Collaborate Disseminate
The hole in the Earth’s ozone layer may be on the mend, but that doesn’t mean its environmental impacts are over. A new review study has examined in detail the effects that the extra UV radiation is having on the environment, such as shifting… Continue reading How the hole in the ozone layer is affecting climate change
Radiotherapy is an effective method for killing cancer, but the downside is that it harms healthy cells at the same time, sometimes leading to complications. Now researchers from CNIO in Spain have found that boosting levels of a certain prot… Continue reading Boosting a radiation-protecting protein could help cancer patients and astronauts
An international research project found that high concentrations of radioactive material in glaciers around the world could be exposed due to climate change. Continue reading Melting Glaciers Could Unleash Nuclear Fallout Trapped Within the Ice
Magnetic hotspots on the Moon might contain clues about how to protect humans from radiation on other planets. Continue reading The Moon Has Tan Lines, NASA Says
When the topic is radiation detection, thoughts turn naturally to the venerable Geiger-Müller tube. It’s been around for ages, Russian surplus tubes are available for next to nothing, and it’s easy to use. But as a vacuum tube it can be somewhat delicate, and the high voltages needed to run …read more
Continue reading Radiation Detector Eschews Tubes, Uses Photodiode
A park safety manager reveals that three buckets of uranium ore were sitting in a museum storage basement, starting in 2000. Continue reading Grand Canyon Visitors May Have Been Exposed to Radiation For Years
It started as a joke, as sometimes these things do. [Marek Więcek] thought building a personal radiation detector would not only give him something to work on, but it would be like having a gadget out of the Fallout games. He would check the data from time to time and have a bit of a laugh. But then things got real. When he started seeing rumors on social media that a nearby nuclear reactor had suffered some kind of radiation leak, his “joke” radiation detector suddenly became serious business.
With the realization that having his own source of detailed environmental …read more
Radioactivity stirs up a lot of anxiety, partially because ionizing radiation is undetectable by any of the senses we were born with. Anytime radiation makes the news, there is a surge of people worried about their exposure levels and a lack of quick and accurate answers. Doctors are flooded with calls, detection devices become scarce, and fraudsters swoop in to make a quick buck. Recognizing the need for a better way, researchers are devising methods to measure cumulative exposure experienced by commodity surface mount resistors.
Cumulative exposure is typically tracked by wearing a dosimeter a.k.a. “radiation badge”. It is standard …read more
Continue reading A Very Different ‘Hot Or Not’ Application For Your Phone
We are somewhat spoiled because electronics today are very reliable compared to even a few decades ago. Most modern electronics obey the bathtub curve. If they don’t fail right away, they won’t fail for a very long time, in all likelihood. However, there are a few cases where that’s not a good enough answer. One is when something really important is at stake — the control systems of an airplane, for example. The other is when you are in an environment that might cause failures. In those cases — near a nuclear reactor or space, for example, you often are …read more
Continue reading Circuit VR: Redundant Flip Flops and Voting Logic
Remember when a homemade cloud chamber was a science fair staple? We haven’t participated for decades, but it seemed like every year someone would put a hunk of dry ice in a fish tank, add a little alcohol, and with the lighting just right – which it never was in the gymnasium – you might be lucky enough to see a few contrails in the supersaturated vapor as the occasional stray bit of background radiation whizzed through the apparatus.
Done right, the classic cloud chamber is a great demonstration, but stocking enough dry ice to keep the fun going is …read more
Continue reading See the Radioactive World with This Peltier Cloud Chamber