Tag Archives: ultrathin

Tablets: An ideal vacation companion

Sleek, light, long-lasting and with a dazzling array of apps, today’s tablets have become an indispensable tool for travelers.

REDMOND, Wash. — Packing for summer vacation used to be quite a chore, but today a new travel companion is removing a lot of the guesswork and lightening the load. Travel guides? Check. Books? A whole library. Movies, music and games for the kids? Got ‘em. Map, compass, calculator, and even Office 2013 so you can get a little work done? Of course.

The best part is that it all comes in one small package. Sleeker, lighter and with more battery life, today’s tablet PCs are the perfect way to navigate new cities, stay entertained on the train, and keep connected to the office while you’re on the road. A tablet paired with a keyboard (or a convertible with a keyboard built in) can help travelers both work and play while away from home. (more…)

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Measuring Table-Top Accelerators’ State-of-the-Art Beams

Studies by Berkeley Lab scientists of electron beam quality in laser plasma accelerators include novel tests for slice-energy spread

Part Two: Slicing through the electron beam

Wim Leemans of Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator and Fusion Research Division heads LOASIS, the Laser and Optical Accelerator Systems Integrated Studies, an oasis indeed for students pursuing graduate studies in laser plasma acceleration (LPA). Among the most promising applications of future table-top accelerators are new kinds of light sources, in which their electron beams power free electron lasers.

“If our LPA electron bunches had good enough quality for free electron lasers – and were really only femtoseconds long – we should see a particular kind of radiation called coherent optical transition radiation, or COTR,” Leemans says. “So I assigned my doctoral student Chen Lin, a graduate of Peking University and now a postdoc there, to find it.” (more…)

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