cyclotron

For more information on cyclotron, visit Britannica.com.

Background

The modern cyclotron uses two hollow D-shaped electrodes held in a vacuum between poles of an electromagnet. A high frequency AC voltage is then applied to each electrode. In the space between the electrodes an ion source produces either positive or negative ions depending on the configuration. These ions are accelerated into one of the electrodes by an electrostatic attraction, and when the alternating current shifts from positive to negative, the ions accelerate into the other electrode. Because of the strong electromagnetic field, the ions travel in a circular path. Each time the ions move from one electrode to another they gain energy, their rotational radius increases, and they produce a spiral orbit. This acceleration continues until they escape from the electrode. The accelerated particles are extracted from the cyclotron when they reach the end of the spiral acceleration path. This beam of accelerated subatomic particles can be used to bombard a variety of target materials to produce radioactive isotopes.

Various isotopes are used in medicine as tracers that are injected into the body and in radiation treatments for certain types of cancers. Cyclotrons are also used for research purposes in academic and industrial settings, and for positron emission tomography (PET). Positron emission tomography (PET) is a technique for measuring the concentrations of positron-emitting radioisotopes within the tissue of living subjects. The usefulness of PET is that, within limits, it has the ability to assess biochemical changes in the body. Any region of the body that is experiencing abnormal biochemical changes can be seen through PET. PET has had a huge impact on the clinical applications of neurological diseases, including cerebral vascular disease, epilepsy, and cerebral tumors.

History

E. O. Lawrence and his graduate students at the University of California, Berkley tried many different configurations of the cyclotron before they met with success in 1929. The earliest cyclotron was very small, using electrodes, a radio frequency oscillator producing 10 watts, a vacuum, hydrogen ions, and a 4 in (10 cm) electromagnet. The accelerating chamber of the first cyclotron measured 5 in (12.7 cm) in diameter and boosted hydrogen ions to energy of 5-45 MeV depending on the settings. One mega electron volt (MeV) is 1.602 × 1013 J. (J stands for Joule, the standard unit for energy.) The design, construction, and operation of increasingly larger cyclotrons involved a growing number of physicists, engineers, and chemists. Lawrence was never certain as to whether his research should be classified as nuclear physics or nuclear chemistry.

Raw Materials

The magnets in the cyclotron are made from 25 tons of low carbon steel with two nickel plated poles. Physically, the cyclotron weighs 55 tons, and is located inside an inner vault with concrete walls and doors about 6.6 ft (2 m) thick to shield the surroundings from the nuclear radiation present when the machine runs. Fortunately, most of this radiation has a half-life of only seconds to minutes, so there are no long-term waste disposal problems. Actual dimensions are approximately 100 × 100.5 × 39 ft (30.5 × 30.6 × 11.9 m). The coils are manufactured from annealed copper, insulated with fiber-glass and covered with an epoxy resin. The aluminum vacuum tank is sealed by polyurethane o-rings. The ion source uses a tungsten filament to energize the hydrogen gas and borated polyethylene packing is used to reduce the build up of thermal neutrons around components of the cyclotron. The target changer allows the cyclotron operator to select different targets on each of the beamlines to be irradiated and are made primarily from aluminum, with a minimum of stainless-steel to minimize neutron activation.

Design

The design of the cyclotron varies according to the specifications of the purchaser. Ebco Technologies Inc. builds two different types of negative ion cyclotrons, one capable of accelerating protons to a maximum energy level of 19 MeV (TR19) and the other capable of accelerating protons to 32 MeV (TR32). The standard configuration of the TR19 cyclotron is with two external beamlines but there is a scaled down version with an option of one beamline. The TR19 standard target configuration is with two external beamlines and eight targets. There is a design option of two to four targets on one beamline, with the upgrade to up to eight targets at a later date. The TR19 is also available in a self-shielded or unshielded configuration. The self-shielded feature eliminates the need for a cyclotron vault or major upgrades to existing facilities. Additionally, the magnet gap in the TR19 is vertical to minimize space.

The radio frequency (RF) system consists of a RF amplifier, a coaxial transmission line from the RF amplifier to the cyclotron, a power supply, and instrumentation and read-back devices, an oscilloscope, current/voltage, power gauges, and interfaces with the computerized control system. A mass flow controller, needle valve, and pneumatic valve regulate the gas pressure and flow.

A tungsten filament is placed inside the ion source and when heated will ionize the hydrogen gas. A plasma filter is placed on the ion source aperture to enhance conditions for negative ion production.

The negative ions generated will be injected into the cyclotron at its X-axis. The injection system is manufactured from a set of steering magnets to focus the negative ions onto the plane of acceleration by the tilted spiral inflector.

The Manufacturing
Process

1. Project teams coordinate conduit, cable tray, floor duct, and related equipment prior to the shipping, rigging, and installation of the cyclotron and its sub-systems.
2. The manufacturing process begins with the 25-ton steel magnet. It is machined from 10-in (25.4-cm) slabs and placed in-between the poles of a powerful electromagnet until the magnetic field area is precisely measured.
3. Two nickel plated magnetic poles are forged from low-carbon steel.
4. Two magnet coil assemblies are manufactured from annealed hollow copper and harden after being bent into shape. They are mounted in the yoke of the magnet, connected to water cooling headers, insulated with fiberglass, and coated in an epoxy resin.
5. The aluminum vacuum tank is placed between the nickel plated poles and bolted into place. The vacuum tank has cryopumps that are bolted externally to cool the tank close to −459°F (−273°C) in order to freeze out any gases that may be present.
6. The electrodes are machined from a single 0.06-in (1.6-mm) low resistively copper sheet (to optimize the energy transfer from the RF system to the accelerating hydrogen ions), cut out, and etched using boaring tools and drill bits.
7. Next, the tank is sealed with polyurethane 0-rings after the copper electrodes are mounted inside. The electrodes are set, using nylon screws and spacers, into a round piece of industrial lisex nylon. A few holes are drilled in the nylon. Two are for the oscillator wiring. The third is meant for the vacuum pump; there is also a vacuum gauge attached to this port.
8. On top of the nylon and surrounding the electrodes is a ring of poly vinyl chloride (PVC) pipe. This has several holes drilled into it, the largest of which is the detector storage tube. Also located in this material are smaller holes sufficient for supplying a voltage source to the deflector plate, for the set screws required to control its position, and attachment holes for the solid brass hook that will be used to hang the complete apparatus on a set of Helmholtz coils.
9. Atop the PVC pipe is a piece of industrial strength clear plastic. This is both to allow people to see the inside workings of the mechanism, should anything go wrong, as well as increase the strength of the casing.
10. On either side of the PVC is silicon gel, in order to maintain a sufficient seal around the main chamber. This is so that the vacuum will be as efficient as possible. The vacuum is needed because the alpha particles are heavily influenced by particles of any kind, especially air. That is why alpha particles are considered so safe; by the time they contact a person through any medium, their energy has been so severely affected, they are not able to do damage.
11. The walls are guided in place by a thin I cut in the face of both the top and bottom sheet and both electrodes are held together with the use of 2 in (5.1 cm) nylon screws. No solder was used in these pieces so as to keep the inner chamber as clean and constant as possible. In one wall is cut a window, roughly 0.79 in (2 cm) long.
12. Pivoted on a nylon screw is a slightly smaller copper plate (the deflector) separated electrically from the rest of the component. Outlying set screws can control the deflector position and both it and each electrode have an electrical connection. This is to allow the oscillator to be supplied to the electrodes and a large negative charge to be put on the deflector plate.
13. The RF system is assembled inside a 19-in (48-cm) square, 6-ft(1.8-m) high metal chassis. Here, the resistors, transmitters, switches, tuning circuits, inductors, and capacitors are assembled by hand.
14. Power supply cabinets are purchased and assembled for the water-cooled targets and magnets, ion sources, cryopump, and the water circuitry.
15. The ion source will be injected after assembly of the cyclotron. A magnetic cylinder, 4 in (10 cm) in diameter and 4.7 in (12 cm) long comprises the ion source. Hydrogen gas will be injected through a capillary tube.
16. The tilted spiral inflector is enclosed J b y a grounded helical shaped electrode. The electrode is machined on a fixed axis milling machine.
17. Next, the target bodies are made of high purity silver, aluminum, and titanium and designed with helium-cooled thin foil windows. The two foil windows separate the target material from the high vacuum within the cyclotron.
18. A recirculating closed loop cooling system is placed in the target services metal cabinet to cool the foil windows with high speed streams of helium gas.
19. The tubing connections, solenoid valves, water-cooled beam stops, and electrically isolated collimators are assembled and attached to the target assembly.
20. The target assembly has a solid aluminum plug that is pierced by a 4 in (10 cm) hole that will act as the target collimator.
21. Grooves are machined onto the outside of the plug, and the o-ring is mounted to create the vacuum seal between the target body and the four position target changer.
22. A collimating disc is placed between the plug and the target body with a window on both sides.
23. Finally, the entire system is integrated with supervisory software to control and monitor the PLC hardware.

Quality Control

Each step of the manufacturing process must be monitored to ensure that the parts are of standard quality. If any of the components have a crack or leak, radiation may get into the environment. The steel used in the magnets of the cyclotron is carefully monitored to ensure it has the desired properties. Magnetic fields are constantly checked by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR).

Byproducts/Waste

The manufacturing process yields 2-3 tons of metal waste during production. This is recycled for future manufacturing processes. Due to the number of parts, the excess material from the manufacturing of the cyclotron is large. If any defective parts are found they are salvaged to the best of their ability, but the majority are scrapped.

The Future

The improvements in sealing the cyclotron unit are requiring that less concrete shielding be provided at the installation site and provide a safer and more compact cyclotron unit. More powerful cyclotron units are being designed for commercial isotope production. The latest series of cyclotrons are state of the art, compact, strong focusing, four sector negative ion cyclotrons, with external ions sources, cryopumps, high precision power and control systems, and superb manufactured quality. They are now modular in design and share a common technology irrespective of the size and type of cyclotron.

Where to Learn More

Books

Lawrence, Ernest 0., and Irving Langmuir. Molecular Films: The Cyclotron & TheNew Biology. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1942.

Periodicals

Burgerjon, J. J., and A. Strathdee, eds. Cyclotrons—1972. New York: American Institute of Physics, 1972.

[Article by: Bonny P. McClain]

A device for accelerating charged particles to high energies by means of an alternating electrical field between electrodes placed in a constant magnetic field.

Cyclotron, a machine for accelerating charged nuclear particles, commonly protons, so that they may be used to probe the nuclei of target atoms. Such "atom smashers" are considered the microscopes of nuclear physics.

In the nineteenth century, some physicists still labored under the theory—really, the dream of alchemists for centuries—that elements could be made to transmute into other elements through chemical processes. In 1902, Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy explained the new phenomenon of radioactivity as a "transformation" of one element into another, occurring spontaneously in nature; and in 1919, Rutherford succeeded in deliberately causing transmutations by bombarding light elements with the alpha particles emitted from naturally decaying radio-elements. Since very few of the projectile alpha particles collided with nuclei of the target atoms, the number of transmutations was relatively small. Therefore, scientists sought new ways to increase the number of projectile particles and to accelerate them to higher energies. The copious production of charged particles was the easier task; the high-voltage engineering required for acceleration proved far more difficult.

Scientists tried a number of different approaches to the acceleration problem, including a voltage multiplier circuit (Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Walton) and an electrostatic generator (Robert J. Van de Graaff), both linear accelerators. In 1930, University of California at Berkeley physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, with the help of one of his students, M. Stanley Livingston, designed and constructed the first of many magnetic resonance accelerators. Lawrence's accelerator operated at voltages much lower than other machines, yet imparted as much or more energy to its projectiles. Lawrence won the 1939 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the cyclotron. During World War II he headed a unit of the Manhattan Project that worked to perfect the process of separating uranium-235 for the atomic bomb.

These cyclotrons, destined to be the chief tool of nuclear physics, worked on the principle that charged particles, accelerated across a voltage gap, travel in a circular path under the influence of a magnetic field. If confined to a hollow disk-shaped chamber built in two D-shaped halves (called "D's") and if subjected to a radio-frequency voltage alternation as the particle passes from one half to the other, the particle receives two accelerations per cycle and travels at higher velocities in ever-larger circles. The beam of rapidly moving particles may then be deflected onto a target, producing observable nuclear reactions.

The D's of Lawrence's first cyclotron were only about 4 inches in diameter. Subsequent models of 9, 11, 27, 37, and 60 inches followed, with a new model built almost every other year. These larger machines surpassed an early goal of one million electron volts projectile energy; many different types of atoms were split; and scores of new radioisotopes were identified, including the first trans-uranium elements.

Higher energies, suitable for the production of mesons, were impossible with the fixed-frequency cyclotrons, because the projectiles would experience a relativistic mass increase at the required velocities, destroying the resonant operating condition. After World War II scientists overcame this handicap with a new generation of accelerators that use a variable-frequency voltage alternation that exactly balances the mass-velocity change. The synchrocyclotron was the largest machine to use a single magnet.

This postwar synchrocyclotron became the foundation for a government-funded national accelerator. Work on a four-mile-long circular machine in Weston, Illinois, thirty miles west of Chicago, was completed in 1971. Project leader Robert O. Wilson envisioned a series of magnets to boost particle speeds, and he insisted on allowing for space in the tunnel of the main ring for the addition of a second magnet system. When the main ring was about to operate in 1971 he described his idea of a "doubler" that would take the protons from the magnetic ring and inject them into a new ring of super-conducting magnets and double their energy. Physicists working at the laboratory, which in 1974 was named the Fermi National Laboratory for physicist Enrico Fermi, solved the technical problems of building the doubler. The principal Fermilab accelerator subsequently became known as the Tevatron (one TeV is a trillion electron volts). In 1994 the Tevatron revealed the existence of the so-called top quark, the last of twelve subatomic building blocks of all matter.

Bibliography

Livingston, Milton Stanley. Particle Accelerators: A Brief History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Mladenovic, Milorad. The Defining Years in Nuclear Physics, 1932– 1960s. Bristol, Pa.: Institute of Physics, 1998.

Riordan, Michael. The Hunting of the Quark: A True Story of Modern Physics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

Wilson, Robert R., and Raphael Littauer. Accelerators: Machines of Nuclear Physics. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1960.

—Lawrence Badash/A. R.

The first kind of particle accelerator built.

A modern Cyclotron for radiation therapy

For other uses, see Cyclotron (disambiguation).

A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator. Cyclotrons accelerate charged particles using a high-frequency, alternating voltage (potential difference). A perpendicular magnetic field causes the particles to spiral almost in a circle so that they re-encounter the accelerating voltage many times.

Ernest Lawrence, of the University of California, Berkeley, is credited with the development of the cyclotron in 1929, though others had been working along similar lines at the time.^{[citation needed]}.

The largest Cyclotron in the world is housed at the Tri-University Meson Facility (TRIUMF) at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and is run as a consortium of eleven Canadian universities and the National Research Council Canada. The 18m diameter, 4000 tonne main magnet produces a field of 0.46 T while a 23 MHz 94 kV electric field is used to accelerate the 200 μA beam.

Contents 1 How the cyclotron works 2 Uses of the cyclotron 3 Problems solved by the cyclotron 4 Advantages of the cyclotron 5 Limitations of the cyclotron 6 Mathematics of the cyclotron 6.1 Non-relativistic 6.2 Relativistic 7 Related technologies 8 See also 9 External links

How the cyclotron works

Diagram of cyclotron operation from Lawrence's 1934 patent.

Beam of electrons moving in a circle. Lighting is caused by excitation of gas atoms in a bulb.

The electrodes shown at the right would be in the vacuum chamber, which is flat, in a narrow gap between the two poles of a large magnet.

In the cyclotron, a high-frequency alternating voltage applied across the "D" electrodes (also called "dees") alternately attracts and repels charged particles. The particles, injected near the center of the magnetic field, accelerate only when passing through the gap between the electrodes. The perpendicular magnetic field (passing vertically through the "D" electrodes), combined with the increasing energy of the particles forces the particles to travel in a spiral path.

With no change in energy the charged particles in a magnetic field will follow a circular path. In the cyclotron, energy is applied to the particles as they cross the gap between the dees and so they are accelerated (at the typical sub-relativistic speeds used) and will increase in mass as they approach the speed of light. Either of these effects (increased velocity or increased mass) will increase the radius of the circle and so the path will be a spiral.

(The particles move in a spiral, because a current of electrons or ions, flowing perpendicular to a magnetic field, experiences a perpendicular force. The charged particles move freely in a vacuum, so the particles follow a spiral path.)

The radius will increase until the particles hit a target at the perimeter of the vacuum chamber. Various materials may be used for the target, and the collisions will create secondary particles which may be guided outside of the cyclotron and into instruments for analysis. The results will enable the calculation of various properties, such as the mean spacing between atoms and the creation of various collision products. Subsequent chemical and particle analysis of the target material may give insight into nuclear transmutation of the elements used in the target.

Uses of the cyclotron

For several decades, cyclotrons were the best source of high-energy beams for nuclear physics experiments; several cyclotrons are still in use for this type of research.

Cyclotrons can be used to treat cancer. Ion beams from cyclotrons can be used, as in proton therapy, to penetrate the body and kill tumors by radiation damage, while minimizing damage to healthy tissue along their path.

Cyclotron beams can be used to bombard other atoms to produce short-lived positron-emitting isotopes suitable for PET imaging.

Problems solved by the cyclotron

60-inch cyclotron, circa 1939, showing a beam of accelerated ions (likely protons or deuterons) escaping the accelerator and ionizing the surrounding air causing a blue glow. This phenomenon of air ionization is analogous to the one responsible for producing the "blue flash" infamously noted by witnesses of criticality accidents. Though the effect is often mistaken for Cherenkov radiation, this is not the case.

The cyclotron was an improvement over the linear accelerators that were available when it was invented. A linear accelerator (also called a linac) accelerates particles in a straight line through an evacuated tube (or series of such tubes placed end to end). A set of electrodes shaped like flat donuts are arranged inside the length of the tube(s). These are driven by high-power radio waves that continuously switch between positive and negative voltage, causing particles traveling along the center of the tube to accelerate. In the 1920s, it was not possible to get high frequency radio waves at high power, so either the accelerating electrodes had to be far apart to accommodate the low frequency or more stages were required to compensate for the low power at each stage. Either way, higher-energy particles required longer accelerators than scientists could afford.

Modern linacs use high power Klystrons and other devices able to impart much more power at higher frequencies. But before these devices existed, cyclotrons were cheaper than linacs.

Cyclotrons accelerate particles in a spiral path. Therefore, a compact accelerator can contain much more distance than a linear accelerator, with more opportunities to accelerate the particles.

Advantages of the cyclotron

• Cyclotrons have a single electrical driver, which saves both money and power, since more expense may be allocated to increasing efficiency.
• Cyclotrons produce a continuous stream of particles at the target, so the average power is relatively high.
• The compactness of the device reduces other costs, such as its foundations, radiation shielding, and the enclosing building.

Limitations of the cyclotron

The magnet portion of a large cyclotron. The gray object is the upper pole piece, routing the magnetic field in two loops through a similar part below. The white canisters held conductive coils to generate the magnetic field. The D electrodes are contained in a vacuum chamber that was inserted in the central field gap.

The spiral path of the cyclotron beam can only "sync up" with klystron-type (constant frequency) voltage sources if the accelerated particles are approximately obeying Newton's Laws of Motion. If the particles become fast enough that relativistic effects become important, the beam gets out of phase with the oscillating electric field, and cannot receive any additional acceleration. The cyclotron is therefore only capable of accelerating particles up to a few percent of the speed of light. To accommodate increased mass the magnetic field may be modified by appropriately shaping the pole pieces as in the isochronous cyclotrons, operating in a pulsed mode and changing the frequency applied to the dees as in the synchrocyclotrons, either of which is limited by the diminishing cost effectiveness of making larger machines. Cost limitations have been overcome by employing the more complex synchrotron or linear accelerator, both of which have the advantage of scalability, offering more power within an improved cost structure as the machines are made larger.

Mathematics of the cyclotron

Non-relativistic

The centripetal force is provided by the transverse magnetic field B, and the force on a particle travelling in a magnetic field (which causes it to be angularly displaced, i.e spiral) is equal to Bqv. So,

(Where m is the mass of the particle, q is its charge, B the magnetic field strength, v is its velocity and r is the radius of its path.)

The speed at which the particles enter the cyclotron due to a potential difference, V.

Therefore,

v/r is equal to angular velocity, ω, so

And since the angular frequency is

ω = 2πf

Therefore,

But this is for one complete loop and cyclotron must switch twice every cycle, therefore

A pair of "dee" electrodes with loops of coolant pipes on their surface at the Lawrence Hall of Science. The particle exit point may be seen at the top of the upper dee, where the target would be positioned

This shows that for a particle of constant mass, the frequency does not depend upon the radius of the particle's orbit. As the beam spirals out, its frequency does not decrease, and it must continue to accelerate, as it is travelling more distance in the same time. As particles approach the speed of light, they acquire additional mass, requiring modifications to the frequency, or the magnetic field during the acceleration. This is accomplished in the synchrocyclotron.

Relativistic

The radius of curvature for a particle moving relativistically in a static magnetic field is

where

the Lorentz factor

Note that in high-energy experiments energy, E, and momentum, p, are used rather than velocity, and both measured in units of energy. In that case one should use the substitution,

where this is in Natural units

The relativistic cyclotron frequency is

,

where

f_c is the classical frequency, given above, of a charged particle with velocity

v circling in a magnetic field.

The rest mass of an electron is 511 keV/c², so the frequency correction is 1% for a magnetic vacuum tube with a 5.11 keV/c² direct current accelerating voltage. The proton mass is nearly two thousand times the electron mass, so the 1% correction energy is about 9 MeV, which is sufficient to induce nuclear reactions.

An alternative to the synchrocyclotron is the isochronous cyclotron, which has a magnetic field that increases with radius, rather than with time. The de-focusing effect of this radial field gradient is compensated by ridges on the magnet faces which vary the field azimuthally as well. This allows particles to be accelerated continuously, on every period of the radio frequency, rather than in bursts as in most other accelerator types. This principle that alternating field gradients have a net focusing effect is called strong focusing. It was obscurely known theoretically long before it was put into practice.

Related technologies

• The spiraling of electrons in a cylindrical vacuum chamber within a transverse magnetic field is also employed in the magnetron, a device for producing high frequency radio waves (microwaves).

• The Synchrotron moves the particles through a path of constant radius, allowing it to be made as a pipe and so of much larger radius than is practical with the cyclotron and synchrocyclotron. The larger radius allows the use of numerous magnets, each of which imparts angular momentum and so allows particles of higher velocity (mass) to be kept within the bounds of the evacuated pipe. The magnetic field strength of each of the bending magnets is increased as the particles gain energy in order to keep the bending angle constant.

See also

• Beamline
• Cyclotron radiation
• Synchrotron light
• Bremsstrahlung radiation
• Electron cyclotron resonance
• Gyrotron
• Ion cyclotron resonance
• Linear accelerator
• Particle accelerator
• Storage ring
• Synchrocyclotron
• Synchrotron
• TRIUMF - largest cyclotron in the world
• Radiation reaction

External links

• TRIUMF -- The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada & National Research Council of Canada\Conseil national de recherches Canada
• U.S. Patent 1,948,384 -- Method and apparatus for the acceleration of ions
• Indiana University Cyclotron Facility MPRI treats first patient using robotic gantry system.
• "The 88-Inch Cyclotron at LBNL"
• "The NSCL at Michigan State University" Home of coupled K500 and K1200 cyclotrons; the K500, being the first superconducting cyclotron and the K1200 currently the most powerful in the world.
• Rutgers Cyclotron and "Building a Cyclotron on a Shoestring" Tim Koeth, now a graduate student at Rutgers University, built a 12-inch 1 MeV cyclotron as an undergraduate project, which is now used for a senior-level undergraduate and a graduate lab course.
• "Cyclotron java applet"
• "Resonance Spectral Analysis with a Homebuilt Cyclotron" an experiment done by Fred M. Niell, III his senior year of high school (1994-95) with which he won the overall grand prize in the ISEF.
• Relativistic accelerator physics PDF
• Wired news article about a neighborhood cyclotron in Anchorage, Alaska
• web site of company IBA
• The Cyclotron Kids A group of high schooled students building their own 2.3 MeV cyclotron for experimentation.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)