Search results for "Handling"
showing 10 items of 345 documents
The European contribution to the development and validation activities for the design of IFMIF lithium facility
2013
The International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) is an accelerator-driven intense neutron source where candidate materials for fusion reactors will be tested and validated. The high energy neutron flux is produced by means of two deuteron beams (total current of 250 mA, energy of 40 MeV) that strikes a liquid lithium target circulating in a lithium loop of IFMIF plant. The European (EU) contribution to the development of the lithium facility comprises five procurement packages, as follow: (1) participation to the experimental activities of the EVEDA lithium test loop in Oarai (Japan); (2) study aimed at evaluating the corrosion and erosion phenomena, promoted by lithium, for …
CERN-MEDICIS: A Review Since Commissioning in 2017
2021
The CERN-MEDICIS (MEDical Isotopes Collected from ISolde) facility has delivered its first radioactive ion beam at CERN (Switzerland) in December 2017 to support the research and development in nuclear medicine using non-conventional radionuclides. Since then, fourteen institutes, including CERN, have joined the collaboration to drive the scientific program of this unique installation and evaluate the needs of the community to improve the research in imaging, diagnostics, radiation therapy and personalized medicine. The facility has been built as an extension of the ISOLDE (Isotope Separator On Line DEvice) facility at CERN. Handling of open radioisotope sources is made possible thanks to i…
Post-mortem microbiology in sudden death: sampling protocols proposed in different clinical settings
2019
Abstract Background Autopsies, including minimally invasive autopsies, are a powerful tool for determination of the cause of death. When a patient dies from an infection, microbiology is crucial to identify the causative organism. Post-mortem microbiology (PMM) aims to detect unexpected infections causing sudden deaths; confirm clinically suspected but unproven infection; evaluate the efficacy of antimicrobial therapy; identify emergent pathogens; and recognize medical errors. Additionally, the analysis of the thanatomicrobiome may help to estimate the post-mortem interval. Aims The aim was to provide advice in the collection of PMM samples and to propose sampling guidelines for microbiolog…
Bactericidal activity of human milk: stability during storage
2016
Human milk provides infants with defensive factors against many illnesses. This study aims to analyse global bactericidal activity in fresh human milk and evaluate its stability in relation to milk manipulation and its possible alteration following refrigeration. Nineteen milk samples (mature milk) from 19 healthy women are analysed. Viability testing involving a strain of Escherichia coli NCTC 9111, serovar O111:K58(B4):H- was used to determine the bactericidal effect of human milk. Degree of bacteriolysis is calculated as the difference between E. coli counts in controls and in milk samples, expressed as a percentage of the control sample counts. An evaluation of the effect of refrigerati…
Optimization of the preanalytical steps of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry identification provides a fle…
2012
ABSTRACT We report here that modifications of the preanalytical steps of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) identification of yeasts, with regard to the original protocol provided by the manufacturers, appear to be efficient for the reliable routine identification of clinical yeast isolates in medical laboratories. Indeed, when one colony was sampled instead of five and the protein extraction protocol was modified, the performance of MALDI-TOF MS was superior to that of the API ID 32C method (discrepancies were confirmed by using molecular identification), allowing the correct identification of 94% of the 335 clinical isolates prospec…
Freezing and storage at -20 °C provides adequate preservation of Toxoplasma gondii DNA for retrospective molecular analysis.
2014
Equipe EA MERS; International audience; Nucleic acid-based testing has become crucial for toxoplasmosis diagnosis. For retrospective (forensic or scientific) studies, optimal methods must be employed for DNA long-term storage. We compared Toxoplasma gondii detection before and after DNA storage using real-time PCR. No significant differences were found depending on duration or storage conditions at -20 °C or -80 °C.
Nutritional Profiling and the Value of Processing By-Products from Gilthead Sea Bream (
2019
Fish processing industries generate a large volume of discards. In order to fulfil with the principles of a sustainable circular economy, it is necessary to maintain aquaculture by-products in the food chain through the production of high-value biomolecules that can be used as novel ingredients. In this study, we try to give value to the gilthead sea bream by-products, evaluating the composition and the nutritional value of the muscle and six discards commonly obtained from the fish processing industry (fishbone, gills, guts, heads, liver, and skin), which represent ≈ 61% of the whole fish. Significant differences were detected among muscle and by-products for fatty acid and amino acid prof…
Collaborative Management in Norwegian Municipalities: Do Middle Managers Make a Difference?
2022
Norway is an example of the Nordic model in which the local level is of fundamental importance. However, the municipalities are relatively small and increasingly subject to decentralisation of their activities. To compensate for scale disadvantages, a mixture of collaborative activities is pursued in order to build system capacity. Paradoxically, little is known about collaboration among key stakeholders. This article makes a contribution to reducing this knowledge gap by focusing on mid-level managers and municipal departments. This research is empirically underpinned by a cross sectional survey of middle managers in 64 municipalities in Norway (N = 1354) and presents, for the first time, …
String kernels and high-quality data set for improved prediction of kinked helices in α-helical membrane proteins.
2011
The reasons for distortions from optimal α-helical geometry are widely unknown, but their influences on structural changes of proteins are significant. Hence, their prediction is a crucial problem in structural bioinformatics. For the particular case of kink prediction, we generated a data set of 132 membrane proteins containing 1014 manually labeled helices and examined the environment of kinks. Our sequence analysis confirms the great relevance of proline and reveals disproportionately high occurrences of glycine and serine at kink positions. The structural analysis shows significantly different solvent accessible surface area mean values for kinked and nonkinked helices. More important, …
Minimizing the cycle time in serial manufacturing systems with multiple dual-gripper robots
2006
Robots are being used more and more extensively as material-handling systems for automated manufacturing systems. This is especially true for dual-gripper robots whose in-process buffer (the robot's second gripper) constitutes a further element of flexibility. When the number of stations to be served is high and the set of activities the robot must execute is great, the system throughput may depend on robot capability rather than on process times. In such conditions, the use of several robots leads to an increase in system productivity. Obviously, the design and the management of such a handling system becomes more complex: the minimum number of robots required, the work stations to be serv…