There is a special reason for reviewing this book at this time: it is the 50th edition of a compendium that is known and used frequently in most chemical and physical laboratories in many parts of the world. Surely, a publication that has been published for 56 years, withstanding the vagaries of science in this century, must have had something to offer. There is another reason: while the book is a standard fixture in most chemical and physical laboratories, including those in medical centers, it is not as frequently seen in the laboratories of physician's offices (those either in solo or group practice). I believe that the Handbook can be useful in those laboratories. One of the reasons, among others, is that the various basic items of information it offers may be helpful in new tests, either physical or chemical, which are continuously being published. The basic information may relate

Handbook of Chemistry and Physics

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

This paper describes the physics case for a new fixed target facility at CERN SPS. The SHiP (search for hidden particles) experiment is intended to hunt for new physics in the largely unexplored domain of very weakly interacting particles with masses below the Fermi scale, inaccessible to the LHC experiments, and to study tau neutrino physics. The same proton beam setup can be used later to look for decays of tau-leptons with lepton flavour number non-conservation, $\tau \to 3\mu $ and to search for weakly-interacting sub-GeV dark matter candidates. We discuss the evidence for physics beyond the standard model and describe interactions between new particles and four different portals—scalars, vectors, fermions or axion-like particles. We discuss motivations for different models, manifesting themselves via these interactions, and how they can be probed with the SHiP experiment and present several case studies. The prospects to search for relatively light SUSY and composite particles at SHiP are also discussed. We demonstrate that the SHiP experiment has a unique potential to discover new physics and can directly probe a number of solutions of beyond the standard model puzzles, such as neutrino masses, baryon asymmetry of the Universe, dark matter, and inflation.

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A facility to search for hidden particles at the CERN SPS: the SHiP physics case.

The main objectives of the KM3NeT Collaboration are (i) the discovery and subsequent observation of high-energy neutrino sources in the Universe and (ii) the determination of the mass hierarchy of neutrinos. These objectives are strongly motivated by two recent important discoveries, namely: (1) the high-energy astrophysical neutrino signal reported by IceCube and (2) the sizable contribution of electron neutrinos to the third neutrino mass eigenstate as reported by Daya Bay, Reno and others. To meet these objectives, the KM3NeT Collaboration plans to build a new Research Infrastructure consisting of a network of deep-sea neutrino telescopes in the Mediterranean Sea. A phased and distributed implementation is pursued which maximises the access to regional funds, the availability of human resources and the synergistic opportunities for the Earth and sea sciences community. Three suitable deep-sea sites are selected, namely off-shore Toulon (France), Capo Passero (Sicily, Italy) and Pylos (Peloponnese, Greece). The infrastructure will consist of three so-called building blocks. A building block comprises 115 strings, each string comprises 18 optical modules and each optical module comprises 31 photo-multiplier tubes. Each building block thus constitutes a three-dimensional array of photo sensors that can be used to detect the Cherenkov light produced by relativistic particles emerging from neutrino interactions. Two building blocks will be sparsely configured to fully explore the IceCube signal with similar instrumented volume, different methodology, improved resolution and complementary field of view, including the galactic plane. One building block will be densely configured to precisely measure atmospheric neutrino oscillations.

Letter of intent for KM3NeT 2.0

We describe a theoretical framework for reversibly modulating 4D light fields using an attenuating mask in the optical path of a lens based camera. Based on this framework, we present a novel design to reconstruct the 4D light field from a 2D camera image without any additional refractive elements as required by previous light field cameras. The patterned mask attenuates light rays inside the camera instead of bending them, and the attenuation recoverably encodes the rays on the 2D sensor. Our mask-equipped camera focuses just as a traditional camera to capture conventional 2D photos at full sensor resolution, but the raw pixel values also hold a modulated 4D light field. The light field can be recovered by rearranging the tiles of the 2D Fourier transform of sensor values into 4D planes, and computing the inverse Fourier transform. In addition, one can also recover the full resolution image information for the in-focus parts of the scene. We also show how a broadband mask placed at the lens enables us to compute refocused images at full sensor resolution for layered Lambertian scenes. This partial encoding of 4D ray-space data enables editing of image contents by depth, yet does not require computational recovery of the complete 4D light field.

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Dappled photography: mask enhanced cameras for heterodyned light fields and coded aperture refocusing

A pressurized multiwire proportional chamber radionuclide imaging system has been constructed which has operated at pressures of up to 11 atmospheres absolute using a xenon-methane gas mix. The experimental detector has an active imaging area of 25 sq. cm. and an effective depth of 11 cm. An all digital readout system has been constructed with an intrinsic resolution of 1.3 mm FWHM. The FWHM has been measured for various radionuclides: iodine-125 (28 keV), 1.3 mm; thallium - 201 (75 keV), 2 mm; technetium-99 m (140 keV), 3 mm. Our primary goal has been the investigation of properties of such detectors that offer advantages over conventional gamma cameras, including high data rate and improved spatial resolution, particularly for isotopes with photon energies below 100 keV. We have fabricated a gas purification system which permits long term operation of the system without degradation and have investigated construction techniques to produce reliable devices which could be used in a hospital environment.

Pressurized Xenon-Filled Multiwire Proportional Chamber for Radionuclide Imaging

A liquid metal/solid metal interface detecting device comprises in general a radiation source for generating gamma radiation, which is directed to pass through a strand extruded from a continuous casting mold A detector detects the gamma radiation passing through the partially solidified strand to determine a spatial profile for a liquid metal/solid metal interface by relying on the different gamma radiation attenuation characteristics of the solid metal and the liquid metal Preferably, the gamma radiation is at energies of greater than one million electron volts In some embodiments, a movable support carries the radiation source and the detector and moves the radiation source and detector along and around the ingot enabling generation of a three-dimensional profile of the liquid metal/solid metal interface by utilizing tomographic imaging techniques Alternatively, solidification at a single region is determined and this information is used to control the formation of the strand in process controller implementations

Solid/liquid interface detection in continuous casting processes by gamma -ray attenuation

In this article, we propose the conceptual design, with supporting beam dynamics results, of a normal conducting, separated-sector cyclotron with a strong-focusing field gradient designed to accelerate light ions with a charge-to-mass ratio of 1/2 up to 15–20 MeV/u. The design can support a host of applications for therapy, radiobiology, material science, and instrumentation development. The light-ion species, which can include a mixed ion beam, can be dynamically chosen to provide a range of characteristic signals appropriate for specific material identification such as special nuclear materials. A conservative baseline concept is presented which has been optimized for radioisotope production of alpha emitters and theranostic radiopharmaceuticals. The modular design is also demonstrated to be scalable in gross physical parameters by a factor of 2–3, thereby reducing the size, weight, and power requirements (SWaP) and enabling near-term security applications.

High-Current Light-Ion Cyclotron for Applications in Nuclear Security and Radioisotope Production

Purpose: Small animal radioscintigraphic imaging systems aim to achieve sub-millimeter resolution. At the present time, sub-millimeter calibration sources that can be placed at will within an imaged volume are not readily available. We have developed a method for producing technetium-99m (Tc-99m) sources in less than 15 minutes with readily available reagents. Procedures: Tc-99m pertechnetate [TcO 4 ] − was incubated with 45 μm to 106 μm diameter spherical anion exchange beads, washed, and mounted as desired for instrument calibration. Results: The procedure yields spherical sources having between 6.8 μCi to 11.1 μCi of Tc-99m per source. This work shows that dual imaging of these sources using white light and radioscintigraphy permits measurement of system performance with high precision. Conclusion: Easily prepared, sub-millimeter Tc-99m spherical calibration sources are described, and it is demonstrated that such sources are useful for measuring the resolution and sensitivity of radioscintigraphic systems, such as those designed for small animal imaging. (Mol Imag Biol 2002;4:380–384)

Sub-millimeter technetium-99m calibration sources.

The authors have conducted research on coded aperture patterns composed of cyclic difference set uniformly redundant arrays (URA) such that the system point-spread-function is a delta function and no spurious artifacts are introduced by the spatial multiplexing process. Such arrays have the property that the autocorrelation functions have a single peak and flat sidelobes. Although there are some analytical methods for designing some patterns with such a property, the theory is quite incomplete thus requires a different approach. The authors have searched a complete list of such patterns for a range of 1-D and 2-D dimensions, and have obtained some rules. The available results can be used as practical patterns, or as future research reference for coded aperture pattern design. The authors also summarize the 3-D coded aperture imaging methods through a single-angle view (such as coded aperture laminography, moving object coded aperture imaging) and through multiple-angle views (such as modular coded aperture technology, coded aperture tomography), describe the image reconstruction and data processing algorithms, and discuss and compare the performance of different coded aperture imaging methods. Simulation and experimental results have been provided for verification.

Richard C. Lanza

Papers

Pressurized Xenon-Filled Multiwire Proportional Chamber for Radionuclide Imaging

Solid/liquid interface detection in continuous casting processes by gamma -ray attenuation

High-Current Light-Ion Cyclotron for Applications in Nuclear Security and Radioisotope Production

Sub-millimeter technetium-99m calibration sources.

Pattern design and imaging methods in 3-D coded aperture techniques