Letter to H M Roth, Subject: Monthly Highlight Report for March 1957

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OFFICE OF THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OAK RIDGE INSTITUTE OF NUCLEAR STUDIESINCORPORATED Research and Development Division Oak Ridge, Tennessee SUBJECT: Monthly Highlight Report f o r Pjarch, 1957 W. G. Pollard, executive director of ORINS, made official Institute visits t o North Texas State College and Southern b tho dist University early in March. On B r c h 11, Dr. Pollard conferred with John Ewing, direct o r of the University of Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station, concerning ORINS-UT-AEC relationships, mutual interests, and problems. Projected programs specifically discussed were t h e neutron-gamma irradiation project and the strontium-%l project. On March 15, a conference was held in the local AEC offices on the neutron-gamma radiation project. Attending frm OFJNS were Gould Andrews, Paul El=, Cyril Comar, and W. G. Pollard. This project, when fully developed, would be carried out on a broad cooperative basis; ORIIS would provide collaborating physiologists and biochemists, including the initial and continuing advice and planning 02 D r . Comar. a representative from the UT-J!C program and the A i r Force, a representative from GRINS, and one from ORNL Will draft the proposal. Dr. Comar will represent ORIE on the cormittee. A committee consisting of The Building and Fund Raising Committee of the ORINS Council met i n Oak Ridge on March 19. building-funa objective to a meeting-and-symposium building with lecture halls, dining hall, anl dormitory facilities. made f o r approaching several foundations and industries for support for such a building. It was decided to restrict the

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man of the Tennessee Committee on Role, Function, Purpose, and Needs of Higher Education, and with F. A, Ficken, chairman of the University of Tennessee Subcommittee of the Stab Committee, t o discuss research programs. !Ibis committee is apart of a survey of public higher education which was set up by the hg is ht ive Council Committee of the State of Tennessee. the Citizens' Advisory Council for the survey. meeting i n Oak Ridge March 25 and 26 with afull attendance. Alvin M, Weinberg, director of Oak Ridge National Iaboratory, also attended a portion of the meeting, which uas a work conference f o r the purpose of putting i n final form the joint proposal t o the torto be located i n Oak Ridge i n an unclassified area. meeting of the committee will be held in late June. Dr, Pollard is a member of The Southern Regional Accelerator Committee he Id its f i f t h The annual meeting of the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society will be held a t the University of Kentuckg April 4-6, 1957, with one session of the April 4 program devoted t o B high-energy symposium, D r . Pollard will address the meeting on April 5 on "Educational Activities of ORINS from the High School t o the Graduate School Level." Representatives of the Southern Regional Education Board, Dr. Pollard, and Paul M. Gross, president of ORINS, Will meet i n Durham, North Carolina, on April 30 t o discuss relationships and fields of act i vil q of the two organizations. The Commission on Education i n the Basic Sciences o f the National Science Teachers Association, of which Dr. Pollard is a member, will hold its initial meetirg on May 3-4 i n Washington, May has been setas the date for the meeting of the University Relations Committee of the ORINS Council. The fortieth meeting of tb8 ORINS Board af Directors will be held on June 27 i n Oak Ridge, when the renewal of the prime contract with AEC will be considered i n detail. UMVERSITY REULTTONS DIVISION A s of March 29, a total of 423 requests had been received under the Oak Ridge Traveling Lecture Program and 1& lectures had been given. listing speakers and topics this spring in s bad of in the fall, a s i n past years, in order to give college and universiw groups more time for planning and organizing their programs for Tentative plans areto publish the brochurs

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Sixty-four offers of research participation i n Oak Ridge 6 1 a t Oak Ridge National Labratory, To date, LO persons haw accepted during the coming summer have been extended t o college and univers it y faculty members: two a t the ORINS Medical Division, and OTE atthe UT-AEC Agricultural Research Program. offers and six have declined. ..- The BEC Radiological Physics Fellawship Committee met March 6 and the BEC Industrial Hygiene Fellowship Committee, met Y’jrch 20-21, to select fellows for the 1957-58 programs. Nine industrial hygiene fellows selected fmm 36 applicants w i l l be appointed April 1. Nuclear energy technology fellowships were offered 117 of the 305 applicants; 81 radiological physics fellows were selected from U O applicants; and twu Oak Ridge graduate fellows were appointed. additional Oak Ridge graduate fellowship applications. reviewed the 286 applications f o r the 1957-1958 program year and selected twenty teachers who Came UI Oak Ridge for inter - //views and auditions a t the Oak Ridge High School, ten teachers on March 29 and ten on April 1. Final selection will be made early in April. Dondd B. Anderson from the National Science Foundation attended the April 1auditions. l b date, more than 3100 requests f o r visits during the 1957-1958 year have been Pending are two The tsaveling science teacher selection cod tte e has ceived from schools. -&th a total of 640 students and sponsors froin seven states visited the Amsrican Museum of Atomic Emrgy and Oak Ridge National Laboratory during Plarch. Thirty-four schools have indicated a desire to participate i n future tours, and kurs an? now scheduled through Saturday, &y 4. On the March 23 and March 30 tours, special luncheon programs were arranged. It is felt that the programs contributed t o the tour day, and similar arrangements are bei ~msde for future tours. Under the student educational tours program, 24 schools \ March attendance a t the American Museum of Atomic O n e of the most important undertakings of the American Museum of A.t;omic Energy was mrk on the development o f a long-range master plan f o r Museum exhibits, with present concentration on material for the agricultural room. An agricultural exhibit received from Michigan State University for permanent installation in the Huseum is now being repaired and altered to fit into available space.

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Work has continued on replacemnt units for the liSunmary of Atomic Energy" package exhibits. Work has begun on a gamma-ray-penetration exhibit which will ultimately be set up in the Museum, Plans are being made for the high-school demonstration units t o tour juvenile camps i n the Michigan area during the summer The extension exhibits of the Museum Division were presented Break-to a total audience of 373,256 during the month of March. down of this attendance is as follows: Unit No. 1 completed a January 12-Harch 5 showing a t the Philadelphia Commercial Museum, with an attendance of 66,000. !I'his exhibit is now being shown i n the Brooklyn, New York, Public Library under the sponsorship of Abraham and Straus. Unit No. 2 completed an ll-day appearance a t the National Omnge Show in San Bermdim, California, on March a, attendWashington , This exhibit is en route to Richland, Unit No, 3 was shown in Cincinnati, Ohio, under the sponThis exhibit i s now showing i n Tampa, sorship o f Cincinnati Health Museum, February 2'7-March 5 ; Florida, under the sponsorship of -The Tampa Morning Tribune. Unit No. 1 was shown i n 21 communities i n Pennsylvania and West Virginia, with a total attendance o f 12,621, U n i t No, 2 was shown in 31 cornunities i n Georgia and South Carolina, with a total attendance of 23,362. Unit No, 3 was shown i n 20 communities i n Nebrash and Kansas, with a total attendance of 6,615. Unit No. 4 was shown in 1 2 communities i n Texas, With a total attendancs of 9,468. Unit No. 5 was shown i n Nashville and Memphis, Tenressee, with a total attendance o f 11,800.

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species examined except the rabbit. calcium was also greater than other calcium sources in cattle and human beings; the degree of calcium retention was not examined i n the rat. Three out of f o u r humin subjects absorbed an average of 34 per cent ingested strontium-8S from CaC12 a s contrasted with 82 per cent from milk. "he retention of absorbed milk Degraded Radiation on Thyroid-Uptake Measurements. Medicine and Biology. Galleys read March 20. The scintillation pulse-height spectra of patients who had been given iodine-131 were examined with a gamma-ray spectrometer and compared with the spectra of dose standards. indicate how best t o avoid errors in uptake measurements caused by degraded radiation; proper working conditions (distance, collimation) are assumed. of the uptake measurement problem i s to exclude degraded radiation by differential counting. however, be minimized by using a proper phantom and the design of such a phantom is discussed, It is concluded that the best solution Errors in integral measurements may, Medical physics research a t the Nedical Division is proceeding along the following lines: machine has been overhauled and readjusted, and further e ql oration of the potentialities of this kind of treatment will be pursued a s suitable cases come in. almost daily use f o r the treatment of various tumors. ture t o be started this week is the use of total-body radiation i n set, up and schedule, but it i s expected that the installation, within the next few months, of the new unit designed and built for us by Westinghouse will considerably enhance the versatility of our teletherapeutic equipment , With the current equipment this is difficult to Thyroid Evaluation - Interest in the clinical evaluation of thyroid function is still very active, with the help of a number of visiting investigators, has daveloped a method of measuring the uptake o f radioiodim that promises t o be widely applicable i n spite of the tremendous diversity of already established testing equipment, and intensive, two-day courses of instruction a r e being offered approximately every month for interested persons. Meanwhile, investigations are continuing Kith the aim of incmasing the accuracy of our o m uptake measurements, for which we have available equipment that is perhaps better than average. The depth a t which a thyroid is buried presents a persistent problem, and we may need t o adopt new arrangements of the detecting device to bring it under contm1. The The Medical Division,

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Unit No. 1 was shown i n 15 schools i n Mississippi, to a total Unit No. 2 was shown i n 17 California schools, to a total Unit No, 3 was shown i n 10 Arkansas schools, toa total There were eight showings of the Museum Division's package-type1 exhibits with a total attendance of 13,600. J. E. Roberts, professor of physics a t the University of bndon, participated i n the Medical Division's third instructional thyroid - uptake calibration seminar, held March 18-19. Dr. Roberts, whose attendance a t the seminar was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, remained after the seminar to conduct a critical seminar for the Medical Division's seminar instructional staff. The fourth thy-roid-uptake calibration seminar i n the 1957 series will be held April 15-16, and will be open to qualified physicians Design criteria for the five-inch scanning crystal bave been P. S. Sarma, a Rockefeller travel grantee who is professor of biochemistry a t the University of Madras, India, was i n Oak Ridge Narch 17-23, when he visited Oak Ridge National Iabratory, the UT=-a;EC Agricultural Research Program, and the Medical Division, and conferred with UC officials,Dr. Sarma is i n this country for about ten weeks, visiting Commission installations. The following papers from the Medical Division are i n press: tion of Calcium and Strontium f r o m Filk and Nonmilk Diets. J. Nutrition, Galleys read March 19. The availability of calcium from milk was compared with that from CaC12 in rats, rabbits, and human subjects, and with calcium supplied with grain in cattle,rats, and rabbits. was more readily absorbed than the other forms o f calcium i n all

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troublesome difficulty of the nonthyroid neck background, which becomes important i n some cases, is being attacked by the gradual accumulation of a 1flibrary" o f gamma-ray spectm of the neck, measured with o r without the thyroid component as the appropriate patients present themselves, Interest also continues i n the -rate of radioiodine uptake ( a s contrasted with the amount) a s a serviceable index of thyroid activity and/or dysfunction. Inall these investigations careful attention is being paid to the influence of varying gamma-ray spectrum on any quantitative measurements that may be =de+ consideration that appears t o have been neglected during the development of the currently used, routine clinical tests. Sample Counting - Besides the measurement of radiation coming from a patient ' s thyroid gland, other counting procedures are used i n estimating the radioiodine ( o r other radioisotope) content of blood, urine, etc,, and it begins to appear likely that i n these procedures also the effects of inconstant gamma-ray spectrum will. merit closer scrutiny than they have received i n the past. This problem will be explored as rapidly a s time and investigative manpower become available , Scintiscanni - When a patient ' s body is scanned i n search of the-E-€--+ca ion o buried radioisotopes, formidable difficulties arise because of the variable depth a t which the hidden material nearby emitters, and this distorts the true picture unless steps are taken to equalize - orat least roughly level off-its response atall depths concerned. compensation bring u i t h them new problems-€or example variable sharpness of focus-and it i s by no mans certain that our current scanning detectors represent a judicious compromise between the progress with the aim of ascertaining whether increased crystal size and aperture number would enhance a scanner's effectiveness enough to justify the concomitant increase i n cost, weight and usefulness of a scanner's detecting head, The detecting device is inherently more sensitive to Expedients designed to achieve such Accordingly, a theoretical. study isin Atove a certain point, size alone will compromise the Along with the search fora better scanning head, we plan t o build a nplanarn scanner, similar i n principle to that devised i n Ehgland.by Pochin, which permits the sensing device to be swept longitudinally over a patient from head to foot, for the purpose of spotting those areas where more detailed scanning would be advisable, whole patient in detail,for he is unabh t o be still for the required length of time, and for this reason a preliminarg "screening'f scan would often be valuable, i f only to mimmize the chance of overlooking an important area , It is not practicable a t present …