Decay counting methods, chemical

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is an ultrasensitive analytical method for radioactivity analysis. AMS offers 10 -10 -fold increases in sensitivity over LSC or other decay counting methods so that levels as low as 0.0001 DPM can be detected (Brown et al., 2005, 2006). AMS has been applied to mass balance determination, pharmacokinetic studies of total radioactivity, and measurement of chemically modified DNA and proteins in humans after the administration of a low radioisotope dose (approximately lOnCi/person for mass balance and drug metabolism studies) (Buchholz et al., 1999 Garner, 2000 Garner et al., 2002 Liberman et al., 2004 White and Brown, 2004). In addition, off-line HPLC-AMS has been explored for metabolite profiling after... 

The results of the two experiments performed to date are given in Table 4. All samples constituting one complete experiment were counted in one 24-hr period, thus correcting for S radioactive decay. The different radioactive compositions of the two incubation mixtures are due only to matters of laboratory convenience, and do not reflect changes in chemical composition. So far as an illustration of the counting method, it can be seen that 88-89% of... 

In this chapter we discuss improvements documented in the literature over the past decade in these areas and others. Chemical procedures, decay-counting spectroscopy, and mass spectrometric techniques published prior to 1992 were previously discussed by Lally (1992), Ivanovich and Murray (1992), and Chen et al. (1992). Because ICPMS methods were not discussed in preceding reviews and have become more commonly used in the past decade, we also include some theoretical discussion of ICPMS techniques and their variants. We also primarily focus our discussion of analytical developments on the longer-lived isotopes of uranium, thorium, protactinium, and radium in the uranium and thorium decay series, as these have been more widely applied in geochemistry and geochronology. 

Nuclear reactions producing exotic nuclei at the limits of stability are usually very non-specific. For the fast and efficient removal of typically several tens of interfering elements with several hundreds of isotopes from the nuclides selected for study mainly mass separation [Han 79, Rav 79] and rapid chemical procedures [Her 82] are applied. The use of conventional mass separators is limited to elements for which suitable ion sources are available. There exists a number of elements, such as niobium, the noble metals etc., which create problems in mass separation due to restrictions in the diffusion-, evaporation- or ionization process. Such limitations do not exist for chemical methods. Although rapid off-line chemical methods are still valuable for some applications, continuously operated chemical procedures have been advanced recently since they deliver a steady source of activity needed for measurements with low counting efficiencies and for studies of rare decay modes. The present paper presents several examples for such techniques and reports briefly actual applications of these methods for the study of exotic nuclei. 

There are numerous spectroscopic studies of the chromophores bound to the chemically modified silica gel(2-4) but dynamic studies such as fluorescence lifetime measurements are rather limited. In their recent work, Lochmuller and Hunnicutt (5) have employed the time-correlated single photon counting technique and analyzed the non-exponential decays in detail to disclose the complex features of the interfaces through (10-(3-pyrenyl)decyl)dimethylmonochlorosilane chemically bonded to silica as a probe. Unfortunately, however, their method, though sophisticated enough to monitor heterogeneous fluorescence decays, cannot distinguish one microparticle from the other and hence unavoidably follows overall decays. 

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