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Microscope Allows Gentle, Continuous Imaging of Light-Sensitive Corals
Corals are “part animal, part plant, and part rock – and difficult to figure out, despite being studied for centuries,” says Philippe Laissue of University of Essex (UK), a Whitman Scientist at... -
Liquid Crystal Integrated Metalens for Versatile Color Focus
The development of metasurfaces opened a horizon for the advance of planar optics. Among various metadevices, the metalens has attracted widespread attention for practical applications in imaging and spectroscopy, where it... -
Robots Armed with UV Light Fight Grape Mildew
Researchers at Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, New York, have partnered with SAGA Robotics in Norway to develop the first commercial robotic units, and the autonomous vehicle robots will appear on the market this year. This spring,... -
Endoscope Provides Instant Scan for Bladder Cancer
A European photonics research team is developing a new endoscope to scan for the early signs of bladder cancer. Using multi-wavelength lasers, the scanner will provide instant, non-invasive, precise and detailed information to... -
Mathematical Solar Forecasting Model Shows Promise
A new mathematical model for predicting variations in solar irradiance has been developed at Uppsala University (Sweden). It may help to promote more efficient use of electricity from solar energy. In tests of various data... -
In Quantum World, Ignorance of the Whole Does Not Imply Ignorance of Parts
Students can hide their ignorance and answer questions correctly in an exam without their lack of knowledge being detected by teachers – but only in the quantum world. University of Queensland (Australia) researchers... -
X-rays and Eavesdropping Ensure Quality Laser Weld Seams
With an X-ray experiment at the European Synchrotron ESRF in Grenoble (France), Empa researchers were able to demonstrate how well their real-time acoustic monitoring of laser weld seams works. With almost 90 percent...
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Optical Tools Enable the Study of Microplastics
Plastics have only been around since the 1950s and yet they’re everywhere: scattered in our lakes, rivers, floating on the top of oceans, and dropping to the bottom. Back in the 1950s and 60s, plastics were hailed as a useful invention, used... -
Light Research Advances Medical Diagnostics & Health
Light technologies are increasingly contributing to our health and longevity. While, for example, cancer is among the leading causes of death worldwide, death rates for individual cancer types have declined in part due to advanced research on light... -
Thin Film Hides Objects from Infrared Detectors
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed an aerogel film made of DuPont Kevlar fibers that makes objects invisible to infrared detectors. A successful method for hiding objects from heat-sensing cameras could be... -
Measuring and Self-Adjusting Spectral Power Distribution of LED Systems
Researchers from the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC) at the University of Barcelona and its spin-off Ledmotive Technologies in Spain have combined two computational methods to enable solid-state lighting (SSL) to measure and... -
Perovskite NIR LED with Record External Quantum Efficiency
Researchers at Linköping University (LiU) in Sweden have produced near-infrared (NIR) light-emitting diodes (LED) of perovskite with a record external quantum efficiency of 21.6%. Because perovskites have good light-emitting properties and... -
Optical Tweezers Use Fluid Flow Instead of Light
Researchers from the universities of Glasgow, Bristol and Exeter have collaborated to create an entirely new kind of optical tweezers that use fluid flow instead of light to control particles of any material and hold light-sensitive biological... -
First of its Kind Quantum Sensor to Detect Single Photons
A new, groundbreakingly effective sensor developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario (Canada) is the first of its kind, based on semiconductor nanowires, that can detect photons. The research breakthrough promises to...
