Determination of iohexol in canine plasma – strong correlation between enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, high-performance liquid chromatography, and neutron activation analysis

Iohexol is a non-radioactive, iodinated, water-soluble radiographic contrast medium that is widely used in detection imaging for both clinical and scientific purposes. It has also been used as a marker for glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and intestinal permeability (IP) in both humans and animals, such as dogs, rats and cats. Currently, iohexol is determined mainly by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) methods which limit its use in veterinary clinical practice. The aim of this study was to validate an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and its accuracy for the measurement of iohexol in canine plasma by comparison with HPLC and neutron activation analysis (NAA). Blank and iohexol-containing blood samples (n=100) from Beagle dogs were collected from the jugular vein in lithium heparin tubes before and after intravenous application of 3.0 g iohexol/dog via the cephalic vein. The results of this study show that the correlation coefficients when comparing ELISA vs. HPLC (r=0.99), ELISA vs. NAA (r=0.99) and HPLC vs. NAA (r=0.98) are all excellent. In conclusion, the measurement of iohexol from canine plasma using ELISA is as reproducible and reliable as using HPLC or NAA. However, using ELISA for measuring iohexol may be more practical, economical and useful for clinical practice and research than using HPLC or NAA

Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET

The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR

Relationship of edge localized mode burst times with divertor flux loop signal phase in JET

A phase relationship is identified between sequential edge localized modes (ELMs) occurrence times in a set of H-mode tokamak plasmas to the voltage measured in full flux azimuthal loops in the divertor region. We focus on plasmas in the Joint European Torus where a steady H-mode is sustained over several seconds, during which ELMs are observed in the Be II emission at the divertor. The ELMs analysed arise from intrinsic ELMing, in that there is no deliberate intent to control the ELMing process by external means. We use ELM timings derived from the Be II signal to perform direct time domain analysis of the full flux loop VLD2 and VLD3 signals, which provide a high cadence global measurement proportional to the voltage induced by changes in poloidal magnetic flux. Specifically, we examine how the time interval between pairs of successive ELMs is linked to the time-evolving phase of the full flux loop signals. Each ELM produces a clear early pulse in the full flux loop signals, whose peak time is used to condition our analysis. The arrival time of the following ELM, relative to this pulse, is found to fall into one of two categories: (i) prompt ELMs, which are directly paced by the initial response seen in the flux loop signals; and (ii) all other ELMs, which occur after the initial response of the full flux loop signals has decayed in amplitude. The times at which ELMs in category (ii) occur, relative to the first ELM of the pair, are clustered at times when the instantaneous phase of the full flux loop signal is close to its value at the time of the first ELM

Impact of nitrogen seeding on confinement and power load control of a high-triangularity JET ELMy H-mode plasma with a metal wall

This paper reports the impact on confinement and power load of the high-shape 2.5MA ELMy H-mode scenario at JET of a change from an all carbon plasma facing components to an all metal wall. In preparation to this change, systematic studies of power load reduction and impact on confinement as a result of fuelling in combination with nitrogen seeding were carried out in JET-C and are compared to their counterpart in JET with a metallic wall. An unexpected and significant change is reported on the decrease of the pedestal confinement but is partially recovered with the injection of nitrogen.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figure