Background Serotonin is a major transmitter in the gastrointestinal tract, but little is known about the serotonergic system in the esophagus.
Methods The aim of this study was to use multilabel ...immunofluorescence to characterize serotonin‐positive nerve cell bodies and fibers and their relationship with other neuronal and non‐neuronal elements in the mouse esophagus. Antibodies against serotonin, vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT), choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), protein gene product 9.5 (PGP 9.5), and α‐bungarotoxin (α‐BT), were used.
Key Results Serotonin‐containing perikarya represented ∼10% of all PGP 9.5‐positive myenteric neurons. Serotonin‐positive varicose nerve fibers were found in the lamina muscularis mucosae and present on ∼13% of α‐BT–labeled motor endplates in addition to VAChT‐immunoreactive motor terminals. As ChAT‐positive neurons of the compact formation of the nucleus ambiguus were negative for serotonin, serotonin‐positive varicosities on motor endplates are presumed to be of enteric origin. On the other hand, cholinergic ambiguus neurons were densely supplied with serotonin‐positive varicosities. The tela submucosa and tunica adventitia contained large numbers of serotonin‐positive mast cells, a few of which were in close association with serotonin‐positive nerve fibers.
Conclusions & Inferences The mouse esophagus is endowed with a rich serotonin‐positive intrinsic innervation, including enteric co‐innervation of striated muscles. Serotonin may modulate vagal motor innervation of esophageal‐striated muscles not only at the central level via projections of the raphe nuclei to the nucleus ambiguus but also at the peripheral level via enteric co‐innervation. In addition, mast cells represent a non‐neuronal source of serotonin, being involved in neuroimmune processes.
The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) demonstrates the usability of novel Geiger-mode operated Avalanche Photo Diodes (G-APD, often called SiPM) for Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes ...(IACT). The camera consists of 1440pixels with dedicated electronics operating at 2 Giga samples per second. It is installed on the refurbished HEGRA telescope with a mirror area of ≈9.5m2 on the Canary Island La Palma. FACT is taking data almost every night since the camera was installed in October 2011. It was possible to improve the data taking efficiency to very high values due to the very stable and reliable operation. This also allows to operate FACT remotely without any need for operators on site. Even remote human intervention became less and less frequent over the years, allowing operation to become mostly automatic. FACT is monitoring the long-term behavior of some very-high energy variable extra-galactic sources with unparalleled sampling density as well as testing the behavior of the sensors under severe weather conditions. Due to the long exposure of FACT's G-APDs under strong moonlight conditions it was possible to evaluate the aging effects of G-APDs due to collected charge. No indication of aging was found. No external calibration device is needed to operate FACT since the properties of the sensors themselves allow for a high precision self-calibration of the camera.
•SiPMs show no sign of ageing in 5years of operation.•High precision self calibration is possible without external calibration device.•Very high data taking efficiency has been reach due to excessive automation.
The FACT telescope on the Canaries island of La Palma is the first Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) to use solid state photomultipliers. It generates up to 2 TB of data per night which ...motivated us to investigate how to reduce the volume of data. Reducing the throughput enables us to efficiently acquire, store and process the observations data. This document presents the conclusions of this work, along with the implementation of the custom compression algorithm and I/O layer that is currently in use to operate the telescope.
FACT - The G-APD revolution in Cherenkov astronomy Bretz, T.; Anderhub, H.; Backes, M. ...
2013 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (2013 NSS/MIC),
10/2013
Conference Proceeding
Since two years, the FACT telescope is operating on the Canary Island of La Palma. Apart from its purpose to serve as a monitoring facility for the brightest TeV blazars, it was built as a major step ...to establish solid state photon counters as detectors in Cherenkov astronomy. The camera of the First G-APD Cherenkov Telesope comprises 1440 Geiger-mode avalanche photo diodes (G-APD), equipped with solid light guides to increase the effective light collection area of each sensor. Since no sense-line is available, a special challenge is to keep the applied voltage stable although the current drawn by the G-APD depends on the flux of night-sky background photons significantly varying with ambient light conditions. Methods have been developed to keep the temperature and voltage dependent response of the G-APDs stable during operation. As a cross-check, dark count spectra with high statistics have been taken under different environmental conditions. In this presentation, the project, the developed methods and the experience from two years of operation of the first G-APD based camera in Cherenkov astronomy under changing environmental conditions will be presented.
Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) need imaging optics with large apertures to map the faint Cherenkov light emitted in extensive air showers onto their image sensors. Segmented ...reflectors fulfill these needs using mass produced and light weight mirror facets. However, as the overall image is the sum of the individual mirror facet images, alignment is important. Here we present a method to determine the mirror facet positions on a segmented reflector in a very direct way. Our method reconstructs the mirror facet positions from photographs and a laser distance meter measurement which goes from the center of the image sensor plane to the center of each mirror facet. We use our method to both align the mirror facet positions and to feed the measured positions into our IACT simulation. We demonstrate our implementation on the 4m First Geiger-mode Avalanche Cherenkov Telescope (FACT).
Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) need imaging optics with large apertures and high image intensities to map the faint Cherenkov light emitted from cosmic ray air showers onto their ...image sensors. Segmented reflectors fulfill these needs, and composed from mass production mirror facets they are inexpensive and lightweight. However, as the overall image is a superposition of the individual facet images, alignment remains a challenge. Here we present a simple, yet extendable method, to align a segmented reflector using its Bokeh. Bokeh alig nment does not need a star or good weather nights but can be done even during daytime. Bokeh alignment optimizes the facet orientations by comparing the segmented reflectors Bokeh to a predefined template. The optimal Bokeh template is highly constricted by the reflector’s aperture and is easy accessible. The Bokeh is observed using the out of focus image of a near by point like light source in a distance of about 10 focal lengths. We introduce Bokeh alignment on segmented reflectors and demonstrate it on the First Geiger-mode Avalanche Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) on La Palma, Spain.
Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) need imaging optics with large apertures and high image intensities to map the faint Cherenkov light emitted from cosmic ray air showers onto their ...image sensors. Segmented reflectors fulfill these needs, and as they are composed from mass production mirror facets they are inexpensive and lightweight. However, as the overall image is a superposition of the individual facet images, alignment is a challenge. Here we present a computer vision based star tracking alignment method, which also works for limited or changing star light visibility. Our method normalizes the mirror facet reflection intensities to become independent of the reference star’s intensity or the cloud coverage. Using two CCD cameras, our method records the mirror facet orientations asynchronously of the telescope drive system, and thus makes the method easy to integrate into existing telescopes. It can be combined with remote facet actuation, but does not require one to work. Furthermore, it can reconstruct all individual mirror facet point spread functions without moving any mirror. We present alignment results on the 4 m First Geiger-mode Avalanche Cherenkov Telescope (FACT).
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