Covid-19 and the impact on young athletes.

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted organised sport in the community as authorities cancelled, greatly modified or postponed sporting participation as part of a strategy to reduce transmission of the virus. This had a significant impact on young athletes and their families in relation to their psycho-social, physical and career progression considerations. The disruption is likely to continue for some years, considering the constraints of lockdowns, the need to overcome dysfunctional national logistics for delivery of medical care, fund and implement an efficacious vaccine programme locally, nationally and worldwide, develop sufficient herd immunity and create an environment of confidence in the safety of returning to sports for participants, coaches, umpires, administrators and observers.

High-speed volumetric two-photon fluorescence imaging of neurovascular dynamics.

Understanding the structure and function of vasculature in the brain requires us to monitor distributed hemodynamics at high spatial and temporal resolution in three-dimensional (3D) volumes in vivo. Currently, a volumetric vasculature imaging method with sub-capillary spatial resolution and blood flow-resolving speed is lacking. Here, using two-photon laser scanning microscopy (TPLSM) with an axially extended Bessel focus, we capture volumetric hemodynamics in the awake mouse brain at a spatiotemporal resolution sufficient for measuring capillary size and blood flow.

Generating switchable and reconfigurable optical vortices via photopatterning of liquid crystals.

Liquid-crystal fork gratings are demonstrated through photopatterning realized on a DMD-based microlithography system. This supplies a new strategy for generating fast switchable, reconfigurable, wavelength-tolerant and polarization-insensitive optical vortices. The technique has great potential in broad fields such as OAM-based quantum computations, optical communications, and micromanipulation.

Growth of pulmonary microvasculature in ventilated preterm infants.

Rationale: Density-based morphometric studies have demonstrated decreased capillary density in infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and in BPD-like animal models, leading to the prevailing view that microvascular development is disrupted in BPD.

Objective: To perform a comprehensive analysis of the early and late effects of ventilation on pulmonary microvascular growth in preterm infants.

Methods: Postmortem lung samples were collected from ventilated preterm infants who died between 23 and 29 wk ("short-term ventilated") or between 36 and 39 wk ("long-term ventilated") corrected postmenstrual age.