Lateral growth limitation of corneal fibrils and their lamellar stacking depend on covalent collagen cross-linking by transglutaminase-2 and lysyl oxidases, respectively.

Corneal stroma contains an extracellular matrix of orthogonal lamellae formed by parallel and equidistant fibrils with a homogeneous diameter of ~35 nm. This is indispensable for corneal transparency and mechanical functions. However, the mechanisms controlling corneal fibrillogenesis are incompletely understood and the conditions required for lamellar stacking are essentially unknown.

Novel energy resolving x-ray pinhole camera on Alcator C-Mod.

A new energy resolving x-ray pinhole camera has been recently installed on Alcator C-Mod. This diagnostic is capable of 1D or 2D imaging with a spatial resolution of ≈1 cm, an energy resolution of ≈1 keV in the range of 3.5-15 keV and a maximum time resolution of 5 ms.

Synchrotron radiation hardness studies of PILATUS II.

A synchrotron beam has been used to investigate the radiation tolerance of a PILATUS II module. It has been demonstrated that radiation-induced threshold shifts become significant above 30 Mrad. Individual adjustment of pixel thresholds after irradiation enabled retention of standard behaviour in excess of 40 Mrad.

Performance of single-photon-counting PILATUS detector modules.

PILATUS is a silicon hybrid pixel detector system, operating in single-photon-counting mode, that has been developed at the Paul Scherrer Institut for the needs of macromolecular crystallography at the Swiss Light Source (SLS). A calibrated PILATUS module has been characterized with monochromatic synchrotron radiation. The influence of charge sharing on the count rate and the overall energy resolution of the detector were investigated.

A spatially resolving x-ray crystal spectrometer for measurement of ion-temperature and rotation-velocity profiles on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak.

A new spatially resolving x-ray crystal spectrometer capable of measuring continuous spatial profiles of high resolution spectra (lambda/d lambda>6000) of He-like and H-like Ar K alpha lines with good spatial (approximately 1 cm) and temporal (approximately 10 ms) resolutions has been installed on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak. Two spherically bent crystals image the spectra onto four two-dimensional Pilatus II pixel detectors. Tomographic inversion enables inference of local line emissivity, ion temperature (T(i)), and toroidal plasma rotation velocity (upsilon(phi)) from the line Doppler widths and shifts.