Individual Radiation Protection Monitoring in the Marshall Islands: Utrok Atoll (2003-2004)

The United States Department of Energy (U.S. DOE) has recently implemented a series of strategic initiatives to address long-term radiological surveillance needs at former U.S. nuclear test sites in the Marshall Islands. The plan is to engage local atoll communities in developing shared responsibilities for implementing radiation protection monitoring programs for resettled and resettling populations in the northern Marshall Islands. Using the pooled resources of the U.S. DOE and local atoll governments, individual radiological surveillance programs have been developed in whole body counting and plutonium urinalysis in order to accurately assess radiation doses resulting from the ingestion and uptake of fallout radionuclides contained in locally grown foods. Permanent whole body counting facilities have been established at three separate locations in the Marshall Islands (Figure 1). These facilities are operated and maintained by Marshallese technicians with scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) providing on-going technical support services. Bioassay samples are collected under controlled conditions and analyzed for plutonium isotopes at the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at LLNL using state-of-the art measurement technologies. We also conduct an on-going environmental monitoring and characterization program at selected sites in the northern Marshall Islands. The aim of the environmental program is to determine the level and distribution of important fallout radionuclides in soil, water and local foods with a view towards providing more accurate and updated dose assessments, incorporating knowledge of the unique behaviors and exposure pathways of fallout radionuclides in coral atoll ecosystems. These scientific studies have also been essential in helping guide the development of remedial options used in support of island resettlement. Together, the individual and environmental radiological surveillance programs are helping meet the informational needs of the U.S. DOE and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Our updated environmental assessments provide a strong scientific basis for predicting future change in exposure conditions especially in relation to changes in life-style, diet and/or land-use patterns. This information has important implications in addressing questions about existing (and future) radiological conditions on the islands, in determining the cost and the effectiveness of potential remedial measures, and in general policy support considerations. Perhaps most importantly, the recently established individual radiological surveillance programs provide affected atoll communities with an unprecedented level of radiation protection monitoring where, for the first time, local resources are being made available to monitor resettled and resettling populations on a continuous basis. As a hard copy supplement to Marshall Islands Program website (http://eed.llnl.gov/mi/), this document provides an overview of the individual radiation surveillance monitoring program established for the Utrok Atoll population group along with a full disclosure of all verified measurement data (2003-2004). The Utrok whole body counting facility has been temporarily stationed on Majuro Atoll and, in cooperation with the Utrok Atoll Local Government, serves as a national facility open to the general public. Readers are advised that an additional feature of the associated website is a provision whereby users are able to calculate and track radiation doses delivered to volunteers (de-identified information only) participating in the Marshall Islands Radiological Surveillance Program

Good scientific practice in MEEG Research: Progress and Perspectives

Good Scientific Practice (GSP) refers to both explicit and implicit rules, recommendations, and guidelines that help scientists to produce work that is of the highest quality at any given time, and to efficiently share that work with the community for further scrutiny or utilization.For experimental research using magneto- and electroencephalography (MEEG), GSP includes specific standards and guidelines for technical competence, which are periodically updated and adapted to new findings. However, GSP also needs to be periodically revisited in a broader light. At the LiveMEEG 2020 conference, a reflection on GSP was fostered that included explicitly documented guidelines and technical advances, but also emphasized intangible GSP: a general awareness of personal, organizational, and societal realities and how they can influence MEEG research.This article provides an extensive report on most of the LiveMEEG contributions and new literature, with the additional aim to synthesize ongoing cultural changes in GSP. It first covers GSP with respect to cognitive biases and logical fallacies, pre-registration as a tool to avoid those and other early pitfalls, and a number of resources to enable collaborative and reproducible research as a general approach to minimize misconceptions. Second, it covers GSP with respect to data acquisition, analysis, reporting, and sharing, including new tools and frameworks to support collaborative work. Finally, GSP is considered in light of ethical implications of MEEG research and the resulting responsibility that scientists have to engage with societal challenges.Considering among other things the benefits of peer review and open access at all stages, the need to coordinate larger international projects, the complexity of MEEG subject matter, and today's prioritization of fairness, privacy, and the environment, we find that current GSP tends to favor collective and cooperative work, for both scientific and for societal reasons

Carotenoid content and traditional knowledge of breadfruit cultivars of the Republic of the Marshall Islands

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and non-communicable diseases including cancer, heart disease and diabetes, are serious health problems in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), a small island nation of the Pacific. These health problems are related to the trend towards over-consumption of unhealthy imported processed foods and neglect of traditional foods. Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis and Artocarpus mariannensis) is the most widely available traditional starch food for Marshall Islands people. The ripe fruit flesh is yellow or sometimes orange, as with the Mejwaan cultivar, indicative of carotenoid content. Carotenoid-rich foods can protect against VAD and non-communicable diseases. Yet little information on carotenoid content of Marshallese breadfruit cultivars is available. This study documents traditional knowledge of breadfruit cultivars using ethnography, and analyzed 6 breadfruit cultivars of 2 species, A. altilis and A. mariannensis, for provitamin A (β- and α-carotene) and total carotenoid content, of using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The ripe seeded breadfruit Mejwaan contained strikingly rich concentrations of β-carotene (3540 μg/100 g fresh weight). Samples of other ripe and mature cultivars, characterized by lighter-colored flesh, contained-medium to low-carotenoid content (<5–102 μg/100 g fresh weight). As samples were harvested from field-grown plants, it should be noted that the quantity of carotenoids may vary when the same cultivars are planted in different sites. Local experts reported that Mejwaan was once common but is now becoming rare, and that people are now consuming its ripe flesh much less frequently; the discovery of Mejwaan's rich carotenoid content should be used to promote this cultivar for its important health benefits

There’s no such thing as a ‘true’ model: the challenge of assessing face validity*

To select among competing generative models of timeseries data, it is necessary to balance the goodness of fit (accuracy) and model complexity. Bayesian methods are a mathematically principled way to achieve this balance. However, when performing simulations – to assess the identifiability of models (face validation) – the best model identified by Bayesian model comparison might appear more complex than the model that actually generated the data. We illustrate this using dynamic causal models of human electrophysiological data, where models with multiple parameter modulations are selected as the best model, even if the true modulations are sparse. We explain this by the form of the complexity penalty, which is equivalent to weighted L2 norm. This phenomenon is an example of implicit prior biases that necessarily entail a complexity penalty

A dimensão comunicativa de uma exposição de objetos técnicos The communicative dimension of a technical objects exhibit

O presente trabalho discute algumas tendências dos museus de ciências e tecnologia. Inicialmente, é apresentada uma pequena introdução histórica dos museus de ciência no mundo contemporâneo, a fim de situar a presença dos espaços museográficos interativos com uma nova função de comunicação. Finalmente, por meio da análise de pequenos diálogos durante uma visita a uma exposição de objetos técnicos, refletimos sobre a negociação de significado do diálogo possível entre um objeto de exposição e o visitante.<br>This article discusses new approaches for science and technology museums. Firstly, we do a brief historic introduction about science museums and how they provide interactive museographic space. The goal is to make a new communication approach. Finally, through the analysis of the dialogues during the visit to the technical objects exhibit we seek insight into the negotiation through dialogue between the exhibit and the public