The glaciers in the south-eastern part of the plateau, by contrast, are downwind of the Indian subcontinent and Dr Xu found that the concentration of soot in those glaciers went up by 30% between 1990 and 2003, coinciding with a period of rapid industrial growth in India.

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The primary inventors of Ii-key hybrid tech are Dr Robert Humphreys and Dr Minzhen Xu.

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Dr. Xu began decades ago creating models of human patients to understand how radiation affects the body.

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"People really still believe in this kind of association, " observed Dr. Xu, who joined the hospital three years ago.

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"We have had to add beds in the hallway, " said Dr. Xu one recent evening after a 10-hour shift.

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Karl, a faceless, putty-colored model Dr. Xu created 20 years ago, still sits on a desk in his lab.

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The scene at Dr. Xu's hospital is merely the tip of the iceberg.

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In Dr. Xu's lab, virtual patients are exposed to virtual radiation in doses similar to that of a CT scan or cancer-radiation treatment.

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The work was presented early this year at a conference of the American Nuclear Society and has been submitted for publication at a peer-reviewed journal, according to Dr. Xu.

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Dr. Xu's team showed that the virtual patient, using more sophisticated modeling such as how fat is distributed in the body, can provide more accurate calculations of how much additional radiation an overweight person requires.

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