Readings from Scientific American


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Ionizing Radiation, X-Rays, and Nuclear Medicine

7/52 22 "Science in the Art Museum." Gettens; some new methods to study works of art, including the microscope, spectroscope, ultraviolet, x-ray, and microchemistry.
8/52 43 "Microwaves." Pierce; the development of microwaves in radar during World War II and their application in communication.
7/54 51 "The Structure of Protein Molecules." Pauling; describes the use of x-ray diffraction in the determination of protein structure.
12/54 63 "The Physics of Viruses." Pollard; give a basic picture of a virus and how it functions. Briefly describes different types of viruses and how they are separated. Also discusses the results of bombarding a virus with deuterons and explains the effects of the resulting ionization.
8/55 34 "Radioactive Poisons." Schubert; the problem of controlling radioactive atoms and molecules which cause damage to certain organs upon entering the human body.
10/55 38 "Geneva: Biology." Mawson; discussions on medical aspects of radioactivity.
11/55 58 "Radiation and Human Mutation." Muller; a discussion of the possible dangerous effects on genes by military, medical and industrial radiation.
1/56 58 "The Neutrino." Philip Morrison; theories developed from research on this tiny particle which is most important to the theoretical structure of physics but had not then been detected.
4/56 156 "The Amateur Scientist." How to construct a cloud chamber to reveal the paths of nuclear particles.
7/56 135 "The Amateur Scientist." H. Simons; the fundamentals of x-rays and a safe inexpensive method of generating them.
11/56 135 "Radioactive Tuberculosis Drugs." Roth and R. W. Manthei; the use of radioactive tracer drugs against TB to detect their mode of action.
5/58 38 "A 'Flying-Spot' Microscope." Montgomery and Bonner; a new tool pictures living cells by scanning them with ultra-violet radiation.
1/59 75 "The Atomic Nucleus." A concise explanation of the models (Liquid-Drop, Shell, and Optical) and the atomic forces incorporated in them.
1/59 139 "The Amateur Scientist." How to make an electrostatic machine to accelerate protons and electrons.
9/59 74 "Ionizing Radiation." Description and survey.
9/59 94 "Radiation and the Cell." Effects of radiation damage of specialized structures.
9/59 117 "Ionizing Radiation and the Whole Animal." Apparent and inferred effects of radiation.
9/59 138 "Ionizing Radiation and Evolution." Is evolution aided by the mutations induced by radiation?
9/59 164 "Ionizing Radiation and Medicine." How it can help if dosages are kept low.
9/59 180 "Ionizing Radiation and Organic Chemistry." A new branch of technology opens.
9/59 200 "Ionizing Radiation and Metals." Insight into the solid state.
9/59 219 "Ionizing Radiation and the Citizens." Uses of radiation and its hazards.
1/60 99 "Radiation-imitating Chemicals." Alexander; a number of organic compounds produce the same biological effects as radiation, among them Nitrogen mustards.
4/60 142 "Radiation and the Human Cell." Puck; the sensitivity of Human Cells to radiation.
11/62 107 "Neutron Radiography." Berger; neutron radiography may be used to reveal things x-rays cannot.
6/63 40 "The Ecological Effects of Radiation." Woodwell; shows the harmful effects of high levels of ionizing radiation extend to plants as well as man.
8/63 103 "Autobiographies of Cells." Baserga and Kisieleski; presents experiments in which cells have been labeled using autoradiography.
12/63 151 "The Amateur Scientist." Stong; Some experiments on the effects of ionizing radiation on plants.
1/64 88 "Boron." Massey; boron used for high-energy fuels for rockets and jet aircraft; neutron sheilds for nuclear reactors.
1/64 108 "Advances in Field Emission." Dyke; advanced knowledge of emission of electrons important for advanced x-ray techniques and electron microscopes.
2/64 74 "Strongly Interacting Particles." Chew, Gell-Mann-Rosenfeld; particles once thought to be 'elementary' not at all.
3/65 32 "The Structure of Crystal Surfaces." Lester H. Germer. Low-energy electron diffraction technique. Nobel prize winner, on his subject.
5/65 58 "Molecular Beams." 0. R. Frisch. Use of coherent beams of atoms and molecules in physics research.
12/65 54 "The Aurora." Syun-Ichi Akasofu. Description of aurora in terms of ionization of streams of cosmic particles.
1/66 36 "The Bacterial Chromosome." Cairns; an explanation and review of how radioactive labeled precursors allow for autoradiography of chromosomes. A review of DNA replication is included.
2/67 36 "The Repair of DNA." Harawalt and Haynes; How experiments with bacteria reveal that the cell has a remarkable ability to repair damage to the DNA molecule.
2/67 67 "The Solvated Electron." Dye; explanation of the role that an electron released by ionizing radiation can play in chemical reactions.
4/67 68 "Neutron Activation Analysts." Wahl and Kramer; Discussion of how tiny amounts of chemical elements can be measured by making them radioactive.
7/67 76 "The Leakage Problem in Fusion Reactors." Chem; Discussion of how physical theory can cope with the leakage of plasma from a V magnetic bottle.'
5/68 15 "The Three Spectroscopies." Weisskopf; deals with the quantum mechanics of the decay of elements and discusses further the phenomena observed in the great accelerators over the past 30 years.
7/68 38 "Sunburn." Daniels; outlines the reactions of the skin in response to ultraviolet radiation.
7/68 58 "X-ray Crystallography." Bragg; describes the technology, application and new knowledge derived through X-ray diffraction technique.
4/71 26 "A High-Resolution Scanning Electron Microscope." Albert V. Crewe; how it has succeeded in resolving individual atoms for the first time.
1/72 54 "The Scanning Electron Microscope." Everhart and Hayes; talks of mechanism of operation.
7/75 68 See category 10.
10/75 56 "Image Construction from Projections." Gordon, Herman, and Johnson; mathematical combination of x-ray images from several angles into 3-dimensional images of body organs. Informative: some technical computer discussion. (CAT).
4/76 96 "The Analysis of Materials by X-Ray Absorption." Stern; the absorption of x-rays by individual atoms which yields a 'signature' of the atom's position in the array which surrounds it.
10/76 44 "Neutron Scattering Studies of the Ribosome." Engleman; the development of a neutron scattering method which determines the structure of macro-molecules too small for electron microscopy and too large for x-ray diffraction analysis.
6/77 32 "The Uses of Synchrotron Radiation." E. M. Rowe, and J. H. Weaver; mostly in research, a good summary.
10/78 62 See Catagory 6.
11/78 70 "The Optics of Long-Wavelength X-rays." E. Spiller and R. Feder; applications here are for microscopy and research.
9/79 234 "A Radiation Detector made out of aluminum foil and a tin can." J. Walker (Amateur Scientist); mostly gamma rays.
6/80 104 "Gauge Theories of the Forces Between Elementary Particles." Gerard 't Hooft. Theories of this type are able to describe all the basic forces of nature.
8/80 104 "The Isolated Electron." Philip Ekstrom and David Wineland; in which the property of the electron called the g factor is measured with unexcelled accuracy.
10/80 170 "Positron-Emission Tomography." Michel M. Ter Pogossian, Marcus E. Raichle and Burton E. Sobel. A new technique displays physiological processes in the body.
12/80 82 "The Cosmic Asymmetry Between Matter and Anti- Matter." Frank Wilczek; Cosmology and particle physics suggests why more of the former exists than the latter.
2/81 138 "A Deep-Sea Neutrino Telescope." John G. Learned and David Eichler. Neutrinos from the cosmos could be detected by sensors shielded by five kilometers of seawater
3/8l 145 See Category 10.
4/81 48 "A Unified Theory of Elementary Particles and Forces." Howard Georgi; at high energy there may be one kind of elementary particle and one major force.
l0/8l 214 "Image Processing by Computer." T. M. Cannon and B. R. Hunt; nuclear medicine scans of beating hearts, for example, are already being computer-enhanced.
11/81 62 "The Microchannel Image Intensifier." Micheal Lampton; provides increased sensitivity for area detectors that convert ionizing radiation to visible light, such as phosphor screens.
11/81 72 "Inducible Repair of DNA." Paul Howard-Flanders; enzyme systems working together.
2/82 41 "Biological Effects of Low-Level Ionizing Radiation." Arthur C. Upton; examination of evidence for and against threshhold effects.


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Dick Piccard revised this file (http://ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/scientam/radiation.html) on July 15, 1997.

Please E-mail comments and suggestions to piccard@ohiou.edu.