Monitoring of dioxin levels in cow's milk in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen

In 1196/1997, the Belgian government measured dioxin levels in cow's milk from dairy farms in the neighborhood of a metal reclamation plant in Zelzate above the Belgian standard of 5 pg (i) TEQ/g of milkfat. In the same period they measured high dioxin emissions at the metal reclamation plant concerned. Predictions by the dioxin chain model in the basis of the emissions didn't exclude a exceeding of the Dutch standard of 6 pg (i) TEQ/gram milkfat for cow's milk from diary farms on the Dutch side of the border. Therefore, the Dutch government decided to start a monitoring program to measure the dioxin levels in cow's milk from two selected diary farms in the neighborhood of Sas van Gent, 5 km North-east of the metal reclamation plant, on a monthly basis. In the period October 1998 - June 2000 dioxin levels in cow's milk from these two diary farms were measured. None of the values exceeded the Dutch standard. The highest levels were measured at the start of the monitoring program; 3.0 +/- 0.2 and 5.1 +/- 0.3 pg (i)-TEQ/g milkfat, for the two farms respectively, in October 1998. During the same period, October-December 1998, the dioxin levels of consumers milk, sampled on a monthly basis were monitored. The samples were collected per region of the Netherlands (North, East, South and West). The measured dioxin levels in this period resulted in a background level of 0.5-0.8 pg (i)-TEQ/g of fat. At the end of the period, in June 2000, dioxin levels were decreased to a level round 1 pg (i) TEQ/g of fat. These values are in the same order of magnitude as the back ground level of 0.3-0.4 pg (i) TEQ/g of fat found for consumers milk in the second quarter of 2000. It can be concluded that the measures taken by the metal reclamation plant, imposed by the Belgian government, presumably have led to decreasing dioxin levels in locally produced cow's milk. Therefore, in August 2000, the monitoring program in Zeeuws Vlaanderen was discontinued.In 1996/1997 is door de Belgische overheid aangetoond dat de dioxine-gehalten in koemelk, uit de omgeving van een metaalsmelterij te Zelzate, de Belgische norm van 5 pg (i) TEQ/g melkvet overschreden. Tevens werd in die periode aangetoond dat de dioxine-emissie van de betreffende metaalsmelterij verhoogd was. Berekeningen met het ketenmodel sloten een overschrijding van de Nederlandse warenwetnorm van 6 pg (i) TEQ/g melkvet aan de Nederlandse zijde van de grens niet uit. Daarom is besloten koemelk van twee geselecteerde melkveebedrijven in de omgeving van Sas van Gent, 5 km ten noord-oosten van de metaalsmelterij, te monitoren op basis van maandgemiddelde monsters. In de periode oktober 1998-juni 2000 zijn dioxinegehalten gemeten in koemelk van deze twee melkveebedrijven. De dioxinegehalten in de monsters liggen allen beneden de warenwetnorm van 6 pg (i)-TEQ/g vet. De dioxinegehalten waren aan het begin van de meetperiode het hoogst; 3.0 +/- 0.2 en 5.1 +/- 0.3 pg (i)-TEQ/g melkvet voor respectievelijk melkveebedrijf SvG-1 en SvG-2. In dezelfde periode, oktober-december 1998, werden, in het kader van een ander deelprojekt (639102-9802), ook gehalten gemeten van maandgemiddelde consumptiemelkmonsters. De monsters zijn samengesteld per regio (Noord, Oost, Zuid en West) van Nederland. De gemeten waarden lagen in deze periode op een achtergrondniveau van 0.5-0.8 pg (i)-TEQ/g vet. Aan het eind van de periode, in juni 2000, zijn de waarden gedaald tot een niveau van rond de 1 pg (i) TEQ/g vet. Deze waarden hebben dezelfde orde van grootte als het achtergrondniveau van 03.-0.4 pg (i) TEQ/g vet in consumptiemelk bemonsterd in het tweede kwartaal van 2000. Geconcludeerd kan worden dat door de genomen maatregelen bij de metaalsmelterij, opgelegd door de Belgische overheid, de dioxineconcentraties in koemelk uit de omgeving waarschijnlijk structureel tot een waarde royaal onder de norm hebben geleid. Per augustus 2000 is dan ook, door de Inspectie Gezondheidsbescherming, Waren en Veterinaire Zaken besloten het monitoren van koemelk in de omgeving van Sas van Gent stop te zetten

Limit on the mass of a long-lived or stable gluino

We reinterpret the generic CDF charged massive particle limit to obtain a limit on the mass of a stable or long-lived gluino. Various sources of uncertainty are examined. The $R$-hadron spectrum and scattering cross sections are modeled based on known low-energy hadron physics and the resultant uncertainties are quantified and found to be small compared to uncertainties from the scale dependence of the NLO pQCD production cross sections. The largest uncertainty in the limit comes from the unknown squark mass: when the squark -- gluino mass splitting is small, we obtain a gluino mass limit of 407 GeV, while in the limit of heavy squarks the gluino mass limit is 397 GeV. For arbitrary (degenerate) squark masses, we obtain a lower limit of 322 GeV on the gluino mass. These limits apply for any gluino lifetime longer than $\sim 30$ ns, and are the most stringent limits for such a long-lived or stable gluino.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in JHE

Increased Adiposity, Dysregulated Glucose Metabolism and Systemic Inflammation in Galectin-3 KO Mice

PMCID: PMC3579848This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

The Role of Inflammation and Infection in Coronary Artery Disease

New insights into atherosclerosis, the most common disease affecting coronary arteries, may change therapeutic strategies from largely symptomatic to causal. Atherosclerotic plaques contain a lipid-related, immune-mediated inflammation, with release of secretory products capable of changing plaque morphology. Plaques prone to complications contain large numbers of inflammatory cells; stable plaques contain little inflammation. Similarly, atherectomy specimens from patients with coronary syndromes revealed more inflammatory cells in unstable than in stable patients. These observations, and the fact that acute coronary syndromes are associated with increased blood levels of inflammatory markers, have renewed interest in the possible relationship between infection and atherogenesis. Of all potential candidate antigens, Chlamydia pneumoniae presently is considered the most likely because a substantial number of patients with unstable syndromes contain C. pneumoniae-reactive T cells, both in blood and within the atherosclerotic plaque, suggesting enhancement of intraplaque inflammatio

Long-lived stops in MSSM scenarios with a neutralino LSP

This work investigates the possibility of a long-lived stop squark in supersymmetric models with the neutralino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). We study the implications of meta-stable stops on the sparticle mass spectra and the dark matter density. We find that in order to obtain a sufficiently long stop lifetime so as to be observable as a stable R-hadron at an LHC experiment, we need to fine tune the mass degeneracy between the stop and the LSP considerably. This increases the stop-neutralino coanihilation cross section, leaving the neutralino relic density lower than what is expected from the WMAP results for stop masses ~1.5 TeV/c^2. However, if such scenarios are realised in nature we demonstrate that the long-lived stops will be produced at the LHC and that stop-based R-hadrons with masses up to 1 TeV/c^2 can be detected after one year of running at design luminosity

Mixed RG Flows and Hydrodynamics at Finite Holographic Screen

We consider quark-gluon plasma with chemical potential and study renormalization group flows of transport coefficients in the framework of gauge/gravity duality. We first study them using the flow equations and compare the results with hydrodynamic results by calculating the Green functions on the arbitrary slice. Two results match exactly. Transport coefficients at arbitrary scale is ontained by calculating hydrodynamics Green functions. When either momentum or charge vanishes, transport coefficients decouple from each other.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure

Holographic and Wilsonian Renormalization Groups

We develop parallels between the holographic renormalization group in the bulk and the Wilsonian renormalization group in the dual field theory. Our philosophy differs from most previous work on the holographic RG; the most notable feature is the key role of multi-trace operators. We work out the forms of various single- and double-trace flows. The key question, `what cutoff on the field theory corresponds to a radial cutoff in the bulk?' is left unanswered, but by sharpening the analogy between the two sides we identify possible directions.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures. v2: Minor clarifications. Added reference

Affine sl(N) conformal blocks from N=2 SU(N) gauge theories

Recently Alday and Tachikawa proposed a relation between conformal blocks in a two-dimensional theory with affine sl(2) symmetry and instanton partition functions in four-dimensional conformal N=2 SU(2) quiver gauge theories in the presence of a certain surface operator. In this paper we extend this proposal to a relation between conformal blocks in theories with affine sl(N) symmetry and instanton partition functions in conformal N=2 SU(N) quiver gauge theories in the presence of a surface operator. We also discuss the extension to non-conformal N=2 SU(N) theories.Comment: 40 pages. v2: minor changes and clarification