Credit: Korea Institute of Science and Technology(KIST)
Pulsed lasers repeatedly emit light for a short period of time as if blinking. They have the advantage of focusing more energy than a continuous wave laser, whose intensity is kept unchanged over time. If digital signals are loaded in a pulsed laser, each pulse can encode one bit of data. In this respect, the higher the repetition rate, the more the amount of data that can be transmitted. However, conventional optical-fiber-based pulsed lasers have typically had a limitation in increasing the number of pulses per second above the MHz level.
The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that the research team led by Senior Researcher Dr. Yong-Won Song at the Center for Opto-Electronic Materials and Devices was able to generate laser pulses at a rate at least 10,000 times higher than the state of the art. This achievement was accomplished by inserting an additional resonator containing graphene into a fiber-opt
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IMAGE: A fastener with microscopic mushroom shapes could be as strong as Velcro but with less noise and less damage to other fabrics, researchers say. view more
Credit: Preeti Sharma
WASHINGTON, January 19, 2021 A Velcro-like fastener with a microscopic design that looks like tiny mushrooms could mean advances for everyday consumers and scientific fields like robotics.
In
Biointerphases, published by AIP Publishing, researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands show how the design can use softer materials and still be strong enough to work.
Probabilistic fasteners work, because they are designed with a tiny pattern on one surface that interlocks with features on the other surface. Currently available fasteners, like Velcro and 3M, are called hook and loop fasteners. That design requires harder, stiff material, which is what causes the loud ripping sound when they are peeled off and why they can damage delicate surfaces, such as fabrics, when
Our brains consist of soft matter bathed in watery cerebrospinal fluid inside a hard skull, and in Physics of Fluids, researchers describe studying another system with the same features, an egg, to search for answers about concussions. Considering that in most concussive brain injuries, the skull does not break, they wanted to find out if it was possible to break or deform the egg yolk without breaking the eggshell.
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IMAGE: The synthesis of the potent antibiotic thiostrepton uses a radical SAM protein TsrM, whose crystal structure is shown at left while bound to an iron-sulfur cluster and cobalamin. New images. view more
Credit: Booker Lab, Penn State
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Images of a protein involved in creating a potent antibiotic reveal the unusual first steps of the antibiotic s synthesis. The improved understanding of the chemistry behind this process, detailed in a new study led by Penn State chemists, could allow researchers to adapt this and similar compounds for use in human medicine. The antibiotic thiostrepton is very potent against Gram-positive pathogens and can even target certain breast cancer cells in culture, said Squire Booker, a biochemist at Penn State and investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. While it has been used topically in veterinary medicine, so far it has been ineffective in humans because it is poorly absorbed. We studied
A new method to synthesize vaccines safely and quickly should see much faster pre-clinical testing to pursue strategies to combat novel pathogens, something the COVID pandemic has shown is necessary.