Instrumentation Research and Development in DOE Health Physics Programs

Planning and control of exposure to ionizing radiation require the use of accurate, reliable instrumentation to establish dose rates, indicate high exposure rate areas, and control the spread of contamination. The Radiological Controls Division of the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) operates several programs under the technical direction of DOE's lead laboratory in health physics, the Pacific Northwest Laboratory. These programs involve the evaluation and development of instruments to measure dose rates, internal depositions, and airborne and surface contamination. Several important developments, including the total dose meter, the laser-heated dosimeter reader, and a beta survey meter will be described.     

Orthogonal acceleration time-of-flight mass spectrometry

The principles and applications of time-of-flight mass spectrometry involving instruments with independent (orthogonal) axes for ion generation and mass analysis are reviewed. This approach, generally referred to as orthogonal acceleration time-of-flight mass spectrometry, has proved particularly advantageous for the combination of continuous ionization sources with time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The history of the technique is briefly discussed along with the instrumental principles pertaining to all the stages of the instrumentation from ion source to detector. The applications of commercial and customized instruments are discussed for several ionization methods including electrospray, matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization, electron ionization, and plasma ionization.     

Cost models for future software life cycle processes: COCOMO 2.0

Current software cost estimation models, such as the 1981 Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) for software cost estimation and its 1987 Ada COCOMO update, have been experiencing increasing difficulties in estimating the costs of software developed to new life cycle processes and capabilities. These include non-sequential and rapid-development process models; reuse-driven approaches involving commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) packages, re-engineering, applications composition, and applications generation capabilities; object-oriented approaches supported by distributed middleware; and software process maturity initiatives. This paper summarizes research in deriving a baseline COCOMO 2.0 model tailored to these new forms of software development, including rationale for the model decisions. The major new modeling capabilities of COCOMO 2.0 are a tailorable family of software sizing models, involving Object Points, Function Points, and Source Lines of Code; nonlinear models for software reuse and re-engineering; an exponentdriver approach for modeling relative software diseconomies of scale; and several additions, deletions and updates to previous COCOMO effort-multiplier cost drivers. This model is serving as a framework for an extensive current data collection and analysis effort to further refine and calibrate the model's estimation capabilities.     

Effect of roof solar reflectance on the building heat gain in a hot climate

The effect of the roof solar reflectance on the thermal performance of a building is often ignored. However, there are significant differences in heat gain from light and dark-coloured roof surfaces. In this paper an equation for the average daily downward heat flow of a sunlit roof is derived. Using building simulation, it is first shown that the thermal mass of the roof does not significantly affect the overall daily heat gain (although it causes a time lag and reduction in peak heat flow). As a consequence the daily heat gain from the roof may be estimated by integrating the equation for the steady-state downward heat transfer over the day. For north Australia the derived equation suggests that a light-coloured roof has about 30% lower total (air temperature difference and solar-driven) heat gain than a dark-coloured one. The effect of aging (change in solar reflectance with time) is considered in the calculations and a relationship between the solar absorptance of new and aged material is suggested. A classification of roof colours with respect to their solar absorptance (dark, medium, light and reflective) is proposed to enable a quick and simple assessment of the effect of roof colour on the heat gain and R-value.     

Hepatitis C virus envelope glycoprotein E1 originates in the endoplasmic reticulum and requires cytoplasmic processing for presentation by class I MHC molecules

We investigated whether hepatitis C virus envelope glycoprotein E1 is transported from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the cytoplasm of infected cells for class I MHC processing. Target cells expressing E1 were killed by CTL lines from a hepatitis C virus-infected chimpanzee, and synthetic peptides were used to define an epitope (amino acids 233-GNASRCWVA-241) presented by the Patr-B*1601 class I MHC molecule. An unusually high concentration (>100 nM) of this nonameric peptide was required for target cell lysis, but this could be reduced at least 1000-fold by replacing the asparagine at amino acid position 234 (Asn234) with aspartic acid (Asp), the anticipated anchor residue for NH2-terminal peptide binding to Patr-B*1601. Conspicuously, position 234 is part of an N-glycosylation motif (Asn-Xaa-Ser/Thr), suggesting that the Asn234 to Asp substitution might occur naturally within the cell due to deglycosylation/deamidation of this amino acid by the cytosolic enzyme peptide N-glycanase. In support of this model, we demonstrate that presentation of the epitope depended on 1) cotranslational synthesis of E1 in the ER, 2) glycosylation of the E1 molecule, and 3) a functional TAP transporter to shuttle peptide from the cytosolic to ER compartment. These results indicate for the first time that during infection of the host, viral envelope glycoproteins originating in the ER are processed in the cytoplasm for class I MHC presentation. That a posttranslational change in amino acid sequence from Asn to Asp alters the repertoire of peptides presented to CD8+ CTL has implications for the design of antiviral vaccines.     

Probability learning with four event classes of schematic stimuli.

Describes 2 experiments with a total of 80 college students in which classification performance was explored using distorted patterns within a sequentially dependent temporal context. Visual stimuli representing 4 prototype classes were used. All Ss classified patterns by identifying each with 1 of 4 prototypes, and rated the similarity of each pattern to the prototypes. In addition, Ss in 2 groups predicted which pattern would occur next and indicated their confidence in that prediction. Stimulus classes were arranged so that there were sequential dependencies to be learned. Results indicate that both classification and prediction performance improved with sequence redundancy. Prediction performance improved during training, demonstrating that probability learning can occur even when the S is dealing with distorted patterns. Moreover, sequential dependencies in the stimulus sequence facilitated Ss' accurate classification of the patterns. (French summary) (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intestinal transplantation in children under FK 506 immunosuppression

Intestinal transplantation, solitary (n = 3) or in combination with the liver (n = 7), was performed in 10 pediatric patients with intestinal failure. The liver was only replaced if there was liver failure and portal hypertension. Immunosuppression was based on FK 506. Two patients died, one of graft-versus-host disease and one of lymphoproliferative disease. One patient as still in the intensive care unit 1 month posttransplantation due to perioperative complications. The function of the intestinal grafts in the remaining patients is normal. All nutrition and medications including immunosuppression are being administered enterally. This series indicates that small bowel transplantation, alone or in combination with the liver, is feasible in pediatric patients.