bending and improve sagittal focusing efficiency. The crystal was thin with wide stiffening wings. The length‐to‐width ratio of the ...crystal was optimized by finite element analysis, and the optimal value was larger than the `golden value'. The analysis showed that the slope error owing to anticlastic bending is less than the Darwin width. The X‐rays were focused two‐dimensionally using the crystal and a tangentially bent mirror. The observed profiles of the focal spot agreed well with the results of a ray‐tracing calculation in the energy range from 8 to 17.5 keV. X‐ray diffraction measurements with a high signal‐to‐noise ratio using this focusing system were demonstrated for a small protein crystal.
Purpose
The incidence of hot flashes under hormone manipulation therapy is so high that this symptom caused by sex hormone blocking agents has been bothering patients and has a negative impact on ...their quality of life. Venlafaxine and gabapentin are most promising novel nonestrogenic agents to control the symptom. We seek to quatitatively summarize the efficacy of these novel agents.
Patients and methods
We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies on the efficacy of venlafaxine/gabapentin to hot flashes in cancer patient under hormone deprivation therapies. A search for Medline, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Ichushi, and Google Scholar yielded 733 citations, which were independently assessed by two authors. We estimated overall effect sizes and its 95 % confidence intervals (CI) for the efficacy of these agents compared with the controls with standardized mean difference.
Results
A total of 5 studies involving 588 cancer patients with hot flashes finally fulfilled the predefined inclusion criteria. Overall effect size of the efficacy of venlafaxine/gabapentin was −0.630 (95 % CI −0.801, −0.459).
Conclusion
Venlafaxine/gabapentin significantly improved hot flashes in cancer patients under hormone manipulation therapies.
Paraseptal emphysema (PSE) is a relatively unexplored emphysema subtype that is usually asymptomatic, but recently associated with interstitial lung abnormalities which are related with clinical ...outcomes, including mortality. Previous local-based methods for emphysema subtype quantification do not properly characterize PSE. This is in part for their inability to properly capture the global aspect of the disease, as some the PSE lesions can involved large regions along the chest wall. It is our assumption, that path-based approaches are not well-suited to identify this subtype and segmentation is a better paradigm. In this work we propose and introduce the Slice-Recovery network (SR-Net) that leverages 3D contextual information for 2D segmentation of PSE lesions in CT images. For that purpose, a novel convolutional network architecture is presented, which follows an encoding-decoding path that processes a 3D volume to generate a 2D segmentation map. The dataset used for training and testing the method comprised 664 images, coming from 111 CT scans. The results demonstrate the benefit of the proposed approach which incorporate 3D context information to the network and the ability of the proposed method to identify and segment PSE lesions with different sizes even in the presence of other emphysema subtypes in an advanced stage.
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