No abstract

Although the water-soluble fullerenes (and possibly their simple metabolites) are not acutely toxic, they are retained in the body for long periods, raising concerns about chronic toxic effects. The fact that fullerenes distribute rapidly to many tissues suggests that they may eventually be useful to deliver highly polar drugs through membranes to a target tissue, however, and they may even have applications in the delivery of drugs to the brain. Recent advances in fullerene synthetic chemistry may also make it possible to control fullerene absorption/excretion profiles in the future.

A tremendous amount of radioactivity was discharged because of the damage to cooling systems of nuclear reactors in the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011. Fukushima and its adjacent prefectures were contaminated with fission products from the accident. Here, we show a geographical distribution of radioactive iodine, tellurium, and cesium in the surface soils of central-east Japan as determined by gamma-ray spectrometry. Especially in Fukushima prefecture, contaminated area spreads around Iitate and Naka-Dori for all the radionuclides we measured. Distributions of the radionuclides were affected by the physical state of each nuclide as well as geographical features. Considering meteorological conditions, it is concluded that the radioactive material transported on March 15 was the major contributor to contamination in Fukushima prefecture, whereas the radioactive material transported on March 21 was the major source in Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama, and Chiba prefectures and in Tokyo.

The production and decay of 277 112 have been investigated using a gas-filled recoil ion separator in irradiations of 208 Pb targets with a 70 Zn beam at 349.5 MeV. We have observed two -decay chains that can be assigned to subsequent decays from 277 112 produced in the 208 Pb( 70 Zn,n) reaction. After emitting four consecutive -particles, both the chains terminate by spontaneous fission decays of 261 Rf, and the decay energies and decay times of both the chains obtained in the present work agree well with those reported by a group at Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI), Germany. The present result gives the first clear confirmation of the discovery of 277 112 and its -decay product 273 Ds reported previously.

Radioactive endohedral 7 Be@C 60 can be detected using radiochemical and radiochromatographic techniques in the final solvent. Such a 7 Be atom can penetrate into the C 60 cage to produce 7 Be@C 60 by a recoil process of the nuclear reactions. An ab initio molecular dynamics simulation was carried out to demonstrate that a direct insertion process is really possible. Both the experimental and the theoretical results were consistent with each other. [S0031-9007(96)01431-7]