Blasting tumors with high-energy protons has become an increasingly popular and effective way of fighting cancer. Unlike the X rays normally used to fry the cancerous cells, proton beams can be tuned so that they deliver most of their energy to a specific target, without damaging the healthy tissue nearby. But the equipment required for proton therapy, which includes a particle accelerator, can take up an entire building and cost as much as $100 million. Now University of Wisconsin, Madison physicist Thomas Mackie says his company, TomoTherapy, is developing an effective, but smaller and less expensive proton generator in collaboration with scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and the University of California, Davis. This new beam generator would use a di-electric wall accelerator, which uses powerful electric fields to speed up protons in short distances. Best of all, it could fit in todays radiation treatment rooms, and would cost only about $20 million. Mackie guesses that clinical trials are still 5 years away.—Gregory Mone

Via Newswise

(Image credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, TomoTherapy, and University of California, Davis)

When it reaches full operation in 2009, the National Ignition Facil-ity (NIF) beamline will put other, piffling lab lasers to shame. The NIF system will be 60 times as energetic as Nova (which generated 16 trillion watts), NIF´s predecessor at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the previous record holder. But achieving such intensity won´t come easy. The hardware and electronics that power the NIF laser require a space bigger than a football stadium.
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David Keith never expected to get a summons from the White House. But in September 2001, officials with the President's Climate Change Technology Program invited him and more than two dozen other scientists to participate in a roundtable discussion called "Response Options to Rapid or Severe Climate Change." While administration officials were insisting in public that there was no firm proof that the planet was warming, they were quietly exploring potential ways to turn down the heat.