Lead has recently been recognised as a source of environmental pollution, including the lead used for radiation shielding in radiotherapy. The bremsstrahlung radiation caused by the interaction between the electron beam and lead may reduce the accuracy of radiotherapy. To avoid the use of lead, a new material composed of tungsten and hydrogenated styrene-butadiene-styrene copolymer is studied with the Monte Carlo (MC) method and experiment in this paper. The component of the material is chosen after simulation with the MC method and the practical measurement is taken to validate the shielding ability of the material. The result shows that the shielding ability of the new material is good enough to fulfill the requirement for application in radiotherapy. Compared with lead alloy, the present new material is so flexible that can be easily customized into arbitrary shapes. Moreover, the material is environmentally friendly and can be recycled conveniently. Therefore, the material can be used as an effective lead substitute for shielding against electron beams in radiotherapy.

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The Xin'an Reservoir is an important water supply source and water conservation area for the Qiantang River. However, after the occurrence of the two algae blooms in 1998 and 1999, the safety of water quality has been put into question. In order to study the historical deposition of nutrients, sediment cores were collected in different regions from the Xin'an Reservoir. The stable isotopes δC and δN, nutrients, total organic carbon (TOC), and inorganic carbon (IC) in the sediment cores were determined. Radiometric methods (Pb and Cs) were used to obtain sediment chronologies. Spatially, it was found that the average total nitrogen (TN) content in the upper 5 cm of sediments increased from 0.21% in the riverine zone, to 0.33%, and then to 0.57% in the lacustrine zone. The average TP content in the upper 5 cm increased from 0.67 g kg in the riverine zone, to 1.03 g kg in the estuary region, and then to 1.65 g kg in the lacustrine zone. In addition, TOC levels showed a distinct increase from 1.42% in the bottom to 5.97% in the surface of the lacustrine zone. These results demonstrated that although primary productivity and the input of nutrients constantly increased in recent years, algae blooms rarely occurred in the Xin'an Reservoir, due to "depth effect" and an aquatic environment protection-oriented fishery policy. However, high TOC flux and high bio-available phosphorus and nitrogen in surface sediment demonstrated that the reservoir is still confronted with the potential risk of algae blooms.

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