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Home » Page 556

Half a life

The first woman Nobel laureate, the only person in history to win both the physics and chemistry Nobel prizes, the extraordinary scientist who first described radioactivity, the legend who discovered both radium and polonium, the pioneering activist who developed mobile radiology units – Marie Curie’s life is worthy of countless Hollywood biopics. But in trying to condense Curie’s entire legacy into 100 minutes on the big screen, director Marjane Satrapi takes on too much in her new film Radioactive. A Polish emigrant in an intolerant and unwelcoming Paris; a woman scientist breaking societal stereotypes; a world-changing discovery riddled with ethical dilemmas; a sexually liberated wife; a grieving widow; a humanitarian war hero – all this and more is featured in Radioactive. I passionately believe that the world should know the names and lives of more women scientists – but what Hidden Figures got so right (2017), this film gets so wrong.

Based on Lauren Redniss’s graphic novel – Marie & Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout – Radioactive is ultimately the story of the Curies’ relationship: how their discoveries of each other turned their worlds upside down, and how their discovery of radioactivity turned the world upside down. In an attempt to communicate the impact and risks associated with this discovery to a non-expert audience (without explicitly stating how dangerous it would be to conduct nuclear physics experiments in your bedroom), the film awkwardly hops around the 20th century: from 1900s Parisian chemistry labs to inside a reactor at Chernobyl; from the lecture theatres of the École Supérieure to the streets of Hiroshima in 1945; from the Curies swimming naked in a French river to an atomic bomb test in New Mexico. Perhaps a reflection on a badly written script more than the cast themselves, the characters are inconsistent and, at times, infuriatingly superficial.

Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie
Romantic distraction: Radioactive covers Marie Curie’s private life in detail, to the detriment of showing her scientific achievements. (Courtesy: StudioCanal)

Marie Curie, played by Hollywood elite Rosamund Pike, oscillates between unbearably stiff and captivatingly compelling. She is evidently trying to play a controversial, unlikeable and unapologetic genius – but Jack Thorpe’s screenplay doesn’t rise to the challenge. Pike spends the first 23 minutes resolute that she will not, under any circumstances, get distracted, married or collaborate with another scientist. The following 80 minutes, though, show her working exclusively with the scientist she married after a romance limited to a handful of experiments and a lab move, ultimately becoming distracted when the love of her life (played by Sam Riley) gets trampled to death by a horse.

Neither Satrapi nor Thorne expect much from their audience, explicitly re-introducing each character by their full name every time they return to the screen – even when the Curies are alone with one another. The film also provides next to no detail about the scientific experiments. Perhaps fitting with her life’s work, Pike’s Curie spontaneously emits scientific platitudes like a radioactive nucleus. Certainly, dialogue in the Curie household – “This could change science forever!” – transcends into a Research Excellence Framework (REF) impact case study all too often.

Radioactive does not realize the excitement of the scientific process, the miracle of discovery

Radioactive serves as a reminder that while a lot about scientific research has changed since the beginning of the 20th century – including our appreciation of health and safety, and the overwhelming amount of time senior scientists are now required to spend on administrative tasks – a lot hasn’t. Curie’s battle for a permanent position and her own lab space, her being snubbed initially for the Nobel prize and her career being dependent on the opinion of senior male faculty members is painfully close to the present day. Despite this feeling of familiarity, the film does not realize the excitement of the scientific process: the thrill of unpredicted experimental results and the miracle of discovery, which must have been daily occurrences in the Curie laboratory. You are left with the distinct impression that neither Pike nor Riley spent much time with scientists before making the film.

The most frustrating thing about this film is that it could have been so much more. Marie Curie’s brilliance rocked the scientific establishment. From a ramshackle shed in the Latin Quarter of Paris, she transformed our understanding of matter: atoms were not (as was previously understood) indivisible; in fact, they were not even stable. Curie measured the atomic weight of her newly discovered elements with outstanding accuracy. She was the first woman in France to earn a doctoral degree in physics, and her examiners declared her PhD thesis the “greatest single contribution to science ever written”.

To date, she is routinely voted as one of history’s most significant scientists who defied societal expectations of women, and Radioactive was an opportunity to teach a new generation why. Instead, Curie is too contradictory to be conceivable. The raunchy evenings Curie spends with her husband and the later scandalous affair with fellow physicist Paul Langevin jars with the ambitious, independent woman processing tonnes of radioactive pitchblende. While I am immensely glad that women scientists are finally getting their time in the spotlight, I don’t anticipate Radioactive will achieve the half-life that Curie deserves.

  • 2020 Shoebox Films/Working Title Films/StudioCanal 110 minutes

Physics in the pandemic: ‘I miss my group’s vibrant office discussions that propelled my research’

As a graduate student who was on the verge of performing the last experiment for a paper, I lament the timing of COVID-19 – it could not have been more inconvenient.

My lab’s research at the University of Chicago centres on 2D semiconducting nanomaterials that are merely three atoms thick — or thin. We study their optical, electrical, and thermal properties and devise scalable processing techniques to integrate them with other materials. As our nanomaterials are fragile and easily contaminated, our experiments necessitate us donning full-body “bunny suits” (which are stuffy and constraining) and working in a cleanroom, a special facility where the very air is filtered to remove dust and air-borne particulates. Our research is labour intensive, to the extent that we sometimes jokingly call ourselves “blue-collar workers.”

Naturally, my research group was rather frustrated with the coronavirus, as lab shutdowns caused all our experiments to screech to a halt. We scrambled to recover a semblance of normalcy by working from home. But given the heavy experimental nature of our research, we would never be able to replicate the same productivity level as the pre-COVID era. But we would try our very best.

Ever since the lab closed, my group has conducted all interactions, including the weekly group meetings, through online platforms. In the group meetings before the coronavirus, each person would present a research update on their latest experiment. But after our exile from the lab, the old group meeting format no longer made sense.

Focus on the future

Now, we propose future experiments to be done once we return to the lab. Furthermore, our professor organizes online paper-writing clinics for students, especially for those who were more than halfway into their projects. Even if we don’t feel that our projects are near publication-ready, our professor encourages us to start writing a draft.

During the group’s inaugural online group meeting, we ran into a universal hiccup: a presenter was cut-off midsentence due to unstable Internet connection at home. An awkward silence ensued as the rest of the group waited for him to reappear online. During another presentation, I forgot to unmute myself, so I was talking to deaf speakers for several uncomfortable seconds.

Displaced from lab bench to laptop, my lab mates and I are still struggling to adapt to a sedentary lifestyle and working from home. I constantly remind myself of what my advisor has told us, “Consider this an opportunity”.

Combing through the latest research

My working days now consist of doing as much reading as I can. I allocate more time now to comb through the latest research. I take the time to learn new subjects, such as the basics of computer simulations and theoretical studies, a far cry from my experimental work. My lab mate and I have buddied up to check in on each other every day. We begin each day by listing our goals and hold each other accountable. I try to think deeper and more carefully about my project and its implications than ever before, planning future experiments so that I can hit the ground running once the lab reopens. I have no choice but to finally work on that draft of my paper despite the incomplete data (I may have to modify the story though).

Sealed away in my home, I appreciate the time to ruminate, to learn, to chart out the future. How incredibly fortunate I am: I still receive my monthly graduate school stipend, so I can afford my rent. My research is based on lifeless, inorganic materials, so I did not need to throw out any of our samples in preparation for the lab shutdowns, unlike many biology researchers. My experiments are relatively easy to pick up again once the lab doors reopen. I have two years left before I graduate—more than enough research time to make up for the coronavirus setback. Several universities have frozen their hiring of new faculty candidates; and many students graduating this year are struggling to find jobs amidst the economic downturn. In contrast, the impact of the coronavirus on my graduate career is temporary and salvageable—not detrimental, as far as I can tell.

Nevertheless, I miss my group’s vibrant office discussions that propelled my research. Online chatrooms are not able to replace the intimate, collaborative spirit in-person interactions engender. I miss being able to learn through experimentation, not just via reading.

I am also starting to miss my clean room bunny suit. Absence truly makes the heart grow fonder.

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Protective equipment against COVID-19 needs to go further, scientists say

Research on the fluid dynamics of respiratory emissions indicates that individuals infected with COVID-19 could spread viral particles up to 8 metres away when they cough or sneeze – a finding that appears to undermine statements by the World Health Organization (WHO) that “airborne transmission” of the novel coronavirus is not possible.

Current WHO guidelines for respiratory disease containment are based on a model of droplet spray transmission that dates from the 1930s. In this model, air resistance prevents single droplets released in respiratory emissions from travelling more than 2 metres from their source – a distance that has appeared prominently in public-health messages during the current pandemic. However, modern techniques have shown that clouds of turbulent gas in exhalations – that is, coughs and sneezes – can convey droplets much further than is possible for lone droplets in ballistic flight.

In a paper published in JAMA Insights on 26 March, Lydia Bourouiba, an applied mathematician and head of the Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, outlines the implications of these newer techniques and her ongoing work on the fluid dynamics of respiratory emissions. “A turbulent gas cloud is critical to include in the picture,” she says. “Droplets trapped in the cloud can go further than isolated droplets, about 5 metres for coughs and 7-8 metres for sneezes.”

Based on her results, Bourouiba argues that in the current pandemic, “it is not possible to support that there is a safe distance of 1-2 metres in a healthcare setting full of symptomatic patients who emit such violent exhalations.” For this reason, she says, “protection of healthcare workers at the frontline has to be of higher respiratory grade.”

Enough evidence?

Bourouiba and her colleagues have been quantifying influenza respiratory emissions since 2016 using an imaging technique known as high-frequency frame capture illumination. These studies have shown that, because the swiftly-moving exhalation cloud tends to keep droplets together and trap them within a humid environment, evaporation can take minutes, rather than seconds.

The JAMA Insights paper includes several visualizations of the exhalation cloud’s spread, and Julian Tang, a virologist at the University of Leicester, UK, who has expertise in respiratory viruses and their transmission, says he finds them convincing. “You can see from the image and video that it [the exhalation cloud] does spread, which could be enough to convey and transport the infectious virus all the way along that pathway,” says Tang, who was not involved in Bourouiba’s study.

As for why the WHO guidelines do not take such possibilities into account, Tang offers two potential explanations. One is that there is no direct proof that coronavirus particles inhaled from such a gas cloud will cause infection. However, he notes that the huge number of variables and confounders at play – not to mention practical and ethical issues of doing experiments on such a new and deadly disease – make it nearly impossible to conduct a conclusive study quickly enough to affect the evolving pandemic situation.

“That level of proof [required by the WHO] is so ridiculously difficult that it precludes you doing any airborne precaution and infection control now,” he says. Even without such proof, he thinks the WHO should at least acknowledge the possibility of airborne transmission. “It’s the precautionary principle,” he says. “You try and prevent transmission if it’s potentially possible.”

The other possible explanation, Tang adds, has more to do with economics. “The WHO can’t endorse a mode of transmission which low- and middle-income countries can’t do anything about,” he says. While washing hands and cleaning surfaces to prevent droplet transmission is relatively cheap and easy, Tang explains that the possibility of airborne transmission means that healthcare workers on clinical wards might need expensive, full personal protective equipment (PPE) to prevent them from becoming infected.

As it stands, even well-off countries like the UK are struggling to provide adequate PPE for frontline healthcare workers. But that, he argues, is no excuse to ignore these results. “When you see all these studies showing the dissemination of airborne particles, it’s very hard to deny they could be a risk,” he says. “’Can’t afford it’ is one thing, but they shouldn’t say it just doesn’t happen.”

Policy shift

On 2nd April, BBC News reported some movement in the WHO’s position, with the chair of its advisory panel, David Heymann, announcing that the organization is “opening up its discussion again, looking at the new evidence to see whether or not there should be a change in the way it’s recommending masks should be used.”

For Bourouiba, whose research has also appeared in a TEDMED Talk, and who established a new conference to bring together policy makers and scientists, such movement is welcome. “I’m glad that the science has gotten to the committee, but we need, as a system and community, to find ways to improve translation time from the frontline of research to guidelines and policies sooner,” she says, adding that she has contacted the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention with her findings.

  • This article was amended on 7 April 2020 to clarify how Bourouiba has worked to communicate her research findings outside the academic community.

Machines sense and see in nanoseconds

Imaging chip
The imaging chip (left) and microscopy image (right) of the photodiode array (the central region of the chip), which consists of 3×3 pixels. (Courtesy: Thomas Mueller)

As you read this news piece, you are getting help from the ambient light that hits the photoreceptors in your eyes (the sensing step – remember this) and gets converted into electrical signals (the computing step – also remember this) so that your brain (the visual cortex) can make sense of the letters that appear in this article. Biologically inspired machine vision exploits the same principle to progress to the point where artificial systems can “see”.

For instance, when you use your smartphone to take a picture, you have probably noticed that it can identify objects in a scene before you press the record button. Your smartphone camera is actually considered to be a modern image sensor. Such semiconductor-based image sensors capture the surrounding visual information and then pass it along to the processing units. It is then the job of the processing units to decode the optical signals and convert them into digital output. This movement of data between the sensor and processing units not only requires high power consumption, but also results in high computational latency – in the order of milliseconds. But what if a machine could see in nanoseconds?

Researchers in Austria have designed a network of image sensors in which images are encoded as bright pixels with varying optical intensities. They have demonstrated that by tuning the sensitivity of the sensors, in terms of pixel brightness, their new device is capable of self-computation and therefore bypasses the need to relay the signals to higher-level processing units (Nature 10.1038/s41586-020-2038-x).

Design and working principle

Inspired by the natural interconnected architecture of the brain, Lukas Mennel and colleagues from Thomas Mueller’s group at the Institute of Photonics, Vienna University of Technology,  implemented an artificial neural network (ANN) in their image sensor to overcome the high-latency computing issue. They put together rows and columns of photodiodes – tiny, light-sensitive semiconductors, each having a few layers of tungsten diselenide – sequentially on a chip to create a photosensor network.

Lukas Mennel and Thomas Mueller
First author Lukas Mennel (left) and group leader Thomas Mueller. (Courtesy: Thomas Mueller)

Neurons, the interconnected elements of the brain, are connected to each other by synapses, with the strength of the synaptic connections playing a critical role in neuronal information processing. Aware of this concept, Mueller’s research group designed the network such that each semiconductor’s response to light can be strengthened or weakened by applying an external voltage. A change in the voltage thus results in a change in the connection (synaptic) strength. This tuning capability then set the stage for the researchers to take advantage of machine learning algorithms such as ANNs.

Combining sensors and machine learning

The researchers implemented two types of ANNs: a classifier and an autoencoder. A classifier learns to classify images into different categories after a series of training processes (supervised learning), while an autoencoder recognizes a characteristic component or structure of an image from input data, without extra information (unsupervised learning).

In their design, the responsivities of the photodiodes under optical illumination were set by gate voltages, which themselves were results of either supervised or unsupervised learning processes. Changes in the optical intensity affect the output of the 3×3 array of pixels, enabling the device to self-sense and self-compute in nanoseconds.

“We have presented an ANN vision sensor for ultrafast recognition and encoding of optical images. The device concept is easily scalable and provides various training possibilities for ultrafast machine vision applications,” the authors conclude.  This is indeed a promising technology, however, there is more to be done for it to be used in practical applications. For instance, imaging under dim light would be difficult. Redesigning the device to improve its semiconductors’ light absorption could increase the range of light intensities that it can detect.

A call for unity within particle physics

Every five years or so, members of the European Strategy Group (ESG) for particle physics face a monumental task: recommending medium- and long-term plans for the community’s future. In January this group – which comprises scientific delegates appointed by each CERN member state; directors and representatives from major European laboratories and organizations; and a few non-European invitees – met for the final time in Bad Honnef, Germany. We now await their recommendation, which is due in May* when the CERN council announces the laboratory’s future direction. (*See editor’s note below.)

I sincerely hope the announcement will fill the particle-physics community with renewed motivation and engagement. However, particle physicists, accelerator physicists and engineers must reckon with the fact that many of us have dedicated years of our lives to a single project. For some, it has been decades. As a result, we have become so strongly sorted by project allegiance that we resemble opposing sides of a political debate. And the reality is that, come May, some of us could learn that our project is being mothballed.

In the wake of the ESG’s recommendation, we will need to ask ourselves, “Where to from here?” The world only needs so many high-energy colliders. Once the eventual decision is made (even if it’s not immediately conclusive), and as effort is redirected from one project to another, we will need to learn how to work and live well together as a single, unified community.

Building on consensus

For some time, consensus has been brewing that the next high-energy machine should be a positron–electron (e+/e–) or muon collider of sufficient energy to spawn copious Higgs bosons. This so-called “Higgs factory” would enable a detailed investigation of the once-elusive Higgs boson, and would add shading and nuance to our understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics, while not precluding the construction of a proton–proton collider at some later date. Yet the question remains: which collider should CERN pursue?

At this point, readers may well be asking where my own biases lie. The answer is that I have worked on both major CERN-based post-Large Hadron Collider projects – the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) and the e+/e– Future Circular Collider (FCC-ee) – and I see merits in each. In any discussion of this tumultuous subject, this is something that bears repeating: there are merits in both projects. Beyond Europe, Japan’s proposed International Linear Collider (ILC) and plans for a Chinese Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) must also be taken into consideration as we plan our next moves within a global context. The same goes for the recently funded electron–ion collider in Brookhaven, US, and the renewed interest in muon colliders.

The competition between CEPC and FCC-ee has spurred rapid advances in both designs. Similarly, the non-guaranteed future of all four major projects (CLIC, FCC, ILC and CEPC) has demanded rigour from the physicists working on them. Rivalry and disagreements have strengthened each proposal, lending support to the notion that ideas subjected to criticism evolve and grow stronger than ideas left unchallenged. The result is four strong proposals. If ambition were the selection criterion, all four would be overqualified.

Respectful academic disagreements of this type have advanced our field. Embedded in this respect is an acknowledgement that our favoured project might not go ahead. Disappointment for some is inevitable, and many in the community are bracing for it as we try to envision a path forward. For so many of us, what we do for work forms a strong pillar of our identity. We’re dedicated to our research because we love it. But because we love it, and because it forms part of who we are, the ESG’s recommendation could be shattering.

The particle accelerator community is known for its adaptability, problem solving and perseverance. Our next challenge will be to find the capacity and skill, as well as the generosity and courtesy, to hold colleagues from other projects in the same regard as we hold favourite colleagues from our own projects. We can be disappointed, and we can express disappointment, but only in a tone that assures respect.

It is also important to recognize the wider impact of our curiosity-driven search for the next collider. Regardless of the outcome from Bad Honnef, advances and innovations from the various projects have already made their mark on the accelerator community. As a large, low-emittance electron storage ring, FCC-ee has rekindled ties between the collider and light-source communities. Decades of work on CLIC have produced X-band technology that is now being used in medical accelerators. The CLIC accelerating structures have also been repurposed as an XFEL driver known as CompactLight. Meanwhile, the high-field magnets of an FCC hadron-colliding variant (FCC-hh), if demonstrated, would have a profound impact on MRI machines. A wise strategy would be to seek to capitalize still more on these pioneering developments, independent of the project from which they arose, and independent of the ESG’s decision.

Common goals

Once the decision is made (which may take a while, especially if the ESG’s recommendation is not conclusive), there will be an opportunity to welcome talented people from unsuccessful projects into the endorsed one. As we near the date of the report’s release, proponents from each side must find a way to live and work well together. After all, we share common goals: to advance human knowledge, to be inspired by the physics of nature, and to continue the scientific and technological advances in our fields.

  • Editor’s note: This article was written before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a shutdown at CERN and the cancellation of scientific events worldwide. The special session of CERN Council for approval of the strategy, originally scheduled for 25 May 2020, has now been postponed. 

How to transform bosons into fermions

Physicists in the US have shown that normally gregarious bosons can behave like solitary fermions and occupy distinct quantum states when cooled down to very low temperatures and manipulated with laser beams. Expanding on earlier work, they found that this process of “fermionization” can encompass the particles’ velocities as well as their spatial properties. This transformation, they say could prove handy in the development of quantum technologies.

Bosons are atoms or other particles with an integer amount of spin. Many such particles can occupy a single quantum state, a property that leads to the phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation. Discovered experimentally in 1995, this unusual state of matter is made when a gas of atoms is cooled down to just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero and results in all atoms occupying the same quantum ground state.

In stark contrast, fermions have half-integer spin and obey the Pauli exclusion principle. This means that no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state at one time. This property of fermions is what guides the behaviour of atomic electrons, giving us the periodic table of the elements, molecules and solid matter. However, by tuning the interaction between fermions they can be made to pair up and behave like bosons – which is the case with Cooper pairs of electrons forming a condensate that gives rise to the phenomenon of superconductivity.

Spatially fermionic

In the latest work, David Weiss, Marcos Rigol and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University have instead shown how bosons can be made to act like fermions. They do so by cooling a gas of bosonic atoms to very low temperatures and using laser beams to confine the atoms within an array of 1D potential wells. Strong interaction among the bosons then forces the particles to distance themselves from one another along the 1D axes. Although each atomic wave function is spread out in space, the large amount of energy needed to overlap those wave functions means that two particles do not occupy the same region of space. In other words, they behave – spatially at least – like fermions.

This fermionization was first demonstrated in 2004, both by Weiss and colleagues at Penn State and (in a slightly different form) by an independent team at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany. As with its latest research, Weiss’s group used a gas containing around 100,000 atoms of rubidium-87 that was cooled down to just a few millionths of a Kelvin. But in that earlier work, the researchers maintained the gas in an equilibrium state. This meant that even though the atoms acted like fermions in terms of their spatial positioning they nevertheless had a velocity distribution that was typical of bosons.

In 2005, Rigol (then a PhD student at the University of Stuttgart) worked out that the ultracold bosons should behave differently when in a dynamic state. He predicted that the strongly interacting particles should form what is known as a Fermi sea when allowed to fly apart. Rather than having a very limited spread of velocities (akin to bosons), the particles should each have a different velocity (akin to fermions).

Flying apart

This is what the group has now found. By shutting off the lasers that keep the bosons confined to 1D, allowing them to fly apart, the researchers found that the initially sharp peak in the particles’ velocity distribution gradually smoothed out into a rounded distribution. They also found that by suddenly changing the depth of the axial trap, the particles’ velocity distribution oscillates between its bosonic and fermionic forms – again, as predicted by theory.

According to Weiss, this observation of “dynamical fermionization” in a 1D gas should help to shed light on non-equilibrium quantum systems more broadly. These could include fast processes in solids or in molecules in solutions. “We hope to identify universal principles in dynamical quantum systems,” he says.

Weiss adds that this understanding could also have technological benefits. As he points out, quantum computers are generally kept out of equilibrium in order to evolve the system’s wave function in such a way as to obtain a solution to a problem. And in practice, he adds, quantum simulators are fundamentally not that different. “They often aspire to observe equilibrium physics, but it is not always clear that the changes required to set them up do not take them out of equilibrium,” he says.

The research is described in Science.

Physics in the pandemic: ‘It was like waiting for a tsunami that is sure to strike’

I am a physics teacher at King Edward’s School in Birmingham, UK, and it’s now a couple of weeks since all schools in the country were closed – except to the small number of pupils whose parents or carers work in key sectors, such as health or social care.

I have to confess that all my boys (King Edward’s is single-sex) were excited at the prospect of no school, possibly because they are in the lowest-risk group when it comes to COVID-19. Some of us initially did think that the government should have acted earlier in the wake of growing problems. But we certainly don’t expect to be back after the Easter holidays, prompting a couple of the more thoughtful members of my sixth-form tutor group to buy me bottles of wine as a parting gift.

There was a buzz about the place, with the school feeling like it was on a war footing.

In the final week before the shut-down, we actually had even fewer staff absences than usual, with just a handful of staff sensibly self-isolating. In fact, there was a buzz about the place, with the school feeling like it was on a war footing.

Pupils at King Edward’s School don’t do A-levels, like most 18-year-olds in the rest of the country. Instead, they take the International Baccalaureate (IB) and my fellow teachers and I would normally submit coursework scores to the IB after our students go on study leave in preparation for their exams. But because the school was due to shut on 20 March, the deadline was brought forward.

The IB algorithm then selected its samples of what it wants to moderate, which sent teachers scurrying away to quiet corners to annotate the coursework with more detail to justify the marks awarded. Squeezed between lessons we attended INSET (in-service training) sessions so that we can now teach online during the shutdown, with teachers sharing ideas before they went their separate ways.

Teachers scurried away to quiet corners to annotate the coursework with more detail to justify the marks awarded.

During quieter moments in those last days at school, colleagues shared their anxiety about what was to come. It was like waiting for a tsunami that is sure to strike but we don’t really know how big the wave will be and how much damage it will wreak.

Quite naturally, there was also some anxiety about being in such close proximity with other people, mainly students, who might be asymptomatic super-spreaders. Media reports suggest that people in the lowest age groups are as good as immune to the virus, which is perhaps why amongst our boys, the novelty of using hand sanitisers wore off within a day and they were fairly blasé about social distancing.

That final week at King Edward’s also brought home to me just why the school is so successful. While it has more than its fair share of bright students and lots of talented teachers, it’s more than just a school. It is a community, almost an extended family.

In the face of COVID-19, the life of a teacher has become pretty surreal. Though it has made teaching and learning more difficult, I think we are happy that schools are shut for all except the children of key workers – if only so that it reduces the risk to our families and slows the spread of the virus more generally.

As we said our goodbyes on that final day, I knew I was not alone in hoping that we will all be returning to our classrooms just as soon this nightmare is over.

The clever device that can let you see in 3D beyond the diffraction limit

What do you do if you want to look inside a biological cell, hoping to see objects that are well beyond the diffraction limit of a microscope – roughly 200nm? One solution is to use the Nobel-prize-winning technique of “super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”, which involves tagging samples with fluorescent markers.

In its basic form, however, super-resolution microscopy only produces 2D images, meaning it does not produce any “depth” information in 3D. That’s where Double Helix Optics, a small firm in Boulder, Colorado, comes in.

As I found out on a recent visit, this start-up company has developed a small optical device, called a SPINDLE, that can be bolted on to a standard wide-field optical microscope, allowing you to use “out-of-focus” light to generate 3D images at super resolution.

In this short video, Ronald Zimmerman – Double Helix’s director of sales and product management – introduces the basic principles of the device and outlines possible applications, including studying the motion of individual viruses. The video was filmed just before the great global coronavirus lock-down, which makes that particular application potentially more valuable and useful than ever.

Find out more about SPINDLE on the Double Helix Optics website.

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