Quantified retrospective biomonitoring of fetal and infant elemental exposure using LA-ICP-MS analysis of deciduous dentin in three contrasting human cohorts.

Background: Spatial elemental analysis of deciduous tooth dentin combined with odontochronological estimates can provide an early life (in utero to ~2 years of age) history of inorganic element exposure and status.

Objective: To demonstrate the importance of data normalization to a certified reference material to enable between-study comparisons, using populations with assumed contrasting elemental exposures.

Methods: We used laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) of dentin to derive a history of elemental composition from three distinct cohort studies: a present day rural cohort, (the New Hampshire Birth Cohort Study (NHBCS; N = 154)), an historical cohort from an urban area (1958-1970), (the St.

Early-life participation in cognitively stimulating activities and risk of depression and anxiety in late life.

Background: Early-life stressful experiences are associated with increased risk of adverse psychological outcomes in later life. However, much less is known about associations between early-life positive experiences, such as participation in cognitively stimulating activities, and late-life mental health. We investigated whether greater engagement in cognitively stimulating activities in early life is associated with lower risk of depression and anxiety in late life.

Strontium-90 in Baby Teeth as a Basis for Estimating U.S. Cancer Deaths From Nuclear Weapons Fallout.

Nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere during the 1950s and 1960s deposited fallout throughout the world, exposing all humans to food and water before the Limited Test Ban Treaty ended large-scale tests. The largest effort to measure in vivo fallout in humans, performed by Washington University (USA), collected over 300,000 deciduous teeth to document a sustained increase in Strontium-90 (Sr-90) during testing and a sharp decline after the test ban. Sr-90 patterns and trends in teeth were consistent with those of bones and milk.

Comparative efficiency analysis of fiber-array and conventional beam director systems in volume turbulence.

The performance of two prominent laser beam projection system types is analyzed through wave-optics numerical simulations for various atmospheric turbulence conditions, propagation distances, and adaptive optics (AO) mitigation techniques. Comparisons are made between different configurations of both a conventional beam director (BD) using a monolithic-optics-based Cassegrain telescope and a fiber-array BD that uses an array of densely packed fiber collimators. The BD systems considered have equal input power and aperture diameters.

Deep turbulence effects mitigation with coherent combining of 21 laser beams over 7 km.

We demonstrate coherent beam combining and adaptive mitigation of atmospheric turbulence effects over 7 km under strong scintillation conditions using a coherent fiber array laser transmitter operating in a target-in-the-loop setting. The transmitter system is composed of a densely packed array of 21 fiber collimators with integrated capabilities for piston, tip, and tilt control of the outgoing beams wavefront phases. A small cat's-eye retro reflector was used for evaluation of beam combining and turbulence compensation performance at the target plane, and to provide the feedback signal for control of piston and tip/tilt phases of the transmitted beams using the stochastic parallel gradient descent maximization of the power-in-the-bucket metric.

Evaluating for a geospatial relationship between radon levels and thyroid cancer in Pennsylvania.

Objectives/hypothesis: To determine whether there is an association between radon levels and the rise in incidence of thyroid cancer in Pennsylvania.

Study Design: Epidemiological study of the state of Pennsylvania.

Methods: We used information from the Pennsylvania Cancer Registry and the Pennsylvania Department of Energy.

Thyroid cancer characteristics in the population surrounding Three Mile Island.

Objectives/hypothesis: To determine differences in disease characteristics between the thyroid cancer populations in the area around the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant and the rest of the state of Pennsylvania.

Study Design: Retrospective cross-sectional study.

Methods: Data from the Pennsylvania Cancer Registry from 1985 to 2008 were reviewed and information regarding age at diagnosis, sex, race, residential status, county of residence, thyroid pathology, thyroid surgery, and staging was recorded.

An unexpected mortality increase in the United States follows arrival of the radioactive plume from Fukushima: is there a correlation?

The multiple nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima plants beginning on March 11, 2011, are releasing large amounts of airborne radioactivity that has spread throughout Japan and to other nations; thus, studies of contamination and health hazards are merited. In the United States, Fukushima fallout arrived just six days after the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns. Some samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the U.

Elevated in vivo strontium-90 from nuclear weapons test fallout among cancer decedents: a case-control study of deciduous teeth.

Risks to health from large-scale atmospheric nuclear weapons testing are still relatively unknown. A sample of 85,000 deciduous teeth collected from Americans born during the bomb-testing years assessed risk by in vivo measurement of residual strontium-90 (Sr-90) concentrations, using liquid scintillation spectrometry. The authors' analysis included 97 deciduous teeth from persons born between 1959 and 1961 who were diagrosed with cancer, and 194 teeth of matched controls.

Geographic variation in U.S. thyroid cancer incidence and a cluster near nuclear reactors in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

In the United States, thyroid cancer incidence (along with liver cancer) is increasing more rapidly than any other malignancy, rising nearly threefold from 1980 to 2006. Improved diagnosis has been proposed by some as the major reason for this change, while others contend that additional factors also account for the increase. Among U.

Excess infant mortality after nuclear plant startup in rural Mississippi.

In the United States, utility companies have recently begun ordering new nuclear power reactors, the first such orders in the country since 1978. One potential site would be the Grand Gulf plant near Port Gibson, Mississippi. In 1983-1984, the first two years in which the existing Grand Gulf reactor operated, significant increases were observed in local rates of infant deaths (+35.

A short latency between radiation exposure from nuclear plants and cancer in young children.

Previous reports document a short latency of cancer onset in young children exposed to low doses of radioactivity. The standard mortality ratio (SMR) for cancer in children dying before age ten rose in the period 6-10 years after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents in populations most exposed to fallout. SMRs near most nuclear power plants were elevated 6-10 years after startup, particularly for leukemia.

Flowing cells through pulsed electric fields efficiently purges stem cell preparations of contaminating myeloma cells while preserving stem cell function.

Autologous stem cell transplantation, in the setting of hematologic malignancies such as lymphoma, improves disease-free survival if the graft has undergone tumor purging. Here we show that flowing hematopoietic cells through pulsed electric fields (PEFs) effectively purges myeloma cells without sacrificing functional stem cells. Electric fields can induce irreversible cell membrane pores in direct relation to cell diameter, an effect we exploit in a flowing system appropriate for clinical scale.

An unexpected rise in strontium-90 in US deciduous teeth in the 1990s.

For several decades, the United States has been without an ongoing program measuring levels of fission products in the body. Strontium-90 (Sr-90) concentrations in 2089 deciduous (baby) teeth, mostly from persons living near nuclear power reactors, reveal that average levels rose 48.5% for persons born in the late 1990s compared to those born in the late 1980s.

Elevated childhood cancer incidence proximate to U.S. nuclear power plants.

Numerous reports document elevated cancer rates among children living near nuclear facilities in various nations. Little research has examined U.S.

Infant death and childhood cancer reductions after nuclear plant closings in the United States.

Subsequent to 1987, 8 U.S. nuclear plants located at least 113 km from other reactors ceased operations.