Roadmap on holography

From its inception holography has proven an extremely productive and attractive area of research. While specific technical applications give rise to 'hot topics', and three-dimensional (3D) visualisation comes in and out of fashion, the core principals involved continue to lead to exciting innovations in a wide range of areas. We humbly submit that it is impossible, in any journal document of this type, to fully reflect current and potential activity; however, our valiant contributors have produced a series of documents that go no small way to neatly capture progress across a wide range of core activities. As editors we have attempted to spread our net wide in order to illustrate the breadth of international activity. In relation to this we believe we have been at least partially successful.This work was supported by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Spain) under projects FIS2017-82919-R (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE) and FIS2015-66570-P (MINECO/FEDER), and by Generalitat Valenciana (Spain) under project PROMETEO II/2015/015

Improving the hyperpolarization of (31)p nuclei by synthetic design

Traditional (31)P NMR or MRI measurements suffer from low sensitivity relative to (1)H detection and consequently require longer scan times. We show here that hyperpolarization of (31)P nuclei through reversible interactions with parahydrogen can deliver substantial signal enhancements in a range of regioisomeric phosphonate esters containing a heteroaromatic motif which were synthesized in order to identify the optimum molecular scaffold for polarization transfer. A 3588-fold (31)P signal enhancement (2.34% polarization) was returned for a partially deuterated pyridyl substituted phosphonate ester. This hyperpolarization level is sufficient to allow single scan (31)P MR images of a phantom to be recorded at a 9.4 T observation field in seconds that have signal-to-noise ratios of up to 94.4 when the analyte concentration is 10 mM. In contrast, a 12 h 2048 scan measurement under standard conditions yields a signal-to-noise ratio of just 11.4. (31)P-hyperpolarized images are also reported from a 7 T preclinical scanner

ATP synthase: from single molecule to human bioenergetics

ATP synthase (FoF1) consists of an ATP-driven motor (F1) and a H+-driven motor (Fo), which rotate in opposite directions. FoF1 reconstituted into a lipid membrane is capable of ATP synthesis driven by H+ flux. As the basic structures of F1 (α3β3γδε) and Fo (ab2c10) are ubiquitous, stable thermophilic FoF1 (TFoF1) has been used to elucidate molecular mechanisms, while human F1Fo (HF1Fo) has been used to study biomedical significance. Among F1s, only thermophilic F1 (TF1) can be analyzed simultaneously by reconstitution, crystallography, mutagenesis and nanotechnology for torque-driven ATP synthesis using elastic coupling mechanisms. In contrast to the single operon of TFoF1, HFoF1 is encoded by both nuclear DNA with introns and mitochondrial DNA. The regulatory mechanism, tissue specificity and physiopathology of HFoF1 were elucidated by proteomics, RNA interference, cytoplasts and transgenic mice. The ATP synthesized daily by HFoF1 is in the order of tens of kilograms, and is primarily controlled by the brain in response to fluctuations in activity

Roadmap on holography

From its inception holography has proven an extremely productive and attractive area of research. While specific technical applications give rise to 'hot topics', and three-dimensional (3D) visualisation comes in and out of fashion, the core principals involved continue to lead to exciting innovations in a wide range of areas. We humbly submit that it is impossible, in any journal document of this type, to fully reflect current and potential activity; however, our valiant contributors have produced a series of documents that go no small way to neatly capture progress across a wide range of core activities. As editors we have attempted to spread our net wide in order to illustrate the breadth of international activity. In relation to this we believe we have been at least partially successful

Can humans use echolocation to hear the difference between different kinds of walls

status: publishe

Quantitative determination of IgM antibodies reduces the pitfalls in the serodiagnosis of tick-borne encephalitis

BACKGROUND: Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is the most important arbovirus disease in parts of Europe and Asia. Its laboratory diagnosis depends on the detection of specific IgM antibodies which can be impeded by (1) long-time persistence of IgM antibodies after infection, (2) vaccine-induced IgM antibodies, and (3) cross-reactive IgM antibodies from other flavivirus infections. OBJECTIVES: To assess the extent of interference factors in the serodiagnosis of TBE that might lead to the false positive assignment of a recent infection. STUDY DESIGN: We quantified TBE virus-specific IgM and IgG antibodies in sera collected at different time points from cohorts of (1) 61 TBE patients, (2) 131 TBE vaccinees, and (3) 42 patients with recent dengue or West Nile virus infections. RESULTS: All of the TBE patients were IgM- and IgG-positive upon hospitalization and 87% of acute TBE sera had IgM antibody titers of >500 Arbitrary Units (AU). These titers rapidly declined and only 16% of TBE patients had low IgM titers ≥9 months after infection. Vaccine-induced as well as flavivirus cross-reactive IgM antibodies were rarely detectable and of low titer. CONCLUSIONS: Most of the potential problems of TBE serodiagnosis can be resolved by the quantification of IgM antibodies in a single serum sample taken upon hospitalization. High IgM values (>500 AU in our assay) are indicative of a recent infection. Lower IgM values, however, may require the analysis of a follow-up sample and/or a specific neutralization assay to exclude the possibilities of IgM persistence, vaccine-induced IgM antibodies or heterologous flavivirus infections