The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has now become a pandemic, but there is currently very little understanding ...of the antigenicity of the virus. We therefore determined the crystal structure of CR3022, a neutralizing antibody previously isolated from a convalescent SARS patient, in complex with the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein at 3.1-angstrom resolution. CR3022 targets a highly conserved epitope, distal from the receptor binding site, that enables cross-reactive binding between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV. Structural modeling further demonstrates that the binding epitope can only be accessed by CR3022 when at least two RBDs on the trimeric S protein are in the "up" conformation and slightly rotated. These results provide molecular insights into antibody recognition of SARS-CoV-2.
Meat consumption, health, and the environment Godfray, H Charles J; Aveyard, Paul; Garnett, Tara ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
07/2018, Letnik:
361, Številka:
6399
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Both the global average per capita consumption of meat and the total amount of meat consumed are rising, driven by increasing average individual incomes and by population growth. The consumption of ...different types of meat and meat products has substantial effects on people's health, and livestock production can have major negative effects on the environment. Here, we explore the evidence base for these assertions and the options policy-makers have should they wish to intervene to affect population meat consumption. We highlight where more research is required and the great importance of integrating insights from the natural and social sciences.
Silicon photonics has experienced phenomenal transformations over the last decade. In this paper, we present some of the notable advances in silicon-based passive and active optical interconnect ...components, and highlight some of our key contributions. Light is also cast on few other parallel technologies that are working in tandem with silicon-based structures, and providing unique functions not achievable with any single system acting alone. With an increasing utilization of CMOS foundries for silicon photonics fabrication, a viable path for realizing extremely low-cost integrated optoelectronics has been paved. These advances are expected to benefit several application domains in the years to come, including communication networks, sensing, and nonlinear systems.
The past two decades have witnessed the stagnation of the clock speed of microprocessors followed by the recent faltering of Moore's law as nanofabrication technology approaches its unavoidable ...physical limit. Vigorous efforts from various research areas have been made to develop power-efficient and ultrafast computing machines in this post-Moore's law era. With its unique capacity to integrate complex electro-optic circuits on a single chip, integrated photonics has revolutionized the interconnects and has shown its striking potential in optical computing. Here, we propose an electronic-photonic computing architecture for a wavelength division multiplexing-based electronic-photonic arithmetic logic unit, which disentangles the exponential relationship between power and clock rate, leading to an enhancement in computation speed and power efficiency as compared to the state-of-the-art transistors-based circuits. We experimentally demonstrate its practicality by implementing a 4-bit arithmetic logic unit consisting of 8 high-speed microdisk modulators and operating at 20 GHz. This approach paves the way to future power-saving and high-speed electronic-photonic computing circuits.
In this paper, unique surface sensing property and enhanced sensitivity in microring resonator biosensors based on subwavelength grating (SWG) waveguides are studied and demonstrated. The SWG ...structure consists of periodic silicon pillars in the propagation direction with a subwavelength period. Effective sensing region in the SWG microring resonator includes not only the top and side of the waveguide, but also the space between the silicon pillars on the light propagation path. It leads to greatly increased sensitivity and a unique surface sensing property in contrast to common evanescent wave sensors: the surface sensitivity remains constantly high as the surface layer thickness grows. Microring resonator biosensors based on both SWG waveguides and conventional strip waveguides were compared side by side in surface sensing experiment and the enhanced surface sensing capability in SWG based microring resonator biosensors was demonstrated.
We proposed that individuals from upper-class backgrounds are more effective at job search than their working-class counterparts in the white-collar labor market. We further proposed that this is ...partly because upper-class individuals adopt different job search strategies. Our predictions were tested with a time-lagged multisource survey (Study 1) and a 4-wave, 2-month longitudinal survey (Study 2) of business student job seekers. Study 1 found that parental income strengthened the relationship between job search intensity and job search success and that this interaction was mediated by a less haphazard job search strategy. Parental income also strengthened the relationship between job interviews and job offers. Study 2 mostly replicated these findings while showing that the effects generalize to other facets of class background. Study 2 additionally explored mechanisms for why working-class individuals use a more haphazard job search strategy. Although class background positively predicted social capital and social capital negatively predicted a haphazard strategy, social capital did not mediate the negative relationship between class background and a haphazard strategy. Finally, although working-class individuals use a more haphazard strategy on average, exploratory analyses show that those with high psychological capital start with a more haphazard strategy but progress to a low haphazard strategy within two months-on par with upper-class individuals. Conversely, working-class individuals with low psychological capital maintained a more haphazard approach over time. Our findings add new insights into how individuals can conduct a more effective job search and why class inequality remains so durable.
Compared to the conventional strip waveguide microring resonators, subwavelength grating (SWG) waveguide microring resonators have better sensitivity and lower detection limit due to the enhanced ...photon-analyte interaction. As sensors, especially biosensors, are usually used in absorptive ambient environment, it is very challenging to further improve the detection limit of the SWG ring resonator by simply increasing the sensitivity. The high sensitivity resulted from larger mode-analyte overlap also brings significant absorption loss, which deteriorates the quality factor of the resonator. To explore the potential of the SWG ring resonator, we theoretically and experimentally optimize an ultrasensitive transverse magnetic mode SWG racetrack resonator to obtain maximum quality factor and thus lowest detection limit. A quality factor of 9800 around 1550 nm and sensitivity of 429.7 ± 0.4nm/RIU in water environment are achieved. It corresponds to a detection limit (λ/S·Q) of 3.71 × 10
RIU, which marks a reduction of 32.5% compared to the best value reported for SWG microring sensors.
This paper reports a 100% inkjet printed transistor with a short channel of approximately 1 µm with an operating speed up to 18.21 GHz. Printed electronics are a burgeoning area in electronics ...development, but are often stymied by the large minimum feature size. To combat this, techniques were developed to allow for the printings of much shorter transistor channels. The small gap size is achieved through the use of silver inks with different chemical properties to prevent mixing. The combination of the short channel and semiconducting carbon nanotubes (CNT) allows for an exceptional experimentally measured on/off ratio of 10
. This all inkjet printed transistor allows for the fabrication of devices using roll-to-roll methodologies with no additional overhead compared to current state of the art production methods.
Silicon photonic modulators rely on the plasma dispersion effect by free-carrier injection or depletion, which can only induce moderate refractive index perturbation. Therefore, the size and energy ...efficiency of silicon photonic modulators are ultimately limited as they are also subject to the diffraction limit. Here we report an ultracompact electro-optic modulator with total device footprint of 0.6 × 8 μm2 by integrating voltage-switched transparent conductive oxide with one-dimensional silicon photonic crystal nanocavity. The active modulation volume is only 0.06 um3, which is less than 2% of the lambda-cubic volume. The device operates in the dual mode of cavity resonance and optical absorption by exploiting the refractive index modulation from both the conductive oxide and the silicon waveguide induced by the applied gate voltage. Such a metal-free, hybrid silicon-conductive oxide nanocavity modulator also demonstrates only 0.5 dB extra optical loss, moderate Q-factor above 1000, and high energy efficiency of 46 fJ/bit. The combined results achieved through the holistic design opened a new route for the development of next generation electro-optic modulators that can be used for future on-chip optical interconnects.