Morphology adjustable microlens array fabricated by single spatially modulated femtosecond pulse

Silica microlens arrays (MLAs) with multiple numerical-apertures (NAs) have high thermal and mechanical stability, and have potential application prospects in 3D display and rapid detection. However, it is still a challenge to rapidly fabricate silica MLAs with a larger range of NAs and how to obtain multiple NAs in the same aperture diameter. Here, a wet etching assisted spatially modulated femtosecond laser pulse fabricating technology is proposed. In this technology, Gaussian laser pulse is modulated in the axial direction to create a pulse with a large aspect ratio, which is used to modify the silica to obtain a longer modification distance than traditional technology. After that, a microlens with a larger NA can be obtained by etching, and the NA variable range can be up to 0.06–0.65, and even under the same aperture, the variable NA can range up to 0.45–0.65. In addition, a single focus is radially modulated into several focus with different axial lengths to achieve a single exposure fabricating of MLA with multiple NAs. In characterization of the image under a microscope, the multi-plane imaging characteristics of the MLA are revealed. The proposed technology offers great potential toward numerous applications, including microfluidic adaptive imaging and biomedical sensing.

Correction of Astigmatism by a Single-Focus Toric Intraocular Lens during Cataract Surgery: Refractive State and Visual Acuity

Purpose: the main purpose of study is to obtain a better visual outcome after implantation of a monofocal toric IOLs by accurate measurement, calculations and visual assessment.Methods. Fifty eyes with astigmatism of more than 2.5 D were included in a hospital-based prospective study. A biometric evaluation is done by Lenstar. Barette's toric calculation method is used to measure toric IOLs power. In a vertical position, preoperative axis marking was done by both bubble marker and direct slit beam. On table, in a horizontal position, axis marking was reassessed. After phacoemulsification, a monofocal Supra Phob toric IOL was implanted and rotated to match corneal axis marking. Best-corrected visual acuity was measured postoperatively at 1 and 3 months.Results. Reduction of mean of refractive astigmatism was reported postoperatively from 4.0 ± 0.79 preoperatively to 0.7 ± 0.28 at 1 month and 0.6 ± 0.27 at 3 months postoperatively. In whole, 96 % has residual astigmatism less than 1 D at 3 months postoperatively, while 8 % eyes had residual astigmatism more than 1 D. In whole, 76 % patients had IOLs rotation of less than or equal to 5°, 20 % patients had it between 6° and 10° and 4 % eyes had more than 10° at day 7 postoperatively, in which repositioning of IOLs was required.Conclusion. To reduce postoperative residual astigmatism after toric IOLs and to get better results, accurate measurement of parameters and proper calculation are essential.

Managing the Transition to a Dual Business Model: Tradeoff, Paradox, and Routinized Practices

Building on an in-depth study of a manufacturing company’s shift from a product to a product-service business model, we explore how single-focus companies transition to a dual orientation. Although companies generally use highly sophisticated practices to manage a dual orientation, those that transition to one successfully start with less sophisticated practices. Early on, the use of simple tradeoff practices, which maintain the product and service logics, helps single-focus companies explore the emergent tensions that their transition to a dual orientation causes. Conversely, adopting more sophisticated practices at this early stage overwhelms them. At a later stage, these companies’ growing understanding of the tensions allows them to experiment with more comprehensive paradox practices that transcend the product and service logics. Conversely, maintaining simple practices at this stage prevents them from gaining the solution experience required to complete the transition. The evolutionary process culminates in sophisticated routinized practices that institutionalize recurrent tensions’ solution, while allowing for further experimentation to deal with new tensions. The different practices’ appropriate sequence and pacing during the evolutionary process facilitate companies’ transition to a dual orientation.

Introduction—Corona A(e)ffects

Right from the emergence of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, national governments and international institutions have been relentlessly qualifying it as an “unprecedented” event. We have been told that the virus sees no color or class and that equal sacrifices from each one of us are and continue to be necessary to contain its spread. We have been instructed to look at the virus in scientific, neutral terms as if we had equal chances of being affected by it—as if its routes, that is, did not follow the roots of sedimented histories of oppression, exploitation, dispossession, and structural violence. This forum departs from such narratives to look at how the current COVID-19 pandemic intersects with other pre-existing and enduring pandemics, such as those produced by racism, capitalism, and speciesism. In building on the emerging critiques by Indigenous, feminist, Black, and queer academics, movements, and activists, the contributions it hosts offer multimedia reflections on affects triggered or evoked by the current pandemic, such as rage, fear, despair, restraint, care, and hope. Coming from different parts of the globe and disciplinary approaches, authors convey the “Corona(virus) a(e)ffects” in multisensorial ways, combining written essays, poetry, videos, and photographs. By contextualizing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic within a historical legacy of structural violence within and across species, this forum moves beyond deceitfully single-focus and temporally flat narrations. In so doing, it provides a space for the expression of radical affectivities of dissent and hope that its outburst has arguably made only more visible and pressing.

Development and Implementation of an Integrated Academic-Behavior Intervention

The relationship between learning disabilities and behavior disorders is well documented and has led to the development of integrated interventions that target both academic and behavior deficits in elementary students. This paper describes the rationale, development, and implementation of an integrated academic-behavior intervention called a cademic and behavior combined support ( ABC Support). The intervention was developed by integrating the critical intervention elements from two single-focus interventions (i.e., repeated reading and check-in/check-out) into a single comprehensive intervention designed to improve reading fluency for early elementary students with reading disorders while also strengthening their engagement and compliance with behavior expectations.

Acute inflammatory demyelinating pseudotumor after COVID-19

The presence of a single demyelinating focus with signs of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption, revealed during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in the absence of clinical symptoms, is most often an accidental finding and requires careful follow-up and anamnesis clarification for diagnosis. Such a focus can be a sign of multiple sclerosis onset, be a symptom of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, inflammatory demyelinating pseudotumor, brain tumor, encephalitis, etc. Difficulties of differential diagnosis in a radiologically isolated syndrome are reflected in the presented clinical case of a 26-year-old woman who had recovered from COVID-19, in whom an MRI revealed a large single focus in the left frontal lobe with signs of active process.

Distinct subcellular localization of a Type I CRISPR complex and the Cas3 nuclease in bacteria

CRISPR-Cas systems are prokaryotic adaptive immune systems that have been well characterized biochemically, but in vivo spatiotemporal regulation and cell biology remains largely unaddressed. Here, we used fluorescent fusion proteins to study the localization of the Type I-F CRISPR-Cas system native to Pseudomonas aeruginosa. When targeted to an integrated prophage, the crRNA-guided (Csy) complex and a majority of Cas3 molecules in the cell are recruited to a single focus. When lacking a target in the cell, however, the Csy complex is broadly nucleoid bound, while Cas3 is diffuse in the cytoplasm. Nucleoid association for the Csy proteins is crRNA-dependent, and inhibited by expression of anti-CRISPR AcrIF2, which blocks PAM binding. The Cas9 nuclease is also nucleoid localized, only when gRNA-bound, which is abolished by PAM mimic, AcrIIA4. Our findings reveal PAM-dependent nucleoid surveillance and spatiotemporal regulation in Type I CRISPR-Cas that separates the nuclease-helicase Cas3 from the crRNA-guided surveillance complex.