Thermal annealing response following irradiation of a CMOS imager for the JUICE JANUS instrument

ESA's JUICE (JUpiter ICy moon Explorer) spacecraft is an L-class mission destined for the Jovian system in 2030. Its primary goals are to investigate the conditions for planetary formation and the emergence of life, and how does the solar system work. The JANUS camera, an instrument on JUICE, uses a 4T back illuminated CMOS image sensor, the CIS115 designed by Teledyne e2v. JANUS imager test campaigns are studying the CIS115 following exposure to gammas, protons, electrons and heavy ions, simulating the harsh radiation environment present in the Jovian system. The degradation of 4T CMOS device performance following proton fluences is being studied, as well as the effectiveness of thermal annealing to reverse radiation damage. One key parameter for the JANUS mission is the Dark current of the CIS115, which has been shown to degrade in previous radiation campaigns. A thermal anneal of the CIS115 has been used to accelerate any annealing following the irradiation as well as to study the evolution of any performance characteristics. CIS115s have been irradiated to double the expected End of Life (EOL) levels for displacement damage radiation (2×1010 protons, 10 MeV equivalent). Following this, devices have undergone a thermal anneal cycle at 100°C for 168 hours to reveal the extent to which CIS115 recovers pre-irradiation performance. Dark current activation energy analysis following proton fluence gives information on trap species present in the device and how effective anneal is at removing these trap species. Thermal anneal shows no quantifiable change in the activation energy of the dark current following irradiation

Genetic variants in novel pathways influence blood pressure and cardiovascular disease risk.

Blood pressure is a heritable trait influenced by several biological pathways and responsive to environmental stimuli. Over one billion people worldwide have hypertension (≥140 mm Hg systolic blood pressure or  ≥90 mm Hg diastolic blood pressure). Even small increments in blood pressure are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events. This genome-wide association study of systolic and diastolic blood pressure, which used a multi-stage design in 200,000 individuals of European descent, identified sixteen novel loci: six of these loci contain genes previously known or suspected to regulate blood pressure (GUCY1A3-GUCY1B3, NPR3-C5orf23, ADM, FURIN-FES, GOSR2, GNAS-EDN3); the other ten provide new clues to blood pressure physiology. A genetic risk score based on 29 genome-wide significant variants was associated with hypertension, left ventricular wall thickness, stroke and coronary artery disease, but not kidney disease or kidney function. We also observed associations with blood pressure in East Asian, South Asian and African ancestry individuals. Our findings provide new insights into the genetics and biology of blood pressure, and suggest potential novel therapeutic pathways for cardiovascular disease prevention