Word: boron
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...first patient who received this treatment was almost unconscious when she went to Brookhaven. The woman could not talk and did not recognize her family. Into her bloodstream the doctors injected a solution containing boron, a common, stable element with an atomic weight of 10. But under neutron bombardment, boron-10 changes to an excited boron-11, which lives about one-hundredth of a trillionth of a second. In that infinitesimal fraction of time before it decays to stable lithium, it shoots out alpha particles...
They also said that 58 patients with brain cancer have been injected with an isotope of boron, which, they asserted, may "lead to useful treatment by direct rays from the atomic pile at Brookhaven, N.Y." This procedure has been described as "a miniature atomic explosion...
Sweet and Dr. Manucher Javid, Research Fellow in Surgery, explained that the "positron" technique is one of diagnosis while the use of boron may possibly be found of advantage for therapy following surgical operations in which brain tumors have been partially or totally removed...
Although he refused to commit himself until more information about the results of the boron experiments is available, Sweet admitted it was hoped that some day a point would be reached where the therapy would take the place of surgery, when "it is possible to destroy the morbid tissue without brain injury...
Under the Alpher-Herman hypothesis, the gas, constantly expanding, soon cooled enough to allow an occasional proton to join with a neutron, forming the two-part nucleus of heavy hydrogen. Then, little by little, larger nuclei were formed, such as lithium, boron and carbon. Most of the nuclei grew by capturing more neutrons. When they captured too many, they became unstable. Then some of the neutrons inside them turned into protons and electrons. The electrons shot off as high-energy beta particles...