XPAD: pixel detector for material sciences

Currently available 2D detectors do not make full use of the high flux and high brilliance of third generation synchrotron sources. The XPAD prototype, using active pixels, has been developed to fulfil the needs of materials science scattering experiments. At the time, its prototype is build of eight modules of eight chips. The threshold calibration of /spl ap/4 10/sup 4/ pixels is discussed. Applications to powder diffraction or SAXS experiments prove that it allows to record high quality data

Making subaltern shikaris: histories of the hunted in colonial central India

Academic histories of hunting or shikar in India have almost entirely focused on the sports hunting of British colonists and Indian royalty. This article attempts to balance this elite bias by focusing on the meaning of shikar in the construction of the Gond ‘tribal’ identity in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonial central India. Coining the term ‘subaltern shikaris’ to refer to the class of poor, rural hunters, typically ignored in this historiography, the article explores how the British managed to use hunting as a means of state penetration into central India’s forest interior, where they came to regard their Gond forest-dwelling subjects as essentially and eternally primitive hunting tribes. Subaltern shikaris were employed by elite sportsmen and were also paid to hunt in the colonial regime’s vermin eradication programme, which targeted tigers, wolves, bears and other species identified by the state as ‘dangerous beasts’. When offered economic incentives, forest dwellers usually willingly participated in new modes of hunting, even as impact on wildlife rapidly accelerated and became unsustainable. Yet as non-indigenous approaches to nature became normative, there was sometimes also resistance from Gond communities. As overkill accelerated, this led to exclusion of local peoples from natural resources, to their increasing incorporation into dominant political and economic systems, and to the eventual collapse of hunting as a livelihood. All of this raises the question: To what extent were subaltern subjects, like wildlife, ‘the hunted’ in colonial India

A computerized craniofacial reconstruction method for an unidentified skull based on statistical shape models

Craniofacial reconstruction (CFR) has been widely used to produce the facial appearance of an unidentified skull in the realm of forensic science. Many studies have indicated that the computerized CFR approach is fast, flexible, consistent and objective in comparison to the traditional manual CFR approach. This paper presents a computerized CFR system called CFRTools, which features a CFR method based on a statistical shape model (SSM) of living human head models. Given an unidentified skull, a geometrically-similar template skull is chosen as a template, and a non-registration method is used to improve the accuracy of the construction of dense corresponding vertices through the alignment of the template and the unidentified skull. Generalized Procrustes analysis (GPA) and principal component analysis (PCA) are carried out to construct the skull and face SSMs. The sex of the unidentified skull is then predicted based on skull SSM and centroid size, rather than geometric measurements based on anatomical landmarks. Furthermore, a craniofacial morphological relationship which is learnt from the principal component (PC) scores of the skull and face dataset is used to produce a possible reconstructed face. Finally, multiple possible reconstructed faces for the same skull can further be recreated based on adjusting the PC coefficients. The experimental results show that the average rate of sex classification is 97.14% and the reconstructed face of the unidentified skull can be produced. In addition, experts’ understanding and experience can be harnessed in production of face variations for the same skull, which can further be used as a reference for portraiture creation

Design and baseline characteristics of the finerenone in reducing cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in diabetic kidney disease trial

Background: Among people with diabetes, those with kidney disease have exceptionally high rates of cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality and progression of their underlying kidney disease. Finerenone is a novel, nonsteroidal, selective mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist that has shown to reduce albuminuria in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) while revealing only a low risk of hyperkalemia. However, the effect of finerenone on CV and renal outcomes has not yet been investigated in long-term trials. Patients and Methods: The Finerenone in Reducing CV Mortality and Morbidity in Diabetic Kidney Disease (FIGARO-DKD) trial aims to assess the efficacy and safety of finerenone compared to placebo at reducing clinically important CV and renal outcomes in T2D patients with CKD. FIGARO-DKD is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, event-driven trial running in 47 countries with an expected duration of approximately 6 years. FIGARO-DKD randomized 7,437 patients with an estimated glomerular filtration rate >= 25 mL/min/1.73 m(2) and albuminuria (urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio >= 30 to <= 5,000 mg/g). The study has at least 90% power to detect a 20% reduction in the risk of the primary outcome (overall two-sided significance level alpha = 0.05), the composite of time to first occurrence of CV death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or hospitalization for heart failure. Conclusions: FIGARO-DKD will determine whether an optimally treated cohort of T2D patients with CKD at high risk of CV and renal events will experience cardiorenal benefits with the addition of finerenone to their treatment regimen. Trial Registration: EudraCT number: 2015-000950-39; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02545049

Contactless investigation on laser-heated oxides by synchrotron radiation

Aerodynamic levitation associated with $\rm CO_2$ laser heating was used to carefully characterize a series of rare-earth and others refractory oxides in the solid and the liquid state. The differences and the similarities between the structure on both sides of the liquid-crystalline solid phase transition are discussed. The temperature dependence of the structural parameters has been studied by performing, for the first time, in situ combined XAS and XRD experiments up to $\rm 2800\ {}^\circ C$

XPAD3: A new photon counting chip for X-ray CT-scanner

International audienceThe X-ray pixel chip with adaptable dynamics (XPAD3) circuit is the next generation of 2D X-ray photon counting imaging chip to be connected to a pixel sensor using the bump and flip-chip technologies. This circuit, designed in IBM 0.25 μm technology, contains 9600 pixels (130 μm×130 μm) distributed into 80 columns of 120 elements each. Its features have been improved to provide high-counting rate over $10^9$ ph/pixel/mm$^2$, high-dynamic range over 60 keV, very low-noise detection level of 100e− rms, energy window selection and fast image readout less than 2 ms/frame. An innovative architecture has been designed in order to prevent the digital circuits from bothering the very sensitive analogue parts placed in their neighbourhood. This allows to read the chip during acquisition while conserving the precise setting of the thresholds over the pixel array. Finally, the aim of this development is to combine several XPAD3 to form the PIXSCAN detector