A virtual laboratory for radiotracer and sealed-source applications in industry

Radioactive sealed sources and radiotracer techniques are used to diagnose industrial process units. This work introduces a workspace to simulate four sealed sources and radiotracer applications, namely, gamma scanning of distillation columns, gamma scanning of pipes, gamma transmission tomography, and radiotracer flow rate measurements. The workspace was created in Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission (GATE) simulation toolkit and was called Industrial Radioisotope Applications Virtual Laboratory. The flexibility of GATE and the fact that it is an open-source software render it advantageous to radioisotope technology practitioners, educators, and students. The comparison of the simulation results with experimental results that are available in the literature showed the effectiveness of the virtual laboratory.

BRNS Sponsored National Symposium: Radiotracer Techniques: Improve Nutritional Status and Health of Animals and Plants

BRNS Sponsored National Symposium on "Radiotracer Techniques: Improve Nutritional Status and Health of Animals and Plants" Organized By: Chameli Devi Institute of Pharmacy, Indore Saturday, 1st February 2020

Control on rate and pathway of anaerobic organic carbon degradation in the seabed

The degradation of organic matter in the anoxic seabed proceeds through a complex microbial network in which the terminal steps are dominated by oxidation with sulfate or conversion into methane and CO2. The controls on pathway and rate of the degradation process in different geochemical zones remain elusive. Radiotracer techniques were used to perform measurements of sulfate reduction, methanogenesis, and acetate oxidation with unprecedented sensitivity throughout Holocene sediment columns from the Baltic Sea. We found that degradation rates transition continuously from the sulfate to the methane zone, thereby demonstrating that terminal steps do not exert feedback control on upstream hydrolytic and fermentative processes, as previously suspected. Acetate was a key intermediate for carbon mineralization in both zones. However, acetate was not directly converted into methane. Instead, an additional subterminal step converted acetate to CO2 and reducing equivalents, such as H2, which then fed autotrophic reduction of CO2 to methane.

Genotypic Divergence in Per Cent Zinc Derived from Variable Sources and on Zinc Uptake in Rice [Oryza sativa (L.)] as Established by Radiotracer Techniques

A pot culture experiment was conducted at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore to establish the genotypic divergence in per cent zinc (Zn) derived from fertilizer (% Zndff) or from soil (% Zndfs) and on zinc uptake of two rice genotypes Zn -efficient Norungan and Zn –inefficient PMK 3. To assess the partitioning of Zn in the shoot and root of the genotypes, radiotracer technique was employed, in which graded levels of Zn (0.0, 12.5, 25.0, 37.5 and 50.0 kg ha-1 of ZnSO4) as 65Zn labeled ZnSO4 were applied. Per cent Zndff showed an increase by 50 % for Zn-inefficient PMK 3 than that for Norungan while reverse was the trend for % Zndfs implying the fact that Zn inefficient genotypes have the ability to use only readily available sources of Zn. Zinc uptake from fertilizer increased with increasing dose of applied zinc for PMK 3 while in Norungan it showed a peak at 25 kg ha-1 of ZnSO4 and thereafter it declined. Irrespective of the sources of zinc, root zinc accumulation was higher in PMK 3 than that in Norungan. The Zn-efficient genotype Norungan had better translocation of Zn from root to shoot than PMK 3.