One of the oldest unresolved microbiological phenomena is why only a small fraction of the diverse microbiological population grows on artificial media. The "uncultivable" microbial majority arguably represents our planet's largest unexplored pool of biological and chemical novelty. Previously we showed that species from this pool could be grown inside diffusion chambers incubated in situ, likely because diffusion provides microorganisms with their naturally occurring growth factors. Here we utilize this approach and develop a novel high-throughput platform for parallel cultivation and isolation of previously uncultivated microbial species from a variety of environments. We have designed and tested an isolation chip (ichip) composed of several hundred miniature diffusion chambers, each inoculated with a single environmental cell. We show that microbial recovery in the ichip exceeds manyfold that afforded by standard cultivation, and the grown species are of significant phylogenetic novelty. The new method allows access to a large and diverse array of previously inaccessible microorganisms and is well suited for both fundamental and applied research.It has been known for over a century that the overwhelming majority of microbial species do not grow on synthetic media in vitro and remain unexplored (13,32,37,39,40,43). The rRNA and metagenomics approaches demonstrated a spectacular diversity of these uncultivated species (11, 21, 25-27, 30, 36). Accessing this "missing" microbial diversity is of significant interest for both basic and applied sciences and has been recognized as one of the principal challenges for microbiology today (12,29,41). In recent years, technical advances in cultivation methodologies have recovered a diverse set of ecologically relevant species (1,3,5,7,15,20,24,28,33,42). However, by and large the gap between microbial diversity in nature and that in culture collections remains unchanged, and most microbial phyla still have no cultivable representatives (25,29). Earlier, we developed a novel method of in situ cultivation of environmental microorganisms inside diffusion chambers (15). The rationale for such an approach was that diffusion would provide cells inside the chamber with naturally occurring growth components and enable those species that grew in nature at the time of the experiment to also grow inside the diffusion chambers. Expectedly, this method yields a rate of microbial recovery many times larger than those of standard techniques. Even so, this method is laborious and does not allow an efficient, high-throughput isolation of microbial species en masse. This limits the method's applicability, for example, in the drug discovery effort. Here we transform this methodology into a high-throughput technology platform for massively parallel cultivation of "uncultivable" species. Capitalizing on earlier microfluidics methods developed for microbial storage and screening (4, 16), we have designed and tested an isolation chip, or ichip for short, which consists of hundreds of miniature ...

Self-amplified spontaneous emission in a free-electron laser has been proposed for the generation of very high brightness coherent x-rays. This process involves passing a high-energy, high-charge, short-pulse, low-energy-spread, and low-emittance electron beam through the periodic magnetic field of a long series of high-quality undulator magnets. The radiation produced grows exponentially in intensity until it reaches a saturation point. We report on the demonstration of self-amplified spontaneous emission gain, exponential growth, and saturation at visible (530 nanometers) and ultraviolet (385 nanometers) wavelengths. Good agreement between theory and simulation indicates that scaling to much shorter wavelengths may be possible. These results confirm the physics behind the self-amplified spontaneous emission process and forward the development of an operational x-ray free-electron laser.

We present the first observation of self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) in a free-electron laser (FEL) in the vacuum ultraviolet regime at 109 nm wavelength (11 eV). The observed free-electron laser gain (approximately 3000) and the radiation characteristics, such as dependency on bunch charge, angular distribution, spectral width, and intensity fluctuations, are all consistent with the present models for SASE FELs.

We use Fresnel zone plates as focusing optics in hard x-ray microprobes at energies typically between 6 and 30 keV. While a spatial resolution close to 0.1 µm can currently be achieved, highest spatial resolution is obtained only at reduced diffraction efficiency due to manufacturing limitations with respect to the aspect ratios of zone plates. To increase the effective thickness of zone plates, we are stacking several identical zone plates on-axis in close proximity. If the zone plates are aligned laterally to within better than an outermost zone width and longitudinally within the optical near-field, they form a single optical element of larger effective thickness and improved efficiency and reduced background from undiffracted radiation. This allows us both to use zone plates of moderate outermost zone width at energies of 30 keV and above, as well as to increase the efficiency of zone plates with small outermost zone widths particularly for the energy range of 6 -15 keV.

The first undulator radiation has been extracted from the Advanced Photon Source ( A P S ) .The results from the characterization of this radiation are very satisfactory. With the undulator set at a gap of 15.8 mm (K=1.61), harmonics as high as the 17th were observed using a crystal spectrometer. The angular distribution of the third-harmonic radiation was measured, and the source was imaged using a zone plate to determine the particle beam emittance. The horizontal beam emittance was found to be 6.9k1.0 nm-rad, and the vertical emittance coupling was found to be less than 3%. The absolute spectral flux was measured over a wide range of photon energies, and it agrees remarkably well with the theoretical calculations based on the measured undulator magnetic field profile and the measured beam emittance. These results indicate that both the emittance of the electron beam and the undulator magnetic field quality exceed the original specifications.