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Mechanical spectroscopy (damping and elastic modulus as a function of temperature) and transmission electron microscopy studies have been performed in high purity polycrystalline molybdenum plastically deformed to different values of tensile and torsion strain. Mechanical spectroscopy measurements were performed from room temperature up to 1285 K. A relaxation peak in polycrystalline molybdenum related to the movement of dislocations into lower energy configurations near grain boundaries has been discovered to appear around 1170 K. The activation energy of the peak is 4.2 eV ± 0.5 eV. This relaxation phenomenon involves the interaction between vacancies and mobile dislocations near the grain boundaries. It should be highlighted that this relaxation process is controlled by the arrangement of vacancies and dislocations which occur at temperature below 1070 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To propose a methodology for integrating the out-of-field and imaging doses to the in-field dose received by radiotherapy (RT) patients. In addition, the impact of considering the total dose in planning and radiation-induced second malignancies (RISM) risk assessment will be evaluated in several scenarios comprising photon and proton treatments., Methods: The total dose is the voxel-wise sum of the doses from the different radiation sources (accounting for the radiobiological effectiveness) produced during the whole RT chain. The dose from the plan and imaging procedures were obtained by measurements for a photon prostate treatment and by calculation (combining treatment planning system, analytical models, and Monte Carlo simulations) for two lymphoma treatments, one using photons and the other, protons. Dose distributions, dose volume histograms (DVHs) metrics, mean organ doses, and RISM risks were evaluated for each radiation exposure in each treatment., Results: In general, the contribution of the imaging doses is low compared to the dose administered during RT treatment, being higher in proton therapy. However, for some organs, for instance testes in the prostate case, the imaging dose becomes higher than the scattered dose from the treatment fields. Plan evaluations revealed shifts in cumulative DVHs with the inclusion of out-of-field and imaging doses, though minimal clinical impact is expected. Risk assessment showed increased estimates with total dose., Conclusions: The methodology enables accounting for the total dose for optimization of plans and imaging protocols, prospective risk predictions and retrospective epidemiological analyses., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica e Sanitaria. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Total skin electron irradiation (TSEI) has been used as a treatment for mycosis fungoides. Our center has implemented a modified Stanford technique with six pairs of 6 MeV adjacent electron beams, incident perpendicularly on the patient who remains lying on a translational platform, at 200 cm from the source. The purpose of this study is to perform a dosimetric characterization of this technique and to investigate its optimization in terms of energy characteristics, extension, and uniformity of the treatment field. In order to improve the homogeneity of the distribution, a custom-made polyester filter of variable thickness and a uniform PMMA degrader plate were used. It was found that the characteristics of a 9 MeV beam with an 8 mm thick degrader were similar to those of the 6 MeV beam without filter, but with an increased surface dose. The combination of the degrader and the polyester filter improved the uniformity of the distribution along the dual field (180cm long), increasing the dose at the borders of field by 43%. The optimum angles for the pair of beams were ± 27°. This configuration avoided displacement of the patient, and reduced the treatment time and the positioning problems related to the abutting superior and inferior fields. Dose distributions in the transversal plane were measured for the six incidences of the Stanford technique with film dosimetry in an anthropomorphic pelvic phantom. This was performed for the optimized treatment and compared with the previously implemented technique. The comparison showed an increased superficial dose and improved uniformity of the 85% isodose curve coverage for the optimized technique.

A selective and simple analytical method for the trace level determination of carbofuran in complex environmental and biological samples was developed based on immunoaffinity extraction (IAE) followed by on-line preconcentration and HPLC/UV analysis of the purified extract. The immunosorbent for IAE was prepared by sol-gel encapsulation of monoclonal anti-carbofuran antibodies, and was fully characterized for capacity, repeatability, binding strength, binding kinetics and cross-reactivity. Method performance was evaluated with two different types of difficult samples: dam water and methanolic extracts of epithelial cervical-uterine tissue. Linear behavior and quantitative recoveries were obtained from the analysis of samples spiked with carbofuran at 0.2-4 ng/mL (dam water, 50 mL samples) and 10-40 ng/mL (biological tissue extract, 2 mL samples). RSD (n=7) and detection limits were, respectively, 10.1% (spike 0.40 ng/mL) and 0.13 ng/mL for dam water; 8.5% (spike 20 ng/mL) and 5 ng/mL for the biological tissue extract. The excellent sample purification achieved with the IAE column allows precise and accurate determination of carbofuran in complex matrices, even when using non-selective UV detection in the chromatographic analysis., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)