Events in physical chemistry.

Using light to control electrons that, in turn, create new light

An electron that multiphoton ionizes in a gas is immediately subject to the light’s electric field that will control its short-term future.  As a result of this control, we can use a gas of atoms or molecules to produce intense VUV or soft X-ray beams by forcing the electron to recollide and recombine with its parent ion.  Since we can precisely control the infrared beam that creates the radiation, we can also synthesize attosecond soft X-ray pulses – pulses that are the shortest controlled events ever systematically produced (50-attoseconds).  Such pulses, when applied to materials, allow

Understanding Molecular Mechanisms of Biological Error Correction

One of the most fascinating features of biological systems is the ability to sustain an extraordinary high accuracy of all major cellular processes despite the stochastic nature of underlying chemical processes. It is widely believed that such low errors are the result of the error correcting mechanism known as a kinetic proofreading. However, there are contradicting views on the balance of speed and accuracy in biological processes.

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