RICORS2040 : The need for collaborative research in chronic kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a silent and poorly known killer. The current concept of CKD is relatively young and uptake by the public, physicians and health authorities is not widespread. Physicians still confuse CKD with chronic kidney insufficiency or failure. For the wider public and health authorities, CKD evokes kidney replacement therapy (KRT). In Spain, the prevalence of KRT is 0.13%. Thus health authorities may consider CKD a non-issue: very few persons eventually need KRT and, for those in whom kidneys fail, the problem is 'solved' by dialysis or kidney transplantation. However, KRT is the tip of the iceberg in the burden of CKD. The main burden of CKD is accelerated ageing and premature death. The cut-off points for kidney function and kidney damage indexes that define CKD also mark an increased risk for all-cause premature death. CKD is the most prevalent risk factor for lethal coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the factor that most increases the risk of death in COVID-19, after old age. Men and women undergoing KRT still have an annual mortality that is 10- to 100-fold higher than similar-age peers, and life expectancy is shortened by ~40 years for young persons on dialysis and by 15 years for young persons with a functioning kidney graft. CKD is expected to become the fifth greatest global cause of death by 2040 and the second greatest cause of death in Spain before the end of the century, a time when one in four Spaniards will have CKD. However, by 2022, CKD will become the only top-15 global predicted cause of death that is not supported by a dedicated well-funded Centres for Biomedical Research (CIBER) network structure in Spain. Realizing the underestimation of the CKD burden of disease by health authorities, the Decade of the Kidney initiative for 2020-2030 was launched by the American Association of Kidney Patients and the European Kidney Health Alliance. Leading Spanish kidney researchers grouped in the kidney collaborative research network Red de Investigación Renal have now applied for the Redes de Investigación Cooperativa Orientadas a Resultados en Salud (RICORS) call for collaborative research in Spain with the support of the Spanish Society of Nephrology, Federación Nacional de Asociaciones para la Lucha Contra las Enfermedades del Riñón and ONT: RICORS2040 aims to prevent the dire predictions for the global 2040 burden of CKD from becoming true

Fission of <math><mmultiscripts><mi>Fr</mi><mprescripts/><none/><mn>215</mn></mmultiscripts></math> studied with <math><mi>γ</mi></math> spectroscopic methods

International audienceBackground: Asymmetric fission is known to occur in two regions, the actinides and sublead, and is dependent on the fissioning system excitation energy. Experimental evidence in the sublead region show that this mode is surprisingly persistent with increasing energy and its origin is not fully understood.Purpose: To experimentally study the fusion-fission reaction of Fr215 at moderate excitation energy and determine previously unknown independent fission yields and other properties.Method: The compound nucleus was formed in the reaction O18+Au197. The prompt γ rays emitted during the reaction were measured with the high efficiency and high granularity ν-ball-2 spectrometer. Independent fission yields of even-even nuclei were determined by detecting triple-gamma cascades in the fission fragments.Results: The observed yields, although dominated by a symmetric peak, show maxima for heavy fragment of Z≈54–56, which is consistent with the known results in the actinide region but unexpected for the nuclide of interest, and at the studied excitation energy.Conclusions: The mode of asymmetric fission is present even at relatively high excitation energies in the system studied. This observation matches experimental findings in the sublead region, contrary to the actinides, and so far there is no well-developed explanation of this phenomenon

miniBELEN: A modular neutron counter for (, ) reactions

miniBELEN is a modular and transportable neutron moderated counter with a nearly flat neutron detection efficiency up to 10 MeV. Modularity implies that the moderator can be reassembled in different ways in order to obtain different types of response. The detector has been developed in the context of the Measurement of Alpha Neutron Yields (MANY) collaboration, which is a scientific effort aiming to carry out measurements of (, ) production yields, reaction cross-sections and neutron energy spectra. In this work we present and discuss several configurations of the miniBELEN detector. The experimental validation of the efficiency calculations using 252Cf sources and the measurement of the 27Al(, ) 30P reaction is also presented

Decay studies in the A∼225 Po-Fr region from the DESPEC campaign at GSI in 2021

International audienceThe HISPEC-DESPEC collaboration aims at investigating the structure of exotic nuclei formed in fragmentation reactions with decay spectroscopymeasurements, as part of the FAIR Phase-0 campaign at GSI. This paper reportson first results of an experiment performed in spring 2021, with a focus on β-decaystudies in the Po-Fr nuclei in the 220 <A< 230 island of octupole deformationexploiting the DESPEC setup. Ion-beta correlations and fast-timing techniques arebeing employed, giving an insight into this difficult-to-reach region

The DESPEC setup for GSI and FAIR

International audienceThe DEcay SPECtroscopy (DESPEC) setup for nuclear structure investigations was developed and commissioned at GSI, Germany in preparation for a full campaign of experiments at the FRS and Super-FRS. In this paper, we report on the first employment of the setup in the hybrid configuration with the AIDA implanter coupled to the FATIMA LaBr3(Ce) fast-timing array, and high-purity germanium detectors. Initial results are shown from the first experiments carried out with the setup. An overview of the setup and function is discussed, including technical advancements along the path