Nuclear researchers use the Denovo application to, among other things, model the behavior of neutrons in a nuclear power reactor.

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And not only has that led to growth and prosperity in his own country, but he has been a model in efforts around the world to eliminate nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands.

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That is a lot better than nothing, at least for nuclear fallout (for which the model was first developed): there the case for being safe not sorry is overwhelming, and once the fallout has fallen, a Geiger counter will tell you whether the model's forecasts of which places would be affected have turned out to be right.

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It has been used to model viruses and distant parts of the universe, as well as in nuclear weapons research.

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Green, who trained as a nuclear engineer at UC-Berkeley, started out doing fractal math to model ecological risk across huge biological systems such as the rainforest.

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The linchpin of the model is the underlying unity of two of the three forces: electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force.

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Then there is the Atomium, a giant-sized more-or-less model of an atom put up in 1958 as a tribute to the potential of the nuclear age.

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