The Planck collaboration has measured the temperature and polarization of the cosmic microwave background well enough to determine the locations of eight peaks in the temperature (TT) power spectrum, five peaks in the polarization (EE) power spectrum and twelve extrema in the cross (TE) power spectrum. The relative locations of these extrema give a striking, and beautiful, demonstration of what we expect from acoustic oscillations in the plasma; e.g., that EE peaks fall half way between TT peaks. We expect this because the temperature map is predominantly sourced by temperature variations in the last scattering surface, while the polarization map is predominantly sourced by gradients in the velocity field, and the harmonic oscillations have temperature and velocity 90 degrees out of phase. However, there are large differences in expectations for extrema locations from simple analytic models vs. numerical calculations. Here we quantitatively explore the origin of these differences in gravitational potential transients, neutrino free-streaming, the breakdown of tight coupling, the shape of the primordial power spectrum, details of the geometric projection from three to two dimensions, and the thickness of the last scattering surface. We also compare the peak locations determined from Planck measurements to expectations under the ΛCDM model. Taking into account how the peak locations were determined, we find them to be in agreement.

The whispering gallery mode (WGM) biosensor is a micro-optical platform capable of sensitive label-free detection of biological particles. Described by the reactive sensing principle (RSP), this analytic formulation quantifies the response of the system to the adsorption of bioparticles. Guided by the RSP, the WGM biosensor enabling from detection of virus (e.g., Human Papillomavirus, HPV) to the ultimate goal of single protein detection. The latter was derived from insights into the RSP, which resulted in the development of a hybrid plasmonic WGM biosensor, which has recently demonstrated detection of individual protein cancer markers. Enhancements from bound gold nanoparticles provide the sensitivity to detect single protein molecules (66 kDa) with good signal-to-noise (S/N > 10), and project that detection of proteins as small as 5 kDa.

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