Recent applications of nuclear tracks in solids

With partial support from an NSF US-China exchange program, five Chinese scientists collaborated with me for one or more years during the 1980s and 1990s. This review begins with a discussion of some of the research they did while at Berkeley. That is followed by brief reviews of recent applications of the nuclear track technique to nuclear fusion; molecular identification with nanopores; ion track filters for imaging X-ray astronomy; magnetic studies with nanowires; polymeric nanowires; microbiology with Nuclepore filters; radon and neutron dosimetry; and thermochronology with 238U and 244Pu fission tracks. My review provides a small sample of the interesting topics to which nuclear track techniques are now being applied