TAO Conceptual Design Report: A Precision Measurement of the Reactor Antineutrino Spectrum with Sub-percent Energy Resolution

The Taishan Antineutrino Observatory (TAO, also known as JUNO-TAO) is a satellite experiment of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO). A ton-level liquid scintillator detector will be placed at about 30 m from a core of the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant. The reactor antineutrino spectrum will be measured with sub-percent energy resolution, to provide a reference spectrum for future reactor neutrino experiments, and to provide a benchmark measurement to test nuclear databases. A spherical acrylic vessel containing 2.8 ton gadolinium-doped liquid scintillator will be viewed by 10 m^2 Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) of >50% photon detection efficiency with almost full coverage. The photoelectron yield is about 4500 per MeV, an order higher than any existing large-scale liquid scintillator detectors. The detector operates at -50 degree C to lower the dark noise of SiPMs to an acceptable level. The detector will measure about 2000 reactor antineutrinos per day, and is designed to be well shielded from cosmogenic backgrounds and ambient radioactivities to have about 10% background-to-signal ratio. The experiment is expected to start operation in 2022

Relevance of hazards in exoskeleton applications: a survey-based enquiry

Exoskeletons are becoming the reference technology for assistance and augmentation of human motor functions in a wide range of application domains. Unfortunately, the exponential growth of this sector has not been accompanied by a rigorous risk assessment (RA) process, which is necessary to identify the major aspects concerning the safety and impact of this new technology on humans. This situation may seriously hamper the market uptake of new products. This paper presents the results of a survey that was circulated to understand how hazards are considered by exoskeleton users, from research and industry perspectives. Our analysis aimed to identify the perceived occurrence and the impact of a sample of generic hazards, as well as to collect suggestions and general opinions from the respondents that can serve as a reference for more targeted RA. Our results identified a list of relevant hazards for exoskeletons. Among them, misalignments and unintended device motion were perceived as key aspects for exoskeletons’ safety. This survey aims to represent a first attempt in recording overall feedback from the community and contribute to future RAs and the identification of better mitigation strategies in the field.Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. The work presented was developed within the project EXOSAFE and SALOEXO, an awarded project by the COVR European Project under grant agreement No 779966

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Kinanthropology

Proceedings of the 12th Conference of Sport and Quality of Life 2019 gatheres submissions of participants of the conference. Every submission is the result of positive evaluation by reviewers from the corresponding field. Conference is divided into sections – Analysis of human movement; Sport training, nutrition and regeneration; Sport and social sciences; Active ageing and sarcopenia; Strength and conditioning training; section for PhD students

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO

Potential of Core-Collapse Supernova Neutrino Detection at JUNO

JUNO is an underground neutrino observatory under construction in Jiangmen, China. It uses 20kton liquid scintillator as target, which enables it to detect supernova burst neutrinos of a large statistics for the next galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) and also pre-supernova neutrinos from the nearby CCSN progenitors. All flavors of supernova burst neutrinos can be detected by JUNO via several interaction channels, including inverse beta decay, elastic scattering on electron and proton, interactions on C12 nuclei, etc. This retains the possibility for JUNO to reconstruct the energy spectra of supernova burst neutrinos of all flavors. The real time monitoring systems based on FPGA and DAQ are under development in JUNO, which allow prompt alert and trigger-less data acquisition of CCSN events. The alert performances of both monitoring systems have been thoroughly studied using simulations. Moreover, once a CCSN is tagged, the system can give fast characterizations, such as directionality and light curve

New Scaffolds for the Delivery of Protease Sensitive Photosensitizer Prodrugs

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a non-invasive technique for the treatment of several diseases such as microbial infections, rheumatoid arthritis, age-related macular degeneration, and cancer. However, this therapeutic approach suffers from several drawbacks associated with the administration of conventional photoactive compounds, such as skin photosensitization, unfavorable physicochemical properties, and finally low selectivity for the diseased tissue. To improve the selectivity of conventional photosensitizers (PS) we have developed quenched PS prodrugs based on poly (L) lysine and cyclopeptidic carriers that target up-regulated proteolytic activities related to certain diseases, including cancer. These compounds are based on energy transfer between multiple copies of PSs tethered to oligomeric carriers via protease sensitive peptide linkers, thus, silencing any photodynamic activity. Proteolytic digestion of the peptide results into the release of a PS peptidyl fragment thereby restoring photodynamic activity. These conceptually new compounds act through several complementary targeting mechanisms. They 1) accumulate preferentially in pathologic tissue, 2) target pathology-related proteases, 3) are taken-up selectively by abnormal cells, and 4) being selectively irradiated in the diseased area. Using poly(L)lysine based carriers we have designed quenched PS prodrugs that effectively image and treat prostate cancer. Unfortunately, due to their undefined chemical structure these prodrugs are not suitable for clinical use. Therefore, we have proceeded to design defined quenched PS prodrugs based on a cyclopeptidic carrier vehicle. These novel prodrugs have a constrained secondary structure with a defined molecular weight and predefined number and positions of the PS peptide conjugates. Preliminary evaluation demonstrated that these compounds show the expected tendencies, i.e. increased quenching with increasing number PSs per carrier and digestion by recombinant target proteases including, uPA, Cathepsin B and MMPs. The influence of different design parameters has been investigated in vitro and in vivo. For instance, we have shown that high molecular weight PEGylation is unfavorable for high quenching efficiencies. Furthermore, we have characterized quenched PS prodrugs with respect to activation and phototoxicity in human cancer cell lines with special emphasis on prostate and ovarian cancer. Furthermore, preliminary optimization of pharmacokinetics and biodistribution will be carried out in the chorioallantoic membrane model inoculated with tumor spheroids. Finally, might be possible to translate the gained knowledge into other scientific fields such as for instance the improved drug delivery of chemotherapeutics using cyclopeptidic protease sensitive carriers or the targeted imaging of GLP-1 receptors through the multimerization of targeting moieties onto the cyclopeptidic scaffold.</jats:p