09 FERRY_04 LORD_c

Abstract: Interventions are crucial as they offer simple and inexpensive public health solutions that will be useful over the long term use. A Task Force on designing trials of nutritional interventions to slow cognitive decline in older adults was held in Toulouse in September 2012. The aim of the Task Force was to bring together leading experts from academia, the food industry and regulatory agencies to determine the best trial designs that would enable us to reach our goal of maintaining or improving cognitive function in apparently healthy aging people. An associated challenge for this Task Force was to determine the type of trials required by the Public Food Agencies for assessing the impact of nutritional compounds in comparison to well established requirements for drug trials. Although the required quality of the study design, rationale and statistical analysis remains the same, the studies designed to show reduction of cognitive decline require a long duration and the objectives of this task force was to determine best design for these trials. Two specific needs were identified to support trials of nutritional interventions: 1-Risk-reduction strategies are needed to tackle the growing burden of cognitive decline that may lead to dementia, 2-Innovative study designs are needed to improve the quality of these studies

Direct determination of isomeric polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in environmental samples by conventional and laser-excited Shpol'skii spectroscopy.

Various modes of Shpol'skii spectroscopy have been employed to directly determine a number of isomeric four to six-membered ring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in crude extracts of soil and sediment samples with different levels of pollution. The high selectivity of conventional Shpol'skii spectroscopy (lamp excitation-fluorescence and phosphorescence detection) enabled besides several priority PAHs, unambiguous identification of individual monomethylpyrenes, five- and six-membered ring PAH isomers. For a 10 μl sample volume, the absolute limit of detection varied from 0.2 picomole for benzo[e]pyrene (phosphorescence measurements) to 3 femtomole for perylene (lamp excitation/fluorescence detection). Application of laser excited Shpol'skii spectroscopy (LESS) with time-resolved fluorescence detection allowed direct ultra-selective determination of the most potent known to date carcinogen—dibenzo[a,l]pyrene (DB[a,l]P). For this compound, a low 2 femtomole limit of detection (15 percent repeatability) was achieved. DB[a,l]P contents were in the range of tens to hundreds ng/g for different samples. © 1995 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association

A particle-in-cell plus Monte Carlo study of plasma-induced damage of normal incidence collector optics used in extreme ultraviolet lithography

We present a kinetic simulation of the plasma formed by photoionization in the intense flux of an extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) light source. The model is based on the particle-in-cell plus Monte Carlo approach. The photoelectric effect and ionization by electron collisions are included. The time evolution of the low density argon plasma is simulated during and after the EUV pulse and the ion-induced sputtering of the coating material of a normal incidence collector mirror is computed. The relation between the time and position at which the ions are created and their final energy is studied, revealing how the evolution and the properties of the sheath influence the amount of sputtered material. The influence of the gas pressure and the source intensity is studied, evaluating the behavior of Ar+ and Ar2+ ions. A way to reduce the damage to the collector mirror is presented. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics

Simulation of the Neutral Inventory in the Pilot-PSI Beam

The Eunomia code is used to study the neutral species in and near a hydrogen plasma beam. Eunomia is a non-linear Monte Carlo transport code that solves the neutral equilibrium, given a fixed background plasma. The code is developed to study the neutral inventory of Pilot-PSI and Magnum-PSI, linear devices developed to study plasma surface interactions in similar conditions as expected in the ITER divertor. Results show the influence of elastic collisions and the outer vessel wall on the neutral species. In the center of the 2 cm diameter Pilot-PSI beam the results show a strong coupling to the plasma. Only millimeters away from the center, the neutral flow, temperature and density are strongly influenced by recombination processes at the vessel wall ((c) 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

The effect of afforestation on water recharge and nitrogen leaching in the Netherlands

Water balances and nitrogen budgets were studied in two chronosequences of oak and spruce on former arable land. Quantity and quality of rainfall and throughfall, soil water contents and concentrations in the soil solution were measured during a period of 1¿2 years. Hydrological fluxes were calculated using the soil hydrological model SWAP. Nitrogen leaching fluxes were based on monthly measured concentrations and simulated hydrological fluxes. Results showed that water recharge declined from approximately 485 mm/yr in arable land to 172 mm in the 18-year old oak stand and approximately 100 mm in the 13 and 14-year old spruce stands. For both chronosequences the decline in water recharge upon afforestation can be described by a power function; the exponent being ¿0.22 for oak and somewhat higher, ¿0.31, for spruce. Nitrogen leaching fluxes were negligible in the spruce stands and declined with age in the oak stands, from 16 kg/ha/yr at the youngest stand to 8 kg/ha/yr at the 18-year old stand. The nitrogen budget for the four oak stands increased with age. An explanation for this unexpected result may be the declining release of nitrogen by mineralization of organic matter present in the (former) agricultural soil. The data provide valuable information for the validation of simulation models and decision support systems used for policy decisions