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Catching cancer early can make all the difference for successful treatment. A common screening practice measures tumor growth with X-ray computed tomography (CT
It is often the case that a valuable new industrial capability brings with it a whole new set of challenges for measurement science -- and thus, inevitably, for
Neutron detectors and sources play critical roles in national defense, homeland security, nuclear power plant control, radiation medicine, petroleum exploration
For the first time in a laboratory setting, NIST scientists have made stop-action x-ray measurements of the way visible light interacts with atoms and molecules
Neutrons, the charge-less constituents of atomic nuclei, are nifty imagers. Since the 1950s, scientists have been using these particles' eerie ability to non
Last spring, PML's x-ray calibration facilities were used in a pinch – a Z pinch, that is.
The Sandia National Laboratories' Z Pulsed Power Facility, or "Z
A collaboration between NIST scientists and colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has resulted in a new kind of sensor that can be used to
Doctors devising a plan of attack on a tumor may one day gain another tactical advantage thanks to a series of sophisticated calculations proposed by PML's
A little detective work by nuclear physicists has uncovered hidden uncertainties in a popular method for precisely measuring radioactive nuclides, often used to
As cancer diagnostic tools, a new class of imagers – which combines positron-emission tomography (PET) with magnetic resonance imaging (MR or MRI) – has shown
PML researchers are exploring whether ultrasound can be used as a faster, more efficient way to take three-dimensional images of radiation dose profiles in
As part of an Interagency Agreement between NIST and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), PML's Radiation Physics Division recently completed a series of
NIST scientists have pioneered a technology that may speed the arrival of long-awaited materials and devices including advanced high-temperature superconductors
Doctors shrink tumors with radiation therapy, but a badly calibrated beam can cause serious complications. Scientists in NIST's Radiation Physics Division in
In a truly scintillating set of experiments, scientists at NIST and the University of Maryland have demonstrated that a process called excimer* scintillation
A recently announced malaria vaccine – found to be 100 % effective in a small human sample – was years in the making, and its creators had to overcome many
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new standard reference material (SRM), the first such measurement tool
Every month, between 50 and 70 million passengers travel through U.S. airports, toting more than 30 million pieces of luggage destined for aircraft cargo holds
In the United States, about 80 million x-ray computed tomography (CT) scans are made every year – 7 million of them on children – according to the American
In living organisms, biomolecules such as proteins are constantly in complex motion, bending and flexing in different ways at different points. Each molecule
In the pursuit of precision measurements, nothing is simple, even when the apparatus employed appears to be utterly uncomplicated. An instructive case in point
Why there is stuff in the universe—more properly, why there is an imbalance between matter and antimatter—is one of the long-standing mysteries of cosmology. A
The idea of probing the body's interior with radiation stretches back to experiments with X rays in the 1800s, but more than a century later, images taken with
How are physicists helping an effort to eradicate malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than one million people every year? Researchers at the