Kara M Lynch edited section:perception.tex  over 7 years ago

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Finally, but certainly not least of all, nuclear radiation has long been identified as a means of improving medical practices. During the first world war, Marie Curie had already identified many applications to nuclear and radiation physics, offering some of her personal radium sample to use the released radon radioactive isotopes to sterilize surgery instruments at the front, as well as portable radiography systems that could be used in those extreme conditions. Since then, great leaps have been made in the field of nuclear medicine, including SPECT and PET imaging, hadron therapy, and targeted radiotherapy. Those fields are currently in expansion, as evidenced by the increase in proton therapy centers (e.g. in Manchester, UK, across the Netherlands, or in Leuven, Belgium).  But the question remains as to what people think of nuclear science. In a recent outreach project in Brussels (Belgium), a group of high school students were briefly polled on their intuitive response to nuclear science. The results of the poll are shown in Fig.\,\ref{fig:pie:Bru}: Fig.\,\ref{fig:pie:Bru} or \ref{fig:pie:Bru2}:  more than half of those students were actually aware of the research interest of nuclear science, which is a testimony to the work that their teachers had performed previously. From the rest, a few were aware of safety concerns, some were worried about the military applications, while a small part expressed the importance it has for the generation of electricity. The most notable result of this poll was the complete absence of nuclear medicine amongst the results. This, in return, shows where most of the effort is currently required in order to sensitize the population to the importance of nuclear research for societal impact.