Selected Presentations
2021 Scientific Advisory Committee Meeting
WSU Tri-Cities – Haynes, S.
Dr. Haynes provided an update on the WSU Tri-Cities campus, which is strategically building on its research strengths to match research that is carried out in the mid-Columbia region. This includes research related to agriculture and wine, as well as energy and the environment.
WSU/CPPS News – Leid, M.
Dr. Leid discussed research at WSU’s College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, which is involved in a variety of studies related to novel targets for drug development, pharmacokinetics, drug-drug and natural product interactions, drug metabolism and pharmacogenomics, drug delivery, tobacco/smoking cessation, and the impact of novel teaching strategies.
Administrative and Financial Developments – Bedell, M.
Ms. Bedell summarized administrative and financial information including: personnel support, the FY2021 budget vs. spending, the FY2022 budget, and salary increases.
2020 SAC Recommendations & 2021 Overview – Tolmachev, S.
Dr. Tolmachev described the USTUR’s response to each of the SAC’s recommendations from last April’s meeting, and provided an overview of FY2021 activities. Topics included: COVID-19 pandemic impact; research and publications; academic and professional engagement; and Registries management and operation.
Data Quality Objectives Report – Tabatadze, G.
Dr. Tabatadze summarized progress toward completing the USTUR’s Data Quality Objectives (DQO) document. This included a statement of the goals of the DQO, a list of measurement quality objectives (MQO), and a discussion about use of the MDA as an achievable MQO, despite the higher uncertainty associated with it.
Registrant Statistics and IRB – McComish, S.
Ms. McComish briefly summarized Registrant statistics and recent donations. This was followed by a summary of changes that were made to the USTUR’s institutional review board protocol, and a summary of the recently approved procedure for collecting urine samples from living Registrants for actinide analysis.
Database Harmonization – McComish, S.
Ms. McComish discussed a project to harmonize the THEMIS, radiochemistry, planchets, and reagents databases such that they function as a single unit. Progress toward this goal was presented, and several several practical examples, such as standardization of tissue descriptions, were provided.
Autopsy vs. Death Certificate Reports – Liu, X.
Ms. Liu described preliminary results of a study to use autopsy reports to determine how frequently the underlying causes of death from death certificates is misclassified. Calculations were carried out for five disease categories, and for three additional groups according to whether a certifier used the autopsy report to determine the causes of death for the death certificate.
Uncertainty Project – Šefl M.
Dr. Šefl summarized his study of bias in predicted organ activities among eleven Manhattan Project workers. He used post-mortem tissue/organ activities to evaluate the accuracy of reference biokinetic models, which are often used for radiation epidemiology.
Latent Bone Project – Zhou, J.
Dr. Zhou presented his work to determine the best combination of bones for predicting the plutonium concentration in an individual’s entire skeleton. He used a principal component regression to reduce the dimensionality of the dataset and to address the large covariance between the activities of individual bones.
Research Plan and Operation: Plan for FY2022 – Tolmachev, S.Y.
Dr. Tolmachev summarized the USTUR’s research and operational goals for the coming year. He discussed management and operation of the Registries; anticipated scientific research; promotion of the broader use of USTUR research, data, and materials; and plans to contribute to the education of a new generation of scientists.