BACKGROUND High-molecular-weight phthalates in indoor dust have been associated with asthma in children, but few studies have evaluated phthalate biomarkers in association with respiratory outcomes. OBJECTIVES We explored the association between urinary concentrations of phthalate metabolites and current asthma. METHODS In a cross-sectional analysis, 11 metabolites of 8 phthalates [includin...

The weight window variance reduction method in the general-purpose Monte Carlo N-Particle radiation transport code MCNP has recently been rewritten. In particular, it is now possible to generate weight window importance functions on a superimposed mesh, eliminating the need to subdivide geometries for variance reduction purposes. Our assessment addresses the following questions: (1) Does the n...

Background: In treating patients with radiation, the degree of accuracy for the delivery of tumor dose is recommended to be within ± 5% by ICRU in report 24. The experimental studies have shown that the presence of low-density inhomogeneity in areas such as the lung can lead to a greater than 30% change in the water dose data. Therefore, inhomogeneity corrections should be used in treatment pla...

This paper presents comparison of the Krško Power Plant simplified Spent Fuel Pool (SFP) dose rates using different computational shielding methodologies. The analysis was performed to estimate limiting gamma on wall mounted level instrumentation in case significant loss cooling water. SFP represented with simple homogenized cylinders (point kernel and Monte Carlo (MC)) or cuboids (MC) uranium,...

The biological effects of acute, high doses of radiation are well understood. However, the effects of chronic, low doses are not as clear. Mice irradiation experiments to study the correlation of biological effects with chronic low dose rates are underway in order to make conclusions about the effects of low doses. Yet, in order to do so, the level of dose provided to the animals must be determ...

BACKGROUND Central to the design of a randomised controlled trial is the calculation of the number of participants needed. This is typically achieved by specifying a target difference and calculating the corresponding sample size, which provides reassurance that the trial will have the required statistical power (at the planned statistical significance level) to identify whether a difference of...

Kanji Hioka Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamaguchi University 1677-1 Yoshida, Yamaguchi 753-8512, Japan [email protected] Yoshimasa Miwa Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamaguchi University 1677-1 Yoshida, Yamaguchi 753-8512, Japan [email protected] Chen Li Human Genome Center, University of Tokyo 4-6-1 Shirokanedai, Minatoku, Tokyo 108-8639, Ja...