Articular Cartilage Repair After Implantation of Hyaline Cartilage Beads Engineered From Adult Dedifferentiated Chondrocytes: Cartibeads Preclinical Efficacy Study in a Large Animal Model.

Background: Chondrocyte-based cell therapy to repair cartilage has been used for >25 years despite current limitations. This work presents a new treatment option for cartilage lesions.

Hypothesis: High-quality hyaline cartilage microtissues called Cartibeads are capable of treating focal chondral lesions once implanted in the defect, by complete fusion of Cartibeads among themselves and their integration with the surrounding native cartilage and subchondral bone.

Dose assessment following an overexposure of a worker at a Swiss nuclear power plant.

Aim: The aim of this work was to assess the doses received by a diver exposed to a radiation source during maintenance work in the fuel transfer pool at a Swiss nuclear power plant, and to define whether the statutory limit was breached or not.

Method: Onsite measurements were carried out and different scenarios were simulated using the MicroShield Software and the MCNPX Monte Carlo radiation transport code to estimate the activity of the irradiating object as well as the doses to the limbs and the effective dose delivered to the operator.

Results: The activity of the object was estimated to 1.

On the reverse micelle effect in liquid scintillation counting.

This work looks into the tracks of electrons in nanoemulsive scintillating media using the Monte Carlo Geant4-DNA code which simulates event-by-event interactions of electrons in liquid water down to the eV, without resorting to the condensed history method. It demonstrates that the average number of micelles in which electrons deposit energy is quite large, increasing with their emission energy, decreasing with micelle size, and rising with micelle concentration. The probability of an electron ending its track in a micelle is found to be rather large and micelle size-dependent below 1keV, and approximating the aqueous fraction at higher energies.

CONVERTING SPECIFIC ACTIVITY INTO AMBIENT DOSE EQUIVALENT: UPDATED COEFFICIENTS FOR IN SITU GAMMA SPECTROMETRY.

In situ gamma spectrometry is a valuable tool to assess the radionuclides released in the environment and the associated dose. This requires prior establishment of coefficients allowing the conversion of the specific activity into ambient equivalent dose. The aim of this work is to calculate updated conversion factors for monoenergetic photons and for a series of radionuclides of interest.

Improved predictive mapping of indoor radon concentrations using ensemble regression trees based on automatic clustering of geological units.

Purpose: According to estimations around 230 people die as a result of radon exposure in Switzerland. This public health concern makes reliable indoor radon prediction and mapping methods necessary in order to improve risk communication to the public. The aim of this study was to develop an automated method to classify lithological units according to their radon characteristics and to develop mapping and predictive tools in order to improve local radon prediction.