TL investigation of glasses from mobile phone screen protectors for radiation accident dosimetry

International audienceTL dosimetric characteristics of glass screen protectors were analyzed for radiation accident dosimetry. Radiation-induced TL signal and intrinsic background signal of these glasses were investigated. An attempt to categorize the glasses according to the shape of their radiation-induced TL glow curve was made. Then, the main dosimetric properties were studied for a category of glass. Radiation-induced TL signal was light sensitive and TL measurements were done on the hard-to-bleach component of the TL signal after bleaching with blue LEDs. The sensitization was negligible after 5 cycles of irradiation and measurement. The dose response was linear up to 20 Gy. Fading was negligible up to 100 h and limited to ~20% for the investigated time range of 12 days. The results of a dose recovery test were promising. These preliminary results are interesting, but further studies on a larger set of screen protectors are needed to really appreciate the potential of glass extracted from mobile phone screen protectors to be used as fortuitous retrospective dosimeter in the event of a radiological accident

BathyBot - a Deep-sea Crawler to See the Unseen in the NW Mediterranean Sea

Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM), 16-21 February 2020, San Diego, CA, USA.- 1 page, 3 figuresThe deep sea remains one of the less known environment on Earth and is characterized by high pressure, low availability of organic matter and absence of light. While there are still numerous discoveries concerning the diversity and adaptations of deep-sea organisms to their environement, this ecosystem is under an increasing anthropogenic pressure such as climate-related stressors (warming, acidification and deoxygenation), deep-sea fishing, human pollution (microplastics, POP), oil and gas extraction and could face new threats from emerging industries (e.g. mineral mining). How these changes will affect biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is one question of major importance for the future. In the darkness of the oceans, several organisms have the capability to emit light: called bioluminescence. Recent studies quantified that as much as 75% of pelagic and about 40% of benthic organisms are known to be bioluminescent. In this framework, we present a new deep-sea crawler, BathyBot, to be dedicated to the long-term exploration of deep-sea ecosystems allowing biological and-geochemical surveys. BathyBot will be deployed in 2020 in the Mediterranean Sea, at the MEUST-NUMerEnv/KM3NeT site, to strength the ecological-based monitoring capability of the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water column Observatory (EMSO ERIC) network. BathyBot will be able to explore an area of about 15 000 m2 at a depth of 2500m and will be devoted to 1) observe and monitor the dynamics of deep-sea pelagic and benthic organisms, 2) better define the occurrence and functions of bioluminescence in situ (increasing the dataset of bioluminescence records), 3) explore relationships between deep-sea organisms, biogeochemical (carbon content, oxygen concentrations) and environmental variables (temperature, salinity, current) in the context of global changes and their effects on the deep ocean, and 4) investigate benthic biogeochemical processes through the use of oxygen microprofiling in sediment porewatersThis work is funded by UE FEDER NUMerEnv project (number: 1166-39417, 2017), CNRS-INSU Moyens Mi-Lourd 2019 and VICAT-Tangram-MIO projectPeer reviewe

Genetic landscape of congenital insensitivity to pain and hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathies

Lischka A, Eggermann K, Record CJ, et al. Genetic landscape of congenital insensitivity to pain and hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathies. Brain. 2023;146(12):4880-4890.Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP) and hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathies (HSAN) are clinically and genetically heterogeneous disorders exclusively or predominantly affecting the sensory and autonomic neurons. Due to the rarity of the diseases and findings based mainly on single case reports or small case series, knowledge about these disorders is limited.Here, we describe the molecular workup of a large international cohort of CIP/HSAN patients including patients from normally under-represented countries. We identify 80 previously unreported pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants in a total of 73 families in the >20 known CIP/HSAN-associated genes. The data expand the spectrum of disease-relevant alterations in CIP/HSAN, including novel variants in previously rarely recognized entities such as ATL3-, FLVCR1- and NGF-associated neuropathies and previously under-recognized mutation types such as larger deletions. In silico predictions, heterologous expression studies, segregation analyses and metabolic tests helped to overcome limitations of current variant classification schemes that often fail to categorize a variant as disease-related or benign.The study sheds light on the genetic causes and disease-relevant changes within individual genes in CIP/HSAN. This is becoming increasingly important with emerging clinical trials investigating subtype or gene-specific treatment strategies