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Another possible application, he says, is for a kind of imaging, using neutral activation analysis.

The team adopted the well-known instrumental neutron activation analysis method, where a trace element in a chosen sample is irradiated and activated by the capture of thermal neutrons.

Tests were conducted both by the State of Kentucky and by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge,Tenn. At the latter facility, Kentucky's chief medical examiner Dr. George Nichols used a technique known as neutron activation analysis to test for arsenic.

Alvarez knew that a colleague of his at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, Frank Asaro, had developed a technique for measuring very precisely the chemical composition of clays using a process called neutron activation analysis.

As each element has a particular decay path, neutron activation analysis can determine the nature and amount of each element within the sample.