The COVID-19 pandemic and blood utilisation in South Africa.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic, first reported in December 2019, affected every sector of every country worldwide. Health services were the first to experience the direct impact. Blood services were advised to decrease blood utilisation in anticipation of reduced blood collections.

A review on genetic alterations in CNS metastases related to breast cancer treatment. Is there a role for liquid biopsies in CSF?

Acquired mutations or altered gene expression patterns in brain metastases (BM) and/or leptomeningeal metastases (LM) of breast cancer may play a role in therapy-resistance and offer new molecular targets and treatment options. Despite expanding knowledge of genetic alterations in breast cancer and their metastases, clinical applications for patients with central nervous system (CNS) metastases are currently limited. An emerging tool are DNA-techniques that may detect genetic alterations of the CNS metastases in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

High-performance cavity-dumped Q-switched Alexandrite laser CW diode-pumped in double-pass configuration.

We present a high-performance Alexandrite laser for LIDAR applications with repetition rates up to 20 kHz in cavity-dumped Q-switched operation continuous-wave diode-pumped in the red spectral region. With a double-pass pump configuration, short pulses with 2.8 ns duration at repetition frequencies ranging from 1 kHz to 20 kHz could be demonstrated.

Two-Dimensional Laser Melting of Lunar Regolith Simulant Using the MOONRISE Payload on a Mobile Manipulator.

Laser melting experiments were carried out with the MOONRISE payload, installed on the mobile manipulator, MIRA3D. The MOONRISE payload was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of additive processing of lunar regolith with the help of lasers on the Moon within a lunar surface mission in the next years. The development of hardware for the flight to the moon is well advanced and, if successful, would pave the way for the use of laser melting for production of components from regolith.

VOILA on the LUVMI-X Rover: Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy for the Detection of Volatiles at the Lunar South Pole.

The project Lunar Volatiles Mobile Instrumentation-Extended (LUVMI-X) developed an initial system design as well as payload and mobility breadboards for a small, lightweight rover dedicated for in situ exploration of the lunar south pole. One of the proposed payloads is the Volatiles Identification by Laser Analysis instrument (VOILA), which uses laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to analyze the elemental composition of the lunar surface with an emphasis on sampling regolith and the detection of hydrogen for the inference of the presence of water. It is designed to analyze targets in front of the rover at variable focus between 300 mm and 500 mm.