Still-births among the offspring of male radiation workers at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant: detailed results and statistical aspects

Summary. This study investigates whether there was evidence of increasing risk of still-birth with increasing paternal exposure to ionizing radiation received during employment at the Sellafield nuclear installation before the child was conceived. A significant positive association is found between the total paternal preconceptional exposure to external ionizing radiation and the risk of still-birth (after adjustment for year of birth, social class, birth order and paternal age, odds ratio at 100 mSv 1.24 (95% confidence interval 1.04–1.45)). A summary of the principal scientific findings of this study has been published in the Lancet . This paper describes in detail the statistical methods that were used in the investigation and presents the results in full.     

Economics of Radiation Protection: Equity Considerations

In order to implement cost-benefit analysis of protective actions to reduce radiological exposures, one needs to attribute a monetary value to the avoided exposure. Recently, the International Commission on Radiological Protection has stressed the need to take into consideration not only the collective exposure to ionising radiation but also its dispersion in the population. In this paper, by using some well known and some recent results in the economics of uncertainty, we discuss how to integrate these recommendations in the valuation of the benefit of protection.     

Accountability and academic freedom: The battle concerning research on cold fusion at Texas A&M university

abstract

The Massachusetts Task Force on Human Subject Research has so far been the only serious attempt to investigate radiation experiments on humans. No other federal, state or private agency has looked at a specific experiment in detail. The President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) provided an overview of the entire nationwide research project, but without a thorough evaluation of any single experiment. The Massachusetts Task Force examined a group of experiments using institutionalized children at two state facilities, the Fernald and Wrentham schools, from 1943 to 1973. The experiments were performed under supervision by scientists at Harvard and MIT, and were funded by several federal agencies. The Task Force found that these experiments were conducted according to the ethical and protocol standard of their day. This did not prevent the Task Force from judging that the experiments violated human rights, and recommending apology and compensation to the victims.     

Ma system identification using higher order cumulants application to modelling solar radiation

The main goal of this investigation is to elaborate an accurate and efficient algorithm able to estimate the moving average (MA) parameters in noisy environment. So, we address the problem of estimating the parameters of a MA--non-minimum phase (NMP)-system from the output observation when the system is excited by an unobservable independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) sequence. A new procedure, based on third and fourth order cumulants, to estimate the parameters of MA process when the order is known, is presented. This procedure was tested for various examples of MA (NMP) system, and for different order and different signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). A comparison with some existing methods was also performed and the result shows the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. For validation purpose this method is used to search for a model able to describe and to predict the data set representing the daily solar radiation.     

Toward increased public representation on bioethics committees: Lessons from Judging the cold war human radiation experiments∗

The process of judging the Cold War Human Radiation Experiments illuminates a need to develop a model for an appropriate public role on bioethics committees. A citizen representative was appointed to the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, and the Committee solicited broad public participation in their investigation. However, many members of the affected and interested public desired further representation on the Committee, as they tended towards stronger ethical condemnations of the experiments than the Committee expressed. I offer an account of a testimony before the Committee by a radiation experiment subject's survivor to illustrate this contrast in moral perspective. I consider some the contributions that “non‐expert”; public members can add to committee deliberations, and suggest that concerns about public representatives may be overcome with the guidance of clearer principles for selecting public members. Further efforts to increase membership by the general and affected public on bioethics committees will enhance deliberations and help realize the democratic ideals of bioethics.     

商务英语中的一词多义现象分析

本文拟通过对商务英语中的一词多义现象的分析 ,揭示商务英语用词中的一些规律     

Reference Priors for Poisson Processes Involving Nuisance Parameters

A Bayesian reference analysis for determining the posterior distribution of the strength of a radiation source is performed. The only pieces of information available are the numbers of counts gathered in a gross and a background measurement along with the respective counting times and a state-of-knowledge distribution for the efficiency. This situation is addressed by combining the calculations of a “one-at-a-time” reference prior and a reference prior with partial information. The posterior distribution of the source strength obtained with the reference prior leads to credible intervals that have better frequentist coverage than corresponding intervals founded on uniform or Jeffreys’ priors.     

三波长辐射测温法及仪表的研究

本文介绍的三波长辐射测温法是以普朗克公式和电动力学中Hagen-Rubens公式为理论基础的非接触测温方法。主要解决被测对象表面发射率很低或不确定时的辐射测温问题。文章着重介绍了仪表的工作原理和结构,分析了仪表的精度、灵敏度和刻度方法。最后给出了实验结果,对理论分析予以验证。     

任意维Schwarzschild-de Sitter黑洞的Hawking隧穿辐射

运用Parikh模型,研究任意维Schwarzschild-de Sitter(SdS)黑洞的Hawking隧穿辐射.结果表明,黑洞视界处的隧穿率依赖于Bekenstein-Hawking(BH)熵的变化,如果考虑到熵的变化按出射粒子能量展开式中的高次项,辐射谱不再是纯热的谱.     

以边境口岸辐射城镇化:西南边境地区发展模式研究

边境地区因地制宜地推进城镇化,具有"富民、兴边、强国、睦邻"的重大现实意义。迅速兴起的互市贸易、口岸经济、跨境经济表明,以边境口岸辐射城镇化可以促使生产要素整合和人口转移,形成人口规模聚集,培育互市型、口岸型和跨境经济合作型城镇,呈现三个层次的沿边发展模式体系。西南边境地区应当挖掘各自的优势,促进各种要素的合理流动和高效聚集,形成优势互补,从而推进西南边境地区的综合发展。