It has been recently demonstrated that the internal jugular vein may exhibit abnormalities classified as truncular venous malformations (TVMs). The investigation of possible morphological and biochemical anomalies at jugular tissue level could help to better understand the link between brain venous drainage and neurodegenerative disorders, recently found associated with jugular TVMs. To this en...

words count: 242 ABSTRACT Manganese enhanced MRI (MEMRI) offers many possibilities such as tract tracing and functional imaging in vivo. Mn is however neurotoxic and may induce symptoms s of Mn-induced neurotoxicity are not clear. In this study, we combine synchrotron X-ray fluorescence microprobe (SR-XRF) and MEMRI techniques to investigate spatial distribution of Mn within the rat hippocampus...

This work assessed levels of heavy metals exposure from silver coatings of mobile phones recharge cards of three major companies (designated as A, B and C) with price denominations 100, 200 and 400 from companies A, B and C respectively, which were carefully scratched using a plastic scraper into a glass tube. The coatings were acid digested for total metal concentration, while speciation exper...

The Kosa (yellow sand) aerosol affects the global environment as well as human health because it migrates from the interior of China to other areas, absorbing various atmospheric elements. Investigation into individual Kosa aerosol particles, which are submicroscopic to several tens of micrometers in diameter, is required to resolving the issue. We installed a scanning electron microscope (SEM)...

Applications of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis with a pyroelectric X-ray generator are presented. Glass and ceramics were analyzed with this novel X-ray generator to examine its capability for analyzing nonmetallic inorganic material. Although the power of X-ray output was a few orders of magnitude lower than conventional X-ray tubes, many elements such as Si, K, Ca, Ti, Cr, Fe, Zn, Sr, Ba, ...

Raman spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis are commonly applied to archaeological objects as a fast and nondestructive way to characterize the materials. Here, micro-Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics on handheld XRF results were used to completely characterize beads found during archaeological excavations in the Congo. Metallic objects, organogenic materials, and glass beads wer...

New plastic certified reference materials (CRMs) with Pb, Cd and Cr for XRF analysis have been developed in cooperation with the Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry. These CRMs (named as JSAC 0611 – 0615) were prepared by casting polyester including a toluene solution of organometallic compounds as a standard. The disk was removed from the glass plate after 12 h of hardening at room temperat...

Analysis of rodent brains with X-ray fluorescence (XRF) microscopy combined with immunohistochemistry allowed us to demonstrate that local Cu concentrations are thousands of times higher in the glia of the subventricular zone (SVZ) than in other cells. Using XRF microscopy with subcellular resolution and intracellular X-ray absorption spectroscopy we determined the copper (I) oxidation state an...

Given the paucity of empirical constraints, the nature of the newly-recognized phenomena called X-Ray Flashes (XRFs) has been an open question. However, with the recent detections of radio and X-ray afterglow it is finally possible to study the large-and small-scale environments of XRFs. We present Chandra, Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and Keck observations of the fields of XRFs 011030 and 020...

Setting up a system for first order results is straightforward. One can easily identify the major constituents in simple samples and obtain approximate concentrations. This is sufficient for some applications. However, second order effects are quite important for many applications. To obtain high accuracy, identify constituents with low concentrations, or operate on a wide variety of samples, s...