The dead shall be raised : Multidisciplinary analysis of human skeletons reveals complexity in 19th century immigrant socioeconomic history and identity in New Haven, Connecticut

In July 2011, renovations to Yale-New Haven Hospital inadvertently exposed the cemetery of Christ Church, New Haven, Connecticut’s first Catholic cemetery. While this cemetery was active between 1833 and 1851, both the church and its cemetery disappeared from public records, making the discovery serendipitous. Four relatively well-preserved adult skeletons were recovered with few artifacts. All four individuals show indicators of manual labor, health and disease stressors, and dental health issues. Two show indicators of trauma, with the possibility of judicial hanging in one individual. Musculoskeletal markings are consistent with physical stress, and two individuals have arthritic indicators of repetitive movement/specialized activities. Radiographic analyses show osteopenia, healed trauma, and other pathologies in several individuals. Dental calculus analysis did not identify any tuberculosis indicators, despite osteological markers. Isotopic analyses of teeth indicate that all four were likely recent immigrants to the Northeastern United States. Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA were recovered from three individuals, and these analyses identified ancestry, hair/eye color, and relatedness. Genetic and isotopic results upended our initial ancestry assessment based on burial context alone. These individuals provide biocultural evidence of New Haven’s Industrial Revolution and the plasticity of ethnic and religious identity in the immigrant experience. Their recovery and the multifaceted analyses described here illuminate a previously undescribed part of the city’s rich history. The collective expertise of biological, geochemical, archaeological, and historical researchers interprets socioeconomic and cultural identity better than any one could alone. Our combined efforts changed our initial assumptions of a poor urban Catholic cemetery’s membership, and provide a template for future discoveries and analyses

Analytical evaluation of dose measurement of critical accident at SILENE (Contract research)

Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) jointly organized SILENE Accident Dosimetry Intercomparison Exercise to intercompare the dose measurement systems of participating countries. Each participating country carried out dose measurements in the same irradiation field, and the measurement results were mutually compared. The participated in the exercise to measure the doses of gamma rays and neutron from SILENE by using thermoluminescence dosimeters (TLD's) and an alanine dosimeter. In this examination, the derived evaluation formulae for obtaining a tissue-absorbed dose from measured value (ambient dose equivalent) of TLD for neutron. We reported the tissue-absorbed dose computed using this evaluation formula to OECD/NEA. TLD's for neutron were irradiated in the TRACY facility to verify the evaluation formulae. The results of TLD's were compared with the calculations of MCNP and measurements with alanine dose meter. We found that the ratio of the dose by the evaluation formula to the measured value by the alanine dosimeter was 0.94 and the formula agreed within 6%. From examination of this TRACY, we can conclude that the value reported to OECD/NEA has equivalent accuracy

Dynamic Range for Bone Conduction Ultrasound

Introduction Since Gavreau [1] reported that ultrasound could be perceived by bone conduction, controversial discussions have surrounded the concept of the auditory perception of ultrasound. Particular attention has been paid to its perception mechanism and to whether or not the profoundly hearingimpaired can detect ultrasound and discriminate ultrasound modulated by different speech sounds. Consideration is being given to the possibility of using ultrasound hearing aids as an alternative to cochlear implant. Pertaining to the peripheral mechanism of ultrasound perception, the following hypotheses were suggested by Dieroff and Ertelsu [2]. 1) Ultrasonic perception as a result of inadequate stimulation of particular sections of the hearing system [3]. 2) Ultrasonic perception as a result of adequate stimulation of particular sections of the hearing system. The second hypothesis was classified into two categories: the existence of rudimentary ultrasonic receptors [4,5] and the generati