Delays and denials of shipments involving regulated radioactive materials used in medicine and industry are of growing concern to safety and industry experts. Meeting in Rome this week at an IAEA workshop, they agreed on an action plan for the Mediterranean region that seeks to ease hardships for hospitals, research centres and organizations that rely on timely delivery of beneficial radiation sources.

Final results from the University of Utah’s High-Resolution Fly’s Eye cosmic ray observatory show that the most energetic particles in the universe rarely reach Earth at full strength because they come from great distances, so most of them collide with radiation left over from the birth of the universe.

Stephen Hawking should be pleased. The first signs of an effect the British physicist predicted more than 30 years ago – known as Hawking radiation – have finally materialised from the simulated edge of a black hole.

European scientists have developed the most accurate method yet for predicting the doses of radiation that astronauts will receive aboard the orbiting European laboratory module, Columbus, attached to the ISS this week.

Using breast shields during pediatric chest MDCT reduces radiation dose and minimally increases image noise, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock.

A new generation of sensors for detecting explosives and poisons could be developed following new research into a type of radiation known as T-rays, published today (3 February) in Nature Photonics.

A new and increasingly popular type of minimally invasive sinus surgery exposes patients to only “very low” doses of radiation during the procedure, a level considered to be safe, according to a new study published in the February 2008 issue of the journal Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.

The Department of Defense has commissioned a nine-month study from Rice University chemists and scientists in the Texas Medical Center to determine whether a new drug based on carbon nanotubes can help prevent people from dying of acute radiation injury following radiation exposure.

Measures to protect astronauts from health risks caused by space radiation will be important during extended missions to the moon or Mars, say researchers in a paper currently online in Experimental Neurology.

Twenty million nuclear medicine procedures that detect and evaluate heart disease, brain disorders and cancer—and that use radiopharmaceuticals to treat overactive thyroids and some cancers—are performed each year.

Faint, fleeting blue flashes of radiation emitted by particles that travel faster than the speed of light through the atmosphere may help scientists solve one of the oldest mysteries in astrophysics.

Maximum radiation skin dose during coronary angioplasty can be accurately determined by monitoring the total entrance skin radiation dose as the patient is being examined and dividing that number in half according to a recent study conducted by researchers at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.