|  Investigations
Beam it up —
David Grier’s optical vortices
may be an answer for everything from making nanorobots to curing
cancer.
Chicago physicist David Grier’s
latest work has given a new twist to optical vortices: rings of
light that rapidly spin microscopic particles suspended in water
around the rings’ circumference. Using a technology he coinvented
in 1997—holographic optical tweezers (HOT), or computer-generated
holograms that create large optical traps that can suspend particles
in three dimensions—Grier twists ordinary, microscopic light
beams into a corkscrew pattern. Generating 200 twists in the corkscrew—far
exceeding the eight or fewer twists that other methods of creating
optical vortices have produced—Grier and his colleagues can
control and tune the beam precisely.
[ more
]
A
friend in God
As mainstream U.S. Protestant sects
lost members over the past few decades, according to two 1993 reports,
more demanding faiths exploded. With so many converts, Tanya Luhrmann,
professor in the Committees on Human Development and the History
of Culture, wondered how God, a supernatural figure, became real
for adults who grew up without such an intimate religious life.
[ more
]
Moms behind bars
Since the 1980s the number of women
sent to prison has increased dramatically—by roughly 10 percent
per year, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics. The
vast majority of these women are nonviolent offenders serving short
sentences for minor drug or theft offenses.
[ more
]
Citations
Grow up already
Most Americans agree that becoming an adult
is a gradual process that culminates around age 26. That’s
according to the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), which
found that today’s young adults are reaching certain milestones
about a half-decade later than did their parents, says study author
Tom Smith, PhD’80,
who directs the General Social Survey. The report, based on in-person
surveys of Americans over 18, identified seven steps toward adulthood
and the average age of expected completion.
[ more
]
Next
Generation
Thanks to the Access Grid (AG) developed
by Argonne National Laboratory’s Futures Lab, directed by
Chicago computer-science professor Rick Stevens, scientists nationwide
now can collaborate in a virtual conference room. For example, 28
remote sites popped in on this September 2002 National Science Foundation
(NSF) meeting—the largest such meeting to date.
[ more
]
Original
Source
When the sky falls, get a sample
When explosions rocked Chicago’s south suburbs after midnight
one late-March morning, geophysical-sciences professor Lawrence
Grossman heard the crashes and woke up. A few hours later Grossman,
who happens to specialize in meteorites, learned that a meteor had
exploded nearby and that his own research subjects were strewn about
Park Forest—the home of Steven Simon, a senior research associate
in the geophysical-sciences department, who saw the bright light
but didn’t hear the explosion.
[ more
]
Fig.
2
War: the frugal option?
Three Chicago economists pared down the argument for war in Iraq
versus further containment to—what else?—dollars. On
March 20, the day after the United States began its air campaign,
GSB professors Steven J. Davis, Kevin M. Murphy, and Robert H. Topel
released a paper arguing that the cost of containing Saddam Hussein,
at $630 billion, “dwarfs” their war estimate of $125
billion.
[ more
]
|
|
