Highlights

BASF, a major international chemical company headquartered in Germany, has established a major research initiative at Harvard, the BASF Advanced Research Initiative, that will provide up to $4M/yr in research support.

Direct, real-space 3-D observation of shear transformation zones in a glass. A colloidal glass is used to mimic the behavior of atomic and molecular glasses. Upon application of an external shear strain, there are highly localized regions of much higher strain, where particles move irreversibly. These are illustrated in the Figure, where the high-strain regions are colored red.

A femtosecond laser is used to perform “nano” surgery on a living cell. The actin filaments in the cell have been fluorescently labeled using green fluorescent protein (GFP). When a single filament is cut, it retracts, much like a violin string that has broken. This demonstrates that the actin filaments in the cell are under […]