by Haoning Tang, Clayton DeVault, Sarah Alejandra Camayd-Muñoz, Yueyang Liu, Danchen Jia, Fan Du, Olivia Mello, Daryl I. Vulis, Yang Li, and Eric Mazur
Viruses display fascinating dynamics during their life cycle. Only recently has it become possible to probe viral dynamics at the single-particle level. This Review discusses dynamical properties of viruses and recent developments in physical virology approaches to probe such dynamics.
by Maria Chiara Braidotti, Daniele Faccio, and Ewan M. Wright
Author(s): Maria Chiara Braidotti, Daniele Faccio, and Ewan M. Wright
Particles or waves scattered from a rotating black hole can be amplified through the process of Penrose superradiance, although this cannot currently be observed in an astrophysical setting. Here we theoretically show that analog Penrose superradiance arises naturally in the field of nonlinear optic...
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 193902] Published Fri Nov 06, 2020
The coupling of photons to material quasiparticles such as plasmons, phonons and excitons opens new possibilities in light–matter interactions. This Review presents a generalized view of such quasiparticles and the technique that describes their interactions with matter: macroscopic quantum electrodynamics.
by Maxim V. Gorkunov, Alexander A. Antonov, and Yuri S. Kivshar
Author(s): Maxim V. Gorkunov, Alexander A. Antonov, and Yuri S. Kivshar
A dielectric metasurface hosting bound chiral states in the continuum exhibits a narrow unit peak in the circular dichroism spectrum, which can be used for many applications including highly sensitive sensing.
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 093903] Published Thu Aug 27, 2020
Noether’s theorem relates constants of motion to the symmetries of the system. Here we investigate a manifestation of Noether’s theorem in non-Hermitian systems, where the inner product is defined differently from quantum mechanics. In this framework, a generalized symmetry that we term pseudochiral...
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 083902] Published Thu Aug 20, 2020
by Kilian Dietrich, Nick Jaensson, Ivo Buttinoni, Giorgio Volpe, and Lucio Isa
Author(s): Kilian Dietrich, Nick Jaensson, Ivo Buttinoni, Giorgio Volpe, and Lucio Isa
New “Marangoni surfers” that whizz along at 10,000 body lengths per second offer new insight into active matter propelled by surface-tension gradients.
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 098001] Published Tue Aug 25, 2020
by Antonine Rochet†‡, Vasiliy Vadimov§, William Magrini†‡, Siddharatha Thakur†‡, Jean-Baptiste Trebbia†‡, Alexander Melnikov§?, Alexander Buzdin?, Philippe Tamarat†‡, and Brahim Lounis*†‡
We demonstrate by breaking the C6 symmetry for higher-order at-Γ bound states in the continuum (BICs) with topological charge −2 in photonic crystals (i) deterministic generation of off-Γ BICs from the at-Γ BIC and (ii) a variety of pair-creation and annihilation processes of circularly polarized st...
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 053902] Published Thu Jul 30, 2020
Hadas Frostig, Itamar Vidal, Robert Fischer, Hanan Herzig Sheinfux, Yaron Silberberg Efforts to understand the physics of rogue waves have motivated the study of mechanisms that produce rare, extreme events, often through ... [Optica 7, 864-871 (2020)]
by Mengfei Wu†?, Son Tung Ha†?, Sushant Shendre‡, Emek G. Durmusoglu‡, Weon-Kyu Koh‡, Diego R. Abujetas§, Jose´ A. Sa´nchez-Gil§, Ramo´n Paniagua-Domi´nguez†, Hilmi Volkan Demir*‡?, and Arseniy I. Kuznetsov*†
It is a long-standing belief that, in the diffusion regime, the intensity statistics is always stationary and its probability distribution follows a negative exponential decay. Here, we demonstrate that, in fact, in reflection from strong disordered media, the intensity statistics changes through di...
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 043902] Published Tue Jul 21, 2020
by Thanh Xuan Hoang†+, Son Tung Ha‡+, Zhenying Pan‡+, Wee Kee Phua†, Ramo´n Paniagua-Domi´nguez‡, Ching Eng Png†, Hong-Son Chu*†, and Arseniy I. Kuznetsov*‡
by Peter A. Jeong*†‡, Michael D. Goldflam†, Salvatore Campione†, Jayson L. Briscoe†, Polina P. Vabishchevich†‡, John Nogan†‡, Michael B. Sinclair†, Ting S. Luk†‡, and Igal Brener*†‡
by Yutian Ao, Xiaoyong Hu, Yilong You, Cuicui Lu, Yulan Fu, Xingyuan Wang, and Qihuang Gong
Author(s): Yutian Ao, Xiaoyong Hu, Yilong You, Cuicui Lu, Yulan Fu, Xingyuan Wang, and Qihuang Gong
In a two-dimensional non-Hermitian topological photonic system, the physics of topological states is complicated, which brings great challenges for clarifying the topological phase transitions and achieving precise active control. Here, we prove the topological phase transition exists in a two-dimen...
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 013902] Published Wed Jul 01, 2020
When material parameters are fixed, optical responses of nanoresonators are dictated by their shapes and dimensions. Therefore, both designing nanoresonators and understanding their underlying physics would benefit from a theory that predicts the evolutions of resonance modes of open systems—the so-...
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 013901] Published Wed Jul 01, 2020
by Nils Bernhardt†‡?, Kirill Koshelev§??, Simon J.U. White†, Kelvin Wong Choon Meng†?, Johannes E. Fro¨ch†, Sejeong Kim†, Toan Trong Tran†, Duk-Yong Choi#, Yuri Kivshar*§?, and Alexander S. Solntsev*†
Here is an updated post to help keep research budgets in perspective. We did this in 2012, and this is the 2020 edition.
Some things to note:
The NYC school system runs a budget that is about the same as the entire NIH.
R&D budgets at large companies dwarf the NSF budget.
Large research universities run budgets around $3 billion per year. If they have a hospital, that number goes up.
HHMI and Wellcome are small in terms of annual spending compared to these other examples. Imagine if Microsoft decided to add an HHMI-like arm of their R&D budget and outspend the actual HHMI. They could do so by increasing their annual R&D budget by less than 6%.
The Gates Foundation is huge. They don’t have as much of a presence in basic biology as HHMI or Wellcome, so some in the Labrigger audience might not realize how much larger the Gates Foundation is.
The Simons Foundation is smaller than HHMI, but not by as much as one might imagine. Simons already spends more than half of what HHMI spends per year.
None of these groups are comprehensive lists, nor are they the top items in their groups. They are selections of larger populations to give some reference points.
The private non-profits vary quite a bit in their annual budget-to-endowment/assets ratio. For example, Wellcome and HHMI each have annual spending that is less than 4% of their assets. But the Simons foundation is closer to 10% and the Gates Foundation spends an amount that is about 15% of their assets.
University endowments are huge at a relatively small number of big name places. After the top 15 or so, the annual budgets are a significant fraction of the endowment (or larger than the endowment).
Top billionaires can have net worths that dwarf the endowments of universities. However, major research universities have annual budgets that $3 billion or more per year. Most billionaires are not running those kinds of budgets. Most nonprofits are not either. The Gates Foundation is an exception.
Some top billionaires could start their own universities, or rename existing ones. Lots of big name places got their start this way (Stanford, Cornell, CMU, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Brown, Duke). Imagine someone dishing out $1 billion for real estate and buildings, and then $8 billion for the endowment. Instant top research university. Well, instant after they built the buildings and hired people.
Bezos has a lot of net worth. More than anyone else. For perspective, note that the US Department of Defense spends more than 4x Bezos’ net worth every single year.
Some additional notes:
The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative isn’t listed above. It’s an LLC, so they don’t do the same kind of reporting that non-profits and publicly traded companies do. However, there are some numbers in news articles. They have pledged $3 billion. Other details are unclear. For perspective, $3 billion is less than 1/10 of the NIH budget per year, but larger than most university endowments.
The Allen Institute is also not listed above. A good portion of their operating funds are from the NIH. Paul Allen gave $0.5 billion to the institute during his life. His net worth was about $20 billion. Details on any funds from his estate going to the Allen Institute have not been publicly announced.
An example outside of neuroscience for billionaire charity: the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Michael Dell has a net worth of over $30 billion. His institute has about $1.6 billion in assets. It spends about $0.15 billion per year. Not endorsing this particular charity, just providing another, hopefully somewhat representative, example of a charity that a billionaire set up.
Government spending via the NIH and NSF far outstrips Wellcome, HHMI, Simons, CZI, Allen, etc. Still, Wellcome, HHMI, Simons and other institutes have outsize impact on neuroscience.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
Eisenhower, 1961
Endnote: One Gerald R. Ford–class aircraft carrier costs $13 billion. This isn’t the development cost, that’s separate. This is just to make one aircraft carrier. That amount of money could create a university with an endowment in the top 10. One additional aircraft carrier or one additional top-10 research university? This post isn’t generally about comparing military and research expenditures, but since we’ve already quoted Eisenhower once, we’ll recall this evergreen speech of his from 1953:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The of cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Johnny Moughames, Xavier Porte, Michael Thiel, Gwenn Ulliac, Laurent Larger, Maxime Jacquot, Muamer Kadic, Daniel Brunner Photonic waveguides are prime candidates for integrated and parallel photonic interconnects. Such interconnects correspond to large-scale ... [Optica 7, 640-646 (2020)]
by Amy Butcher†, Xinghan Guo†, Robert Shreiner‡, Nazar Delegan§, Kai Hao†, Peter J. Duda, III†, David D. Awschalom†§, F. Joseph Heremans†§, and Alexander A. High*†§
Chitraleema Chakraborty, Arunabh Mukherjee, Hyowon Moon, Kumarasiri Konthasinghe, Liangyu Qiu, Wenhui Hou, Tara Peña, Carla Watson, Stephen M. Wu, Dirk Englund, Nick Vamivakas Strain engineering is a natural route to control the electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials. Recently, 2D ... [Optica 7, 580-585 (2020)]
by Huanan Li, Ahmed Mekawy, Alex Krasnok, and Andrea Alù
Author(s): Huanan Li, Ahmed Mekawy, Alex Krasnok, and Andrea Alù
Parity-time (PT) symmetry has recently been opening exciting directions in photonics, yet the required careful balance of loss and gain has been hindering its widespread applicability. Here, we propose a gain-free route to PT symmetry by extending it to complex-frequency excitations that can mimic g...
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 193901] Published Thu May 14, 2020
