ACCUMULATION OF RADIOCESIUM BY MUSHROOMS IN THE ENVIRONMENT: A LITERATURE REVIEW AND IMAGE GALLERY (open access)

ACCUMULATION OF RADIOCESIUM BY MUSHROOMS IN THE ENVIRONMENT: A LITERATURE REVIEW AND IMAGE GALLERY

During the last 50 years, a large amount of information on radionuclide accumulators or 'sentinel-type' organisms in the environment has been published. Much of this work focused on the risks of food-chain transfer of radionuclides to higher organisms such as reindeer and man. However, until the 1980's and 1990's, there has been little published data on the radiocesium ({sup 134}Cs and {sup 137}Cs) accumulation by mushrooms. This presentation will consist of a review of the published data for {sup 134,137}Cs accumulation by mushrooms in nature. The review will consider the time of sampling, sample location characteristics, the radiocesium source term and other aspects that promote {sup 134,137}Cs uptake by mushrooms. This review will focus on published data for mushrooms that demonstrate a large propensity for use in the environmental biomonitoring of radiocesium contamination. It will also provide photographs and descriptions of habitats for many of these mushrooms to facilitate their collection for biomonitoring.
Date: November 5, 2006
Creator: Duff, M & Mary Ramsey, M
System: The UNT Digital Library
Determination of Dark Matter Properties at High-Energy Colliders (open access)

Determination of Dark Matter Properties at High-Energy Colliders

If the cosmic dark matter consists of weakly-interacting massive particles, these particles should be produced in reactions at the nextgeneration of high-energy accelerators. Measurements at these accelerators can then be used to determine the microscopic properties of the dark matter. From this, we can predict the cosmic density, the annihilation cross sections, and the cross sections relevant to direct detection. In this paper, we present studies in supersymmetry models with neutralino dark matter that give quantitative estimates of the accuracy that can be expected. We show that these are well matched to the requirements of anticipated astrophysical observations of dark matter. The capabilities of the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC) are expected to play a particularly important role in this study.
Date: November 5, 2006
Creator: Baltz, Edward A.; Battaglia, Marco; Peskin, Michael E. & Wizansky, Tommer
System: The UNT Digital Library