Potential feeding sites for seabirds and marine mammals reveal large overlap with offshore wind energy development worldwide.

Offshore wind energy is experiencing accelerated growth worldwide to support global net zero ambitions. To ensure responsible development and to protect the natural environment, it is essential to understand and mitigate the potential impacts on wildlife, particularly on seabirds and marine mammals. However, fully understanding the effects of offshore wind energy production requires characterising its global geographic occurrence and its potential overlap with marine species.

Large-scale movement patterns in a social vulture are influenced by seasonality, sex, and breeding region.

Quantifying space use and segregation, as well as the extrinsic and intrinsic factors affecting them, is crucial to increase our knowledge of species-specific movement ecology and to design effective management and conservation measures. This is particularly relevant in the case of species that are highly mobile and dependent on sparse and unpredictable trophic resources, such as vultures. Here, we used the GPS-tagged data of 127 adult Griffon Vultures captured at five different breeding regions in Spain to describe the movement patterns (home-range size and fidelity, and monthly cumulative distance).

The HEV Ventilator: at the interface between particle physics and biomedical engineering.

A high-quality, low-cost ventilator, dubbed HEV, has been developed by the particle physics community working together with biomedical engineers and physicians around the world. The HEV design is suitable for use both in and out of hospital intensive care units, provides a variety of modes and is capable of supporting spontaneous breathing and supplying oxygen-enriched air. An external air supply can be combined with the unit for use in situations where compressed air is not readily available.

Tri-axial accelerometry shows differences in energy expenditure and parental effort throughout the breeding season in long-lived raptors.

Cutting-edge technologies are extremely useful to develop new workflows in studying ecological data, particularly to understand animal behavior and movement trajectories at the individual level. Although parental care is a well-studied phenomenon, most studies have been focused on direct observational or video recording data, as well as experimental manipulation. Therefore, what happens out of our sight still remains unknown.

Phenotypic and environmental correlates of natal dispersal in a long-lived territorial vulture.

Natal dispersal, the movement between the birth and the first breeding site, has been rarely studied in long-lived territorial birds with a long-lasting pre-breeding stage. Here we benefited from the long-term monitoring programs of six populations of Egyptian vultures (Neophron percnopterus) from Spain and France to study how the rearing environment determines dispersal. For 124 vultures, we recorded a median dispersal distance of 48 km (range 0-656 km).

Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Reliability of the Back Pain and Body Posture Evaluation Instrument (BackPEI) to the Spanish Adolescent Population.

The prevalence of back pain (BP) among children and adolescents has increased over recent years. Some authors advocate promoting back-health education in the school setting. It is therefore important to adopt a uniform suite of assessment instruments to measure the various constructs.

Winter movement patterns of a globally endangered avian scavenger in south-western Europe.

Partial migration, whereby some individuals migrate and some do not, is relatively common and widespread among animals. Switching between migration tactics (from migratory to resident or vice versa) occurs at individual and population levels. Here, we describe for the first time the movement ecology of the largest wintering population of Egyptian Vultures (Neophron percnopterus) in south-west Europe.

Development and calibration of a real-time airborne radioactivity monitor using direct gamma-ray spectrometry with two scintillation detectors.

The implementation of in-situ gamma-ray spectrometry in an automatic real-time environmental radiation surveillance network can help to identify and characterize abnormal radioactivity increases quickly. For this reason, a Real-time Airborne Radioactivity Monitor using direct gamma-ray spectrometry with two scintillation detectors (RARM-D2) was developed. The two scintillation detectors in the RARM-D2 are strategically shielded with Pb to permit the separate measurement of the airborne isotopes with respect to the deposited isotopes.

Implementation of gamma-ray spectrometry in two real-time water monitors using NaI(Tl) scintillation detectors.

In this study, the implementation of gamma-ray spectrometry in two real-time water monitors using 2 in. × 2 in. NaI(Tl) scintillation detectors is described.

Performance of the LHCb RICH detector at the LHC.

The LHCb experiment has been taking data at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN since the end of 2009. One of its key detector components is the Ring-Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) system. This provides charged particle identification over a wide momentum range, from 2-100 GeV/.

Dosimetry of a cone beam CT device for oral and maxillofacial radiology using Monte Carlo techniques and ICRP adult reference computational phantoms.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to calculate organ and effective doses for a range of available protocols in a particular cone beam CT (CBCT) scanner dedicated to dentistry and to derive effective dose conversion factors.

Methods: Monte Carlo simulations were used to calculate organ and effective doses using the International Commission on Radiological Protection voxel adult male and female reference phantoms (AM and AF) in an i-CAT CBCT. Nine different fields of view (FOVs) were simulated considering full- and half-rotation modes, and also a high-resolution acquisition for a particular protocol.

Validation of a Monte Carlo simulation for dose assessment in dental cone beam CT examinations.

A Monte Carlo (MC) simulation for calculating absorbed dose has been developed and applied for dental applications with an i-CAT cone beam CT (CBCT) system. To validate the method a comparison was made between calculated and measured dose values for two different clinical protocols. Measurements with a pencil CT chamber were performed free-in-air and in a CT dose head phantom; measurements were also performed with a transmission ionization chamber.

Performance of data acceptance criteria over 50 months from an automatic real-time environmental radiation surveillance network.

The automatic real-time environmental radiation surveillance network of Catalonia (Spain) comprises two subnetworks; one with 9 aerosol monitors and the other with 8 Geiger monitors together with 2 water monitors located in the Ebre river. Since September 2006, several improvements were implemented in order to get better quality and quantity of data, allowing a more accurate data analysis. However, several causes (natural causes, equipment failure, artificial external causes and incidents in nuclear power plants) may produce radiological measured values mismatched with the own station background, whether spurious without significance or true radiological values.

Collimator with filtration compensator: clinical adaptation to meet European Union recommendation 4F on radiological protection for dental radiography.

Objective: Our aim was to develop a compensated filtration collimator for use in paediatric patients undergoing cephalometric radiography that reduces the radiation dose administered and fulfils recommendation 4F of the European guidelines on radiation protection in dental radiology.

Methods: An easy to use filtration-compensated collimator was constructed of plastic, lead and aluminium and used randomly with a group of 32 children (mean age 11 years) undergoing cephalometric radiography before receiving orthodontic treatment. The radiation doses administered to patients (eye lens and thyroid, submandibular and parotid glands) and to the chassis of the radiographic equipment were determined.

Monte Carlo calculation of radiation dose in CT examinations using phantom and patient tomographic models.

By using a voxel-based Monte Carlo simulation technique, we developed and validated a method to calculate radiation-absorbed dose in the computed tomography (CT) examinations from the images of phantoms and patients. The ionising radiation transport was simulated using the EGS4 code system. The geometry of the X-ray beam (focus-to-axis distance, field of view, collimation, and primary and beam-shaper filtration) and the X-ray spectral distribution (HiSpeed LX/i) were included in the simulation.