The Euratom Safeguards On-site Laboratories at the Reprocessing Plants of La Hague and Sellafield

In the European Union, nuclear material is reprocessed from irradiated power reactor fuel at two sites ¿ La Hague in France and Sellafield in the United Kingdom. These are the largest nuclear sites within the EU, processing many hundreds of tons of nuclear material in a year. Under the Euratom Treaty, the European Commission has the duty to assure that the nuclear material is only used for declared purposes. The Directorate General for Energy (DG ENER), acting for the Commission, assures itself that the terms of Article 77 of Chapter VII of the Treaty have been complied with. In contrast to the Non Proliferation Treaty, the Euratom Treaty requires to safeguard all civil nuclear material in all EU member states ¿ including the nuclear weapons states. The considerable amount of fissile material separated per year (several tonnes) calls for a stringent system of safeguards measures. The aim of safeguards is to deter diversion of nuclear material from peaceful use by maximizing the chance of early detection. At a broader level, it provides assurance to the public that the European nuclear industry, the EU member states and the European Union honour their legal duties under the Euratom Treaty and their commitments to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Efficient and effective safeguards measures are essential for the public acceptance of nuclear activities.JRC.E.7-Nuclear Safeguards and Forensic

Characterization and plant expression of glyphosate-tolerant enolpyruvylshikimate phosphate synthase

Abstract BACKGROUND: Glyphosate tolerance is a dominant trait in modern biotech crops. RESULTS: A gene encoding a glyphosate-tolerant EPSP synthase (aroA 1398 ) from bacterial strain ATX1398 was cloned and characterized. The protein is initiated at a GTG translational start codon to produce a protein that provides robust glyphosate resistance in Escherichia coli (Mig) Cast & Chalm. The aroA 1398 protein was expressed and purified from E. coli, and key kinetic values were determined (K i = 161 µM; K m (PEP) = 11.3 µM; k cat = 28.3 s −1 ). The full-length enzyme is 800-fold more resistant to glyphosate than the maize EPSP synthase while retaining high affinity for the substrate phosphoenol pyruvate. To evaluate further the potential of aroA 1398 , transgenic maize events expressing the aroA 1398 protein were generated. T 0 plants were screened for tolerance to glyphosate sprays at 1.3× commercial spray rates, and T 1 plants were selected that completely resisted glyphosate sprays at 1×, 2× and 4× recommended spray rates in field trials. CONCLUSION: These data suggest that aroA 1398 is a suitable candidate for conferring glyphosate tolerance in transgenic crop plants

How Attractive Is the Girl Next Door? An Assessment of Spatial Mate Acquisition and Paternity in the Solitary Cape Dune Mole-Rat, Bathyergus suillus

Behavioural observations of reproduction and mate choice in wild fossorial rodents are extremely limited and consequently indirect methods are typically used to infer mating strategies. We use a combination of morphological, reproductive, spatial, and genetic data to investigate the reproductive strategy of a solitary endemic species, the Cape dune mole-rat Bathyergus suillus. These data provide the first account on the population dynamics of this species. Marked sexual dimorphism was apparent with males being both significantly larger and heavier than females. Of all females sampled 36% had previously reproduced and 12% were pregnant at the time of capture. Post-partum sex ratio was found to be significantly skewed in favour of females. The paternity of fifteen litters (n = 37) was calculated, with sires assigned to progeny using both categorical and full probability methods, and including a distance function. The maximum distance between progeny and a putative sire was determined as 2149 m with males moving between sub-populations. We suggest that above-ground movement should not be ignored in the consideration of mate acquisition behaviour of subterranean mammals. Estimated levels of multiple paternity were shown to be potentially as high as 26%, as determined using sibship and sire assignment methods. Such high levels of multiple paternity have not been found in other solitary mole-rat species. The data therefore suggest polyandry with no evidence as yet for polygyny

Searching for stochastic gravitational waves using data from the two colocated LIGO Hanford detectors

Searches for a stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB) using terrestrial detectors typically involve cross-correlating data from pairs of detectors. The sensitivity of such cross-correlation analyses depends, among other things, on the separation between the two detectors: the smaller the separation, the better the sensitivity. Hence, a colocated detector pair is more sensitive to a gravitational-wave background than a noncolocated detector pair. However, colocated detectors are also expected to suffer from correlated noise from instrumental and environmental effects that could contaminate the measurement of the background. Hence, methods to identify and mitigate the effects of correlated noise are necessary to achieve the potential increase in sensitivity of colocated detectors. Here we report on the first SGWB analysis using the two LIGO Hanford detectors and address the complications arising from correlated environmental noise. We apply correlated noise identification and mitigation techniques to data taken by the two LIGO Hanford detectors, H1 and H2, during LIGO’s fifth science run. At low frequencies, 40–460 Hz, we are unable to sufficiently mitigate the correlated noise to a level where we may confidently measure or bound the stochastic gravitational-wave signal. However, at high frequencies, 460–1000 Hz, these techniques are sufficient to set a 95% confidence level upper limit on the gravitational-wave energy density of Ω(f) < 7.7 × 10[superscript -4](f/900  Hz)[superscript 3], which improves on the previous upper limit by a factor of ~180. In doing so, we demonstrate techniques that will be useful for future searches using advanced detectors, where correlated noise (e.g., from global magnetic fields) may affect even widely separated detectors.National Science Foundation (U.S.)United States. National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationCarnegie TrustDavid & Lucile Packard FoundationAlfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Detecting DoS Attack in Smart Home IoT Devices Using a Graph-Based Approach

The use of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices has surged in recent years. However, due to the lack of substantial security, IoT devices are vulnerable to cyber-attacks like Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. Most of the current security solutions are either computationally expensive or unscalable as they require known attack signatures or full packet inspection. In this paper, we introduce a novel Graph-based Outlier Detection in Internet of Things (GODIT) approach that (i) represents smart home IoT traffic as a real-time graph stream, (ii) efficiently processes graph data, and (iii) detects DoS attack in real-time. The experimental results on real-world data collected from IoT-equipped smart home show that GODIT is more effective than the traditional machine learning approaches, and is able to outperform current graph-stream anomaly detection approaches

Kentucky Legal Ethics Deskbook

Sixth Edition The latest edition of the Deskbook maintains the 3-volume format and for the first time exists only in an electronic version which is organized as follows. Volume I collects all the ethics rules used in Kentucky and includes the current Kentucky Rules of Professional Conduct, the Kentucky Rules of Professional Conduct (1990-2009), the Kentucky Code of Professional Responsibility (1971-1990), the Kentucky Canons of Professional Responsibility (1946-1971), and the Kentucky Code of Legal Ethics (1903-1946). A convenient index to all rules, codes, and canons is also included. The Kentucky Procedures for Disciplinary Enforcement (SCR 3.140-3.520), bar admission rules (SCR 2.000-2.540), provisions relating to paralegals (SCR 3.700), and the Ken- tucky Lawyer Assistance Program (KYLAP) (SCR 3.900-3.995) are also included. Chapters on Legal Ethics Research and Practical Resolutions to Ethical Problems round out Volume I. Volume II contains the bulk of the Deskbook, the complete collection of all Formal Ethics Opinions. In May of 2013, the Ethics Committee of the Kentucky Bar Association announced that it was withdrawing 65 of the nearly 440 formal ethics opinions the Committee had released over the last five decades. Opinions that have been marked as withdrawn by the Kentucky Bar Association are italicized and are included in Volume II for historical purposes. There is also an excellent index to the collection. Volume III consists of the opinions of the KBA Unauthorized Practice Com- mittee and is accompanied by a very useful index to these opinions. This volume also addresses judicial ethics and includes the Kentucky Code of Judicial Conduct, Opinions of the Ethics Committee of the Kentucky Judiciary, along with an in- dex to those opinions. The Rules of the Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission complete the Volume.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/lawfac_book/1010/thumbnail.jp

Molecular Alignment in Polyethylene during Cold Drawing Using In-Situ SANS and Raman Spectroscopy

Changes in the crystalline and mesoscale lamellar structure during plastic deformation of semicrystalline polymers have been extensively studied by X-ray diffraction techniques. However, direct measurements of single chain conformations during stretching have not been realized, although they are key to fully understand the structural transitions during cold drawing and their relation with the state of uniaxial stress. We report direct measurements of molecular alignment of a semicrystalline polymer <i>during</i> cold drawing by combining in-situ small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) and polarized Raman spectroscopy. The sample investigated is a linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) with density of 918 kg/m³ and melt index of 1.0 g/10 min. A multifaceted protocol consisting of hydrogen–deuterium exchange, followed by fractionation (by molecular weight, MW) and blending of selected deuterated fractions with protonated LLDPE, was used to elucidate, via SANS measurements, the response of the different fractions to uniaxial deformation. Under tensile deformation significant chain stretching occurs in the initial elastic regime. Further plastic deformation causes additional chain stretching, but to a lesser degree, that eventually plateaus in the strain hardening regime. Concurrently, the fraction of trans conformers increases linearly, as measured by in-situ Raman spectroscopy. The total orientation, quantified using an alignment factor, is lower for the lower MW fractions. We hypothesize through simple geometric arguments that this is directly related to the probability of forming intercrystal tie chains

The Safeguards On-Site Laboratory at La Hague June 2000 - June 2005 - Experience over Five Years of Operation

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