Looking back, looking forward: Recovery journeys in a high secure hospital.

A qualitative study of staff and service users' views of recovery was undertaken in a UK high secure hospital working to implement recovery practices. 30 staff and 25 service users participated in semi-structured interviews or focus groups. Thematic analysis identified four broad accounts of how recovery was made sense of in the high secure environment: the importance of meaningful occupation; valuing relationships; recovery journeys and dialogue with the past; and recovery as personal responsibility.

Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation spanning 1.8 octaves using step-index indium fluoride fiber pumped by a femtosecond fiber laser near 2 µm.

A nearly two-octave wide coherent mid-infrared supercontinuum is demonstrated in a dispersion-engineered step-index indium fluoride fiber pumped near 2 µm. The pump source is an all-fiber femtosecond laser with 100 fs pulse width, 570 mW average power and 50 MHz repetition rate. The supercontinuum spectrum spans from 1.

Determination of 2-Hydroxypyridine-1-Oxide (HOPO) at sub-ppm levels using derivitization and gas chromatography with mass spectrometry detection (GCMS).

This work describes the development and validation of an analytical method to determine residual trace levels of 2-Hydroxypyridine-1-Oxide (HOPO) in an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API). A method was required to be specific and sensitive enough to determine sub-ppm levels of this reagent. The approach taken to use a derivitization step overcame two of the primary challenges associated with the analysis of HOPO.

Impact of fiber outer boundaries on leaky mode losses in leakage channel fibers.

In a leakage channel fiber, the desired fundamental mode (FM) has negligible waveguide loss. Higher-order modes (HOM) are designed to have much higher waveguide losses so that they are practically eliminated during propagation. Coherent reflection at the fiber outer boundary can lead to additional confinement especially for highly leaky HOM, leading to lower HOM losses than what are predicted by conventional FEM mode solver considering infinite cladding.

Mode area scaling with all-solid photonic bandgap fibers.

There are still very strong interests for power scaling in high power fiber lasers for a wide range of applications in medical, industry, defense and science. In many of these lasers, fiber nonlinearities are the main limits to further scaling. Although numerous specific techniques have studied for the suppression of a wide range of nonlinearities, the fundamental solution is to scale mode areas in fibers while maintaining sufficient single mode operation.

Germanium microsphere high-Q resonator.

In this Letter, the fabrication and characterization of a microsphere resonator from the semiconductor germanium is demonstrated. Whispering gallery modes are excited in a 46 μm diameter germanium microsphere resonator using evanescent coupling from a tapered silica optical fiber with a waist diameter of 2 μm. Resonances with Q factors as high as 3.

Apoptosis of lung carcinoma cells induced by a flexible optical fiber-based cold microplasma.

Atmospheric pressure plasmas have been used as a therapy for cancer. However, the fairly large size and rigidity of present plasma-delivery systems obstructs the precise treatment of tumors in harder-to-reach internal organs such as the lungs, pancreas, and duodenum. In order to improve the targeted delivery of plasmas a highly flexible microplasma jet device is fabricated using a hollow-core optical fiber with an inner diameter of either 15 μm, 55 μm, or 200 μm.

Single-cell-level microplasma cancer therapy.

A flexible microplasma endoscope based on a 15 μm hollow-core glass optical fiber is fabricated, and tumor cell apoptotic analysis supports its potential use in targeted cancer therapies. The optical-fiber microplasma jet reveals antitumor activity at a certain plasma dose in animal studies.

Binary III-V semiconductor core optical fiber.

For the first time to the best of our knowledge a glass-clad optical fiber comprising a crystalline binary III-V semiconductor core has been fabricated. More specifically, a phosphate glass-clad fiber containing an indium antimonide (InSb) core was drawn using a molten core approach. The core was found to be highly crystalline with some oxygen and phosphorus diffusing in from the cladding glass.