Toggle light / dark theme

Barbell ‘whip’ may shape Olympic lifts more than lifters realize

In Olympic weightlifting, a single kilogram plate can be the difference between gold and silver. As much as possible, elite athletes must use everything they can to their advantage.

One of these variables is known as the barbell’s “whip,” the bouncy bendiness of a bar under dynamic movements. Joshua Langlois, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, presented his work studying these Olympic barbell vibrations at the 190th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 11–15.

“Weightlifters use the bar’s whip to assist in the upward acceleration by timing the oscillation of the bar so that they drive upwards into the bar when the vibration in the bar is already moving the weight upwards,” Langlois said.

Targeting systemic and tumor metabolic balances with ketogenic diets enhance efficacy of therapy in FLT3-ITD acute myeloid leukemia

Goupille et al. describe an alternative approach targeting the host and tumoral primary metabolism in FLT3-mutant leukemia. Ketogenic diet strategies aiming to imbalance lipid homeostasis augment fatty acid and amino acid degradative activity, attenuating FLT3 signaling activation, cell proliferation, and leukemia progression upon targeted therapies.

Organic luminescent radicals enable bright circularly polarized light in the near-infrared region

Circularly polarized light has properties that make it useful in a growing range of technologies, from next-generation 3D displays to bioimaging tools that can detect signals deep within living tissues. One way to produce this kind of light is with the help of chiral molecules—compounds that have a mirror-image form to which they cannot be perfectly superimposed. Among these, small organic molecules (SOMs) offer tunable emission wavelengths.

Luminescent radicals represent a promising type of SOM for red and near-infrared circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) emission. One particular family of radicals, tris(2,4,6‑trichlorophenyl)methyl (TTM)‑based radicals, is inherently chiral and a natural candidate for CPL.

In practice, however, these molecules fall short on multiple fronts, with tradeoffs between stable chirality, high emission efficiency, and durability under operating conditions.

/* */