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Development of an IAEA Training Course for Future U.S. Inspectors
U.S. citizens currently make up only 12% of the positions held in the IAEAās Department of Safeguards. While the United States has maintained a high level of support for the Agency over the duration of its history, the number of American inspectors currently in the field does not reflect this level of involvement. As a result, the National Nuclear Security Administrationās Office of International Relations, as part of the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) mission, has tasked Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to develop a rigorous two week hands-on training program to encourage and operationally acclimatize U.S. Citizens who are interested in applying for IAEA inspector positions using IAEA authorized equipment at INL. Idaho National Laboratory is one-of-a-kind in its ability to train IAEA inspectors by including training at nuclear facilities on site and includes, for example, direct measurement of an active spent fuel storage cooling pond. This accredited course will introduce and train attendees on the major IAEA systems used in collecting nuclear safeguards data and performing safeguards inspections. Unique in the United States, these classes will give attendees direct hands-on training and will address equipment purpose, function, operating principles, application, and troubleshooting, based upon what would be expected of an IAEA Safeguards Inspector in the field and in the office. Upon completion, U.S. applicants will be better qualified to pursue a position in the IAEA Department of Safeguards Operational Divisions. In support, INL has recently established a new laboratory space to house state of the art nuclear safeguards instrumentation. Currently, equipment installed in the laboratory space includes attended systems: 3DLR (3-D Imaging Laser) for design information verification, a Digital Cerenkov Viewing Device for measurement of spent fuel, HM-5 handheld radiation detectors, quantitative neutron and gamma systems; unattended monitoring systems including: NGAM and MiniGRAND radiation systems and a DMOS camera system, and VACOSS/EOSS Optical Sealing Systems.
Perspectives on ENCODE
The Encylopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project launched in 2003 with the long-term goal of developing a comprehensive map of functional elements in the human genome. These included genes, biochemical regions associated with gene regulation (for example, transcription factor binding sites, open chromatin, and histone marks) and transcript isoforms. The marks serve as sites for candidate cis-regulatory elements (cCREs) that may serve functional roles in regulating gene expression1. The project has been extended to model organisms, particularly the mouse. In the third phase of ENCODE, nearly a million and more than 300,000 cCRE annotations have been generated for human and mouse, respectively, and these have provided a valuable resource for the scientific community.11Nsciescopu
Expanded encyclopaedias of DNA elements in the human and mouse genomes
AbstractThe human and mouse genomes contain instructions that specify RNAs and proteins and govern the timing, magnitude, and cellular context of their production. To better delineate these elements, phase III of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project has expanded analysis of the cell and tissue repertoires of RNA transcription, chromatin structure and modification, DNA methylation, chromatin looping, and occupancy by transcription factors and RNA-binding proteins. Here we summarize these efforts, which have produced 5,992 new experimental datasets, including systematic determinations across mouse fetal development. All data are available through the ENCODE data portal (https://www.encodeproject.org), including phase II ENCODE1 and Roadmap Epigenomics2 data. We have developed a registry of 926,535 human and 339,815 mouse candidate cis-regulatory elements, covering 7.9 and 3.4% of their respective genomes, by integrating selected datatypes associated with gene regulation, and constructed a web-based server (SCREEN; http://screen.encodeproject.org) to provide flexible, user-defined access to this resource. Collectively, the ENCODE data and registry provide an expansive resource for the scientific community to build a better understanding of the organization and function of the human and mouse genomes.11Nsciescopu