Dose levels of the occupational radiation exposures in Poland based on results from the accredited dosimetry service at the IFJ PAN, Krakow

Individual dosimetry service based on thermoluminescence (TLD) detectors has started its activity at the Institute of Nuclear Physics (IFJ) in Krakow in 1965. In 2002, the new Laboratory of Individual and Environment Dosimetry (Polish acronym LADIS) was established and underwent the accreditation according to the EN-PN-ISO/IEC 17025 standard. Nowadays, the service is based on the worldwide known standard thermoluminescent detectors MTS-N (LiF:Mg,Ti) and MCP-N (LiF:Mg,Cu,P), developed at IFJ, processed in automatic thermoluminescent DOSACUS or RE2000 (Rados Oy, Finland) readers. Laboratory provides individual monitoring in terms of personal dose equivalent H(p)(10) and H(p)(0.07) in photon and neutron fields, over the range from 0.1 mSv to 1 Sv, and environmental dosimetry in terms of air kerma K(a) over the range from 30 μGy to 1 Gy and also ambient dose equivalent H*(10) over the range from 30 μSv to 1 Sv. Dosimetric service is currently performed for ca. 3200 institutions from Poland and abroad, monitored on quarterly and monthly basis. The goal of this paper is to identify the main activities leading to the highest radiation exposures in Poland. The paper presents the results of statistical evaluation of ～ 100,000 quarterly H(p)(10) and K(a) measurements performed between 2002 and 2009. Sixty-five per cent up to 90 % of all individual doses in Poland are on the level of natural radiation background. The dose levels between 0.1 and 5 mSv per quarter are the most frequent in nuclear medicine, veterinary and industrial radiography sectors.     

Effects of cyclic lipodepsipeptide structural modulation on stability, antibacterial activity, and human cell toxicity

Bacterial infections are becoming increasingly difficult to treat due to the development and spread of antibiotic resistance. Therefore, identifying novel antibacterial targets and new antibacterial agents capable of treating infections by drug-resistant bacteria is of vital importance. The structurally simple yet potent fusaricidin or LI-F class of natural products represents a particularly attractive source of candidates for the development of new antibacterial agents. We synthesized 18 fusaricidin/LI-F analogues and investigated the effects of structure modification on their conformation, serum stability, antibacterial activity, and toxicity toward human cells. Our findings show that substitution of an ester bond in depsipeptides with an amide bond may afford equally potent analogues with improved stability and greatly decreased cytotoxicity. The lower overall hydrophobicity/amphiphilicity of amide analogues in comparison with their parent depsipeptides, as indicated by HPLC retention times, may explain the dissociation of antibacterial activity and human cell cytotoxicity. These results indicate that amide analogues may have significant advantages over fusaricidin/LI-F natural products and their depsipeptide analogues as lead structures for the development of new antibacterial agents.     

Cell motility, morphology, viability and proliferation in response to nanotopography on silicon black

Knowledge of cells' interactions with nanostructured materials is fundamental for bio-nanotechnology. We present results for how individual mouse fibroblasts from cell line NIH3T3 respond to highly spiked surfaces of silicon black that were fabricated by maskless reactive ion etching (RIE). We did standard measurements of cell viability, proliferation, and morphology on various surfaces. We also analyzed the motility of cells on the same surfaces, as recorded in time lapse movies of sparsely populated cell cultures. We find that motility and morphology vary strongly with nano-patterns, while viability and proliferation show little dependence on substrate type. We conclude that motility analysis can show a wide range of cell responses e.g. over a factor of two in cell speed to different nano-topographies, where standard assays, such as viability or proliferation, in the tested cases show much less variation of the order 10-20%.     

Conventional and Multiscale Modeling of Microstructure Evolution During Laminar Cooling of DP Steel Strips

Physical and numerical simulations of the hot rolling and laminar cooling of DP steel strips are presented in the paper. The objectives of the paper were twofold. Physical simulations of hot plastic deformation were used to identify and validate numerical models. Validated models were applied to simulate the manufacturing of DP steel strips. Conventional flow stress model and microstructure evolution model were used in the hot deformation part. The approach to the complex systems analysis based on global thermodynamic characterization and detailed microstructure characterization was applied to determine equilibrium state at various temperatures. Finally, two numerical models were used to simulate kinetics of austenite decomposition at varying temperatures: the first, conventional model based on the Avrami equation, and the second, the discrete Cellular Automata approach. Plastometric tests and stress relaxation tests were used for identification of the hot rolling model for the DP steel. Dilatometric tests were performed to identify the phase transformation models. Verification confirmed good accuracy of all models. Validated models were applied to simulate the manufacturing of DP steel strips. Influence of technological parameters (e.g., strip thickness and velocity, active sections in the laminar cooling, and water flux in the sections) on the DP microstructure was analyzed. The cooling schedules, which give required microstructures were proposed. The numerical tool, which simulates manufacturing chain for DP steel strips is the main output of the paper.     

Evaluating tear clearance rate with optical coherence tomography

Purpose

To assess the early-phase of tear clearance rate (TCR) with anterior segment optical coherence tomography (OCT) and to determine the association between TCR and other clinical measures of the tear film in a group of young subjects with different levels of tear film quality.

Temperature dependence of water activity in aqueous solutions of sucrose

A comprehensive experimental data analysis was performed to evaluate the effect of temperature on the water activity coefficient and selected excess thermodynamic functions for aqueous solutions of sucrose. A four-suffix Margules equation with temperature-dependent parameters was used to fit thermodynamic data such as the vapor pressure, boiling point, osmotic coefficient, freezing point, sucrose solubility, heat of dilution and specific heat of solution. The proposed equation gives an adequate representation of the available literature data on sucrose solutions for temperatures from −15 to +150 °C and sucrose concentrations up to 98% wt. The isotherms of water activity coefficient exhibit a characteristic minimum at about 96% wt. sucrose which is then followed by a dramatic increase to values well exceeding 1, as it was suggested before by some theoretical models [Starzak, M., & Mathlouthi, M. (2002). Water activity in concentrated sucrose solutions and its consequences for the availability of water in the film of syrup surrounding the sugar crystal. Zuckerindustrie, 127, 175–185; Van Hook, A. (1987). The thermodynamic activity of concentrated sugar solutions. Zuckerindustrie, 112, 597–600]. The effect of temperature on water activity, almost negligible for dilute solutions, was found significant for very concentrated solutions (above 80% wt. sucrose). The new water activity equation should find numerous applications in the food technology and sugar industry.     

Electrostatic aggregation and formation of core-shell suprastructures in binary mixtures of charged metal nanoparticles

Electrostatic aggregation of oppositely charged silver and gold nanoparticles leads to the formation of core-shell clusters in which the shell is formed by the nanoparticles, which are in excess. Arguments based on Debye screening of interactions between like-charged particles help explain why these clusters are stable despite possessing net electric charge. The core-shell aggregates exhibit unusual optical properties with the resonance absorption of the shell particles enhanced by the particles in the core and that of the core suppressed by the shell. Experimental UV-vis absorption spectra are faithfully reproduced by Mie theory. The modeling allows for estimation of the numbers of particles forming the shell and of the shell's effective thickness. These theoretical predictions are substantiated by experiments using nanoparticles covered with different combinations of charged groups and performed at different values of pH.     

Graph grammar‐driven parallel partial differential equation solver

The paper presents an extension of the composite programmable graph grammar (CP‐graph grammar) suitable for modeling the parallel direct solver algorithm utilized by the hp finite element method (hp‐FEM). In the proposed graph grammar model, the computational mesh is represented by a CP‐graph. The presented graph grammar models the solver algorithm by a set of graph grammar productions. The graph grammar model makes it possible to examine the concurrency of the algorithm by analyzing the interdependence between the atomic tasks, tasks and super‐tasks. The atomic tasks correspond to the graph grammar productions, representing basic undividable parts of the algorithms. The level of atomic tasks models the concurrency for the shared memory architectures. On the other hand, the tasks correspond to the groups of atomic tasks with predefined inter‐task communication channels. They constitute the grain for the decomposition of the parallel algorithm for the distributed memory architecture. Finally, the super‐tasks correspond to a group of tasks resulting from the execution of load balancing algorithm. The solver algorithm is tested on distributed memory linux cluster for up to 192 processors. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.