Université de Sherbrooke

About: Université de Sherbrooke is a education organization based out in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Receptor. The organization has 14922 authors who have published 28783 publications receiving 792511 citations. The organization is also known as: Universite de Sherbrooke & Sherbrooke University.

Investigation of depth-of-interaction by pulse shape discrimination in multicrystal detectors read out by avalanche photodiodes

Abstract: The measurement of depth of interaction (DOI) within detectors is necessary to improve resolution uniformity across the FOV of small diameter PET scanners. DOI encoding by pulse shape discrimination (PSD) has definite advantages as it requires only one readout per pixel and it allows DOI measurement of photoelectric and Compton events. The PSD time characteristics of various scintillators were studied with avalanche photodiodes (APD) and the identification capability was tested in multi-crystal assemblies with up to four scintillators. In the PSD time spectrum of an APD-GSO/LSO/BGO/CsI(Tl) assembly, four distinct time peaks at 45, 26, 88 and 150 ns relative to a fast test pulse, having resolution of 10.6, 5.2, 20 and 27 ns, can be easily separated. Whereas the number and position of scintillators in the multi-crystal assemblies affect detector performance, the ability to identify crystals is not compromised. Compton events have a significant effect on PSD accuracy, suggesting that photopeak energy gating should be used for better crystal identification. However, more sophisticated PSD techniques using parametric time-energy histograms can also improve crystal identification in cases where PSD time or energy discrimination alone is inadequate. These results confirm the feasibility of PSD DOI encoding with APD-based detectors for PET.

Historical ecology: using unconventional data sources to test for effects of global environmental change.

Abstract: Predicting the future ecological impact of global change drivers requires understanding how these same drivers have acted in the past to produce the plant populations and communities we see today. Historical ecological data sources have made contributions of central importance to global change biology, but remain outside the toolkit of most ecologists. Here we review the strengths and weaknesses of four unconventional sources of historical ecological data: land survey records, "legacy" vegetation data, historical maps and photographs, and herbarium specimens. We discuss recent contributions made using these data sources to understanding the impacts of habitat disturbance and climate change on plant populations and communities, and the duration of extinction-colonization time lags in response to landscape change. Historical data frequently support inferences made using conventional ecological studies (e.g., increases in warm-adapted species as temperature rises), but there are cases when the addition of different data sources leads to different conclusions (e.g., temporal vegetation change not as predicted by chronosequence studies). The explicit combination of historical and contemporary data sources is an especially powerful approach for unraveling long-term consequences of multiple drivers of global change. Despite the limitations of historical data, which include spotty and potentially biased spatial and temporal coverage, they often represent the only means of characterizing ecological phenomena in the past and have proven indispensable for characterizing the nature, magnitude, and generality of global change impacts on plant populations and communities.

Model systems for hydrophobic interactions: Volumes and heat capacities ofn-alkoxyethanols in water

Abstract: The densities and heat capacities of the first four members of the 2-n-alkoxyethanols were measured in water over the whole mole fraction range with a flow densimeter and a flow microcalorimeter The methoxy and n-propoxy homologs were studied at 25°C, ethoxyethanol at 19, 25, and 40C, andn-butoxyethanol at 4, 10, 25, 40, and 55°C While methoxyethanol behaves as a fairly typical polar nonelectrolyte in water,n-butoxyethanol shows trends in the concentration dependence which resemble micellization; some pseudo-microphase transition occurs at about 002 mole fraction, and this transition concentration decreases with increasing temperature There is no simple relationship between this phenomenon and the existence of a lower critical solution temperature at 49°C since the sharpness of the thermodynamic changes is maximum at the lowest temperature and at 55°C the apparent molal quantities on both sides of the two-phase region appear to fall on the same continuous curve In the region prior to the pseudo-microphase separation the apparent and partial molal heat capacities decrease regularly but beyond approximately 001 mole fraction increase sharply to a maximum, suggesting some type of pre-association The apparent molal heat capacity of water in the binary solutions is larger than the molar heat capacity of water over the whole mole fraction range The present data seem to be consistent with a clathrate model for hydrophobic hydration and interactions with these systems

Extensions and limitations of analytical airfoil broadband noise models

Abstract: The present paper is a state-of-the-art of a special class of analytical models to predict the broadband noise generated by thin airfoils in a flow, either clean or disturbed. Three generating mechanisms are addressed, namely the noise from the impingement of upstream turbulence called turbulence-interaction noise, the noise due to the scattering of boundary-layer turbulence as sound at the trailing edge for an attached flow called trailing-edge noise, and the noise generated due to the formation of a coherent vortex shedding in the near wake of a thick trailing edge, called vortex-shedding noise. Different analytical models previously proposed for each mechanism are reviewed, as declinations of the same basic approach inherited from the pioneer work performed by Amiet in the seventies and based on an extensive use of Schwarzschild's technique. This choice is only an alternative to other models available in the literature and is made here for the sake of a unified approach. Issues dealing with the input d...