Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering

Kerr ring microresonator-based optical frequency combs have attracted significant interest due to their suitability for on-chip integration and their wide-ranging applications in telecommunications, sensing, and spectroscopy [1]. Two main challenges in microcomb development are stabilizing the comb offset frequency and generating broadband combs [1], [2]. A promising approach to address both is the generation of multicolor soliton microcombs [3]. These emerge in systems with an engineered dispersion profile consisting of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$J$</tex> equally spaced regions of anomalous dispersion (orange curves in Fig. 1(a) and (c) for <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$J=3$</tex> and <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$J=5$</tex> respectively). Multicolor microcombs feature spectra spanning multiple distinct spectral windows, each centered at a different frequency (blue curves in Fig. 1(a) and (c)). In the time domain, they consist of a rapidly oscillating carrier and a meta-envelope which has the hyperbolic secant shape characteristic of single-color solitons (see Fig. 1(b)-(d)). Despite purely numerical investigations on the two-color case <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$(J=2)$</tex> [3], [4], a general theory that elucidates the physical properties of these states has yet to be published.

Cargo-filled protein cages are powerful tools in biotechnology with demonstrated potential as catalytic nanoreactors and vehicles for targeted drug delivery. While endogenous biomolecules can be packaged into protein cages during their expression and self-assembly inside cells, synthetic cargo molecules are typically incompatible with live cells and must be packaged in vitro. Here, we report a fusion-based in vitro assembly method for packaging diverse synthetic cargo into encapsulin protein cages that outperforms standard in cellulo assembly, producing cages with superior uniformity and thermal stability. Fluorescent dyes, proteins and cytotoxic drug molecules can all be selectively packaged with high efficiency via a peptide-mediated targeting process. The exceptional fidelity and broad compatibility of our in vitro assembly platform enables generalisable access to cargo-filled protein cages that host novel synthetic functionality for diverse biotechnological applications.

Microbiology is increasingly being incorporated into secondary school biology curricula, an important component of science technology engineering and mathematics (STEM) training. The microbiological competency of teachers and the availability of skilled laboratory technicians that understand the risks involved and the reasoning behind restrictions to protocols is vital for the safe execution of microbiology experiments in secondary schools. The addition of gene-modification experiments to microbiology curricula increases the complexity of experimental set-up and potentially exacerbates existing deficiencies in laboratory technique and disinfection practice. There is currently no targeted national program to up-skill school science teachers or laboratory technicians, which can leave these staff in vulnerable positions if they are asked to co-ordinate experiments that are beyond their expertise. It is important that such training is available, preferably as part of well-planned professional development and that continued online support is provided to answer questions swiftly and assist STEM school staff to conduct microbiology experiments safely. Improved integration between universities and high schools can be beneficial in this regard, not only in the safe teaching of microbiology in schools, but also in collaborative links formed between secondary schools and universities.

This study of text/image relations in manuscripts of Burgundian prose romances illuminated by the Wavrin Master analyses how the verbal comedy of the narrative is represented visually. Whether this is through direct pictorial equivalents to amusing episodes in the text or “translation” of these episodes into the visual language of clothing, gesture and symbolism, the illuminator can be shown to be faithful to the narrative in deploying comedy for the didactic instruction of the reader/viewer.

It is a long debated question whether catalytic activities of enzymes, which lie on the millisecond timescale, are possibly already reflected in variations in atomic thermal fluctuations on the pico- to nanosecond timescale. To shed light on this puzzle, the enzyme human acetylcholinesterase in its wild-type form and complexed with the inhibitor huperzine A were investigated by various neutron scattering techniques and molecular dynamics simulations. Previous results on elastic neutron scattering at various timescales and simulations suggest that dynamical processes are not affected on average by the presence of the ligand within the considered time ranges between 10 ps and 1 ns. In the work presented here, the focus was laid on quasi-elastic (QENS) and inelastic neutron scattering (INS). These techniques give access to different kinds of individual diffusive motions and to the density of states of collective motions at the sub-picoseconds timescale. Hence, they permit going beyond the first approach of looking at mean square displacements. For both samples, the autocorrelation function was well described by a stretched-exponential function indicating a linkage between the timescales of fast and slow functional relaxation dynamics. The findings of the QENS and INS investigation are discussed in relation to the results of our earlier elastic incoherent neutron scattering and molecular dynamics simulations.

The author headed a project, now 30 years old, to bridge a gap of 50 years in the indexes to the Melbourne newspaper the Argus. He describes the project and also argues the advantages of the resulting indexes over the search facility provided by the National Library of Australia’s website Trove.

Growth and form traits data were obtained from eight provenance trials of radiata pine (Pinus radiata D. Don) planted across the radiata pine plantation estate in southeast Australia. The genetic pool included 466 open-pollinated families collected from Ano Nuevo, Monterey and Cambria provenances on the Californian mainland coast in the USA and from Guadalupe and Cedros islands off the coast of Baja California in Mexico. Early survival of all provenances was around 90%, except for Cedros ( 0.80. Estimates of between-site genetic and provenance correlations for DBH were often low, indicating high genotype by environment interaction across trials, consistent with previous Australian studies. However, there was minimal G × E among trials on high-altitude high-rainfall sites and among trials on low-altitude, low-rainfall sites.