Very high quality factor measured in annealed fused silica

We present the results of quality factor measurements for rod samples made of fused silica. To decrease the dissipation we annealed our samples. The highest quality factor that we observed was $Q=(2.03\pm0.01)\times10^8$ for a mode at 384 Hz. This is the highest published value of $Q$ in fused silica measured to date.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

A twist in chiral interaction between biological helices

Using an exact solution for the pair interaction potential, we show that long, rigid, chiral molecules with helical surface charge patterns have a preferential interaxial angle ~((RH)^1/2)/L, where L is the length of the molecules, R is the closest distance between their axes, and H is the helical pitch. Estimates based on this formula suggest a solution for the puzzle of small interaxial angles in a-helix bundles and in cholesteric phases of DNA.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, PDF file onl