A clinical solution for non-toxic 3D-printed photon blocks in external beam radiation therapy.

Purpose: A well-known limitation of multi-leaf collimators is that they cannot easily form island blocks. This can be important in mantle region therapy. Cerrobend photon blocks, currently used for supplementary shielding, are labor-intensive and error-prone.

Packing and the structural transformations in liquid and amorphous oxides from ambient to extreme conditions.

Liquid and glassy oxide materials play a vital role in multiple scientific and technological disciplines, but little is known about the part played by oxygen-oxygen interactions in the structural transformations that change their physical properties. Here we show that the coordination number of network-forming structural motifs, which play a key role in defining the topological ordering, can be rationalized in terms of the oxygen-packing fraction over an extensive pressure and temperature range. The result is a structural map for predicting the likely regimes of topological change for a range of oxide materials.