Zhang Weishen: A Pioneer in the Development and Industrial Production of Penicillin in New China.

The research and development of penicillin started with difficulty before 1949 and achieved certain results. In 1951, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhang Weishen, as the only Chinese scientist who had been trained and worked in a penicillin research and development center in the United States for many years, overcame many difficulties and returned to China. In 1953, with the efforts of Zhang Weishen and his colleagues, China realized the industrialized production of penicillin, alleviating the urgent needs of the masses.

Metal oxide nanoparticle mediated enhanced Raman scattering and its use in direct monitoring of interfacial chemical reactions.

Metal oxide nanoparticles (MONPs) have widespread usage across many disciplines, but monitoring molecular processes at their surfaces in situ has not been possible. Here we demonstrate that MONPs give highly enhanced (×10(4)) Raman scattering signals from molecules at the interface permitting direct monitoring of their reactions, when placed on top of flat metallic surfaces. Experiments with different metal oxide materials and molecules indicate that the enhancement is generic and operates at the single nanoparticle level.

[Effects of different altitudes on cardiac hemodynamics and electrocardiogram of healthy male adults].

Objective: To detect the changes of cardiovascular system at different altitudes, so as to prevent and predict the susceptibility to acute mountain sickness.

Methods: The test was performed with noninvasive cardiovascular monitor and electrocardiogram in healthy male Chinese members of the 25th and 26th expeditions to the antarctic kunlun station at different altitudes (40 m, 3 650 m and 4 300 m).

Results: Compared with 40 m, from 3 650 m to 4 300 m, heart rate (HR), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), mean arterial pressure (MAP), systemic vascular resistance (SVR), systemic vascular resistance index (SVRI) significantly increased (P < 0.

Precise subnanometer plasmonic junctions for SERS within gold nanoparticle assemblies using cucurbit[n]uril "glue".

Cucurbit[n]urils (CB[n]) are macrocyclic host molecules with subnanometer dimensions capable of binding to gold surfaces. Aggregation of gold nanoparticles with CB[n] produces a repeatable, fixed, and rigid interparticle separation of 0.9 nm, and thus such assemblies possess distinct and exquisitely sensitive plasmonics.

Dressing plasmons in particle-in-cavity architectures.

Placing metallic nanoparticles inside cavities, rather than in dimers, greatly improves their plasmonic response. Such particle-in-cavity (PIC) hybrid architectures are shown to produce extremely strong field enhancement at the particle-cavity junctions, arising from the cascaded focusing of large optical cross sections into small gaps. These simply constructed PIC structures produce the strongest field enhancement for coupled nanoparticles, up to 90% stronger than for a dimer.

Super-resolution without evanescent waves.

The past decade has seen numerous efforts to achieve imaging resolution beyond that of the Abbe-Rayleigh diffraction limit. The main direction of research aiming to break this limit seeks to exploit the evanescent components containing fine detail of the electromagnetic field distribution at the immediate proximity of the object. Here, we propose a solution that removes the need for evanescent fields.

Nanohole array as a lens.

We demonstrate that a quasi-crystal array of nanoholes in a metal screen can mimic a function of the lens: one-to-one imaging of a point source located a few tens of wavelengths away from the array to a point on the other side of the array. A displacement of the point source leads to a linear displacement of the image point. Complex structures composed of multiple point sources can be faithfully imaged with resolutions comparable to those of high numerical aperture lenses.