Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Environmental impact assessment of uranium ore mining and milling with a LCA approach

International audienceIn any environmental impact assessment concerning nuclear power production, uranium ore mining and yellowcake (uranium concentrate) production operations cannot be ignored. A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) study was carried out in order to identify the steps in these activities which have the most serious environmental impact

State of the environment around uranium mining sites (MIMAUSA: Memory and Impact of (French) Mining sites for urAniUm: Synthesis and Archives)

In France, the mining and milling of uranium ore and the disposal of uranium mill tailings involved nearly 200 sites of very different nature. Being in charge of both the review of some remediation reports and the routine monitoring of the environment provides IRSN with selective data on most sites. The data collected by IRSN as well as those available from other data sources often remain incomplete therefore preventing IRSN from presenting a global view or answering some specific questions. In order to overcome this difficulty, it was decided, under the aegis of the Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development, that IRSN should develop a program of investigations organized in two parts: Part 1, called “State of knowledge" is aimed at assessing the amount of information available and at consolidating it into a user-friendly computerized database. The main goal is to identify the occurrence of significant enhanced radiological levels in the environment and to detect any lack of information concerning the various sites. This paper gives an overview of the information already collected. Part 2, called “specific studies" is aimed at fixing the gaps in the database by implementing new investigations on specific sites. It could lead to improvements in networks for the monitoring of radioactivity in the environment

Thermodynamics analysis of the current defluoration process of UF6 and its application for efficient recycling of fluorine in the French nuclear fuel cycle

International audienceIn the nuclear fuel cycle, contrary to uranium, fluorine is not recycled as it cannot be efficiently separated from the concomitant produced water. In this paper, modification of the current French deconversion industrial process to recycle fluorhydric acid (HF) in an anhydrous form is examined. An alternative solution using a flash drum to recycle overazeotropic mixture of HF/H$_2$O into the hydrolysis reactor is proposed and compared to previous propositions in terms of energetic cost and corrosion issue

Le tritium dans le milieu aquatique et le risque associé

Le tritium est présent naturellement dans l'environnement sous forme d'eau tritiée et participe au cycle normal de l'eau. Aujourd'hui, les installations nucléaires constituent la principale source de tritium associée aux activités humaines et la production civile de tritium est estimée à environ 2.104 TBq/an, soit approximativement un tiers de la production naturelle. Compte tenu de l'aspect localisé des rejets, on observe autour de ces installations des teneurs en tritium plus élevées que la concentration naturelle (comprise entre 0,1 et 0,9 Bq/l pour les eaux de surface). Les mesures effectuées en France, montrent des teneurs en tritium généralement inférieures à 10 Bq/l dans les eaux souterraines et inférieures à 20 Bq/l pour les fleuves, bien que certaines nappes phréatiques et quelques fleuves présentent localement une concentration de quelques dizaines, voire plus rarement quelques centaines de Bq/l à certaines périodes. Dans l'ensemble, les mesures réalisées en France apparaissent tout à fait cohérentes avec celles disponibles pour les autres cours d'eau européens. En ce qui concerne les impacts associés au tritium dans les eaux, en considérant un individu dont tous les apports en eau proviendraient d'une source présentant une concentration de 100 Bq/l, valeur dans l'ensemble cohérente avec les teneurs maximales relevées dans les eaux potables, la dose individuelle annuelle correspondante serait de l'ordre du millième de l'irradiation naturelle

“Mises à jour” de données scientifiques suite aux recommandations du groupe radioécologie Nord-Cotentin (GRNC) formulées en 1999

Dans son rapport remis aux ministres en 1999, le GRNC a indiqué la nécessité de mener des compléments d'études afin de combler certaines lacunes dans la connaissance de paramètres radiologiques. Le GRNC a également recommandé de prendre en compte des aspects autres que radiologiques. Suite à ces recommandations, les ministres de la Santé et de l'Environnement ont confié au GRNC une deuxième mission portant sur l'étude des incertitudes associées aux résultats de la première mission, et la prise en compte des rejets chimiques. De plus, à la faveur de diverses études publiées récemment par l'IRSN, des informations sur des concentrations de radionucléides peu étudiés jusqu'alors ont été obtenues et des paramètres ont été précisés. Des informations totalement nouvelles ont été acquises comme celles sur le chlore-36. Dans le présent texte les apports scientifiques obtenus depuis la publication du rapport GRNC sont résumés

«Mises à jour» de données scientifiques suite aux recommandations du groupe radioécologie Nord-Cotentin (GRNC) formulées en 1999

Updating of scientific data following the Nord-Cotentin Radioecology Group (GRNC) recommendations expressed in 1999. In its report submitted to the ministers in 1999, the GRNC indicated the need to carry out further studies so that some gaps in the knowledge of radiological parameters are filled, and recommended to take into account aspects other than the radiological ones. Further to these recommendations, the ministers of State of Health and Environment assigned the GRNC the responsibility of a second mission (study of uncertainties on the first mission results, and consideration of chemical releases). Then, about the radiological data used, thanks to various studies recently published by the IRSN, information concerning radionuclide concentrations, not much studied until then, has been obtained and parameters have been specified. Completely new information has been acquired as chlorine-36 information. In the present text are summarized the scientific contributions obtained since the GRNC report publication. © EDP Sciences, 2004

Long term retention and excretion of 201Tl in a patient after myocardial perfusion imaging

201Tl is widely used in nuclear medicine to carry out myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI). However, very limited data is available on long-term distribution in the body, excretion and corresponding dose. In this study we performed a 2 month follow-up of a patient who underwent MPI, by urine analysis and in vivo measurements. The biological half-life of thallium was consequently estimated to be 11.6-27 d, which is in partial agreement with previous studies. We also estimated excretion and retention of 200Tl, 201Tl and 202Tl isotopes using the biokinetic parameters from ICRP publication 53 and compared the forecast result with actual measurements. The latter demonstrated a higher urinary excretion and a higher body retention than what was expected. Our results therefore suggest that the long-term retention and consequently the effective dose coefficient for 201Tl considered in ICRP publications 53 and 80 may be slightly underestimated. © The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved