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Independent measurement of the total active B8 solar neutrino flux using an array of He3 proportional counters at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

O'Keeffe was leader of the backgrounds group, responsible for providing measurements for use in the signal extraction fit. She developed methods to measure radioactive backgrounds using the neutrino data and during this analysis, discovered an area of increased radioactivity on a proportional counter. She devised a method to determine its composition and her results reduced the neutral current flux uncertainty due to backgrounds from 7% to <1%. Her contributions to the water assay programme included co-developing beta-alpha coincidence counters used to measure aqueous radioactivity. These counters are used by the Daya Bay, DEAP, SNO+ and Picasso experiments.