Human urine certified reference material CZ 6010: creatinine and toluene metabolites (hippuric acid and o-cresol) and a benzene metabolite (phenol)

A reference material for the biological monitoring of occupational exposure to toluene, benzene and phenol was prepared. O-cresol and hippuric acid (metabolites of toluene) are used for the biological monitoring of occupational exposure to toluene. Phenol, a metabolite of benzene, is used for the biological monitoring of exposure to benzene, but phenol can of course also be used as an indicator of exposure to phenol as well. The reference material (RM) used for the determination of these metabolites was prepared by freeze-drying pooled urine samples obtained from healthy persons occupationally exposed to toluene and those taking part in an inhalation experiment. Tests for homogeneity and stability were performed by determining urine concentrations of o-cresol, hippuric acid, creatinine and phenol. To investigate the stability of the RM, the urinary concentrations of o-cresol and phenol were monitored for eighteen months using GC and HPLC, while those of hippuric acid and creatinine were followed for five and six years, respectively, using HPLC. Analysis of variance showed that the concentrations did not change. The certified concentration values (and their uncertainties) of the substances in this reference material (phenol concentration c=6.46+/-0.58 mg l(-1); o-cresol concentration c=1.17+/-0.15 mg l(-1); hippuric acid concentration c=1328+/-30 mg l(-1); creatinine concentration c=0.82+/-0.10 g l(-1)) were evaluated via the interactive statistical programme IPECA

Evolution of order and chaos across a first-order quantum phase transition

We study the evolution of the dynamics across a generic first order quantum phase transition in an interacting boson model of nuclei. The dynamics inside the phase coexistence region exhibits a very simple pattern. A classical analysis reveals a robustly regular dynamics confined to the deformed region and well separated from a chaotic dynamics ascribed to the spherical region. A quantum analysis discloses regular bands of states in the deformed region, which persist to energies well above the phase-separating barrier, in the face of a complicated environment. The impact of kinetic collective rotational terms on this intricate interplay of order and chaos is investigated.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Physics Letters B, in press. Higher quality (larger size) figures can be obtained from http://www-ucjf.troja.mff.cuni.cz/~geometric/PLB-Figs2-3.zi

New Capabilities of the FLUKA Multi-Purpose Code

FLUKA is a general purpose Monte Carlo code able to describe the transport and interaction of any particle and nucleus type in complex geometries over an energy range extending from thermal neutrons to ultrarelativistic hadron collisions. It has many different applications in accelerator design, detector studies, dosimetry, radiation protection, medical physics, and space research. In 2019, CERN and INFN, as FLUKA copyright holders, together decided to end their formal collaboration framework, allowing them henceforth to pursue different pathways aimed at meeting the evolving requirements of the FLUKA user community, and at ensuring the long term sustainability of the code. To this end, CERN set up the FLUKA.CERN Collaboration1. This paper illustrates the physics processes that have been newly released or are currently implemented in the code distributed by the FLUKA.CERN Collaboration2 under new licensing conditions that are meant to further facilitate access to the code, as well as intercomparisons. The description of coherent effects experienced by high energy hadron beams in crystal devices, relevant to promising beam manipulation techniques, and the charged particle tracking in vacuum regions subject to an electric field, overcoming a former lack, have already been made available to the users. Other features, namely the different kinds of low energy deuteron interactions as well as the synchrotron radiation emission in the course of charged particle transport in vacuum regions subject to magnetic fields, are currently undergoing systematic testing and benchmarking prior to release. FLUKA is widely used to evaluate radiobiological effects, with the powerful support of the Flair graphical interface, whose new generation (Available at http://flair.cern) offers now additional capabilities, e.g., advanced 3D visualization with photorealistic rendering and support for industry-standard volume visualization of medical phantoms. FLUKA has also been playing an extensive role in the characterization of radiation environments in which electronics operate. In parallel, it has been used to evaluate the response of electronics to a variety of conditions not included in radiation testing guidelines and standards for space and accelerators, and not accessible through conventional ground level testing. Instructive results have been obtained from Single Event Effects (SEE) simulations and benchmarks, when possible, for various radiation types and energies. The code has reached a high level of maturity, from which the FLUKA.CERN Collaboration is planning a substantial evolution of its present architecture. Moving towards a modern programming language allows to overcome fundamental constraints that limited development options. Our long term goal, in addition to improving and extending its physics performances with even more rigorous scientific oversight, is to modernize its structure to integrate independent contributions more easily and to formalize quality assurance through state-of-the-art software deployment techniques. This includes a continuous integration pipeline to automatically validate the codebase as well as automatic processing and analysis of a tailored physics-case test suite. With regard to the aforementioned objectives, several paths are currently envisaged, like finding synergies with Geant4, both at the core structure and interface level, this way offering the user the possibility to run with the same input different Monte Carlo codes and crosscheck the results

Optical spectra of FLASH generated plasmas

Time integrated measurements of optical spectra of the plasma generated by pulses of the free electron laser facility FLASH on a solid target at DESY Hamburg are interpreted in terms of plasma hydrodynamics. It is shown that the main contribution to the optical range comes from the expanding stage of the plasma evolution on a ns scale, whereas the UV part is partially obscured by the optically dense outstreaming plasma near the ablated hol

Provocando a Museologia: o pensamento geminal de Zbynek Z. Stránský e a Escola de Brno

Este artigo se propõe a fazer uma revisão conceitual da obra do museólogo tcheco Zbynek Zbyslav Stránský (1926-2016), referente ao período entre 1965 e 1995, quando ele foi responsável pela tentativa de estruturar uma teoria para a Museologia. Seu objetivo era o de defender e comprovar o estatuto científico dessa disciplina, por meio da sua concepção metateórica. Stránský iria discutir, em sua obra, a partir da negação do museu como objeto de estudo dessa suposta ciência, em 1965, quais seriam os seus objetos de interesse fundamentais, criando conceitos próprios para a Museologia. Por meio dos conceitos de musealia, musealidade e musealização, ele desloca o foco da disciplina dos museus, como instrumentos para uma dada finalidade, aos processos de atribuição de valor às coisas da realidade. Sua teoria engendra, assim, a fundamentação necessária para o campo museológico, integrando teoria e prática e constituindo o início de uma reflexão científica e social para a Museologia. Nesse sentido, o artigo historiciza o processo de constituição da Museologia disciplinar no leste europeu para entender o que estava na base do pensamento geminal estruturante desse campo de saberes museológicos e, ao mesmo tempo, aponta caminhos para o seu porvir.The paper intends to make a conceptual revision of the work produced by the Czech museologist Zbynek Zbyslav Stránský (1926-2016), referring to the period between 1965 to 1995, when he is responsible for the attempt to conceive a theory for museology. With his metatheory, this thinker aimed to defend and sustain this discipline’s scientific status. In his works, by refuting the museum as the study subject for this supposed “science”, Stránský would discuss which should be its fundamental subjects of interest in its place, creating specific concepts for museology. With the terms musealia, museality and musealization he shifts the discipline’s focus from the museum, as an instrument for a certain end, to the processes of attributing value to things. His theory generates, thus, the necessary foundation for the museological field, integrating theory and practice, and initiating a social and scientific reflection for museology. Therefore, the paper historicizes the process of configuration of disciplinary museology in Eastern Europe in order to understand what was in the base of the geminal thinking structuring this branch of knowledge and, at the same time, appointing new pathways for its future