The TIANSHAN Radio Experiment for Neutrino Detection

An antenna array devoted to the autonomous radio-detection of high energy cosmic rays is being deployed on the site of the 21 cm array radio telescope in XinJiang, China. Thanks in particular to the very good electromagnetic environment of this remote experimental site, self-triggering on extensive air showers induced by cosmic rays has been achieved with a small scale prototype of the foreseen antenna array. We give here a detailed description of the detector and present the first detection of extensive air showers with this prototype.Comment: 37 pages, 15 figures. Astroparticle Physics (in press

Application of the INSTANT-HPS PN Transport Code to the C5G7 Benchmark Problem

INSTANT is the INL's next generation neutron transport solver to support high-fidelity multi-physics reactor simulation INSTANT is in continuous development to extend its capability Code is designed to take full advantage of middle to large cluster (10-1000 processors) Code is designed to focus on method adaptation while also mesh adaptation will be possible. It utilizes the most modern computing techniques to generate a neutronics tool of full-core transport calculations for reactor analysis and design. It can perform calculations on unstructured 2D/3D triangular, hexagonal and Cartesian geometries. Calculations can be easily extended to more geometries because of the independent mesh framework coded with the model Fortran. This code has a multigroup solver with thermal rebalance and Chebyshev acceleration. It employs second-order PN and Hybrid Finite Element method (PNHFEM) discretization scheme. Three different in-group solvers - preconditioned Conjugate Gradient (CG) method, preconditioned Generalized Minimal Residual Method (GMRES) and Red-Black iteration - have been implemented and parallelized with the spatial domain decomposition in the code. The input is managed with extensible markup language (XML) format. 3D variables including the flux distributions are outputted into VTK files, which can be visualized by tools such as VisIt and ParaView. An extension of the code named INSTANTHPS provides the capability to perform 3D heterogeneous transport calculations within fuel pins. C5G7 is an OECD/NEA benchmark problem created to test the ability of modern deterministic transport methods and codes to treat reactor core problems without spatial homogenization. This benchmark problem had been widely analyzed with various code packages. In this transaction, results of the applying the INSTANT-HPS code to the C5G7 problem are summarized

Systemic Effects of Arctic Pollutants in Beluga Whales Indicated by CYP1A1 Expression

Cytochrome P450 1A1 (CYP1A1) is induced by exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and planar halogenated aromatic hydrocarbons (PHAHs) such as non-ortho polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). In this study, we examined CYP1A1 protein expression immunohistochemically in multiple organs of beluga whales from two locations in the Arctic and from the St. Lawrence estuary. These beluga populations have some of the lowest (Arctic sites) and highest (St. Lawrence estuary) concentrations of PCBs in blubber of all cetaceans. Samples from these populations might be expected to have different contaminant-induced responses, reflecting their different exposure histories. The pattern and extent of CYP1A1 staining in whales from all three locations were similar to those seen in animal models in which CYP1A has been highly induced, indicating a high-level expression in these whales. CYP1A1 induction has been related to toxic effects of PHAHs or PAHs in some species. In St. Lawrence beluga, the high level of CYP1A1 expression coupled with high levels of contaminants (including CYP1A1 substrates, e.g., PAH procarcinogens potentially activated by CYP1A1) indicates that CYP1A1 could be involved in the development of neoplastic lesions seen in the St. Lawrence beluga population. The systemic high-level expression of CYP1A1 in Arctic beluga suggests that effects of PAHs or PHAHs may be expected in Arctic populations, as well. The high-level expression of CYP1A1 in the Arctic beluga suggests that this species is highly sensitive to CYP1A1 induction by aryl hydrocarbon receptor agonists

Ethnic Variation in Inflammatory Profile in Tuberculosis

PMCID: PMC3701709This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Development of a radio detection array for the observation of showers induced by UHE Tau neutrinos

International audienceDevelopment of a radio detection array for the observation of showers induced by UHE Tau neutrino

Search for Anisotropy of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with the Telescope Array Experiment

We study the anisotropy of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray (UHECR) events collected by the Telescope Array (TA) detector in the first 40 months of operation. Following earlier studies, we examine event sets with energy thresholds of 10 EeV, 40 EeV, and 57 EeV. We find that the distributions of the events in right ascension and declination are compatible with an isotropic distribution in all three sets. We then compare with previously reported clustering of the UHECR events at small angular scales. No significant clustering is found in the TA data. We then check the events with E>57 EeV for correlations with nearby active galactic nuclei. No significant correlation is found. Finally, we examine all three sets for correlations with the large-scale structure of the Universe. We find that the two higher-energy sets are compatible with both an isotropic distribution and the hypothesis that UHECR sources follow the matter distribution of the Universe (the LSS hypothesis), while the event set with E>10 EeV is compatible with isotropy and is not compatible with the LSS hypothesis at 95% CL unless large deflection angles are also assumed. We show that accounting for UHECR deflections in a realistic model of the Galactic magnetic field can make this set compatible with the LSS hypothesis.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure