#radioisotopes

[biology-geology-beaches-india]

TSRNOSS. Page 302.

[bpod-bpod]

Picking the Brain

Various cell types in brain tumour biopsies are marked when applying radioactive antibodies for detection by positron emission tomography. This study of glioblastoma uses cell sorting and 3D histology – technique to highlight the tissue make-up – to distinguish cells of the tumour and its environment towards targeted monitoring of specific cell populations

Read the latest published research paper here

This is International Brain Tumour Awareness Week – 29.10–5.11 2023

Image from work by Laura M. Bartos and colleagues

Department of Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital of Munich, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Science Advances, October 2023

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[memoriesfromthefuture]

In week two of our powering space imperialism series, we're talking about radioisotope thermoelectric generators and how they can provide power outside of the sun's reach.

[weirdbooksifoundatwork]

Good, I've always been curious

[biology-geology-beaches-india]

The Scientific Research Notes Of S. Sunkavally (years: 2002-2011).

2149-2151.

[infactforgetthepark]

[Free eBook] Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine [Technology & Political History]

Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine by Angela H. N. Creager, a professor of History of Science at Princeton University, is a science and medical history book, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher The University of Chicago Press.

This is their featured Free eBook of the Month for August, and is an accessibly-written look at the history and politics surrounding the development and use of radioisotopes as government-sponsored tools for science and medicine from the mid-20th century onwards, while public perception of them shifted from more positive to negative due to growing societal concerns over the effects of radioactivity.

Offered worldwide through the month of August, available directly from the publisher's website.

Currently free @ the university's dedicated promo page (PDF available with download options for both Adobe Digital Editions and Readium DRM, follow instructions provided on download link page, requires newsletter signup with valid email address), and you can read more about the book on its regular catalogue page.

Description After World War II, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began mass-producing radioisotopes, sending out nearly 64,000 shipments of radioactive materials to scientists and physicians by 1955. Even as the atomic bomb became the focus of Cold War anxiety, radioisotopes represented the government’s efforts to harness the power of the atom for peace—advancing medicine, domestic energy, and foreign relations.

In Life Atomic, Angela N. H. Creager tells the story of how these radioisotopes, which were simultaneously scientific tools and political icons, transformed biomedicine and ecology. Government-produced radioisotopes provided physicians with new tools for diagnosis and therapy, specifically cancer therapy, and enabled biologists to trace molecular transformations. Yet the government’s attempt to present radioisotopes as marvelous dividends of the atomic age was undercut in the 1950s by the fallout debates, as scientists and citizens recognized the hazards of low-level radiation. Creager reveals that growing consciousness of the danger of radioactivity did not reduce the demand for radioisotopes at hospitals and laboratories, but it did change their popular representation from a therapeutic agent to an environmental poison. She then demonstrates how, by the late twentieth century, public fear of radioactivity overshadowed any appreciation of the positive consequences of the AEC’s provision of radioisotopes for research and medicine.

[eyepool]

In my back yard, they lit cesium

to measure the glow.

Hold it in your hand:

foxfire, wormwood, glow worm.

Cesium lights the rain,

absorbed in the skin,

unstable, unstable

dancing away, ticking away

in bones, fingernails, brain.

Sick burns through, burns blue.

—Jeannine Hall Gailey

[man-and-atom]

This is the back cover illustration to Industrial Applications for Isotopic Power Generators, Joint UKAEA–ENEA International Symposium, AERE Harwell, September 1966.

I bought the book for the contents, not even knowing about this illustration ― depicting a phoenix rising from the radioactive “ashes” of the nuclear “fire” ― which frankly was worth what I paid for the book, all by itself!