What Future Will We Choose for Physics?

Science in the United States is in a time of pain and uncertainty. The pain is felt most acutely by young scientists, who are having great difficulty establishing their careers. The uncertainty about the duration and outcome of the current situation stems from its roots in ponderous events of recent history—the end of the cold war, industrial downsizing, government deficits and demographic trends. Although budget difficulties and lack of jobs plague most of the sciences, the atmosphere of uncertainty about the future is palpably different from one profession to the next. Our concern here is with the profession of physics

Considerations about future hard x-ray area detectors

X-ray sources continue to advance in both intensity and temporal domains, thereby opening new ways to analyze the structure and properties of matter, provided that the resultant x-ray images can be efficiently and quantitatively recorded. In this perspective we focus on specific limitations of pixel area x-ray detectors. Although pixel area x-ray detectors have also advanced in recent years, many experiments are still detector limited. Specifically, there is need for detectors that can acquire successive images at GHz rates; detectors that can accurately measure both single photon and millions of photons per pixel in the same image at frame rates of hundreds of kHz; and detectors that efficiently capture images of very hard x-rays (20 keV to several hundred keV). The data volumes and data rates of state-of-the-art detection exceeds most practical data storage options and readout bandwidths, thereby necessitating on-line processing of data prior to, or in lieu of full frame readouts

X-ray analog pixel array detector for single synchrotron bunch time-resolved imaging

Dynamic x-ray studies may reach temporal resolutions limited by only the x-ray pulse duration if the detector is fast enough to segregate synchrotron pulses. An analog integrating pixel array detector with in-pixel storage and temporal resolution of around 150 ns, sufficient to isolate pulses, is presented. Analog integration minimizes count-rate limitations and in-pixel storage captures successive pulses. Fundamental tests of noise and linearity as well as high-speed laser measurements are shown. The detector resolved individual bunch trains at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) at levels of up to 3.7x10^3 x-rays/pixel/train. When applied to turn-by-turn x-ray beam characterization single-shot intensity measurements were made with a repeatability of 0.4% and horizontal oscillations of the positron cloud were detected. This device is appropriate for time-resolved Bragg spot single crystal experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figure

The RCK Domain of the KtrAB K+ Transporter: Multiple Conformations of an Octameric Ring

SummaryThe KtrAB ion transporter is a complex of the KtrB membrane protein and KtrA, an RCK domain. RCK domains regulate eukaryotic and prokaryotic membrane proteins involved in K+ transport. Conflicting functional models have proposed two different oligomeric arrangements for RCK domains, tetramer versus octamer. Our results for the KtrAB RCK domain clearly show an octamer in solution and in the crystal. We determined the structure of this protein in three different octameric ring conformations that resemble the RCK-domain octamer observed in the MthK potassium channel but show striking differences in size and symmetry. We present experimental evidence for the association between one RCK octameric ring and two KtrB membrane proteins. These results provide insights into the quaternary organization of the KtrAB transporter and its mechanism of activation and show that the RCK-domain octameric ring model is generally applicable to other ion-transport systems