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    Performance requirements and penumbra optimization of the MedAustron beam delivery system

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    The Austrian hadron therapy center MedAustron is currently under construction with patient treatment planned to commence in 2015. Tumors will be irradiated using proton and carbon ions, for which the steeply rising Bragg curve and finite range offer a better conformity of the dose to the geometrical shape of the tumor compared to conventional photon irradiation.The current trend is to move from passive scattering toward active scanning using a narrow pencil beam in order to reach an even better dose conformation and limit the need of patient specific hardware. The quality of the deposited dose will ultimately depend on the performance of the beam delivery chain: beam profile and extraction stability of the extracted beam, accuracy and ramp rate of the scanning magnet power supplies, and precision of the beam monitors used for verifying the delivered dose. With a sharp lateral penumbra, the transverse dose fall-off can be minimized. This is of particular importance in situations where the lesion is adjacent to critical and radiosensitive structures. Multiple Coulomb scattering upstream of the patient in e.g.air gap, monitors and vacuum windows will limit the sharpness of the beam, in particular for protons in the lower therapeutic energy range.In this work, clinical requirements on target dose distribution are translated into specifications along the beam delivery chain. By using an analytical model for third integer resonant extraction in combination with particle tracking, the effect of power supply ripple in the main ring magnets on extraction stability has been analyzed. A model for calculating beam growth caused by scattering in a heterogeneous slab geometry along a transfer line (taking focusing and defocussing of the beam into account) has been implemented and used for optimizing the MedAustron nozzles and proton gantry with respect to beam growth at the isocenter. By combining the scattering model with parameterized proton and carbon ion Bragg curves, a three dimensional dose calculator for spot scanning has been implemented to perform a dose distribution error analysis with respect to the combined effect of various beam delivery imperfections and limitations. This approach enables for identification of "bottlenecks" at an early stage in the design procedure while avoiding unnecessarily strict specifications. Different scanning modes have been compared and preventive means of suppressing the impact of beam delivery imperfections already on the treatment planning stage are discussed.<br /

    Characterization of electron bunches from field emitter array cathodes for use in next-generation X-Ray free electron lasers

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    PSI is interested in developing an X-FEL as a companion radiation source to the existing Swiss Light Source. In order to achieve radiation wavelengths as low as 1 Å, the X-FEL requires excellent electron beam quality and high beam energy. The energy requirements and thus the size and cost of the project can be reduced considerably if an ultra-low emittance electron source is developed. Therefore PSI has started the Low Emittance Gun Project with the aim to design a novel type of electron source that will deliver an electron beam with unprecedented emittance at high peak currents to the linear accelerator of the proposed X-FEL. A source candidate for such a gun is field emission from cold cathodes. In order to gain first experience with field emission guns, investigate the dynamics of space charge dominated electron beams and to develop diagnostics capable of resolving ultra-low emittances, it was decided to build a 100 keV DC gun test stand. In the scope of this thesis, the test stand has been designed, assembled and commissioned. For the first time, transverse phase space measurements of bunches emitted by field emitter arrays in pulsed DC accelerating fields have been performed

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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