Canada

The radioactive decay of radon in the home is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smoking Canadians (REF 1,2). Radon produced by the decay of uranium and thorium minerals entering the home may accumulate in concentrations that exceed the national maximum guideline for indoor air of 200 Bq/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. There is a critical need to develop a practical tool to assess an individual’s exposure to radon and eventually one’s lung cancer risk. An important opportunity is to use keratinizing tissues in the body (hair, nails) as archives of radon exposure. The lead is sequestered from the environment in toenails, including the relatively long-lived (22 yrs) &lt;sup&gt;210&lt;/sup&gt;Pb isotope, which comes from &lt;sup&gt;222&lt;/sup&gt;Rn decay. 

In this project, we are using isotope ratio mass spectrometry to quantify the amount of &lt;sup&gt;210&lt;/sup&gt;Pb in a known amount of sample. This method has the advantage of providing a direct and relatively rapid count of the numbers of &lt;sup&gt;210&lt;/sup&gt;Pb atoms. The challenge is that the actual number of &lt;sup&gt;210&lt;/sup&gt;Pb atoms is very low and achieving reliable results requires high sensitivity methods specifically designed for the extraction of lead from the biological matrix. In the first stages of the project, we are using isotope dilution methods coupled with multiple collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICPMS). Initial results demonstrate that femtogram quantities of lead can be measured.

The next stage of the project involves the design and construction of a laser ablation ion source coupled to the Multiple Reflection Time of Flight (MR-TOF MS) at the TITAN instrument at TRIUMF. The laser ion source in combination with the MR-TOF MS offers high sensitivity and the ability to separate isobars of &lt;sup&gt;210&lt;/sup&gt;Pb. The laser beam, after passing through optical telescope system and polarizers for pulse energy modulation, is focused on a small point on the sample surface located in a high-vacuum chamber. Thus, the laser source enables spatial mapping of &lt;sup&gt;210&lt;/sup&gt;Pb isotopic composition and allow one to map the accumulation of the radon daughter products over the growth of tissue. Ultimately, an accurate measurement of the number of accumulated atoms in an individual’s biological tissue may be a personalized biodosimeter for radon.

1. Gogna, Priyanka, et al. &quot;Estimates of the current and future burden of lung cancer attributable to residential radon exposure in Canada.&quot; Preventive medicine 122 (2019): 100-108
2. Stanley, F. K., Zarezadeh, S., Dumais, C. D., Dumais, K., MacQueen, R., Clement, F., &amp; Goodarzi, A. A. (2017). Comprehensive survey of household radon gas levels and risk factors in southern Alberta. CMAJ open, 5(1), E255–E264. https://doi.org/10.9778/cmajo.20160142
3. Stanley, Fintan KT, et al. &quot;Radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern North American residential environment and is increasingly uniform across seasons.&quot; Scientific reports 9.1 (2019): 1-17.

CAP Virtual Congress 2021

Development of an isotopic biodosimeter to assess radon gas exposure

laser ablation

mass spectrometry

radon exposure

Colleagues and Friends:

I am very happy to welcome you to the 14th annual Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, and to the first virtual edition of our meeting. I want to highlight the important work the CAN meeting chair, **Roger Thompson** and co-chair, **Alyson Fournier**, did to put together the great program we are offering this year. Moving to a virtual format required a complete re-design of the program, and both Roger and Alyson did a splendid job in providing us with an appealing and well adapted program for our first virtual event. I wish to thank them for this very important effort.

Highlights of this year’s scientific meeting include invited speakers **Michael Hausser, Franck Polleux, Gwyneth Card, Magdalena Götz**and Brain Prize winner **Huda Zoghbi**. Plenary and parallel symposia, proposed by our members complete our diverse [scientific program.](https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/program-2021/)

The 2021 Advocacy session, chaired and organized by CAN advocacy committee chair **Karun Singh**, will feature a special lecture and question period with Member of Parliament and past Science Minister **Kirsty Duncan**. This will be followed by a short overview of CAN’s advocacy activities over the last year. We invite you to participate in this session for insight from Dr. Duncan on the workings of Parliament Hill, and to learn more about what CAN has been doing to promote neuroscience research in Canada.

We are also excited to host **Lisa Willis** in the Equity Diversity and Inclusion session, organized by EDI committee chair **Jibran Khokhar**.

A special highlight of our meeting will be the lectures by award-winning young neuroscientists. We are please to host the CAN 2020 Young Investigator Award winner **Mihaela Iordanova**, and CAN 2021 Young Investigator Award winners **Aaron Phillips** and **Tabrez Siddiqui**. Highlights will also include presentation by the top three winners of the CAN-CIHR-INMHA Brain Star Award winners, **Claire Gizowski, Nuria Daviu Abant** and **Lukas Tamayo-Orrego**.

Independently organized satellite symposia complement and complete this exciting program, check them out here: https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/2021-satellite-symposia/

Some of the most engaging sessions are always the poster sessions featuring the work of our trainees, so make sure to log in to Gather Town during the poster sessions to chat with the presenters.
We hope you enjoy this program, and look forward to welcoming you, virtually.

Shernaz Bamji

President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience

![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/b9aea25343a87d5aac3b9367dc780974.jpg)



Please head to https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/registration-2021/ to register. 

CAN-ACN 2021

14th Canadian Neuroscience Meeting from August 23rd-25th

The radioactive decay of radon in the home is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smoking Canadians (REF 1,2). Radon produced by the decay of uranium and thorium minerals entering the home may accumulate in concentrations that exceed the national maximum guideline for indoor air of 200 Bq/m3. There is a critical need to develop a practical tool to assess an individual’s exposure to radon and eventually one’s lung cancer risk. An important opportunity is to use keratinizing tissues in the body (hair, nails) as archives of radon exposure. The lead is sequestered from the environment in toenails, including the relatively long-lived (22 yrs) 210Pb isotope, which comes from 222Rn decay. 

In this project, we are using isotope ratio mass spectrometry to quantify the amount of 210Pb in a known amount of sample. This method has the advantage of providing a direct and relatively rapid count of the numbers of 210Pb atoms. The challenge is that the actual number of 210Pb atoms is very low and achieving reliable results requires high sensitivity methods specifically designed for the extraction of lead from the biological matrix. In the first stages of the project, we are using isotope dilution methods coupled with multiple collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICPMS). Initial results demonstrate that femtogram quantities of lead can be measured.

The next stage of the project involves the design and construction of a laser ablation ion source coupled to the Multiple Reflection Time of Flight (MR-TOF MS) at the TITAN instrument at TRIUMF. The laser ion source in combination with the MR-TOF MS offers high sensitivity and the ability to separate isobars of 210Pb. The laser beam, after passing through optical telescope system and polarizers for pulse energy modulation, is focused on a small point on the sample surface located in a high-vacuum chamber. Thus, the laser source enables spatial mapping of 210Pb isotopic composition and allow one to map the accumulation of the radon daughter products over the growth of tissue. Ultimately, an accurate measurement of the number of accumulated atoms in an individual’s biological tissue may be a personalized biodosimeter for radon.

1. Gogna, Priyanka, et al. "Estimates of the current and future burden of lung cancer attributable to residential radon exposure in Canada." Preventive medicine 122 (2019): 100-108
2. Stanley, F. K., Zarezadeh, S., Dumais, C. D., Dumais, K., MacQueen, R., Clement, F., & Goodarzi, A. A. (2017). Comprehensive survey of household radon gas levels and risk factors in southern Alberta. CMAJ open, 5(1), E255–E264. https://doi.org/10.9778/cmajo.20160142
3. Stanley, Fintan KT, et al. "Radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern North American residential environment and is increasingly uniform across seasons." Scientific reports 9.1 (2019): 1-17.

technical paper

**WELCOME TO THE 2021 CAP VIRTUAL CONGRESS UNDERLINE PLATFORM**

The CAP staff and our organizing and program committees are pleased to welcome you to our 2021 Congress filled with plenary talks, technical sessions/talks, student presentations and competition sessions, workshops, and several symposia offered by the CAP divisions and its partners.  

You will also have opportunities to network with other delegates through the Gathertown platform accessed by selecting the lounge or posters button on the left.

Registered delegates should use the schedule button to call up the details of the session/event they wish to attend.  Each sessions includes a link to access the online platform where the event is taking place, either within Underline or through other Congress-related Zoom meetings.  

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General information about the Congress can be found on the CAP website Congress pages at https://www.cap.ca/congress/2021.

Looking for a specific talk?   A full searchable list is available on our Indico Congress site at https://indico.cern.ch/event/985448/contributions/

We look forward to sharing this exciting week with you!


We model a number of both closed-packed and non-closed-packed crystals inside a cholesteric liquid crystal (LC) with different pitch values and nematic LC through the Landau–de Gennes free-energy method[1]. We investigated the anisotropic interactions between particles with heterogeneous boundary conditions inside both nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals[2]. The results show that it is energetically favorable for the particles to remain in a plane parallel to the far-field director in a nematic liquid crystal, while for particles immersed in a cholesteric there are multiple energy minima not all located in the same plane. Therefore, We became interested in investigating the stability of binary crystals [3]. The results indicate that body-centered-cubic (BCC) crystals have a lower-energy lattice defect structure than the diamond crystal. Furthermore, it is shown that a pair of binary colloids can be self-assemble into a stable face-centered- cubic lattice structure inside a nematic LC, as it has the lowest energy comparing to diamond and BCC crystals.

1-P.G. de Gennes and J. Prost, The Physics of Liquid Crystals (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993)
2-Phys. Rev. E 95, 052703 – Published 30 May 2017
3-Phys. Rev. E 99, 052701 – Published 13 May 2019

Stability Of Binary Colloidal Crystals Immersed In a Cholesteric Liquid Crystal

High-power lasers are rapidly becoming standard tools in advanced manufacturing, mainly in the form of laser welding, laser cutting, and laser additive manufacturing. Of these applications, laser welding in the electric mobility sector---particularly in the manufacturing of battery packs---presents unique challenges. Weld depth needs to be precisely controlled, not only to ensure joint strength, but also to ensure the weld does not puncture into the lithium ion cell. In addition, these processes often involve highly reflective metals (such as copper), which have material properties that lead to unstable welds; this requires an unprecedented level of control to ensure weld quality and depth. To better monitor and control weld quality, we need fully in-line monitoring during the process. Inline Coherent Imaging (ICI) is a process monitoring technique that has been demonstrated to measure keyhole depth (down to 15 um axial resolution) at high imaging rates (~200 kHz), even in high aspect ratio features. Due to its interferometric nature, coherent imaging has unparalleled sensitivity and dynamic range. However, it suffers from speckle noise, which degrades high-speed measurements by orders of magnitude, and false interfaces that arise from unwanted interferences (“autocorrelation” peaks). These pose a significant challenge to quality assurance and closed-loop control, particularly in highly dynamic laser processing applications, such as copper welding. To mitigate these problems, we have integrated a second, automatically synchronized, imaging channel into a standard ICI system, by exploiting a previously unused part of the imaging window. This “witness” image allows us to identify real signatures based on correlation and filter out the uncorrelated noise. Using this system, we have demonstrated the complete removal of autocorrelation artifacts, and have increased signal to noise by a factor of two, with no loss of imaging rate or spatial resolution compared to standard ICI. When applied to imaging laser keyhole welding, the false interface detection rate is reduced from 10% to 0.15%, yielding improved tracking of the true morphology.

Self-witnessing coherent imaging for artifact removal and noise filtering in laser keyhole welding

Raman spectroscopy is an efficient method to characterize the graphene structure. The technique gives distinctive features for pristine, damaged and even doped graphene. Nonetheless, especially when graphene is grown on a polycrystalline substrate, strong discrepancies may appear on the macroscopic scale. Moreover, in the case of plasma irradiation of graphene, it is essential to understand the impact of the small heterogeneities in pristine graphene (local defects, grain boundaries, etc.) on the resulting graphene structure after treatment [1]. Hyperspectral Raman Imaging (RIMA for Raman Imaging) is a powerful method enabling the capture of qualitative as well as quantitative data on a macroscopic scale [2]. Grain Boundaries (GBs) reveal themselves being more resistant to plasma treatment than pristine graphene domains. After careful consideration of Raman parameters, it appears clearly that preferential self-healing of GBs and its surrounding is taking place, a phenomenon observed in 3D materials, yet to be observed in graphene. This mechanism is governed by carbon adatoms generated from impacts of low-energy argon ions with graphene film. Under constant irradiation from exited species (ions, metastable, VUV photons), carbon adatoms can easily migrate on graphene surface and, in particular, alongside GBs. Hence, defects created at GBs or present nearby might be healed by the adatoms influx [3]. Furthermore, another plasma conditions shown that energy fluence from Argon metastable deexcitation can be linked to an enhanced defect migration and self-healing at GBs [4]. Finally, the previous study in Argon plasma enable the determination of ideal operating conditions for Argon plasma with B2H6 trace. The exposition of graphene to such plasma reveals boron in-plane substitution combined with low-level hydrogenation and defect generation [5].

Fundamental study of plasma-graphene interactions in Argon/B2H6 plasma

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is widely used as a non-invasive diagnostic technique to visualize the internal structure of biological systems. Quantitative analysis of magnetic resonance signal lifetimes, i.e., relaxation times, can reveal molecular scale information and has significance in the study of brain, spinal cord, articular cartilage, and cancer discrimination. Determination of MR relaxation spectra (relaxometry) is an inherently ill-posed problem. Conventional methods to extract MR relaxation spectra are computationally intensive, requiring high quality data and generally lacking the spectrum peak width information. A novel computationally efficient signal analysis method, based on neural networks (NN), has been developed to provide accurate real-time quantitative MR relaxation spectrum analysis. 
Deep learning with NN is a technique for solving complex nonlinear problems. NN have been optimized to determine 1D and 2D MR relaxation spectra. Simulated signals with Rician noise were employed for training the neural networks. The network performance was evaluated with simulated and experimental data, and compared with the traditional inverse Laplace transform (ILT) method. NN outperformed ILT. The 1D spectrum peak widths, generally considered not reliable with the traditional approach, could be determined accurately by the NN, noise permitting. 
The proposed exponential analysis method is not restricted to magnetic resonance. It is readily applicable in other areas with exponential analysis, such as fluorescence decay and radioactive decay. The method could be extended to higher dimensional spectra and adopted to solve other ill-posed problems.

Magnetic Resonance Relaxometry with Neural Networks

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is widely used as a non-invasive diagnostic technique to visualize the internal structure of biological systems. MRI has limited spatial resolution and the microscopic behaviour within an image voxel cannot be visualized with qualitative images. Quantitative analysis of molecular diffusion provides insights into the microscopic structure beyond the MRI image resolution. It is challenging to analytically derive the MR diffusion signals for complex microscopic environments, particularly with susceptibility effects. In this work, an easy to use open-source Monte Carlo algorithm has been developed to simulate MR diffusion measurements under arbitrary conditions.
The self diffusion of water molecules can be described by Brownian motion. The Monte Carlo method was applied to simulate the Brownian motion in a user-defined microscopic environment. The fast simulation can be performed on any MRI experiments with user-defined magnetic field distribution. The method has been applied to predict nanoparticle configuration. Magnetic nanoparticles, serving as biosensors, distort the local magnetic field leading to changes in the MR diffusion signals. The simulation agreed with the experimental results. The nanoparticle concentration in water can be determined with MR diffusion measurements. 
We have developed an efficient, easy to use algorithm for rapid diffusion simulation in different microscopic environments with arbitrary magnetic fields. This simulation will be employed to optimize the nanoparticle biosensor systems for a wide range of targets, including cancer cells and COVID virus.

Monte Carlo Simulation for Magnetic Resonance Diffusion Measurements

In this talk, we show that any non-constant quantity defined on density matrices that is additive on tensor products and invariant under permutations cannot be "more than asymptotically continuous."The proof is a direct consequence of generalizing a protocol for embezzling entanglement. Joint work with Andrea Coladangelo.

Additive quantities cannot be more than asymptotically continuous

Quantum field theory is completely characterized by the field correlations between spacetime points. In turn, some of these can be accessed by locally coupling to the field simple quantum systems, a.k.a. particle detectors. In this work, we consider what happens when a quantum- controlled superposition of detectors at different space-time points is used to probe the correlations of the field. We show that, due to quantum interference effects, two detectors can gain information on field correlations which would not be otherwise accessible. This has relevant consequences for information theoretic quantities, like entanglement and mutual information harvested from the field. In particular, the quantum control allows for extraction of entanglement in scenarios where this is otherwise provably impossible.

Quantum Temporal Superposition: the case of QFT

DarkSide-20k is a planned two-phase liquid Argon time-projection-chamber (LAr-TPC) for direct WIMP search. The S1 and S2 light from the 20 ton fiducial volume is detected with Silicon photomultipliers and digitized. Due to the expected data rate of hundreds of MB/s it is impractical to record full waveform data continuously like in the smaller DarkSide-50 experiment, instead complex filtering and processing is required to select meaningful data. Since this processing needs to take into account all (above threshold) data channels at once, it cannot happen directly in the acquisition module, but all data has to be transferred to a processing farm, where processing time will likely exceed acquisition time. In order to address this, data will be compiled into time slices (on the order of a second), which get distributed to individual processing machines. The process is somewhat complicated by the fact that due to the long drift time in the TPC signals from the same physical event can be spread out over milliseconds, it is thus necessary for time slices to overlap enough to ensure each physical event is contained completely in one slice.
This presentation will give an overview of the DarkSide vertical slice scheme and show how it is implemented within a MIDAS-based data acquisition system.

The Vertical Slice Data Processing Scheme for DarkSide

Attosecond science is a relatively new research field founded on high-harmonic generation (HHG) in atomic and molecular gases, which has recently transitioned to experiment in 3-dimensional solids. Most of the physics underlying attosecond pulse emission from 2-dimensional semiconductors is unknown. Following years of research focusing on HHG in bulk semiconductors, this project focuses on the mostly unstudied van der Waals materials ReS$_2$ and MoS$_2$. We measure the power of the emitted high harmonics for varying orientation of the crystallographic axis with respect to the linear polarization of the incident driving laser beam. Both crystals emit high harmonics in a very distinctive pattern which reveals the symmetry of the crystal as well as microscopic details about the orbitals involved in the emission. Our demonstration inches us closer to understanding high-field phenomena in van der Waals materials, and controlling high-harmonic emission with unprecedented precision thanks to the high degree of tunability of 2-dimensional materials and their heterostructures.

An exploration for new phenomena using high-harmonic generation in two-dimensional van der Waals materials

Graphene is among the most promising materials considered for next-generation gas sensing due to its properties including high mechanical strength and flexibility, high surface-to-volume ratio, large conductivity, and low electrical noise. While gas sensors based on graphene devices have already demonstrated high sensitivity, one of the most important figures of merit, selectivity, remains a challenge. In the last few years, however, surface functionalization emerged as a potential route to achieve selectivity. In this talk, we focus on experiments where we functionalized the surface of CVD graphene field-effect transistors (GFET) through thermal evaporation of metal-free phthalocyanines and copper phthalocyanines. We present and discuss sensitivity and selectivity results obtained when such sensors are exposed to volatile organic compounds such as ethanol, toluene, formaldehyde, and acetone. In general, the functionalized GFET presented enhanced selectivity for oxygen-containing molecules (formaldehyde and acetone).

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Development of an isotopic biodosimeter to assess radon gas exposure

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Stability Of Binary Colloidal Crystals Immersed In a Cholesteric Liquid Crystal

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