The use of unmanned aerial systems for the mapping of legacy uranium mines

AbstractHistorical mining of uranium mineral veins within Cornwall, England, has resulted in a significant amount of legacy radiological contamination spread across numerous long disused mining sites. Factors including the poorly documented and aged condition of these sites as well as the highly localised nature of radioactivity limit the success of traditional survey methods. A newly developed terrain-independent unmanned aerial system [UAS] carrying an integrated gamma radiation mapping unit was used for the radiological characterisation of a single legacy mining site. Using this instrument to produce high-spatial-resolution maps, it was possible to determine the radiologically contaminated land areas and to rapidly identify and quantify the degree of contamination and its isotopic nature. The instrument was demonstrated to be a viable tool for the characterisation of similar sites worldwide

Low altitude unmanned aerial vehicle for characterising remediation effectiveness following the FDNPP accident

AbstractOn the 12th of March 2011, The Great Tōhoku Earthquake occurred 70 km off the eastern coast of Japan, generating a large 14 m high tsunami. The ensuing catalogue of events over the succeeding 12 d resulted in the release of considerable quantities of radioactive material into the environment. Important to the large-scale remediation of the affected areas is the accurate and high spatial resolution characterisation of contamination, including the verification of decontaminated areas. To enable this, a low altitude unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with a lightweight gamma-spectrometer and height normalisation system was used to produce sub-meter resolution maps of contamination. This system provided a valuable method to examine both contaminated and remediated areas rapidly, whilst greatly reducing the dose received by the operator, typically in localities formerly inaccessible to ground-based survey methods. The characterisation of three sites within Fukushima Prefecture is presented; one remediated (and a site of much previous attention), one un-remediated and a third having been subjected to an alternative method to reduce emitted radiation dose

High-speed AFM with a light touch

No abstract available

Production of Magnetic Arsenic–Phosphorus Alloy Nanoribbons with Small Band Gaps and High Hole Conductivities

Quasi-1D nanoribbons provide a unique route to diversifying the properties of their parent 2D nanomaterial, introducing lateral quantum confinement and an abundance of edge sites. Here, a new family of nanomaterials is opened with the creation of arsenic–phosphorus alloy nanoribbons (AsPNRs). By ionically etching the layered crystal black arsenic–phosphorus using lithium electride followed by dissolution in amidic solvents, solutions of AsPNRs are formed. The ribbons are typically few-layered, several micrometers long with widths tens of nanometers across, and both highly flexible and crystalline. The AsPNRs are highly electrically conducting above 130 K due to their small band gap (ca. 0.035 eV), paramagnetic in nature, and have high hole mobilities, as measured with the first generation of AsP devices, directly highlighting their properties and utility in electronic devices such as near-infrared detectors, quantum computing, and charge carrier layers in solar cells

Pathogenetics of alveolar capillary dysplasia with misalignment of pulmonary veins.

Alveolar capillary dysplasia with misalignment of pulmonary veins (ACDMPV) is a lethal lung developmental disorder caused by heterozygous point mutations or genomic deletion copy-number variants (CNVs) of FOXF1 or its upstream enhancer involving fetal lung-expressed long noncoding RNA genes LINC01081 and LINC01082. Using custom-designed array comparative genomic hybridization, Sanger sequencing, whole exome sequencing (WES), and bioinformatic analyses, we studied 22 new unrelated families (20 postnatal and two prenatal) with clinically diagnosed ACDMPV. We describe novel deletion CNVs at the FOXF1 locus in 13 unrelated ACDMPV patients. Together with the previously reported cases, all 31 genomic deletions in 16q24.1, pathogenic for ACDMPV, for which parental origin was determined, arose de novo with 30 of them occurring on the maternally inherited chromosome 16, strongly implicating genomic imprinting of the FOXF1 locus in human lungs. Surprisingly, we have also identified four ACDMPV families with the pathogenic variants in the FOXF1 locus that arose on paternal chromosome 16. Interestingly, a combination of the severe cardiac defects, including hypoplastic left heart, and single umbilical artery were observed only in children with deletion CNVs involving FOXF1 and its upstream enhancer. Our data demonstrate that genomic imprinting at 16q24.1 plays an important role in variable ACDMPV manifestation likely through long-range regulation of FOXF1 expression, and may be also responsible for key phenotypic features of maternal uniparental disomy 16. Moreover, in one family, WES revealed a de novo missense variant in ESRP1, potentially implicating FGF signaling in the etiology of ACDMPV

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead