Upgraded Calibrations of the Thomson System at DIII-D

The DIII-D Thomson system measures electron density and temperature with eight pulsed ND:YAG lasers along three paths through the plasma vessel. The components of the Thomson system are absolutely calibrated so the measurements can be combined into a single profile from a normalized plasma radius ({rho}) of about 0.1 to the edge of the plasma. A monochromator calibration and opto-electronic calibration measure the detectors' absolute sensitivity to background and pulsed light. A Rayleigh scattering calibration and transmission calibrations measure the transmission of light to the detectors. The calibration systems are being upgraded to reduce the effect of systematic errors on the temperature and density measurements. The systematic errors can be checked by a comparison of overlapping channels and estimated from fits to the profiles. The contributions of the systematic uncertainties relative to the statistical uncertainties of the measurement are discussed through simulations and experimental data

New Thomson scattering Laser Control for DIII-D

A Laser Control system has been built for the DIII-D Scattering Diagnostic. This new system has provided the capability to place the laser probe pulses with one microsecond timing precision throughout the DIII-D shot. The new system fires the eight lasers with a programmable sequence which repeats ever 50 ms. If one wants to probe the plasma at a higher rate to study a fast paced event, the new control circuit can fire all charged lasers in rapid succession (BURST MODE). This burst rate is programmable. The new Laser Control system successfully replaced the previous control scheme which consisted of three VME Motorola 68030 computers (one host under UNIX VME V/68 and two interrupt driven targets under VME Exec. The old system was not successful due to the many VME interrupts needed to service the lasers. The new hardware approach is much more reliable. The old system still controls data acquisition and as a monitoring system since it does not have the burden of controlling the lasers. A brief description of the Thomson Scattering diagnostic will be presented with emphasis in the new upgraded laser firing control system and data acquisition timing control

A Minimal Set of SNPs for the Noninvasive Prenatal Diagnosis of β-Thalassaemia

β-thalassaemia is one of the commonest autosomal recessive single-gene disorders worldwide. Prenatal tests use invasive methods, posing a risk for the pregnancy itself. Development of a noninvasive prenatal diagnostic method is, therefore, of paramount importance. The aim of the present study is to identify high-heterozygote informative single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), suitable for the development of noninvasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) of β-thalassaemia. SNP genotyping analysis was performed on 75 random samples from the Cypriot population for 140 SNPs across the β-globin cluster. Shortlisted, highly heterozygous SNPs were then examined in 101 carrier families for their applicability in the noninvasive detection of paternally inherited alleles. Forty-nine SNPs displayed more than 6% heterozygosity and were selected for NIPD analysis, revealing 72.28% of the carrier families eligible for qualitative SNP-based NIPD, and 92% for quantitative detection. Moreover, inference of haplotypes showed predominant haplotypes and many subhaplotypes with sufficient prevalence for diagnostic exploitation. SNP-based analyses are sensitive and specific for the detection of the paternally inherited allele in maternal plasma. This study provides proof of concept for this approach, highlighting its superiority to NIPD based on single markers and thus providing a blueprint for the general development of noninvasive prenatal diagnostic assays for β-thalassaemia. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/University College London

Gilded medieval Islamic glazed ceramics: non-destructive surface analyses in search of technological features

International audienc

Mass Segmentation of Dense Breasts on Digitized Mammograms: Analysis of a Probability-Based Function

In this study, a segmentation algorithm based on steepest changes of a probabilistic cost function was tested on non-processed and pre-processed dense breast images in an attempt to determine the efficacy of pre-processing for dense breast masses. Also, the inter-observer variability between expert radiologists is studied. The preprocessing method used was background trend correction. The algorithm, based on searching the steepest changes on a probabilistic cost function, was tested on 107 cancerous masses and 98 benign masses. Their density ratings were 3 and 4 according to the ACR density rating scale. The computer-segmented results were validated using the overlap, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, Dice similarity index, and kappa statistics. The mean values for the accuracy statistic ranged from 0.71-0.84 for cancer cases and 0.81-0.86 for benign cases. For nearly all statistics there were statistically significant differences between the expert radiologists