Abstract :
In just the 100 yr after W.C. Roentgenʹs discovery of the X-ray, applications of ionizing radiation have become more and more widespread. Electron spin resonance, whose 50th anniversary we celebrated last year, provides a powerful tool for the detection of centers and radicals created in various radiation fields. That arrives at the reason for the 10th birthday of this series of conferences, which started 1985 at Ube (Japan). Many of the advances over the past decade of ESR applications involving ionizing radiation reported at the three earlier meetings have now become firmly established. Current areas of growing interest, stimulated by the first three symposia, are leading to an exciting future in the field. These stimuli find profound importance in the applied science of radiological and nuclear medicine, biomedicine, and biopolymers, materials effects in electronics and photonics, artifact dating in geology, paleontology, anthropology, and archaeology, radiation protection and the study of radiation accidents, forensics, food preservation and detection of irradiated foods, radiographic imaging and microscopy, and reference transfer dosimetry for medical-product sterilization and industrial processing by gamma radiation and electron beams.
