Muon tomography, or muography, stands out as a non-invasive technique for the scanning of big objects internal structure. It relies on the measurement of the direction changes or absorption of ...atmospheric muons when crossing the studied object. For the first case, the trajectory reconstruction of muons upstream and downstream the object, provides information to generate its 3D density map. For bigger objects, a 2D map can be obtained by measuring the absorption for different incident directions. Proposed several decades ago, the performance achieved in particle detectors in the last years, specially in terms of stability, robustness and precision, has enlarged the possible applications of this technique.
Bulk Micromegas represent a well-known technology suitable for the construction of muon telescopes based on these detectors. Thus autonomous and portable instruments have been conceived and constructed at Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives (CEA), being able to perform measurements in-situ, next to the studied objects. Furthermore, a Geant4-based simulation framework, capable to handle 3D models of the studied objects, is also being implemented to be used as support tool during the feasibility studies and for data analysis and results interpretation.
•PVA was evaluated as a capping agent that prevents nanocellulose (CNFs) hornification.•PVA was effectively removed via successive rinsing with hot water.•The PVA ratio affected cellulosic ...redispersion patterns.•Redispersion of CNFs was achieved with the use of PVA for the first time.
Commercialization of cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) involves addressing various challenges. Among them, wet storage and transport of CNFs due to their irreversible agglomeration when dehydrated (i.e., hornification) is a pressing issue, as it increases transportation costs. Various alternatives have been proposed in literature, some of which require the use of high-energy treatments to facilitate their redispersion after drying, while others may be inadequate when applied to food and pharmaceutical applications. The present work examines a new approach that involves using poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) as a capping agent to redisperse CNFs. Different CNF to PVA ratios were used, and redispersed samples were analyzed in terms of their morphological, physicochemical and rheological properties to assess changes occurring during processing. Results show that the ratio of CNFs to PVA affects the final properties of the redispersed product, when the ratio 1:2.5 was used, the redispersed product closely resembles the never dried sample.
Purpose
Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) can be formed in foods by the reaction of reducing sugars with proteins, and have been shown to induce insulin resistance and obesity in experimental ...studies. We examined the association between dietary AGEs intake and changes in body weight in adults over an average of 5 years of follow-up.
Methods
A total of 255,170 participants aged 25–70 years were recruited in ten European countries (1992–2000) in the PANACEA study (Physical Activity, Nutrition, Alcohol, Cessation of smoking, Eating out of home in relation to Anthropometry), a sub-cohort of the EPIC (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition). Body weight was measured at recruitment and self-reported between 2 and 11 years later depending on the study center. A reference database for AGEs was used containing UPLC–MS/MS-measured N
ε
-(carboxymethyl)-lysine (CML), N
ε
-(1-carboxyethyl)-lysine (CEL), and N
δ
-(5-hydro-5-methyl-4-imidazolon-2-yl)-ornithine (MG-H1) in 200 common European foods. This reference database was matched to foods and decomposed recipes obtained from country-specific validated dietary questionnaires in EPIC and intake levels of CEL, CML, and MG-H1 were estimated. Associations between dietary AGEs intake and body weight change were estimated separately for each of the three AGEs using multilevel mixed linear regression models with center as random effect and dietary AGEs intake and relevant confounders as fixed effects.
Results
A one-SD increment in CEL intake was associated with 0.111 kg (95% CI 0.087–0.135) additional weight gain over 5 years. The corresponding additional weight gain for CML and MG-H1 was 0.065 kg (0.041–0.089) and 0.034 kg (0.012, 0.057), respectively. The top six food groups contributing to AGEs intake, with varying proportions across the AGEs, were cereals/cereal products, meat/processed meat, cakes/biscuits, dairy, sugar and confectionary, and fish/shellfish.
Conclusion
In this study of European adults, higher intakes of AGEs were associated with marginally greater weight gain over an average of 5 years of follow-up.
Landslides represent one of the most morphodynamic processes that affect the steep lands, and may destroy croplands as well as urban and industrial development. Landslide risk analysis can help ...government agencies to select suitable locations for development schemes and plan mitigation measures in unstable landslide-prone areas. This study describes an approach for assessing the landslide risk potential, mainly for shallow landslides, with reference to Jabonosa river basin in the Venezuelan Andes using artificial neural networks (ANNs), specifically a Multilayer Perceptron with backpropagation learning algorithm. The approach developed uses a wide range of parameters of slope instability derived from digital elevation models (DEMs), remote sensing imagery and documentary data. Around 90% overall accuracy produced by the ANN technique were found promising for future studies in landslide susceptibility zonation.
Full RNA-Seq is a fundamental research tool for whole transcriptome analysis. However, it is too costly and time consuming to be used in routine clinical practice. We evaluated the transcript ...quantification agreement between RNA-Seq and a digital multiplexed gene expression platform, and the subtype call after running the PAM50 assay in a series of breast cancer patients classified as triple negative by IHC/FISH. The goal of this study is to analyze the concordance between both expression platforms overall, and for calling PAM50 triple negative breast cancer intrinsic subtypes in particular.
The analyses were performed in paraffin-embedded tissues from 96 patients recruited in a multicenter, prospective, non-randomized neoadjuvant triple negative breast cancer trial (NCT01560663). Pre-treatment core biopsies were obtained following clinical practice guidelines and conserved as FFPE for further RNA extraction. PAM50 was performed on both digital multiplexed gene expression and RNA-Seq platforms. Subtype assignment was based on the nearest centroid classification following this procedure for both platforms and it was concordant on 96% of the cases (N = 96). In four cases, digital multiplexed gene expression analysis and RNA-Seq were discordant. The Spearman correlation to each of the centroids and the risk of recurrence were above 0.89 in both platforms while the agreement on Proliferation Score reached up to 0.97. In addition, 82% of the individual PAM50 genes showed a correlation coefficient > 0.80.
In our analysis, the subtype calling in most of the samples was concordant in both platforms and the potential discordances had reduced clinical implications in terms of prognosis. If speed and cost are the main driving forces then the preferred technique is the digital multiplexed platform, while if whole genome patterns and subtype are the driving forces, then RNA-Seq is the preferred method.
Urbanization drives changes in acoustic communication systems in some animal species. Noise and light pollution are among the main urban factors known to disrupt the timing and structure of avian ...singing behaviour. Despite our understanding of the ways in which urbanization can drive variations in avian acoustic communication, our ability to generalize the underlying causes of such variation and its consequences is still limited. Here, we reviewed the literature focused on the study of avian dawn choruses in urban settings at a global scale. Our findings reveal that avian dawn chorus research has focused on the impact of anthropogenic noise on dawn chorus traits (i.e. timing, peak, song output, song frequencies); relationships between light pollution and chorus timing; the effects of temperature, cloudiness, moonlight and natural light on chorus timing; relationships between nocturnal noise and light, and dawn chorus timing; the effects of chemical pollution and supplementary feeding on dawn chorus activity; and ecological patterns of dawn choruses in soundscapes across urban–non‐urban gradients. We identified important knowledge gaps in the study of avian dawn choruses in urban settings and thus suggest future research directions, including frameworks (e.g. the urbanization intensity gradient) and consideration of a wider array of urban conditions and variables. Given the complexity of urban settings, we encourage further studies to address the role that all sources of pollution can have on avian acoustic communication at dawn. Additionally, a central question to resolve is whether the function of avian dawn choruses in urban areas differs, and if so how, from non‐urban counterparts. Given that most research has been performed across Holarctic cities and towns, studies from tropical and subtropical regions are needed if we aim to understand the phenomenon globally. Finally, studies at the community‐ and soundscape‐level across cities could advance understanding of the way in which urban birds use the acoustic space during the most critical singing time period, dawn.
The use of nanocellulose as a food additive in 1983 was one of the first applications of this plant-derived biopolymer. However, at that time, the product was not commercialized owing to the high ...energetic cost of the isolation methods used. Currently, improvements in nanocellulose production allow its commercialization. The high surface area and aspect ratio, rheological behavior, water absorption and absence of cytotoxic and genotoxic properties of nanocellulose facilitate its use in food applications. In this review, three different applications were identified: (i) nanocellulose as a stabilizing agent, (ii) nanocellulose as a functional food ingredient and (iii) nanocellulose in food packaging. The last is the most common application of nanocellulose in the food industry. Aiming to demonstrate the potential of nanocellulose as a stabilizing and functional food ingredient, relevant publications on uses of nanocellulose in food are examined, focusing on applications of nanocellulose as a food additive and safety and regulatory issues. Nanocellulose has potential use as a stabilizing agent in food emulsions, as dietary fiber and to reduce the caloric value of food. Nevertheless, validated standards to characterize the produced nanostructure, quantify its properties and evaluate its toxicity are still required to answer safety and regulatory issues to achieve the incorporation of nanocellulose as a commercial product in the food industry.
Display omitted
•Potential applications of vegetable nanocellulose in food science are reviewed.•Nanocellulose has potential use as emulsifier and as functional food ingredient.•Literature on safety and regulatory issues of nanocellulose in food is also reviewed.•Standardized methods to characterize the obtained food nanostructure are required.•These methods are necessary for incorporation of nanocellulose in the food industry.
The NEMO-3 experiment looked for neutrinoless double beta decay processes from 2003 to 2011 at the Modane Underground Laboratory. Seven isotopes were studied by the simultaneous recording of the ...energy and track of the event, standing out 100Mo and 82Se since they were the most massive ones. No evidence for neutrinoless double beta decay has been observed, leading to obtain limits on the effective neutrino mass that are among the best to date, specially for the mentioned isotopes.
In addition to the results regarding the effective neutrino mass, NEMO-3 results have shown the physics potential of the tracking + calorimetry technique for the neutrinoless double beta decay search, specially in terms of background rejection capabilities in the energy region of interest. For this reason, the SuperNEMO experiment has been conceived using this technique as one of the so-called new generation experiments. SuperNEMO is at present under construction after a R&D phase (started in 2007) which concluded that all the requirements are achievable. First phase is the construction of a first module that has been started in 2012 and will finish during 2015, when the data taking is expected to start.
A summary of the latest NEMO-3 results, as well as the present status of the SuperNEMO progress (which includes, for example, the development of outstanding detectors for materials radiopurity and radon concentration measurements), will be presented, together with collaboration prospects about the installation, commissioning and operation of the experiment.
•A mathematical methodology to find the optimal NIR light protocol in transdermal drug delivery;•Strategy based on an optimization problem minimizing the difference between target and simulated drug ...absorption profile;•The optimization problem relies on a 2D mathematical model for NIR light controlled transdermal drug delivery;•Validation of the transdermal model against laboratory data;•Convergence and stability analysis of a finite difference spatial scheme for a generalization of the transdermal model.
Near-infrared light-controlled transdermal drug delivery (NIRTDD) has several advantages over traditional delivery methods, and it is now undergoing extensive research. One prominent aspect of NIRTDD is the possibility of keeping the drug concentration in its optimal therapeutic window using a suitable near-infrared light protocol. The problem is that this ideal protocol is usually unknown. In this paper, we propose a computational tool that aims at solving this issue. The computational tool relies on an optimization problem involving the numerical simulation of a two-dimensional mathematical model for NIRTDD. We also analyze the convergence and stability of a finite difference spatial scheme for a generalized version of this mathematical model.
We propose an alternative distribution for modelling fading-shadowing wireless channels. This distribution presents certain advantages over the Rayleigh-lognormal distribution and the K distribution ...and has proved useful in the setting described. We obtain closed-form expressions for the average channel capacity and for the average bit error rate of differential phase-shift keying and of minimum shift keying when the new distribution is used. This distribution can be obtained exactly as the sum of mutual independent Gaussian stochastic processes, because it must represent the simulation of the fading channel; that is, it simulates the signal envelope. Finally, we describe practical applications of this distribution, comparing it with the Rayleigh-lognormal and K distributions.
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