Peak fitting applied to low-resolution enrichment measurements

Materials accounting at bulk processing facilities that handle low enriched uranium consists primarily of weight and uranium enrichment measurements. Most low enriched uranium processing facilities draw separate materials balances for each enrichment handled at the facility. The enrichment measurement determines the isotopic abundance of the {sup 235}U, thereby determining the proper strata for the item, while the weight measurement generates the primary accounting value for the item. Enrichment measurements using the passive gamma radiation from uranium were developed for use in US facilities a few decades ago. In the US, the use of low-resolution detectors was favored because they cost less, are lighter and more robust, and don`t require the use of liquid nitrogen. When these techniques were exported to Europe, however, difficulties were encountered. Two of the possible root causes were discovered to be inaccurate knowledge of the container wall thickness and higher levels of minor isotopes of uranium introduced by the use of reactor returns in the enrichment plants. the minor isotopes cause an increase in the Compton continuum under the 185.7 keV assay peak and the observance of interfering 238.6 keV gamma rays. The solution selected to address these problems was to rely on the slower, more costly, high-resolution gamma ray detectors when the low-resolution method failed. Recently, these gamma ray based enrichment measurement techniques have been applied to Russian origin material. The presence of interfering gamma radiation from minor isotopes was confirmed. However, with the advent of fast portable computers, it is now possible to apply more sophisticated analysis techniques to the low-resolution data in the field. Explicit corrections for Compton background, gamma rays from {sup 236}U daughters, and the attenuation caused by thick containers can be part of the least squares fitting routine. Preliminary results from field measurements in Kazakhstan will be discussed

Colon carcinoma cells harboring PIK3CA mutations display resistance to growth factor deprivation induced apoptosis.

PIK3CA, encoding the p110alpha catalytic subunit of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), is mutated in a variety of human cancers. We screened the colon cancer cell lines previously established in our laboratory for PIK3CA mutations and found that four of them harbored gain of function mutations. We have now compared a panel of mutant and wild-type cell lines for cell proliferation and survival in response to stress. There was little difference in PI3K activity between mutant PIK3CA-bearing cells (mutant cells) and wild-type PIK3CA-bearing cells (wild-type cells) under optimal growth conditions. However, the mutant cells showed constitutive PI3K activity during growth factor deprivation stress (GFDS), whereas PI3K activity decayed rapidly in the wild-type cells. Importantly, constitutively active PI3K rendered the mutant cells resistant to GFDS-induced apoptosis relative to the wild-type cells, indicating a biological advantage under stress conditions that is imparted by the mutant enzymes. Compared with the wild-type cells, the mutant cells were hypersensitive to the apoptosis induced by the PI3K inhibitor LY294002. In addition, PIK3CA small interfering RNA significantly decreased DNA synthesis and/or induced apoptosis in the mutant cells but not in the wild-type cells. Furthermore, ecotopic expression of a mutant PIK3CA in a nontumorigenic PIK3CA wild-type cell line resulted in resistance to GFDS-induced apoptosis, whereas transfection of wild-type PIK3CA or empty vector had little effect. Taken together, our studies show that mutant PIK3CA increases the capacity for proliferation and survival under environmental stresses, such as GFDS while also imparting greater dependency on the PI3K pathway for proliferation and survival