AN ELECTRON-BEAM CONTROLLED SLM BASED ON A BISTABLE NONLINEAR INTERFERENCE FILTER

A nonlinear interference filter has been incorporated into a CRT and e-beam controlled switching of individual elements in a 2 x 2 array of optically bistable pixels demonstrated

Measuring movement and location of the gastroesophageal junction: research and clinical implications

Understanding the physiology of gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) is important as failure of its function is associated with reflux disease, hiatus hernia, and cancer. In recent years, there have been impressive developments in high resolution technologies allowing measurement of luminal pressure, pH, and impedance. One obvious deficiency is the lack of technique to monitor the movement and location of the GEJ over a prolonged period of time. Proximal movement of the GEJ during peristalsis and transient lower esophageal sphincter relaxations (TLESRs) is due to shortening of the longitudinal muscle of the esophagus. Techniques for measuring shortening include fluoroscopic imaging of mucosal clip, high-frequency intraluminal ultrasound, and high resolution manometry, but these techniques have limitations. Short segment reflux is recently found to be more common than traditional reflux and may account for the high prevalence of intestinal metaplasia and cancer seen at GEJ. While high resolution pHmetry is available, there is no technique that can reliably and continuously measure the position of the squamocolumnar junction. A new technique is recently reported allowing a precise and continuous measurement of the GEJ based on the principle of Hall effect. Reported studies have validated its accuracy both on the bench and against the gold standard, fluoroscopy. It has been used alongside high resolution manometry in studying the behavior of the GEJ during TLESRs and swallows. While there are challenges associated with this new technique, there are promising ongoing developments. There is exciting time ahead in research and clinical applications for this new technique

Discovery and genomic characterization of a 382-nucleotide deletion in ORF7B and orf8 during the early evolution of SARS-CoV-2

10.1128/mBio.01610-20mBio1149-Ja

On the discovery of the gluon

Quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong interaction, is a field theory of quarks and gluons. When it was formulated, the existence of its basic ingredients was still unproven and controversial. While for the quarks the case had been settled by 1975, it remained open for the gluons until in 1979 experiments at the electron-positron collider PETRA at DESY in Hamburg led to a breakthrough. Peculiar final configurations of hadrons produced in the electron-positron annihilation process at high energies, so-called planar events and three-jet events, were discovered. In a close cooperation between experiment and theory they were unambiguously identified as signatures of the radiation of hard gluons by quarks (“hard gluon bremsstrahlung”), providing the first clear and direct observational evidence for the existence of the gluon and confirming crucial predictions of quantum chromodynamics