Today, scientists at 22 synchrotron light sources are analyzing protein structures, and the worldwide Protein Data Bank contains the structures of more than 72,000 proteins.
In the United States, we buy more than 20 billion disposable diapers each year. That's a lot of baby bottoms to keep dry, and parents everywhere can thank particle accelerators for doing their part.
Many a promising innovation dies on its way from the research lab to the commercial market. But with help from government or industry, the survival odds increase.
Traditional methods for sterilizing empty packaging are simple and effective, but have environmental drawbacks. Low-energy electron beams from particle accelerators provide an environmentally friendly alternative.
For many patients with serious burn wounds, the most dreaded visitor each day is the doctor or nurse who arrives to change the bandages. But accelerator-treated bandages can create healing environment.
A report from the field on the vital roles that accelerators play in energy and the environment, medicine, industry, national security and defense, and discovery science will inform strategic planning for accelerator science and technology by DOE's Office of Science.
Hundreds of thousands of patients around the world depend on medical imaging to reveal injuries, diagnose disease, or learn how a course of treatment such as chemotherapy is affecting their bodies.
More than two billion tons of cargo pass through ports and waterways annually in the United States. Many ports rely on gamma-ray scanners, based on radioactive isotopes such as cobalt-60, to screen cargo for nuclear materials or weapons.
On March 11, 1972 CERN engineer Bent Stumpe proposed a new type of interactive computer display for controlling the labs new Super Proton Synchrotron accelerator.
Sterilizing equipment, a critical aspect of modern medical care, can be accomplished by bombarding the equipment and its packaging with a beam of electrons or X-rays derived from a particle accelerator.
