Inland shipping response to discharge extremes: A 10 years case study of the Rhine

Inland shipping is a key modality for freight transport between the seaport of Rotterdam and the industrial areas in Germany and Switzerland. The recent droughts of 2018, 2019 and 2022 have clearly demonstrated how discharge related supply chain disruptions cause substantial economic damages in the hinterland. The IPCC predicts that climate...

Cascading effects of sustained low water on inland shipping

The river Rhine is one of Europe’s busiest waterways and is part of the Rhine-Alpine corridor. In 2018 the river experienced a severe low discharge extreme. This impacted the river’s transport capacity for a period of several months, causing shortages of source materials and fuels in regions far in-land. Historically, prolonged droughts of this...

Spin-Mixing Enhanced Proximity Effect in Aluminum-Based Superconductor–Semiconductor Hybrids

In superconducting quantum circuits, aluminum is one of the most widely used materials. It is currently also the superconductor of choice for the development of topological qubits. However, aluminum-based devices suffer from poor magnetic field compatibility. Herein, this limitation is resolved by showing that adatoms of heavy elements (e.g.,...

Progression along data-driven disease timelines is predictive of Alzheimer's disease in a population-based cohort

Data-driven disease progression models have provided important insight into the timeline of brain changes in AD phenotypes. However, their utility in predicting the progression of pre-symptomatic AD in a population-based setting has not yet been investigated. In this study, we investigated if the disease timelines constructed in a case...

Differences Between MR Brain Region Segmentation Methods: Impact on Single-Subject Analysis

For the segmentation of magnetic resonance brain images into anatomical regions, numerous fully automated methods have been proposed and compared to reference segmentations obtained manually. However, systematic differences might exist between the resulting segmentations, depending on the segmentation method and underlying brain atlas. This...

Assessment of the functional performance of lowland river systems subjected to climate change and large-scale morphological trends

Worldwide, rivers provide important socio-economic and environmental functions and are essential to human well-being. The growing demand of user-functions and the change in river conditions due to large-scale morphology and climate change, increase the pressure on lowland river systems (e.g. Rhine, Meuse, Danube and Mississippi). To ensure a...

The effect of low water on loading capacity of inland ships

Prolonged periods of drought affect river discharges and cause water levels and available water depth to drop for extended periods of time. Low water depth has a major impact on the loading capacity of inland ships, and as a consequence on the transport capacity of the overall waterborne supply chain. Individual ship owners have detailed...

Normative brain volumetry derived from different reference populations: impact on single-subject diagnostic assessment in dementia

Brain imaging data are increasingly made publicly accessible, and volumetric imaging measures derived from population-based cohorts may serve as normative data for individual patient diagnostic assessment. Yet, these normative cohorts are usually not a perfect reflection of a patient's base population, nor are imaging parameters such as field...

Trajectories of imaging markers in brain aging: the Rotterdam Study

With aging, the brain undergoes several structural changes. These changes reflect the normal aging process and are therefore not necessarily pathologic. In fact, better understanding of these normal changes is an important cornerstone to also disentangle pathologic changes. Several studies have investigated normal brain aging, both cross...

A fast preamplifier concept for SiPM-based time-of-flight PET detectors

Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) offer high gain and fast response to light, making them interesting for fast timing applications such as time-of-flight (TOF) PET. To fully exploit the potential of these photosensors, dedicated preamplifiers that do not deteriorate the rise time and signal-to-noise ratio are crucial. Challenges include the high...

A Comprehensive Model of the Response of Silicon Photomultipliers

The response of a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) to optical signals is inherently nonproportional due to saturation, afterpulsing, and crosstalk. Existing models of the SiPM response do not account for all of these effects, and therefore, these models are not sufficiently accurate for many applications. In this work, a comprehensive model of the...

LaBr3:Ce and SiPMs for time-of-flight PET: Achieving 100 ps coincidence resolving time

The use of time-of-flight (TOF) information in positron emission tomography (PET) enables significant improvement in image noise properties and, therefore, lesion detection. Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are solid-state photosensors that have several advantages over photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). SiPMs are small, essentially transparent to 511...

Simulation of silicon photomultiplier signals

In a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM), also referred to as multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC), many Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes (GM-APDs) are connected in parallel so as to combine the photon counting capabilities of each of these so-called microcells into a proportional light sensor. The discharge of a single microcell is relatively well...

A novel, SiPM-array-based, monolithic scintillator detector for PET

Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are of great interest to positron emission tomography (PET), as they enable new detector geometries, for e.g., depth-of-interaction (DOI) determination, are MR compatible, and offer faster response and higher gain than other solid-state photosensors such as avalanche photodiodes. Here we present a novel detector...