Outdoor Radon Dose Rate in Canada's Arctic amid Climate Change.

Decades of radiation monitoring data were analyzed to estimate outdoor Radon Dose Rates (RnDRs) and evaluate climate change impacts in Canada's Arctic Regions (Resolute and Yellowknife). This study shows that the RnDR involves dynamic sources and complex environmental factors and processes. Its seasonality and long-term trends are significantly impacted by temperatures and soil-and-above water contents. From 2005 to 2022, Yellowknife's RnDR increased by +0.35 ± 0.06 nGy/h per decade, with the fastest increases occurring in cold months (October to March). The rise is largely attributable to water condition changes over time in these months, which also caused enhanced soil gas emissions and likely higher indoor radon concentrations. In Resolute, the RnDR increased between 2013 and 2022 at +0.62 ± 0.19 nGy/h (or 16% relatively) per decade in summer months, with a positive temperature relationship of +0.12 nGy/h per °C. This work also demonstrates the relevance of local climate and terrain features (e.g., typical active layer depth, precipitation amount/pattern, and ground vegetation cover) in researching climate change implications. Such research can also benefit from using supporting monitoring data, which prove effective and scientifically significant. From the perspective of external exposure to outdoor radon, the observed climate change effects pose a low health risk.

Unveiling the Quantitative Relationships between Electron Distribution and Steric Hindrance of Organic Amines and Their Reaction Rates with Carbonyl Sulfur: A Theoretical Calculation Investigation.

The removal of carbonyl sulfide (COS) commonly contained in natural gas is of great significance but still very challenging via a widely employed absorption process due to its low reactivity and solubility in various commercial solvents. Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly important role in the exploration of desulfurization solvents. However, practically feasible AI models still lack a thorough understanding of the reaction mechanisms. Machine learning (ML) models established on chemical mechanisms exhibit enhanced chemical interpretability and prediction performance. In this study, we constructed a series of solvent molecules with varying functional groups, including linear aliphatic amines, cyclic aliphatic amines, and aromatic amines and proposed a three-step reaction pathway to dissect the effects of charge and steric hindrance of different substituents on their reaction rates with COS. Chemical descriptors, based on electrostatic potential (ESP), average local ionization energy (ALIE) theory, Hirshfeld charges, and Fukui functions, were used to correlate and predict the electrophilic reactivity of amine groups with COS. Substituents influence the reaction rate by changing the attraction interaction of amine groups to COS molecules and the electron rearrangement in the electrophilic reaction. Furthermore, they have more pronounced steric effects on the reaction rate in the linear amines. The descriptors N_ALIE and q(N) were found to be crucial in predicting the reactivity of amine groups with COS. Present study provides a comprehensive understanding of the reaction mechanisms of COS with amine compounds, offers specific chemical principles for the development of chemistry-driven ML models, sheds light on other types of electrophilic reactions occurring on amine and phosphine groups, and guides the development of chemical solvents in gas absorption processes.

Environmental monitoring and external exposure to natural radiation in Canada.

External sources of radiation originate from cosmic rays and natural radioactive elements, principally 40K and decay products in the uranium and thorium decay series occurring in the ground. People are exposed to terrestrial radiation and cosmic rays everywhere and at all times. To assess Canadians' external exposure to natural radiation, five years (2016-2020) of real-time environment monitoring data recorded by Health Canada's Fixed Point Surveillance (FPS) network were analysed for 36 monitoring stations across Canada. Absorbed dose rates in air from terrestrial radiation vary geographically and seasonally. Absorbed dose rates due to cosmic rays depend strongly on the elevation and vary with solar activities. The population-weighted annual outdoor ambient dose equivalent rates are 20 nSv/h for terrestrial radiation and 52 nSv/h for cosmic rays. Considering that, on average, Canadians spend 89% of their time indoors and 11% of the time outdoors, the population-weighted annual effective doses were calculated as 443 µSv (54 µSv outdoors and 389 µSv indoors), with 20.6% (91 µSv) from terrestrial radiation and 79.4% (352 µSv) from cosmic rays.

Dose calibration of Health Canada's Fixed Point Surveillance system for environmental radiation monitoring in terms of air kerma and H*(10).

The environmental radiation exposure in Canada has been monitored since 2002 by Health Canada's Fixed Point Surveillance network. The network consists of over eighty 7.6 cm × 7.6 cm sodium iodide spectrometers, and routinely reports to the public the environmental gamma radiation level throughout Canada. This paper describes the latest dose calibrations to air kerma and ambient dose equivalent for the future upgraded network. The calibration curves were developed using Monte Carlo techniques and further optimized via experiments in various reference fields. The dose calibration was validated over a wide range of gamma energy, dose measurement range, and angle of incidence under laboratory conditions. In environmental monitoring situations, the angular distribution of radiation exposure was analytically calculated by assuming a semi-infinite plume source, semi-infinite planar source, and infinite volume sources for the respective exposure scenarios of radioactive plume, ground contamination, and soil source. By coupling the resultant radiation angular distribution with detector's angular variation on dose response, the overall accuracy of dose measurement in each of these environmental scenarios was estimated. The accuracy is expected to be within ±3.7% for plume radiation, -5.6% for 137Cs ground contamination, and 0% to -17.1% for soil radioactive sources. The under-estimation for soil sources is mainly caused by absorption of radiation in the electronic system underneath the crystal.

A realistic solution of overcoming disadvantage of Compton suppression spectrometer.

To achieve low detection limits for radionuclide analysis, Compton continuum suppression gamma-ray spectrometer has been used for several decades. The most serious disadvantage arises when radionuclides measured have cascade gamma emissions. This is a major limitation of the technique in environmental sample analysis. The digital list-mode data acquisition techniques in conjunction with time stamped pulse analysis method presented in this paper recovers the undesired full-energy-peak (FEP) coincidence losses for cascade radionuclides while retains suppression of true Compton events to keep the improved detection limit, thus extending the usefulness of the anti-Compton spectroscopy. In this study, software are developed to analyse the radionuclides with a relative simple decay scheme, such as 22Na, 60Co and 88Y, and a complex decay scheme, such as 125Sb, 134Cs, 152Eu and 154Eu. The results indicated that in the reconstruct anticoincidence spectra the FEP restoration efficiency, both for minor and major peaks, is near 100%.

Observation of Ground-level Enhancement Across Canada's Fixed Point Surveillance Network During the 20 January 2005 Solar Event.

This paper presents the count rate enhancement observed across Canada's Fixed Point Surveillance network during the solar event on 20 January 2005 and explores the feasibility and value of applying the Fixed Point Surveillance network's long-term and continuous observations for space weather monitoring. The count rate, recorded in the high-energy channel of RS250 sodium iodide detectors, reflects the detector's response to muonic and electromagnetic components of the cosmic ray shower. During the event peak time, simultaneous count rate increases have been observed across many Fixed Point Surveillance network stations at enhancements varying from 10% to 18%, 12- to 15-fold less than relative increases in neutron detector observations.

MicroRNA-150 suppresses the growth and malignant behavior of papillary thyroid carcinoma cells via downregulation of MUC4.

Previous studies have revealed that microRNA (miR)-150 can act as an oncomiR or a tumor suppressor in numerous types of hematological malignancy and solid tumor. However, the function of miR-150 in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) remains elusive. The present study aimed to investigate the function of miR-150 in PTC and its underlying molecular mechanism. The expression of miR-150 was identified to be significantly downregulated, whereas that of mucin (MUC)4 was significantly upregulated in PTC tissues and cell lines compared with corresponding controls. Further experiments demonstrated that MUC4 is a direct target of miR-150. PTC cell proliferation and capacity for migration and invasion decreased following miR-150 overexpression. It was also demonstrated that miR-150-mediated MUC4 downregulation was associated with an accompanying decrease in human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, as well as its phosphorylated form, resulting in suppressed activation of downstream signaling. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that miR-150 may serve a key function in suppressing the malignant growth and aggressive behavior of PTC cells through the downregulation of MUC4. These findings may provide a novel approach for diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for PTC.

Gamma spectrum and coincidence summation simulations with Geant4 in the analysis of radionuclide using BEGe detector.

A Geant4 application has been developed to simulate the gamma spectrum of a BEGe detector. The summation effects were encompassed for both random and true coincidences through a time-based approach. The application well reproduces the typical spectral features such as full energy peaks, escape peaks, summation peaks and Compton/backscatter continuum. The simulated gamma response is consistent with empirical data within 3%, while simulations of the X-ray and baseline regions are valid within a 10% deviation.

Development of a national cosmic-ray dose monitoring system with Health Canada's Fixed Point Surveillance network.

This work explores the application of Health Canada's Fixed Point Surveillance (FPS) network for cosmic ray monitoring and dose estimation purposes. This network is comprised of RS250 3 inch by 3 inch Sodium Iodide (NaI) spectroscopic dosimeters distributed throughout Canada. The RS250's high channel count rate responds to the electromagnetic and muonic components of cosmic ray shower. These count rates are used to infer cosmic ray doses throughout FPS locations. The derived dose was found to have an accuracy within 6.5% deviation relative to theoretical calculation. The solar cycle effect and meteorologically induced fluctuation can be realistically reflected in the estimated dose. This work may serve as a basis to enable the FPS network to monitor and report both terrestrial and cosmic radiation in quasi-real time.

Cosmic-muon intensity measurement and overburden estimation in a building at surface level and in an underground facility using two BC408 scintillation detectors coincidence counting system.

A series of measurements have been recently conducted to determine the cosmic-muon intensities and attenuation factors at various indoor and underground locations for a gamma spectrometer. For this purpose, a digital coincidence spectrometer was developed by using two BC408 plastic scintillation detectors and an XIA LLC Digital Gamma Finder (DGF)/Pixie-4 software and card package. The results indicate that the overburden in the building at surface level absorbs a large part of cosmic ray protons while attenuating the cosmic-muon intensity by 20-50%. The underground facility has the largest overburden of 39 m water equivalent, where the cosmic-muon intensity is reduced by a factor of 6. The study provides a cosmic-muon intensity measurement and overburden assessment, which are important parameters for analysing the background of an HPGe counting system, or for comparing the background of similar systems.

Real Time in Situ Gamma Radiation Measurements of the Plume Evolution from the Full-Scale Radiological Dispersal Device Field Trials.

During the Full-Scale Radiological Dispersal Device Field Trials carried out in Suffield in 2012, several suites of detection and sampling equipment were used to measure and characterize the explosive dispersal of the short half-life radioactive tracer Lanthanum-140 ((140)La). The equipment deployed included networks of in situ real-time radiation monitoring detectors providing measurements of different sensitivities and characteristics. A dense array of lower sensitivity detectors was established near field, ranging from 10 to 450 m from the detonation location. A sparser array of more sensitive detectors was established in the far field (150 m to 3.5 km from the detonation location). Each was used to collect and report the dose rate data from the radioactive plume passage with a sample time resolution of 1 s. The two systems went through independent calibrations and were compared and shown to be consistent with each other. The in situ gamma radiation measurements have allowed the movement and evolution of the plume to be described and to identify deposition rates and non-uniformities in the temporal shape of the plume. This knowledge could be applied for emergency planning guidance for the case of release of radioactive material by a radiological dispersive device.

Deposition Measurements From the Full-Scale Radiological Dispersal Device Field Trials.

In 2012, Defence Research and Development Canada led a series of experiments, titled the Full-Scale Radiological Dispersal Device Field Trials, in which short-lived radioactive material was explosively dispersed and the resulting plume and deposition were characterized through a variety of methods. Presented here are the results of a number of measurements that were taken to characterize the radioactive ground deposition. These included in situ gamma measurements, deposition filter samples, and witness plate measurements that were taken in situ with handheld beta survey meters. The results from the different measurement techniques are compared to each other and to a simple deposition model. Results showed that approximately 3% of the original source activity was deposited in the immediate vicinity of ground zero, and an additional 15-30% of the original activity was deposited within 450 m of ground zero. Implications of these results for emergency response are discussed.