Effect of Patient Positioning on CT Number Accuracy: A Phantom Study Comparing Energy Integrating and Deep Silicon Photon Counting Detector CT.

Objective: Patient positioning during clinical practice can be challenging, and mispositioning leads to a change in CT number. CT number fluctuation was assessed in single-energy (SE) EID, dual-energy (DE) EID, and deep silicon photon-counting detector (PCD) CT over water-equivalent diameter (WED) with different mispositions.

Methods: A phantom containing five clinically relevant inserts (Mercury Phantom, Gammex) was scanned on a clinical EID CT and a deep silicon PCD CT prototype at vertical positions of 0, 4, 8, and 12 cm.

Advancing macromolecular structure determination with microsecond X-ray pulses at a 4th generation synchrotron.

Serial macromolecular crystallography has become a powerful method to reveal room temperature structures of biological macromolecules and perform time-resolved studies. ID29, a flagship beamline of the ESRF 4th generation synchrotron, is the first synchrotron beamline in the world capable of delivering high brilliance microsecond X-ray pulses at high repetition rate for the structure determination of biological macromolecules at room temperature. The cardinal combination of microsecond exposure times, innovative beam characteristics and adaptable sample environment provides high quality complete data, even from an exceptionally small amount of crystalline material, enabling what we collectively term serial microsecond crystallography (SµX).

Impact of Automation Level of Dairy Farms in Northern and Central Germany on Dairy Cattle Welfare.

An increasing number of automation technologies for dairy cattle farming, including automatic milking, feeding, manure removal and bedding, are now commercially available. The effects of these technologies on individual aspects of animal welfare have already been explored to some extent. However, as of now, there are no studies that analyze the impact of increasing farm automation through various combinations of these technologies.

Risk reduction in SARS-CoV-2 infection and reinfection conferred by humoral antibody levels among essential workers during Omicron predominance.

The extent to which semi-quantitative antibody levels confer protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in populations with heterogenous immune histories is unclear. Two nested case-control studies were designed within the multisite HEROES/RECOVER prospective cohort of frontline workers to study the relationship between antibody levels and protection against first-time post-vaccination infection and reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 from December 2021 to January 2023. All participants submitted weekly nasal swabs for rRT-PCR testing and blood samples quarterly and following infection or vaccination.