Bone marrow and chelatable iron in patients with protein energy malnutrition

Objectives: To examine the iron status of malnourished children by comparing bone marrow iron deposits in children with protein energy malnutrition with those in well-nourished controls, and measuring chelatable urinary iron excretion in children with kwashiorkor. Design: Bone marrow iron was assessed histologicaHy in postmortem specimens from children with kwashiorkor or marasmus, and from controls. Twenty-four-hour urinary iron was measured in children with severe kwashiorkor, half of whom received 10 mg/kg of intramuscular desferrioxamine (DFO) on admission.  Setting: Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital, Cape Town. Subjects: Thirteen children with kwashiorkor, 6 with marasmus and 16 well-nourished children underwent bone marrow examination. Urinary iron excretion was assayed in 17 children with kwashiorkor. Results: Stainable iron was present in the bone marrow of half the children with kwashiorkor but in only 1 child in each of the other groups. The median iron excretion was 945.5 µg/24 hours in the DFO group compared with 28.5 µg/24 hours in the non-DFO group. Conclusions: There is an apparent excess of iron which may predispose to bacterial infections and free radicalmediated injury in children with kwashiorkor. S AFr Med J 1996; 86: 1410-141

USING GASEOUS EMISSIONS OF A PROTON ACCELERATOR FACILITY AS TRACER FOR SMALL-SCALE ATMOSPHERIC DISPERSION

The gaseous effluents of the proton accelerator facility located in the Western part of the Paul Scherrer Institute, Aargau, Switzerland, contain a mixture of positron emitters (50 % 15O, 20 % 13N and 30 % 11C). For the experimental verification of a future upgrade of the dispersion model in the complex topography of the Aare valley, a measuring campaign using three continuous gamma-spectrometric measuring stations was launched in 2011. The concept of a modified man-made-gross-count (MMGC) ratio yields a clear signal associated with the positron emitters while minimising the influence of radon progeny rain-out events. A dependence of the measured MMGC ratios on the emitted activity and wind direction could be demonstrated using frequency distributions of the modified MMGC ratio measured in 2012 and 2013. A significant fraction of high MMGC-ratio values was found associated with dispersion directions (based on measurements of the wind direction in 70 m above ground) not towards or even against the direction between stack and measuring statio

Continuous vertical aerosol profiling with a multi-wavelength Raman polarization lidar over the Pearl River Delta, China

A dataset of particle optical properties of the highly polluted atmosphere over the Pearl River Delta (PRD), Guangzhou, China, is presented in this paper. The data were derived from the measurements of a multi-wavelength Raman and depolarization lidar PollyXT and a co-located AERONET sun photometer. The measurement campaign was conducted from November 2011 to mid-June 2012. These are the first Raman lidar measurements in the PRD that lasted for several months. A mean value of aerosol optical depth (AOD) of 0.54 ± 0.33 was observed by the sun photometer at 500 nm in the polluted atmosphere over this megacity for the whole measurement period. The lidar profiles frequently show lofted aerosol layers, which reach altitudes of up to 2 to 3 km and, especially during the spring season, up to 5 km. These layers contain between 12 and 56 % of the total AOD, with the highest values in spring. The aerosol types in these lofted layers are classified by their optical properties. The observed lidar ratio values range from 30 to 80 sr with a mean value of 48.0 ± 10.7 sr at 532 nm. The linear particle depolarization ratio at 532 nm lies mostly below 5 %, with a mean value of 3.6 ± 3.7 %. The majority of the Ångström exponents lie between 0.5 and 1.5, indicating a mixture of fine- and coarse-mode aerosols. These results reveal that mostly urban pollution particles mixed with particles produced from biomass and industrial burning are present in the atmosphere above the Pearl River Delta. Trajectory analyses show that these pollution mixtures arise mainly from local and regional sources

Predictable and robust performance of a Bi-2223 superconducting coil for compact isochronous cyclotrons

The development of ever smaller medical particle accelerators is motivated by a desire to make proton therapy accessible to more patients. Reducing the footprint of particle accelerators and subsequently proton therapy facilities allows for cheaper and broader usage of proton therapy. By employing superconducting technologies for field shaping, the size of particle accelerators can be reduced further below what is possible with saturated iron. This article discusses experiments on a first-of-its-kind double pancake (DP), and an assembly of six DP coils, designed to be used as a so-called ‘flutter coil’ for a compact isochronous cyclotron for proton therapy, fabricated from high-temperature superconducting (HTS) Bi 2 − x Pbx Sr2Ca2Cu3Oy (Bi-2223) tape. The coils were mounted under pre-stress within a stainless-steel structure to maintain mechanical stability during the experiments. The critical current as a function of the temperature of both coils was measured in a conduction-cooled setup. A model describing the coils, based on tape data, was created and revealed that the measurements were in excellent agreement with the predictions. Additional experiments were performed to study the quench and thermal runaway behaviour of the HTS coils, determining whether such coils can be protected against fault scenarios, using realistic quench-detection levels and discharge extraction-rates. These experiments demonstrate that the coils are very robust and can be well protected against quenches and thermal-runaway events using common quench-protection measures with realistic parameters.</p

Very high rotational frequencies and band termination in 73Br

Rotational bands in 73Br have been investigated up to spins of 65/2 using the EUROBALL III spectrometer. One of the negative-parity bands displays the highest rotational frequency 1.85 MeV reported to date in nuclei with mass number greater than 25. At high frequencies, the experimental dynamic moment of inertia for all bands decrease to very low values, indicating a loss of collectivity. The bands are described in the configuration-dependent cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky model. The calculations indicate that one of the negative-parity bands is observed up to its terminating single-particle state at spin 63/2. This result establishes the first band termination case in the A = 70 mass region.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. C as a Rapid Communicatio

BNL Sources Development Laboratory

The NSLS has a long-standing interest in providing the best possible synchrotron radiation sources for its user community, and hence, has recently established the Source Development Laboratory (SDL) to pursue research into fourth generation synchrotron radiation sources. A major element of the program includes development of a high peak power FEL meant to operate in the vacuum ultraviolet. The objective of the program is to develop the source, and experimental technology together to provide the greatest impact on UV science. The accelerator under construction for the SDL consists of a high brightness RF photocathode electron gun followed by a 230 MeV short pulse linac incorporating a magnetic chicane for pulse compression. The gun drive laser is a wide bandwidth Ti: Sapphire regenerative amplifier capable of pulse shaping which will be used to study non- linear emittance compensation. Using the compressor, 1 nC bunches with a length as small as 50 {mu}m sigma (2 kA peak current) are available for experiments. In this paper we briefly describe the facility and detail our plans for utilizing the 10 m long NISUS wiggler to carry out single pass FEL experiments. These include a 1 {mu}m SASE demonstration, a seeded beam demonstration at 300 nm, and a High Gain Harmonic Generation experiment at 200 mn. The application of chirped pulse amplification to this type of FEL will also be discussed

Top-Off Safety Analysis for NSLS-II

Top-off injection will be adopted in NSLS-II. To ensure no injected beam can pass into experimental beamlines with open photon shutters during top-off injection, simulation studies for possible machine fault scenarios are required. We compare two available simulation methods, backward (H. Nishimura-LBL) and forward tracking (A. Terebilo-SLAC). We also discuss the tracking settings, fault scenarios, apertures and interlocks considered in the analysis

Transgenic expression of the dicotyledonous pattern recognition receptor EFR in rice leads to ligand-dependent activation of defense responses

Plant plasma membrane localized pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) detect extracellular pathogen-associated molecules. PRRs such as Arabidopsis EFR and rice XA21 are taxonomically restricted and are absent from most plant genomes. Here we show that rice plants expressing EFR or the chimeric receptor EFR::XA21, containing the EFR ectodomain and the XA21 intracellular domain, sense both Escherichia coli- and Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo)-derived elf18 peptides at sub-nanomolar concentrations. Treatment of EFR and EFR::XA21 rice leaf tissue with elf18 leads to MAP kinase activation, reactive oxygen production and defense gene expression. Although expression of EFR does not lead to robust enhanced resistance to fully virulent Xoo isolates, it does lead to quantitatively enhanced resistance to weakly virulent Xoo isolates. EFR interacts with OsSERK2 and the XA21 binding protein 24 (XB24), two key components of the rice XA21-mediated immune response. Rice-EFR plants silenced for OsSERK2, or overexpressing rice XB24 are compromised in elf18-induced reactive oxygen production and defense gene expression indicating that these proteins are also important for EFR-mediated signaling in transgenic rice. Taken together, our results demonstrate the potential feasibility of enhancing disease resistance in rice and possibly other monocotyledonous crop species by expression of dicotyledonous PRRs. Our results also suggest that Arabidopsis EFR utilizes at least a subset of the known endogenous rice XA21 signaling components

Urinary MicroRNA Profiling in the Nephropathy of Type 1 Diabetes

Background: Patients with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) are particularly vulnerable to development of Diabetic nephropathy (DN) leading to End Stage Renal Disease. Hence a better understanding of the factors affecting kidney disease progression in T1D is urgently needed. In recent years microRNAs have emerged as important post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression in many different health conditions. We hypothesized that urinary microRNA profile of patients will differ in the different stages of diabetic renal disease. Methods and Findings: We studied urine microRNA profiles with qPCR in 40 T1D with >20 year follow up 10 who never developed renal disease (N) matched against 10 patients who went on to develop overt nephropathy (DN), 10 patients with intermittent microalbuminuria (IMA) matched against 10 patients with persistent (PMA) microalbuminuria. A Bayesian procedure was used to normalize and convert raw signals to expression ratios. We applied formal statistical techniques to translate fold changes to profiles of microRNA targets which were then used to make inferences about biological pathways in the Gene Ontology and REACTOME structured vocabularies. A total of 27 microRNAs were found to be present at significantly different levels in different stages of untreated nephropathy. These microRNAs mapped to overlapping pathways pertaining to growth factor signaling and renal fibrosis known to be targeted in diabetic kidney disease. Conclusions: Urinary microRNA profiles differ across the different stages of diabetic nephropathy. Previous work using experimental, clinical chemistry or biopsy samples has demonstrated differential expression of many of these microRNAs in a variety of chronic renal conditions and diabetes. Combining expression ratios of microRNAs with formal inferences about their predicted mRNA targets and associated biological pathways may yield useful markers for early diagnosis and risk stratification of DN in T1D by inferring the alteration of renal molecular processes. © 2013 Argyropoulos et al