Critical evaluation of internal normalization and standard-sample-bracketing for accurate ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr analysis

[EN] This contribution reports on the recently held MEDAMI 2019 workshop in Valencia (15-17th May 2019). This workshop is about advanced molecular imaging and the main topic of this last edition was Imaging in Immunotherapy. Around 70 attenders met together during three days. This meeting made it possible to join medical doctors and instrumentalists. In MEDAMI 2019 it was exposed the new immunotherapies from a clinical and research point of view. It was shown the already observed improvements when using these therapies. At the same time, we heard about the difficulties and limitations of current molecular imaging in this particular field. It was clear that improvements in system sensitivity and resolution are demanded. Timing information can be utilized in different ways to improve the image quality in PET systems. Precise Coincidence Time Resolution (CTR) improves the signal-to-noise ratio and, therefore, the image contrast, allowing for instance to distinguish low uptake tumors, multicentric lesions, or tumor heterogeneity, to name but a few. Both high time resolution and angular coverage in a PET system can improve the effective sensitivity. An example of a system benchmarking the timing resolution is the Siemens Biograph Vision with 214 ps FWHM, enhancing the detectability. The Explorer total-body PET from UC Davis improves the system sensitivity by having a 2 meters long PET scanner. Deep investigations, from different research groups, are being carried out to further push the limits of timing resolution. This work also describes some of the projects on high timing performance that are being carried out at the Detector for Molecular Imaging Lab (DMIL) at the Institute for Instrumentation in Molecular Imaging (i3M) in Valencia. The DMIL group has extensively worked on detectors and implementation of PET systems enabling the use of accurate timing information. In this progress report we describe the results obtained at the DMIL regarding timing determination in gamma-ray detectors both based on monolithic and pixelated crystals. Although with 15 min thick LYSO blocks it was tough to obtain values of CTR below 500 ps when using analog SiPMs and ASIC-based readout, this was improved down to 250 ps if small 3 mm size and 6 mm height pixels under the one-to-one coupling approach were enabled. This type of approach, the one-to-one coupling, seems to benefit from the light collection in a single photosensor element and, therefore, to improve the timing properties. Monolithic blocks offer, on the contrary, advantages such as photon depth of interaction. In order to separate Compton and photoelectric events we have thought of a detector block design with a high aspect ratio, using LYSO crystals of 51 mm size vs. 3 mm thickness, read-out by the four lateral sides. We have demonstrated the possibility to reach below 2 mm FWHM spatial resolution with an energy resolution of 12%.

Start of Antiplatelet Therapy Increases the Prevalence of Intraplaque Hemorrhage in Patients With Advanced Carotid Artery Lesions: A Longitudinal MR Imaging Study

Abstract. Dust orientation is an ongoing investigation in recent years (Ulanowski et al., 2007). Its potential proof will be a paradigm shift for dust remote sensing, invalidating the currently used simplifications of randomly-oriented particles. Vertically-resolved measurements of dust orientation can be acquired with the new polarization lidar “WALL-E”, designed to target the off-diagonal elements of the backscatter matrix which are non-zero only when the particles are oriented (Tsekeri et al., 2021). Herein, we present first measurements of oriented dust particles acquired during the ESA Aeolus Cal/Val Campaign “ASKOS” at Cabo Verde (June and September 2022). Acknowledgments: This research was supported by D-TECT (Grant Agreement 725698) funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and PANGEA4CalVal (Grant Agreement 101079201) funded by European Union’s Horizon Widera 2021 Access program.  

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is known to be one of the deadliest cancers due to its late diagnosis and faster metastasis rate1. Thus, the time required to test the patient-derived cancer cells against different therapeutics becomes extremely crucial. Gene expression analysis using real-time PCR is vital, typically when designing patient-specific therapeutics. 2D tumor models do not represent the true picture of the tumor in vivo. In order to perform these gene expression studies, robust 3D cancer models are required2. The traditional techniques of generating cancer spheroids using U-bottom wells and hanging drop methods are effective but are limited by scalability as well as the limitations associated with the traditional organoid architecture. Gene expression studies of spheroids under different combinations of drug treatment thus requires many well defined and easy to handle spheroids. Here, we are trying to perform real-time PCR studies to access the gene expression changes on MIA PaCa-2 microgel based spheroids generated using co-axial droplet microfluidics with or without stromal cells. This 3D platform will enable gene expression studies in miniature co-culture tumor models. In addition, PCR and single-cell sequencing analyses will define the gene expression changes in the recently described conditionally reprogramed, patient-derived, primary PDAC cultures3. The establishment and analysis of this 3D model is fast, reproducible and can be easily scaled to enable high-throughput screening, thereby providing an opportunity to design patient-specific precision medicine. The research leading to these results received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 759959, ERC-StG “INTERCELLMED”).

We appreciate the comment1 on our recent study2 of the risk of stroke the first year after a delivery resulting from assisted reproductive technologies (ART) made by Drs. McCaughey and Dodge. We agree that multiple births is a potential mediator (not a potential confounder) of the relationship between the use of ART and the risk of stroke. Incorporating this into the multivariable model might therefore indeed be considered an over-adjustment and may introduce bias. Omitting adjustment for multiple births did not substantially change the association between delivery after using ART and risk of stroke during the first year after delivery, with an adjusted HR of 1.10 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.77, 1.57) when including an indicator for multiple births, compared to an adjusted HR of 1.12 (95% CI 0.79, 1.58) when excluding this adjustment. The main purpose of our study was to replicate in a different study population the analyses made by Sachdev et al.3 We therefore chose an adjustment strategy as similar as possible to this previous study, to ensure the comparability of the findings from the two studies. We would also like to highlight our main study on the long-term risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) overall after the use of ART.4 Here, we did not restrict the analysis to the first year after delivery. That study also includes a more detailed description of both multiple births and pregnancy complications as potential mediators of the relationship between the use of ART and women's risk of CVD. Conception and Design: Maria C. Magnus and Signe Opdahl; Acquisition and analysis of data: Maria C. Magnus and Signe Opdahl; Interpretation of data: Maria C. Magnus and Signe Opdahl; Drafting of the manuscript: Maria C. Magnus; Critical revision of the manuscript: Signe Opdahl. This work was funded by a grant from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 947684). The effort was also partly supported by the Research Council of Norway (project no. 320656), and through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme (project no. 262700), the Nordic Trial Alliance (grant number 71450), the Central Norway Regional Health Authorities (grant number 46045000), the Nordic Federation of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (grant numbers NF13041, NF15058, NF16026 and NF17043), the Interreg-Öresund-Kattegat-Skagerrak European Regional Development Fund (ReproUnion project) and the Swedish state under the agreement between the Swedish government and the county councils, the ALF-agreement (ALFGBG-70940). The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Research for this chapter has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 and innovation programme, grant agreement ERC CoG 648535.

<p>The long–range transport of larger than expected dust particles has been established in numerous observational studies. However, dust transport models struggle to simulate the observed particle size distributions. Studies utilizing a new version of WRF-chem code that contains the full size range of dust particles (0.2-100μm in diameter), estimated that approximately 80% reduction in the particles’ settling velocity is required for the particles to be transported from the desert towards the Cape Verde. Here, we examine the effect of the dust particles’ shape in the dynamics of coarse and giant long-range transport. We specifically apply a new drag coefficient for spheroids in idealized atmospheric WRF-chem simulations above the Atlantic Ocean. Additionally, since there is much confusion about the definition of the size of non-spherical dust particles, where some studies define size as the diameter of a sphere with the same volume, while others as the particles’ maximum, we perform simulations comparing the spherical and spheroid dust particles using both those two different approaches. The results are encouraging for the explanation of long –range dust transport, however more processes should be re-visited, including the dust radiation effects of non-spherical articles.</p><p><strong>Acknowledgements</strong></p><p>This research was supported by D-TECT (Grant Agreement 725698) funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Eleni Drakaki is funded by Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Fellowship.</p><p> </p>

Sex differences in the inflammatory response and inflammation-induced vascular dysfunction

BackgroundThis study applies multimodal MRI to investigate neurodevelopment in nine-year-old children born to cancer-complicated pregnancies.MethodsIn this cohort study, children born after cancer-complicated pregnancies were recruited alongside 1:1 matched controls regarding age, sex and gestational age at birth (GA). Multimodal MRI was used to investigate whole-brain and subcortical volume, cortical structure (using surface-based morphometry), white matter microstructure (using fixel-based analysis) and functional connectivity (using resting-state blood-oxygen-level-dependant signal correlations). Graph theory probed whole-brain structural and functional organization. For each imaging outcome we conducted two group comparisons: 1) children born after cancer-complicated pregnancies versus matched controls, and 2) the subgroup of children with prenatal chemotherapy exposure versus matched controls. In both models, we used the covariate of GA and the group-by-GA interaction, using false-discovery-rate (FDR) or family-wise-error (FWE) correction for multiple comparisons. Exploratory post-hoc analyses investigated the relation between brain structure/function, neuropsychological outcome and maternal oncological/obstetrical history.FindingsForty-two children born after cancer-complicated pregnancies were included in this study, with 30 prenatally exposed to chemotherapy. Brain organization and functional connectivity were not significantly different between groups. Both cancer and chemotherapy in pregnancy, as compared to matched controls, were associated with a lower travel depth, indicating less pronounced gyrification, in the left superior temporal gyrus (pFDR ≤ 006), with post-hoc analysis indicating platinum derivatives during pregnancy as a potential risk factor (p = .028). Both cancer and chemotherapy in pregnancy were related to a lower fibre cross-section (FCS) and lower fibre density and cross-section (FDC) in the posterior corpus callosum and its tapetal fibres, compared to controls. Higher FDC in the chemotherapy subgroup and higher FCS in the whole study group were observed in the anterior thalamic radiations. None of the psycho-behavioural parameters correlated significantly with any of the brain differences in the study group or chemotherapy subgroup.InterpretationPrenatal exposure to maternal cancer and its treatment might affect local grey and white matter structure, but not functional connectivity or global organization. While platinum-based therapy was identified as a potential risk factor, this was not the case for chemotherapy in general.FundingThis project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (European Research council, grant no 647,047), the Foundation against cancer (Stichting tegen kanker, grant no. 2014–152) and the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO, grants no. 11B9919N, 12ZV420N)

We describe predictions for top quark pair differential distributions at hadron colliders, by combining the next-to-next-to-leading order quantum chromodynamics calculations and next-to-leading order electroweak corrections with double resummation at the next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy of threshold logarithms and small-mass logarithms. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to present such a combination, which incorporates all known perturbative information. Numerical results are presented for the invariant-mass distribution, transverse-momentum distribution, and rapidity distributions.

Spin-wave spectroscopy methods, such as electron-spin-resonance [1], and ferromagnetic resonance [2], are vital tools for materials characterization and chemical monitoring. Together with momentum-sensitive techniques, such as Brillouin light scattering, they are also central to spintronics experiments and the design of spintronic and magnonic devices. Here, we demonstrate a new technique to spatially resolve spin-waves on the single nanometer scale with the potential for atomic resolution by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The precessional torque of a spin excitation is coupled to a highly coherent electron beam, which reveals localized resonant spin excitations in transmission electron microscopy. This technique can be applied in-situ and in-operando on its own and together with conventional spectroscopy methods. As a model system, we present first results of magnonic networks comprising ferromagnetic nanoparticles [3,4] and observe the spatial distributions of various spin-resonance modes.Financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project-ID 405553726 – TRR 270 and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant No. 856538, project “3D MAGiC”)

Improvement of laser ablation in situ micro-analysis to identify diagenetic alteration and measure strontium isotope ratios in fossil human teeth

Understanding the post-Archaic population of Satricum, Italy: A bioarchaeological approach

Examination on simultaneous multi-element isotope ratio measurement by inductively coupled plasma time of flight mass spectrometry

In this manuscript, which appeared in ALTEX 35 , 429-432 ( doi:10.14573/altex.1807031 ), the Acknowledgements should read: This work was supported by BMBF and DFG (KoRS-CB) grants, and it has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 681002 (EU-ToxRisk).