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•During the last decades the refusal of vaccination is increasing.•There is lowest vaccination coverage in countries with anti-vaccination campaigns.•Proponents against vaccination now use the Internet and web 2.0 in particular.•HCWs have a pivotal role in imparting information and advice to the public on the vaccines promotion.•HCWs are models for patients and parents in particular, but vaccination coverages of HCWs are low. Over the last two decades, growing numbers of parents in the industrialized world are choosing not to have their children vaccinated. Trying to explain why this is occurring, public health commentators refer to the activities of an anti-vaccination movement. The aim of this paper is to review the literature about the anti-vaccination movements and to highlight the knowledge and the skills needed for HCWs to fight against their ideas. The main theoretical structures of anti-vaccination ideology in the 19th and 20th centuries are: vaccines cause idiopathic illness; opponents against vaccines accused vaccine partisans to be afraid of the “search after truth,” they fear unveiling errors; the vaccination law not only insults every subject of the realm, but also it insults every human being; vaccine immunity is temporary; an alternative healthy lifestyle, personal hygiene and diet stop diseases. Proponents against vaccination now have additional means to communicate their positions to the general public, the Internet in particular. Doctors and HCWs constantly have to face parents and patients who search information about vaccination. A lot of these people have previously found data about vaccinations from a lot of sources, such as papers, media or in websites and in these sources most contents come from anti-vaccine movements. For these reasons doctors and HCWs need to have updated knowledge about the vaccinations and to know the contents proposed by vaccine sceptics. Educating the general public cannot be fully effective unless there is a corresponding provision, enthusiasm and commitment by trained HCWs.

We present the first continuous operation in a surface lab of BULLKID, a detector for searches of light Dark Matter and precision measurements of the coherent and elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering. The detector consists of an array of 60 cubic silicon particle absorbers of 0.34 g each, sensed by cryogenic kinetic inductance detectors. The data presented focusses on one of the central elements of the array and on its surrounding elements used as veto. The energy spectrum resulting from an exposure of 39 h to ambient backgrounds, obtained without radiation shields, is flat at the level of ( 2.0 ± 0.1 stat . ± 0.2 syst . ) × 10 6  counts/keV kg days down to the energy threshold of 160 ± 13  eV. The data analysis demonstrates the unique capability of rejecting backgrounds generated from interactions in other sites of the array, stemming from the segmented and monolithic structure of the detector.

As an integral part of the European strategy for advancing fusion-generated electricity, IFMIF-DONES represents a high-intensity neutron irradiation plant with the main purpose of assessing the suitability of materials for fusion reactor applications. Its primary mission is to examine how materials respond to irradiation within a neutron flux that mimics the conditions expected in the first wall of the proposed DEMO reactor, which is intended to succeed ITER. Consequently, IFMIF-DONES, whose construction is slated to commence shortly, plays a pivotal role in aiding the development, approval, and safe operation of DEMO, as well as future fusion power plants. This paper provides a quick overview of the current development of the IFMIF-DONES neutron source with a particular snapshot of the present engineering design status for what concerns the instrumentation and control systems together with its complex diagnostics, that guarantees the safe monitoring, supervision and regulation of all operations. The current status of design, after the completion of the preliminary design phase is presented, as well as the existing and future plans for their integration also using some of the new capabilities offered by Artificial Intelligence tools.

International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility-DEMO-Oriented NEutron Source (IFMIF-DONES) is a high-intensity neutron irradiation facility for qualification of fusion reactor materials, which is being designed as part of the European roadmap to fusion-generated electricity. Its main purpose is to study the behavior of materials properties under irradiation in a neutron flux able to simulate the same effects in terms of relevant nuclear responses as those expected in the first wall of the DEMO reactor which is envisaged to follow ITER. It is thus a key facility to support the design, licensing and safe operation of DEMO as well as of the fusion power plants that will be developed afterwards. The start of its construction is foreseen in the next few years. In this contribution, an overview of the IFMIF-DONES neutron source is presented together with a snapshot of the current engineering design status and of the relevant key results achieved within the EUROfusion Work Package Early Neutron Source (WPENS) as part of the 2014–2020 EURATOM Research and Training Programme, complementary to the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (FP8). Moreover, some information on the future developments of the project are given.

BULLKID is a cryogenic, solid-state detector designed for direct searches of particle Dark Matter candidates, with mass ≲ 1 GeV/c 2 , and coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering. It is based on an array of dice carved in 5 mm thick silicon crystal, sensed by phonon-mediated Kinetic Inductance Detectors. In previous works, the array was calibrated with bursts of optical photons, which are absorbed in the first hundreds nanometers of the dice and give rise to surface events. In this work, we present the reconstruction of bulk events through the 59.5 keV γ -ray generated by an 241 Am source, which emulates more closely the interaction of Dark Matter and neutrinos. The peak resolution is 5 % ( σ ) and its position is shifted by less than 10 % with respect to the optical calibration. We observe that the resolution is further improved by a factor 2 combining the signal from neighboring dice. These results confirm the performance of the detector in view of the physics goals of the BULLKID-DM experiment for dark matter search.

•Apulia Region in Italy introduced universal routine vaccination (URV) against varicella in 2006.•A seroprevalence survey was carried out 6 years after the introduction of URV.•93% of Apulian aged 18–65 years was immune to varicella.•The URV did not seem to change the varicella epidemiological pattern among adults. In 2006, the Apulia Region (Italy) introduced universal routine vaccination (URV) against varicella disease. The coverage for one dose of varicella vaccine at 24 month of age reached 91.1% in 2010 birth-cohort. Vaccination coverage for the second dose at 5–6 years was 64.8% for the cohort 2005, and 28.8% for adolescents born in 1997. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the pattern of immunity/susceptibility to varicella in Apulian adults by a seroprevalence survey carried out 6 years after the introduction of URV. The study was carried out from May 2011 to June 2012 among blood donors of the Department of Transfusion Medicine of Policlinico General Hospital in Bari. Subjects were enrolled by a convenience sample. For each enrolled patient we collected a sample of serum of 5ml. Anti-VZV IgG in collected sera were analyzed by chemiluminescence (CLIA). We enrolled 1769 subject; 1365 (77.2%) were male with a mean age of 38.4±11.7 years. 93% (95% CI=91.7–94.1) of enrolled subject presented a titre of anti-VZV IgG >164mIU/mL. GMT of anti-VZV IgG titre was 1063.4mIU/ml and no difference was observed between different age group. According to our data, URV did not seem to have any impact on susceptibility among adults and in particular we did not note any cluster of susceptible subjects among young adults. Also in the vaccination era, we did not note that the average age of infection shifts among adults and then we could exclude an increase of case of complicated varicella related to the URV.

NUCLEUS is a cryogenic detection experiment which aims to measure Coherent Elastic Neutrino–Nucleus Scattering (CE ν νNS) and to search for new physics at the Chooz nuclear power plant in France. This article reports on the prediction of particle-induced backgrounds, especially focusing on the sub-keV energy range, which is a poorly known region where most of the CE ν νNS signal from reactor antineutrinos is expected. Together with measurements of the environmental background radiations at the experimental site, extensive Monte Carlo simulations based on the Geant4 package were run both to optimize the experimental setup for background reduction and to estimate the residual rates arising from different contributions such as cosmic ray-induced radiations, environmental gammas and material radioactivity. The NUCLEUS experimental setup is predicted to achieve a total rejection power of more than two orders of magnitude, leaving a residual background component which is strongly dominated by cosmic ray-induced neutrons. In the CE ν νNS signal region of interest between 10 and 100 eV, a total particle background rate of ∼ ∼ 250 d−1 kg−1 keV−1 is expected in the CaWO4 target detectors. This corresponds to a signal-to-background ratio ≳ ≳ 1, and therefore meets the required specifications in terms of particle background rejection for the detection of reactor antineutrinos through CE ν νNS.

This paper introduces a novel architecture for optimizing radiation shielding using a genetic algorithm with dynamic penalties and a custom parallel computing architecture. A practical example focuses on minimizing the Total Ionizing Dose for a silicon slab, considering only the layer number and the total thickness (additional constraints, e.g., cost and density, can be easily added). Genetic algorithm coupled with Geant4 simulations in a custom parallel computing architecture demonstrates convergence for the Total Ionizing Dose values. To address genetic algorithm issues (premature convergence, not perfectly fitted search parameters), a Total Ionizing Dose Database Vault object was introduced to enhance search speed (data persistence) and to preserve all solutions’ details independently. The Total Ionizing Dose Database Vault analysis highlights boron carbide as the best material for the first layer for neutron shielding and high-Z material (e.g., Tungsten) for the last layers to stop secondary gammas. A validation point between Geant4 and MCNP was conducted for specific simulation conditions. The advantages of the custom parallel computing architecture introduced here, are discussed in terms of resilience, scalability, autonomy, flexibility, and efficiency, with the benefit of saving computational time. The proposed genetic algorithm-based approach optimizes radiation shielding materials and configurations efficiently benefiting space exploration, medical devices, nuclear facilities, radioactive sources, and radiogenic devices.

We present the calibration and data analysis of BULLKID, a cryogenic, low threshold particle detector for searches of low mass dark matter candidates and coherent neutrino on nucleus scattering (CE ν NS) events. The BULLKID detector is an array of 60 cubic particle absorbers made out of 0.34 g of silicon per cube, each one sensed by a kinetic inductance detector (KID). This paper describes the energy calibration of the detector as well as an evaluation of the background rate of the device when operated in an above-ground unshielded environment. By performing coincidence cuts on a cluster of 3x3 dice, the background rejection power of the design is demonstrated, allowing reach to a flat background down to a threshold of 160 eV.

Background. Surveillance represents a key strategy to control type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). In Italy, national data are missing. This study aimed at evaluating the incidence of T1DM in subjects <18 year olds in Apulia (a large southeastern region, about 4,000,000 inhabitants) and assessing the sensitivity of the regional Registry of Childhood-Onset Diabetes (RCOD) in the 2009–2013 period. Methods. We performed a retrospective study matching records from regional Hospital Discharge Registry (HDR), User Fee Exempt Registry (UFER), and Drugs Prescription Registry (DPR) and calculated T1DM incidence; completeness of each data source was also estimated. In order to assess the RCOD sensitivity we compared cases from the registry to those extracted from HDR-UFER-DPR matching. Results. During 2009–2013, a total of 917 cases (about 184/year) in at least one of the three sources and an annual incidence of 25.2 per 100,000 were recorded, lower in infant, increasing with age and peaked in 5- to 9-year-olds. The completeness of DPR was 78.7%, higher than that of UFER (64.3%) and of HDR (59.6%). The RCOD’s sensitivity was 39.05% (360/922; 95% CI: 34.01%–44.09%). Conclusions. Apulia appeared as a high-incidence region. A full, active involvement of physicians working in paediatric diabetes clinics would be desirable to improve the RCOD performance.