ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) ? Nearly 12,000 people will die of head and neck cancer in the United States this year and worldwide cases will exceed half a million.
A study published this week in the journal Carcinogenesis shows that in both cell lines and mouse models, grape seed extract (GSE) kills head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.
“It’s a rather dramatic effect,” says Rajesh Agarwal, PhD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
It depends in large part, says Agarwal, on a healthy cell’s ability to wait out damage.
“Cancer cells are fast-growing cells,” Agarwal says. “Not only that, but they are necessarily fast growing. When conditions exist in which they can’t grow, they die.”
Grape seed extract creates these conditions that are unfavorable to growth. Specifically, the paper shows that grape seed extract both damages cancer cells’ DNA (via increased reactive oxygen species) and stops the pathways that allow repair (as seen by decreased levels of the DNA repair molecules Brca1 and Rad51 and DNA repair foci).
“Yet we saw absolutely no toxicity to the mice, themselves,” Agarwal says.
Again, the grape seed extract killed the cancer cells but not the healthy cells.
“I think the whole point is that cancer cells have a lot of defective pathways and they are very vulnerable if you target those pathways. The same is not true of healthy cells,” Agarwal says.
The Agarwal Lab hopes to move in the direction of clinical trials of grape seed extract, potentially as an addition to second-line therapies that target head and neck squamous cell carcinoma that has failed a first treatment.?
This work was supported by the R01 grants AT003623 from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and CA91883 from the National Cancer Institute, NIH.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Colorado Denver.
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Journal Reference:
S. Shrotriya, G. Deep, M. Gu, M. Kaur, A. K. Jain, S. Inturi, R. Agarwal, C. Agarwal. Generation of reactive oxygen species by grape seed extract causes irreparable DNA damage leading to G2/M arrest and apoptosis selectively in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cells. Carcinogenesis, 2012; DOI: 10.1093/carcin/bgs019
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Cell Press reinforces its commitment to provide a broad range of publishing options for the life sciences community with the inaugural issue of a new open-access journal: Cell Reports. Since the announcement in August, after 6 months of hard work on the part of our authors, reviewers, and editorial board members as well as our own editorial and production teams, the first issue is available online today, January 26, 2011, with eight exciting papers on topics ranging from evolutionary biology to immunology.
“We are thrilled to add Cell Reports to the Cell Press family of journals, giving choice to our authors and readers and providing a new avenue for communicating cutting-edge science.” said Dr. Emilie Marcus, CEO of Cell Press. “Cell Reports brings all the features scientists have come to expect from Cell Pressexciting science, highest quality content, editorial responsiveness, and rapid publicationtogether with a broad biological scope, a short report format, and an open-access business model.”
Leading the Cell Reports editorial team is Dr. Boyana Konforti, who brings a wealth of experience from a successful research career and over 13 years as a professional editor. Support from Cell Press editors as well as an actively engaged editorial board ensures broad expertise across an extensive range of topics. With a focus on concise, provocative stories and a professional approach to the entire publication process, Cell Reports will make a distinctive contribution to open-access publishing.
The launch of Cell Reports is the next step in Cell Press’s ongoing dedication to serving the scientific community. Cell Press has always placed a high priority on enabling authors to disseminate published research widely and easily and offers a variety of options to make content universally accessible. The Cell Press open-archive policy, enacted in 2005, allows readers to access all online research journal content free of charge from 12 months after publication. This policy now provides a resource of over 24,000 articles that are freely available online. Newly-published featured articles are also available online at no charge on a monthly basis. On behalf of authors, Cell Press has voluntarily deposited over 7,200 of the total 84,863 Elsevier contribution of research papers into PubMed Central databases over the past 5 years. Cell Press continues to partner proactively with institutions, government agencies, and funding bodies to facilitate access to research. Cell Press and Elsevier also participate in a wide range of worldwide initiatives to provide low-cost or free access to scientific information to teachers, healthcare patients and providers, as well as researchers with limited resources. In addition, subscribing libraries are able to offer free access to walk-in users.
Through Cell Reports, Cell Press is happy to provide authors with the option to publish in a prestigious journal with immediate open access. Authors can choose to publish their work under one of two Creative Commons licenses, one of which is the most liberal available. Cell Press and Elsevier share an ongoing commitment to promote access to the scientific literature and to support a broad range of sustainable publishing models.
###
For more information on Cell Reports, please visit http://cellreports.cell.com/
About Cell Press:
Cell Press is committed to improving scientific communication through the publication of exciting research and reviews. As we introduce publications and expand our online content to serve our growing audience, our mission remains to publish and develop journals that deliver the highest possible intellectual rigor, promote community trust, and are widely disseminated. Cell Press primary research journals include the flagship journal Cell. For more information, please visit www.cell.com
About Elsevier:
Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier publishes eight open-access journals and offers authors the option to sponsor open access to articles published in over 1,100 titles. Elsevier’s online solutions include SciVerse ScienceDirect, SciVerse Scopus, Reaxys, MD Consult, and Nursing Consult, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite and MEDai’s Pinpoint Review, which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK, and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).
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Public release date: 26-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Elisabeth (Lisa) Lyons elyons@cell.com 617-386-2121 Cell Press
Cell Press reinforces its commitment to provide a broad range of publishing options for the life sciences community with the inaugural issue of a new open-access journal: Cell Reports. Since the announcement in August, after 6 months of hard work on the part of our authors, reviewers, and editorial board members as well as our own editorial and production teams, the first issue is available online today, January 26, 2011, with eight exciting papers on topics ranging from evolutionary biology to immunology.
“We are thrilled to add Cell Reports to the Cell Press family of journals, giving choice to our authors and readers and providing a new avenue for communicating cutting-edge science.” said Dr. Emilie Marcus, CEO of Cell Press. “Cell Reports brings all the features scientists have come to expect from Cell Pressexciting science, highest quality content, editorial responsiveness, and rapid publicationtogether with a broad biological scope, a short report format, and an open-access business model.”
Leading the Cell Reports editorial team is Dr. Boyana Konforti, who brings a wealth of experience from a successful research career and over 13 years as a professional editor. Support from Cell Press editors as well as an actively engaged editorial board ensures broad expertise across an extensive range of topics. With a focus on concise, provocative stories and a professional approach to the entire publication process, Cell Reports will make a distinctive contribution to open-access publishing.
The launch of Cell Reports is the next step in Cell Press’s ongoing dedication to serving the scientific community. Cell Press has always placed a high priority on enabling authors to disseminate published research widely and easily and offers a variety of options to make content universally accessible. The Cell Press open-archive policy, enacted in 2005, allows readers to access all online research journal content free of charge from 12 months after publication. This policy now provides a resource of over 24,000 articles that are freely available online. Newly-published featured articles are also available online at no charge on a monthly basis. On behalf of authors, Cell Press has voluntarily deposited over 7,200 of the total 84,863 Elsevier contribution of research papers into PubMed Central databases over the past 5 years. Cell Press continues to partner proactively with institutions, government agencies, and funding bodies to facilitate access to research. Cell Press and Elsevier also participate in a wide range of worldwide initiatives to provide low-cost or free access to scientific information to teachers, healthcare patients and providers, as well as researchers with limited resources. In addition, subscribing libraries are able to offer free access to walk-in users.
Through Cell Reports, Cell Press is happy to provide authors with the option to publish in a prestigious journal with immediate open access. Authors can choose to publish their work under one of two Creative Commons licenses, one of which is the most liberal available. Cell Press and Elsevier share an ongoing commitment to promote access to the scientific literature and to support a broad range of sustainable publishing models.
###
For more information on Cell Reports, please visit http://cellreports.cell.com/
About Cell Press:
Cell Press is committed to improving scientific communication through the publication of exciting research and reviews. As we introduce publications and expand our online content to serve our growing audience, our mission remains to publish and develop journals that deliver the highest possible intellectual rigor, promote community trust, and are widely disseminated. Cell Press primary research journals include the flagship journal Cell. For more information, please visit www.cell.com
About Elsevier:
Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier publishes eight open-access journals and offers authors the option to sponsor open access to articles published in over 1,100 titles. Elsevier’s online solutions include SciVerse ScienceDirect, SciVerse Scopus, Reaxys, MD Consult, and Nursing Consult, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite and MEDai’s Pinpoint Review, which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK, and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
BAGHDAD (AP) ? A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car near a funeral procession in southeastern Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 32 people ? half of them policemen who were guarding the march ? in the latest brazen attack since the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Police officials said the blast occurred at 11:00 a.m. in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Zafaraniyah, where mourners had gathered for the funeral of a person killed the day before. They said 65 people were wounded in the attack, including 16 policemen.
Hospital officials confirmed the death toll.
Salam Hussein, a 42-year-old grocery store owner in Zafaraniyah said he was watching the funeral procession, which was heavily guarded by police, when the blast blew out his store windows and injured one of his workers.
“It was a huge explosion,” Hussein said. As he took his worker to the hospital, Hussein said he saw cars engulfed in flames, “human flesh scattered around and several mutilated bodies in a pool of blood” around where the attacker’s car had exploded.
Zafaraniyah resident Talib Bashir, 50, said he was part of the procession of about 500 men but left the group to take his child home when he heard the blast.
“I saw smoke coming from a parked car that had exploded,” Bashir said, adding that police and civilians cars, an ambulance van and several stores were engulfed in flames hours after the blast. “The fire lasted for a long time,” Bashir said.
Minutes after the blast, gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint in Zafaraniyah, killing two policemen, according to police officials. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Across Iraq, at least 200 people have been killed in a wave of attacks by suspected insurgents since the beginning of the year, raising concerns that the surge in violence and an escalating political crisis might deteriorate into a civil war, just weeks after the U.S. military withdrawal.
Most of the dead have been Shiite pilgrims and members of the Iraqi security forces.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday’s attack.
Since the United States completed its pullout last month, militant groups ? mainly al-Qaida in Iraq ? have stepped up attacks targeting the country’s majority Shiites to undermine confidence in the Shiite-led government and its efforts to protect people without American backup.
On Thursday, 17 people died in bombings around the country, including seven people in attacks on Baghdad’s s two predominantly Sunni districts, suggesting that Shiite militants could be retaliating amid fears of a reignited sectarian conflict in the war-ravaged country.
Friday’s blast is the second deadliest single attack in Iraq this month.
At least 53 people were killed Jan. 14, when a bomb tore through a procession of Shiite pilgrims heading toward a largely Sunni town in southern Iraq. The attack suggested a renewed power struggle between rival Muslim sects amid an escalating sectarian crisis in the Shiite-led government.
The last U.S. soldiers left the country Dec. 18.
___
Associated Press writer Barbara Surk in Baghdad contributed to this report.
Under new USDA rules school lunches will become healthier. NBC’s Rehema Ellis reports.
By Sylvia Wood, msnbc.com
Millions of schoolchildren in the United States will see more fruit and vegetables and less fat on their lunch plates under new U.S. Department of Agriculture standards unveiled Wednesday aimed at improving child nutrition and reducing childhood obesity.
“Improving the quality of the school meals is a critical step in building a healthy future for our kids,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “When it comes to our children, we must do everything possible to provide them the nutrition they need to be healthy, active and ready to face the future ? today we take an important step towards that goal.”
The changes mark the first overhaul of the school lunch program in more than 15 years and will affect the nearly 32 million children who eat at school. The new regulations?will be phased in over the next three years, starting in the fall.
?We strongly support the regulations,? said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokeswoman for the Maryland-based School Nutrition Association. ?The new nutrition standards for school meals are great news for kids.?
Under the new regulations, schools will be required to offer fruits and vegetables every day,?increase the amount of whole-grain foods and reduce the sodium and fats in the foods served. Schools will also be required to offer only fat-free or low-fat milk. In addition, the menus will pay attention to portion sizes to make sure children receive calories appropriate to their age, according to Kevin Concannon, USDA under secretary for food, nutrition and consumer services.
Read more: Trans fat ban proposed for Colorado schools
The new requirements are part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act signed into law last year by President Barack Obama and championed by the First Lady Michelle Obama as part of her Let’s Move! campaign.
First lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announce new nutrition standards for school meals. NBC’s Erika Edwards reports.
“As parents, we try to prepare decent meals, limit how much junk food our kids eat, and ensure they have a reasonably balanced diet,” said Michelle Obama. “And when we’re putting in all that effort the last thing we want is for our hard work to be undone each day in the school cafeteria.
Read more: Blogger eats school lunch every day
Statistics show that about 17 percent of U.S. children and teenagers are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But whether the kids will choose to eat the new, healthier?foods remains to be seen. The new menus?won’t entirely eliminate favorite food choices among kids, like pizza and french fries, but they will provide alternatives. For example, instead of cheese pizza, students will receive whole wheat cheese pizza. Rather than tater tots, students will get baked sweet potato fries. ??
“We know if it?s not delicious, kids aren?t going to eat it,”?said White House Chef Sam Kass. But he added that thousands of?schools?have already implemented many of the required changes and their chefs are?making progress in designing appealing menus. “We’re working very hard on that,” he said.
Wendy Weyer, director of nutrition services for Seattle Public Schools, said her district is already complying with many of the new USDA standards, and taking other steps, such as having partnerships with local farmers and planting school gardens. “Seattle has been very progressive with changing the way we offer meals, offering fruits and vegetables every day, as well as whole grain-rich foods,” she said.
Weyer said the biggest challenge will be reducing sodium content, “while keeping the meals palatable for our students.”
Pratt-Heavner said parents?will play an important role in supporting the new standards.???We all have to work to get the kids to make these healthier choices,? she said. ?Students are more apt to pick up a fruit or vegetable in the lunch line if they have been introduced to those foods at home.??
To support the changes, schools will receive another 6 cents per meal in federal funding, and the overall cost of implementing the new requirements is projected at $3.2 billion. To help minimize costs, schools?will also have more flexibility in designing the school lunch line to reduce waste, Concannon said.?Students, for example,?will be allowed to pick and choose more items as they move through the line, rather than getting a plate served to them.
Weyer said the Seattle school district still needs to determine how far the additional money will go to cover the new requirements.
“It’s not going to cover all the cost, but it’s definitely going to help,” Pratt-Heavner said.
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To become in a position to locate the cheap car insurance you should realize what the insurance coverage corporations are seeking for in a beneficial driver. For those who think that just about every individual pays precisely the same automobile insurance premiums consider once again. This is a myth. Auto insurance rates are determined by many elements and ordinarily, these are statistically based risk. As an example, an person having a higher threat would need to spend higher rates because of the risk related to them individually. The least expensive auto insurance is all about getting a lot more coverage for much less quantity of cash.
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AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) ? A tornado hit Austin, Texas, and thunderstorms pounded San Antonio, Dallas and Houston on Wednesday, bringing the parched Lone Star State drenching rains and destructive winds that knocked out power, flooded streets and kept emergency workers busy rescuing drivers stranded in high water.
The tornado touched down early Wednesday in northeast Austin, tearing across U.S. 290 and into a subdivision, damaging homes along a road called Happy Trail, according to the National Weather Service.
Springlike moisture from the Gulf of Mexico dropped the heaviest rainfall – 6-8 inches – on an area east of Austin and San Antonio and extending south into Houston, it added.
“That’s very unusual for this time of year,” NWS meteorologist Mark Wiley said. “It was just so much rain in such a short period of time. In so many areas, the ground is still fairly dry, but it was just so fast that it didn’t have anywhere to go, especially in the urban areas.”
There were no reports of injuries.
By Wednesday afternoon, the storms were pushing into Louisiana and were expected to head into Mississippi and Alabama on Thursday, the NWS said.
In Bastrop, an area east of Austin heavily damaged by Labor Day weekend wildfires, schools canceled classes on Wednesday. In Pflugerville, north of Austin, school buses were delayed Wednesday morning because the school district’s bus barn was damaged overnight, the district website said. And the Houston Independent School District canceled after-school activities.
Wind toppled an 18-wheeler in on IH-45 in Madison County, between Dallas and Houston, officials said. More than 30 flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Wednesday morning.
In San Antonio, lightning hit an apartment complex on the city’s north side as storms blew through, sparking a fire that forced people into the driving rain and destroyed four apartments, officials said.
Between Austin and Houston, in Brenham, high winds twisted trees and tore the roofs off a couple of buildings in the downtown area, said Ricky Boeker, fire chief and emergency management coordinator.
“It sounded like the world was coming apart — I’m not going to lie,” Boeker told Reuters.
The severe weather in Texas follows damaging storms and tornadoes that swept through Arkansas and Alabama earlier in the week.
In Texas, “while most of the region is still in the grips of a severe drought and very much needs the rain, too much rain too quickly can do more harm than good,” AccuWeather.com meteorologist Mark Miller said in a Wednesday report. “Still, the rain will go a long way in helping to reduce the severity of the drought in exceptionally dry locations.”
Last year was the driest year on record in Texas and the second-hottest, according to the NWS.
CPS Energy, the South Texas electric utility, reported more than 30,000 customers without power as wind snapped electric power lines and knocked out traffic signals during the morning rush hour in San Antonio. In Austin, some 5,000 customers of Austin Energy lost power, the company said. As many as 5,000 homes and businesses in the Dallas area also lost power, according to Oncor Delivery.
As San Antonio resident Johnny Grant surveyed damage to homes in his northwest San Antonio neighborhood on Wednesday, he said of the storm: “It sounded like a freight train to me. It was something terrible.”
(Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth, Lauren Keiper, Deborah Quinn Hensel and Marice Richter. Editing by Paul Thomasch)
Public release date: 25-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andy Freeberg afreeberg@slac.stanford.edu 650-926-4359 DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists working at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, fulfilling a 45-year-old prediction and opening the door to a new range of scientific discovery.
The researchers, reporting today in Nature, aimed SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at a capsule of neon gas, setting off an avalanche of X-ray emissions to create the world’s first “atomic X-ray laser.”
“X-rays give us a penetrating view into the world of atoms and molecules,” said physicist Nina Rohringer, who led the research. A group leader at the Max Planck Society’s Advanced Study Group in Hamburg, Germany, Rohringer collaborated with researchers from SLAC, DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Colorado State University.
“We envision researchers using this new type of laser for all sorts of interesting things, such as teasing out the details of chemical reactions or watching biological molecules at work,” she added. “The shorter the pulses, the faster the changes we can capture. And the purer the light, the sharper the details we can see.”
The new atomic X-ray laser fulfills a 1967 prediction that X-ray lasers could be made in the same manner as many visible-light lasers by inducing electrons to fall from higher to lower energy levels within atoms, releasing a single color of light in the process. But until 2009, when LCLS turned on, no X-ray source was powerful enough to create this type of laser.
To make the atom laser, LCLS’s powerful X-ray pulses each a billion times brighter than any available before knocked electrons out of the inner shells of many of the neon atoms in the capsule. When other electrons fell in to fill the holes, about one in 50 atoms responded by emitting a photon in the X-ray range, which has a very short wavelength. Those X-rays then stimulated neighboring neon atoms to emit more X-rays, creating a domino effect that amplified the laser light 200 million times.
Although LCLS and the neon capsule are both lasers, they create light in different ways and emit light with different attributes. The LCLS passes high-energy electrons through alternating magnetic fields to trigger production of X-rays; its X-ray pulses are brighter and much more powerful. The atomic laser’s pulses are only one-eighth as long and their color is much more pure, qualities that will enable it to illuminate and distinguish details of ultrafast reactions that had been impossible to see before.
“This achievement opens the door for a new realm of X-ray capabilities,” said John Bozek, LCLS instrument scientist. “Scientists will surely want new facilities to take advantage of this new type of laser.”
For example, researchers envision using both LCLS and atomic laser pulses in a synchronized one-two punch: The first laser triggers a change in a sample under study, and the second records with atomic-scale precision any changes that occurred within a few quadrillionths of a second.
In future experiments, Rohringer says she will try to create even shorter-pulsed, higher-energy atomic X-ray lasers using oxygen, nitrogen or sulfur gas.
###
Additional authors included Richard London, Felicie Albert, James Dunn, Randal Hill and Stefan P. Hau-Riege from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL); Duncan Ryan, Michael Purvis and Jorge J. Rocca from Colorado State University; and Christoph Bostedt from SLAC.
The work was supported by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program. Authors Roca, Purvis and Ryan were supported by the DOE Office of Science. LCLS is a national scientific user facility operated by SLAC and supported by DOE’s Office of Science.
SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located in Menlo Park, California, SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. To learn more, please visit www.slac.stanford.edu.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 25-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andy Freeberg afreeberg@slac.stanford.edu 650-926-4359 DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists working at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, fulfilling a 45-year-old prediction and opening the door to a new range of scientific discovery.
The researchers, reporting today in Nature, aimed SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at a capsule of neon gas, setting off an avalanche of X-ray emissions to create the world’s first “atomic X-ray laser.”
“X-rays give us a penetrating view into the world of atoms and molecules,” said physicist Nina Rohringer, who led the research. A group leader at the Max Planck Society’s Advanced Study Group in Hamburg, Germany, Rohringer collaborated with researchers from SLAC, DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Colorado State University.
“We envision researchers using this new type of laser for all sorts of interesting things, such as teasing out the details of chemical reactions or watching biological molecules at work,” she added. “The shorter the pulses, the faster the changes we can capture. And the purer the light, the sharper the details we can see.”
The new atomic X-ray laser fulfills a 1967 prediction that X-ray lasers could be made in the same manner as many visible-light lasers by inducing electrons to fall from higher to lower energy levels within atoms, releasing a single color of light in the process. But until 2009, when LCLS turned on, no X-ray source was powerful enough to create this type of laser.
To make the atom laser, LCLS’s powerful X-ray pulses each a billion times brighter than any available before knocked electrons out of the inner shells of many of the neon atoms in the capsule. When other electrons fell in to fill the holes, about one in 50 atoms responded by emitting a photon in the X-ray range, which has a very short wavelength. Those X-rays then stimulated neighboring neon atoms to emit more X-rays, creating a domino effect that amplified the laser light 200 million times.
Although LCLS and the neon capsule are both lasers, they create light in different ways and emit light with different attributes. The LCLS passes high-energy electrons through alternating magnetic fields to trigger production of X-rays; its X-ray pulses are brighter and much more powerful. The atomic laser’s pulses are only one-eighth as long and their color is much more pure, qualities that will enable it to illuminate and distinguish details of ultrafast reactions that had been impossible to see before.
“This achievement opens the door for a new realm of X-ray capabilities,” said John Bozek, LCLS instrument scientist. “Scientists will surely want new facilities to take advantage of this new type of laser.”
For example, researchers envision using both LCLS and atomic laser pulses in a synchronized one-two punch: The first laser triggers a change in a sample under study, and the second records with atomic-scale precision any changes that occurred within a few quadrillionths of a second.
In future experiments, Rohringer says she will try to create even shorter-pulsed, higher-energy atomic X-ray lasers using oxygen, nitrogen or sulfur gas.
###
Additional authors included Richard London, Felicie Albert, James Dunn, Randal Hill and Stefan P. Hau-Riege from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL); Duncan Ryan, Michael Purvis and Jorge J. Rocca from Colorado State University; and Christoph Bostedt from SLAC.
The work was supported by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program. Authors Roca, Purvis and Ryan were supported by the DOE Office of Science. LCLS is a national scientific user facility operated by SLAC and supported by DOE’s Office of Science.
SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located in Menlo Park, California, SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. To learn more, please visit www.slac.stanford.edu.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
DUBAI?? Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, an investor in some of the world’s top companies, has bought a stake in Twitter for $300 million, gaining another foothold in the global media industry.
Alwaleed, a nephew of Saudi Arabia’s king and estimated by Forbes magazine to be the 26th richest person in [...]
To become in a position to locate the cheap car insurance you should realize what the insurance coverage corporations are seeking for in a beneficial driver. For those who think that just about every individual pays precisely the same automobile insurance premiums consider once again. This is a myth. Auto insurance rates are determined by [...]
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) ? Yahoo Inc co-founder Jerry Yang has quit the company he started in 1995, appeasing shareholders who had blasted the Internet pioneer for pursuing an ineffective personal vision and impeding investment deals that could have transformed the struggling company. Yang’s abrupt departure comes two weeks after Yahoo appointed Scott Thompson its new [...]
BAGHDAD (AP) ? A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car near a funeral procession in southeastern Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 32 people ? half of them policemen who were guarding the march ? in the latest brazen attack since the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Police officials said the blast occurred at 11:00 [...]
LONDON ? Bob Weston, a British guitarist who played with Fleetwood Mac, has died aged 64. Police say Weston’s body was found in his north London home on Tuesday after neighbors raised the alarm. Police said Friday that his death was not being treated as suspicious. An autopsy revealed the causes of death as gastric [...]
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Public release date: 26-Jan-2012
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