Nanocavities: Optomechanics goes molecular

News and Views.A theoretical framework that interprets Raman scattering as an optomechanical process can be used to understand, and guide, experiments in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.Peer Reviewe

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' resources: focus on curated databases

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (www.isb-sib.ch) provides world-class bioinformatics databases, software tools, services and training to the international life science community in academia and industry. These solutions allow life scientists to turn the exponentially growing amount of data into knowledge. Here, we provide an overview of SIB's resources and competence areas, with a strong focus on curated databases and SIB's most popular and widely used resources. In particular, SIB's Bioinformatics resource portal ExPASy features over 150 resources, including UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, ENZYME, PROSITE, neXtProt, STRING, UniCarbKB, SugarBindDB, SwissRegulon, EPD, arrayMap, Bgee, SWISS-MODEL Repository, OMA, OrthoDB and other databases, which are briefly described in this article

Die Bedeutung der ST-Hebung im Belastungs-Ekg. [The significance of ST elevation in the exercise ECG]

In contrast to ST-segment depression during exercise, the mechanism for ST-segment elevation - a more unusual finding - is controversial and poorly understood. Exercise induced ST-segment elevation of 2 mm and more was observed in 80 of 3000 consecutive patients (2.6%) undergoing bicycle exercise testing using 6 of 12 ECG leads. This abnormality was detected in 70 of 777 patients (9%) with documented previous myocardial infarction and in 10 of 2223 (0.5%) patients without a history of myocardial necrosis and with normal resting ECG. The substantial differences in exercise induced ST-segment elevation between these two groups are: patients with previous myocardial infarction and angiographically documented left ventricular aneurysm revealed progressive asymptomatic ST-segment elevation on an average of 3.4 +/- 1.2 mm persisting for a long time (greater than 3 minutes) during the recovery period. The extent of ST-segment elevation appears to correlate with LV EF and LV volume. These patients should be treated medically (as in 73% of our patients), and cardiac catheterization is indicated only in the presence of severe angina, congestive LV failure and arrhythmias. Patients with normal ECG at rest showed ST-elevation at maximal exercise. ST-segment elevation was associated with chest pain, which was more pronounced and shorter in duration than in the other group (9.1 +/- 2.8 mm, less than 30 sec). ST-elevation was abrupt and not preceded by ST-segment depression. 8 of 10 patients with anterior ST-segment elevation had a left anterior descending artery (LAD) lesion. Therefore, exercise testing in this group predicts significant proximal LAD obstruction accessible for PTCA

Cooperative interactions between nano-antennas in a high-Q cavity for unidirectional light sources

We analyse the resonant mode structure and local density of states in high-Q hybrid plasmonic-photonic resonators composed of dielectric microdisks hybridized with pairs of plasmon antennas that are systematically swept in position through the cavity mode. On the one hand, this system is a classical realization of the cooperative resonant dipole–dipole interaction through a cavity mode, as is evident through predicted and measured resonance linewidths and shifts. At the same time, our work introduces the notion of ‘phased array’ antenna physics into plasmonic-photonic resonators. We predict that one may construct large local density of states (LDOS) enhancements exceeding those given by a single antenna, which are ‘chiral’ in the sense of correlating with the unidirectional injection of fluorescence into the cavity. We report an experiment probing the resonances of silicon nitride microdisks decorated with aluminium antenna dimers. Measurements directly confirm the predicted cooperative effects of the coupled dipole antennas as a function of the antenna spacing on the hybrid mode quality factors and resonance conditions