Abstract
THE methods at present available for counting calcium-45 by conventional liquid scintillation techniques, such as those of Carr and Parsons1, Sarnat and Jeffay2 and Humphreys3, make it possible to count large quantities of low specific activity calcium at efficiencies of 50 per cent or more. However, these methods are laborious and timeconsuming because of the lengthy chemical processing required to produce a calcium salt which will dissolve in the toluene-based scintillator mixture. Methods involving the use of hyamine for the direct solution of tissues or aqueous solutions in toluene4–6 are much quicker, but are only capable of counting very small quantities of calcium at lower efficiency; they are also subject to quenching errors. The use of plastic scintillator fibres or beads and anthracene crystals by Steinberg7–9 made it possible to count directly colourless aqueous solutions of calcium-45; however, the efficiency, except with anthracene, was low, and the sample and scintillator materials could only be recovered with difficulty. Plastic scintillator systems consisting of a vial10 and a flow cell11 are capable of counting calcium-45 in aqueous solutions without any corrections for quenching, but their capacity is 1 ml. or less and their efficiency only of the order of 6 per cent.
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SANSOM, B., TAYLOR, P. A Simple Device for the Scintillation Counting of Aqueous Solutions of Calcium-45 and other β-Emitting Isotopes. Nature 211, 626 (1966). https://doi.org/10.1038/211626a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/211626a0
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