High Precision Half‑Life Measurement of the Extinct Radio‑Lanthanide Dysprosium-154

Sixty years after the discovery of 154Dy, the half-life of this pure alpha-emitter was re-measured. 154Dy was radiochemically separated from proton-irradiated tantalum samples. Sector field- and multicollector-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry were used to determine the amount of 154Dy retrieved. The disintegration rate of the radio-lanthanide was measured by means of α-spectrometry. The half-life value was determined as (1.33 ± 0.07)∙106 y, with an uncertainty reduced by a factor of ~10 compared to the currently adopted value of (3.0 ± 1.5)∙106 y. This precise half-life value is crucial for the correct estimation of p-process nucleosynthetic reactions in the lanthanide region, as well as for the safe disposal of irradiated target material from spallation facilities. As a first application of the half-life value found in this work, the excitation functions for the production of 154Dy in proton-irradiated Ta, Pb, and W targets were re-evaluated, which found to be in agreement with theoretical calculations.

Risk-based constraints with correlated uncertainties for the optimal operation of an energy community

<div>This paper formulates an energy community's centralized optimal bidding and scheduling problem as a time-series scenario-driven stochastic optimization model, building on real-life measurement data. In the presented model, a surrogate battery storage system with uncertain state-of-charge (SoC) bounds approximates the portfolio's aggregated flexibility. </div><div>First, it is emphasized in a stylized analysis that risk-based energy constraints are highly beneficial (compared to chance-constraints) in coordinating distributed assets with unknown costs of constraint violation, as they limit both violation magnitude and probability. The presented research extends state-of-the-art models by implementing a worst-case conditional value at risk (WCVaR) based constraint for the storage SoC bounds. Then, an extensive numerical comparison is conducted to analyze the trade-off between out-of-sample violations and expected objective values, revealing that the proposed WCVaR based constraint shields significantly better against extreme out-of-sample outcomes than the conditional value at risk based equivalent.</div><div>To bypass the non-trivial task of capturing the underlying time and asset-dependent uncertain processes, real-life measurement data is directly leveraged for both imbalance market uncertainty and load forecast errors. For this purpose, a shape-based clustering method is implemented to capture the input scenarios' temporal characteristics.</div>

Abordări conceptuale și metodologii de măsurare a calității vieții. O analiză descriptivă

The main objective of this paper is to describe the logic of the conceptual approaches regarding the quality of life, and to identify the main dimensions and measurable indicators of quality of life. The identification of the main conceptualizations of quality of life is an essential step, in the context in which quality of life is often ambiguous or has multiple meanings. Although often used as an umbrella term which encompasses many aspects of human life, we aim to describe the logic of the integrative approaches regarding well-being/ quality of life. The identification of the main dimensions and measurable indicators of quality of life with a brief description of those, will serve to operationalize a list of life quality dimensions. Keywords: quality of life research; quality of life measurement; quality of life theory; social indicators; economic indicators. ●●●●● Principalele obiective ale acestei lucrări sunt de a descrie logica abordărilor conceptuale privind calitatea vieții și de a identifica principalele dimensiuni, respectiv indicatori măsurabili ai calității vieții. Analiza principalelor conceptualizări ale calității vieții reprezintă un pas esențial, în contextul în care utilizarea conceptului de calitatea vieții este adesea ambiguă sau cel puțin cu sensuri multiple. Deși utilizat adesea ca un termen-umbrelă care înglobează mai multe aspecte ale vieții umane, ne propunem să descriem logica abordărilor integrative privind calitatea vieții. Identificarea principalelor dimensiuni și indicatorii măsurabili ai calității vieții, cu o descriere pe scurt a acestora, va servi la operaționalizarea unei liste de dimensiuni a calității vieții. Cuvinte-cheie: cercetarea calității vieții; măsurarea calității vieții; teoria calității vieții; indicatori sociali; indicatori economici.

SPAAC Pulse-Chase: A Novel Click Chemistry-Based Method to Determine the Half-Life of Cellular Proteins

Assessing the stability and degradation of proteins is central to the study of cellular biological processes. Here, we describe a novel pulse-chase method to determine the half-life of cellular proteins that overcomes the limitations of other commonly used approaches. This method takes advantage of pulse-labeling of nascent proteins in living cells with the bioorthogonal amino acid L-azidohomoalanine (AHA) that is compatible with click chemistry-based modifications. We validate this method in both mammalian and yeast cells by assessing both over-expressed and endogenous proteins using various fluorescent and chemiluminescent click chemistry-compatible probes. Importantly, while cellular stress responses are induced to a limited extent following live-cell AHA pulse-labeling, we also show that this response does not result in changes in cell viability and growth. Moreover, this method is not compromised by the cytotoxicity evident in other commonly used protein half-life measurement methods and it does not require the use of radioactive amino acids. This new method thus presents a versatile, customizable, and valuable addition to the toolbox available to cell biologists to determine the stability of cellular proteins.