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Introduction Lead-based shields are the most widely used attenuators in X-ray and gamma ray fields. The heavy weight, toxicity and corrosion of lead have led researchers towards the development of non-lead shields. Materials and Methods The purpose of this study was to design multi-layered shields for protection against X-rays and gamma rays in diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine. In this...

The zebrafish dorsoventral axis can first be distinguished at gastrulation, upon formation of the embryonic shield, the site of the organizer. We have asked whether the shield is specified before gastrulation. First, we show that brief exposure of premidblastula embryos to lithium, which is known to shut down the phospho-inositol signaling pathway, produces excessive shield formation and extrem...

We report our technique for hemibody skin electron irradiation with a custom-made plywood shield. The technique is similar to our clinical total skin electron irradiation (TSEI), performed with a six-pair dual field (Stanford technique) at an extended source-to-skin distance (SSD) of 377 cm, with the addition of a plywood shield placed at 50 cm from the patient. The shield is made of three laye...

Background: This paper presents a method to reduce radiation exposure during mammography by analysing the doses to ipsilateral and contralateral breasts and to adjacent organs by evaluating material-dependent shielding performance.  Materials and Methods: Six target-filter combinations (Mo-Mo, Mo-Rh, Rh-Rh, Rh-Mo, W-Mo, W-Rh) were tested by measuring the doses delivered to the breasts and adjac...

Model parameters of conditioned soils in head chamber of shield machine are determined based on tri-axial compression tests in laboratory. The loads acting on tunneling face are estimated according to static earth pressure principle. Based on Duncan-Chang nonlinear elastic constitutive model, the earth pressures on head chamber of shield machine are simulated. The variation of earth pressure on...

In the last decade, numerous growth factors and biomaterials have been explored for the treatment of myocardial infarction (MI). While pre-clinical studies have demonstrated promising results, clinical trials have been disappointing and inconsistent, likely due to poor translatability. In the present study, we investigate a potential myocardial regenerative therapy consisting of a protein-engin...

Biofertilizer Ning shield was composed of different strains of plant growth promotion bacteria. In this study, the plant growth promotion and root-knot nematode disease control potential on Trichosanthes kirilowii in the field were evaluated. The application of Ning shield significantly reduced the diseases severity caused by Meloidogyne incognita, the biocontrol efficacy could reached up to 51...

For shielding applications that cannot sufficiently be shielded by only a passive shield, it is useful to combine a passive and an active shield. Indeed, the latter does the “finetuning” of the field reduction that is mainly caused by the passive shield. The design requires the optimization of the geometry of the passive shield, the position of all coils of the active shield, and the real and i...

Scalability issues may prevent users from verifying critical properties of a complex hardware design. In this situation, we propose to synthesize a “safety shield” that is attached to the design to enforce the properties at run time. Shield synthesis can succeed where model checking and reactive synthesis fail, because it only considers a small set of critical properties, as opposed to the comp...