No abstract

Gas chromatographic/mass spectrometric examination of products from laboratory thermal degradation of kerogen from a young marine sediment (Tanner Basin off California), revealed a series of long-chain nitriles whose carbon-chain lengths range from 12 to 26. These compounds appeared after the relatively mild thermal conditions of 310-350°C for 5-116 hrs and disappeared before major n alkane generation. We hypothesise that n-alkanes are generated at the expense of long-chain fatty nitriles which in turn are formed via fatty acid amide-linked structures in kerogen.Heating of standard long chain (C18) fatty acid amides with kerogen produced n-alkanes with no odd/even predominance. The heating experiments showed that these nitrogen compounds have a strong potential for producing a series of normal hydrocarbons. Consequently, nitrogen-linked long methylene-chain structures in kerogen analogous to fatty acid amides /fatty nitriles can act as one of the precursors of petroleum hydrocarbons.

Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is an innovative cancer therapy that selectively destroys only cancer cells by utilizing the reaction between boron agents, which selectively accumulate in cancer cells, and neutron beams. However, the irradiation field of BNCT is a mixture of multiple radiation types, making accurate dose evaluation difficult. For dose evaluation in cancer tissues, which is particularly important, it is essential to discriminate neutrons and γ-rays mixed in the BNCT irradiation field and to measure them correctly. In this paper, we introduce a new method for selective measurement of neutrons and γ-rays using thermoluminescence phosphor, which is expected to be a promising method to improve the accuracy of dose evaluations.