2,015 research outputs found
Hip Pain in a Male High School Runner
Please refer to the pdf version of the abstract located adjacent to the title
In-room test results at CNAO of an innovative PT treatments online monitor (Dose Profiler)
The use of C, He and O ions as projectiles in Particle Therapy (PT) treatments is getting more and more widespread as a consequence of their enhanced relative biological effectiveness and oxygen enhancement ratio, when compared to the protons one. The advantages related to the incoming radiation improved efficacy are requiring an accurate online monitor of the dose release spatial distribution. Such monitor is necessary to prevent unwanted damage to the tissues surrounding the tumour that can arise, for example, due to morphological changes occurred in the patient during the treatment with respect to the initial CT scan. PT treatments with ions can be monitored by detecting the secondary radiation produced by the primary beam interactions with the patient body along the path towards the target volume. Charged fragments produced in the nuclear process of projectile fragmentation can be emitted at large angles with respect to the incoming beam direction and can be detected with high efficiency in a nearly background-free environment. The Dose Profiler (DP) detector, developed within the INSIDE project, is a scintillating fibre tracker that allows an online reconstruction and backtracking of such secondary charged fragments. The construction and preliminary in-room tests performed on the DP, carried out using the 12C ions beam of the CNAO treatment centre using an anthropomorphic phantom as a target, will be reviewed in this contribution. The impact of the secondary fragments interactions with the patient body will be discussed in view of a clinical application. Furthermore, the results implications for a pre-clinical trial on CNAO patients, foreseen in 2019, will be discussed
On High-Energy Behavior of Cross Sections in Theories with Large Extra Dimensions
We discuss the high-energy behavior of cross sections in theories with large
extra dimensions and low-scale quantum gravity, addressing two particular
issues: (i) the tension of the D-branes, and (ii) bounds on the cross section
and their relation to approximations in the mode sum over Kaluza-Klein-graviton
exchanges.Comment: 6 pages, late
Scintillating fiber devices for particle therapy applications
Particle Therapy (PT) is a radiation therapy technique in which solid tumors are treated with charged ions and exploits the achievable highly localized dose delivery, allowing to spare healthy tissues and organs at risk. The development of a range monitoring technique to be used on-line, during the treatment, capable to reach millimetric precision is considered one of the important steps towards an optimization of the PT efficacy and of the treatment quality. To this aim, charged secondary particles produced in the nuclear interactions between the beam particles and the patient tissues can be exploited. Besides charged secondaries, also neutrons are produced in nuclear interactions. The secondary neutron component might cause an undesired and not negligible dose deposition far away from the tumor region, enhancing the risk of secondary malignant neoplasms that can develop even years after the treatment. An accurate neutron characterization (flux, energy and emission profile) is hence needed for a better evaluation of long-term complications. In this contribution two tracker detectors, both based on scintillating fibers, are presented. The first one, named Dose Profiler (DP), is planned to be used as a beam range monitor in PT treatments with heavy ion beams, exploiting the charged secondary fragments production. The DP is currently under development within the INSIDE (Innovative Solutions for In-beam DosimEtry in hadrontherapy) project. The second one is dedicated to the measurement of the fast and ultrafast neutron component produced in PT treatments, in the framework of the MONDO (MOnitor for Neutron Dose in hadrOntherapy) project. Results of the first calibration tests performed at the Trento Protontherapy center and at CNAO (Italy) are reported, as well as simulation studies
Fermion Mass Hierarchies and Small Mixing Angles from Extra Dimensions
In this paper we study renormalization-group evolutions of Yukawa matrices
enhanced by Kaluza-Klein excited modes and analyze their infrared fixed-point
structure. We derive necessary conditions to obtain hierarchies between
generations on the fixed point. These conditions restrict how the fields in the
models can extend to higher dimension. Several specific mechanisms to realize
the conditions are presented. We also take account of generation mixing effects
and find a scenario where the mixing angles become small at low energy even
with large initial values at high-energy scale. A toy model is shown to lead
realistic quark mass matrices.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, LaTeX, a supplementary explanation and
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Photons, neutrinos and large compact space dimensions
We compute the contribution of Kaluza-Klein graviton exchange to the cross
section for photon-neutrino scattering. Unlike the usual situation where the
virtual graviton exchange represents a small correction to a leading order
electroweak or strong amplitude, in this case the graviton contribution is of
the same order as the electroweak amplitude, or somewhat larger. Inclusion of
the graviton contribution is not sufficient to allow high energy neutrinos to
scatter from relic neutrinos in processes such as
, but the photon-neutrino decoupling temperature
is substantially reduced.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures LaTeX. Typos correcte
Asthma Symptoms Among Adolescents Who Attend Public Schools That Are Located Near Confined Swine Feeding Operations
Little is known about the health effects of living in close proximity to industrial swine operations. We assessed the relationship between estimated exposure to airborne effluent from confined swine feeding operations and asthma symptoms among adolescents who were aged 12 to 14 years
Enniatin and Beauvericin Biosynthesis in Fusarium Species: Production Profiles and Structural Determinant Prediction
Citation: Liuzzi, V. C., Mirabelli, V., Cimmarusti, M. T., Haidukowski, M., Leslie, J. F., Logrieco, A. F., . . . Mule, G. (2017). Enniatin and Beauvericin Biosynthesis in Fusarium Species: Production Profiles and Structural Determinant Prediction. Toxins, 9(2), 17. doi:10.3390/toxins9020045Members of the fungal genus Fusarium can produce numerous secondary metabolites, including the nonribosomal mycotoxins beauvericin (BEA) and enniatins (ENNs). Both mycotoxins are synthesized by the multifunctional enzyme enniatin synthetase (ESYN1) that contains both peptide synthetase and S-adenosyl-L-methionine-dependent N-methyltransferase activities. Several Fusarium species can produce ENNs, BEA or both, but the mechanism(s) enabling these differential metabolic profiles is unknown. In this study, we analyzed the primary structure of ESYN1 by sequencing esyn1 transcripts from different Fusarium species. We measured ENNs and BEA production by ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with photodiode array and Acquity QDa mass detector (UPLC-PDA-QDa) analyses. We predicted protein structures, compared the predictions by multivariate analysis methods and found a striking correlation between BEA/ENN-producing profiles and ESYN1 three-dimensional structures. Structural differences in the beta strand's Asn789-Ala793 and His797-Asp802 portions of the amino acid adenylation domain can be used to distinguish BEA/ENN-producing Fusarium isolates from those that produce only ENN
TOPS project: Development of new fast timing plastic scintillators.
In particle physics charged particles are measured exploiting many different detection strategies. The plastic scintillators are cheap, versatile and show good time response, thus are traditionally employed as timing detectors. TOPS (Time Of flight Plastic Scintillators) is an R&D project devoted to the synthesis and characterization of a novel class of plastic scintillators. Liquid and solid sam- ples of tens of new scintillators have been tested and characterized. Some of them (2N, 1N, 2B, P2, T2) have shown a larger light output with respect to antracene, a standard benchmark material, and good timing properties. In order to improve the matching between the scintillators emission and the optimal trasmittive region in the absorption spectra, a doping material has been added as wave-shifter. The use of POPOP as doping improved the performances of a fraction of the scintillator samples. Based on the comparison of the light output values in measurements with cosmic rays, a selection of the most promising scintillators has been investigated also from the timing point of view. The scintillation time characteristics of the TOPS plastic samples have been studied with minimum ionizing particles using a commercial plastic scintillator BC-412 as a reference. The light output and timing properties have been also investigated with proton beams at different energies (70, 120, 170, 220 MeV) and show promising results providing a time of flight measure- ments accuracy of 150â300ps. In this contribution, preliminary results obtained with this new class of scintillators developed in the TOPS project will be presented
Neutrinos Have Mass - So What?
In this brief review, I discuss the new physics unveiled by neutrino
oscillation experiments over the past several years, and discuss several
attempts at understanding the mechanism behind neutrino masses and lepton
mixing. It is fair to say that, while significant theoretical progress has been
made, we are yet to construct a coherent picture that naturally explains
non-zero, yet tiny, neutrino masses and the newly revealed, puzzling patterns
of lepton mixing. I discuss what the challenges are, and point to the fact that
more experimental input (from both neutrino and non-neutrino experiments) is
dearly required - and that new data is expected to reveal, in the next several
years, new information. Finally, I draw attention to the fact that neutrinos
may have only just begun to reshape fundamental physics, given the fact that we
are still to explain the LSND anomaly and because the neutrino oscillation
phenomenon is ultimately sensitive to very small new-physics effects.Comment: invited brief review, 15 pages, 1 eps figure, typo corrected,
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