Love in pandemic times A scene from ‘The Dogs’. – Picture courtesy of Andy Darrel Gomez Zhen. – Picture courtesy of Nigel Zhen Piong. – Picture courtesy of Geraldine Piong Gomez’s idea for the film was inspired by the ‘new normal’ of the times we live in. – Picture courtesy of Andy Darrel Gomez
THE Covid-19 pandemic encourages us to practise social distancing. We have less communication with our colleagues, classmates, friends and lovers. We use modern technology such as the Zoom app to stay in touch with our loved ones.
In the spirit of this new normal, filmmaker Andy Darrel Gomez used Zoom to direct a 16-minute short film called
SERDANG (Feb 11): The one-off payment of RM500 to 140,000 healthcare frontliners, will start being paid on March 1, said Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba. He said eligible staff can start applying for the payment claim beginning this month.
May Ling Ng, area manager for LCLS Metrology Labs and Photon Transport Systems (photo taken in February 2020). (Jacqueline Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Strategically placed mirrors inside the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) are key to guiding, preserving, and focusing its free-electron laser beam, which scientists use to observe atomic-scale processes with unprecedented resolution. But to achieve this, the mirrors have to be exquisitely precise.
This is where the Optics Metrology Lab at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory comes in.
Staff Engineer and Optics Metrology Lab Manager May Ling Ng and her team use their own set of lasers to inspect LCLS mirrors before they’re installed to ensure the mirror shape and smoothness meet the performance requirements. The entire surface of the mirror, which can be up to a meter long, has to come within less than one nanometer, or billionth of a meter, of the desired profile.
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In Malaysia, researchers have designed a drone using fibers extracted from pineapple leaves. The project, led by Professor Mohamed Thariq Hameed Sultan at University Putra Malaysia, began in 2017 when a community project asked the school to find an outlet for the region’s abundant waste pineapple leaves.
The drone components made out of pineapple leaves have a higher strength-to-weight ratio than existing materials biodegrade in two weeks when buried. “We are transforming the leaf of the pineapple into a fiber that can be used for aerospace application, basically inventing a drone,” Sultan tells Reuters.
The drones have been tested at over 1,000 meters with a flight time of 20 minutes. The aim is to develop a larger drone that could be used to spread agricultural chemicals and inspect fields.