Tuberculosis (TB) disease affects 10 million people worldwide every year and is the leading cause of death from an infectious disease. New TB biomarkers are required for a variety of applications, including detection of sub-clinical disease for early intervention to prevent disease progression; detection of new active TB cases; and for monitoring of treatment response [..]

Artificial light is essential in information technologies such as optical telecommunications, data storage, security features, and information display. In this paper, researchers present a chiral lanthanide lumino-glass with extra-large circularly polarized light (luminescence) (CPL) for advanced photonic security device applications. A europium complex with the chiral (+)-3-(trifluoroacetyl) camphor ligand and the achiral glass promoter tris [..]

The explosive rise of silicon photonics has led to renewed interest in the electro-optic (EO) or Pockels effect due to its potential uses in many next-generation device applications. To find materials with a strong EO response in thin-film form, which are essential for low power and small footprint devices, one needs to find a general [..]

Over the last decade or so, a group of scientists has begun to transform the field of optics by engineering flat optics metasurfaces, which use an array of millions of tiny, microscopically thin, and transparent quartz pillars to diffract and mold the flow of light in much the same way that a glass lens does, [..]

For some applications, such as microprojection and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), researchers continue to chase ever-smaller pixel sizes (nanopixels) and higher pixel densities. And these efforts eventually run up against some practical limitations, particularly on pixel brightness, imposed by the 2D-patterning approaches commonly used to create display pixels. Now, researchers have proposed a novel [..]

Unlike conventional solar panels, which convert sunlight into energy by absorption, researchers’ novel radiative cooling technology works in the opposite direction. Even though there isn’t any heat for solar panels to collect at night, heat still leaves the system that can be converted into electricity. This radiating heat spreads outward as infrared light when a [..]

A new project pushes system-in-package designs past the terabit-per-second threshold through extremely sophisticated electronics, CMOS, and optical physics management. The three main system blocks—processor, memory, and interconnects (I/O)—are constantly being reevaluated and are currently the “choke point” in enhancing overall efficiency. Each component strives to improve so as not to receive unfair criticism. Interconnects must [..]

Researchers have developed a laser test for measuring the effectiveness of a facemask. The mask-testing setup is much simpler than those commonly seen in typical laser labs: it consists only of a laser, a lens, and a camera. Specifically, a laser is shone through a cylindrical lens to create an elliptical beam profile, which then [..]

While your skeleton helps your body to move, fine skeleton-like filaments within your cells likewise help cellular structures to move. Now, researchers have developed a new imaging method that lets them monitor a small subset of these filaments, called actin. Actin is the most abundant protein in the cell, so when you image it, it’s [..]

Researchers have developed a brand-new strategy (optical metasurface) that will allow quantum sensors to get much smaller than they are right now. Currently used in sensing devices, quantum technology engineers and manipulates atoms at extremely low temperatures by carefully regulating laser beams. To handle this, the atoms must be kept in a vacuum-sealed container where [..]

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is humans’ third most impactful example of potentially lethal coronavirus infection within the last 20 years. Coronaviruses are positive-stranded RNA (+RNA) viruses that replicate their unusually large genomes in the host cell’s cytoplasm. This process is supported by an elaborate virus-induced network of transformed endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membranes [..]

In the past ten years, there has been a lot of research into on-chip spectrometers with customized spectral ranges and small sizes. When splitting various frequencies, there is a trade-off between resolution and size because the propagation length usually scales inversely with the frequency resolution. On-chip compressive spectrometers can be used with scattering media in [..]

Integrating a light source inside a Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) platform has always been as challenging as much as an appealing task. Besides the manufacturing issues, one of the most limiting aspects is due to the need for an energy source to feed the light emission (battery free). A solution independent of external energy sources can be [..]

Researchers have shown that quantum particles can carry an unlimited amount of information about things they have interacted with. The results could enable far more precise measurements and power new technologies, such as super-precise microscopes and quantum computers. Metrology is the science of estimations and measurements. If you weighed yourself this morning, you’ve done metrology. [..]

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide have implemented a ground-breaking facial recognition system powered by artificial intelligence that can recognize people wearing masks. In addition, the device can identify people in very dim lighting. The biometric system can identify individuals using only 40% of their face compared to a reference image or video, making it [..]

Engineers have introduced a new technique for performing high-level neural network computations by substituting a photonic tensor core for existing digital processors such as GPUs. In the approach, light-speed energy replaces electricity, and optical processing data feeds at a two to three orders higher performance than an electrical tensor processing unit (TPU), supporting unsupervised learning [..]

Imaging chemical species using mid-infrared light is a key bioimaging and environmental monitoring technique. Still, the mid-IR detectors needed for the task have tended to be expensive, complex, and relatively inefficient. Current mid-IR cameras are based on low bandgap semiconductor materials that require cryogenic cooling to reduce thermally excited electronic noise, and electronically cooled alternatives [..]

The therapeutic management of dry age-related macular degeneration (dry AMD) is difficult. It is one of the main reasons for progressive blindness, depriving millions of people over 65 of their central vision, and it frequently makes it difficult for patients to read, drive, and recognize the faces of their loved ones. Although vitamin-based supplements might [..]

An advanced imaging technique called scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) has provided scientists with rough pictures of enamel crystallites. However, the intensity of traditional STEM beams required for a clearer view would damage the enamel before a picture could be generated. In new research, a team used advanced imaging techniques to produce a picture of [..]

Due to limitations in how it can sense objects using lidar, a self-driving vehicle struggles to distinguish between a toddler and a brown bag that abruptly appears in view. The autonomous vehicle business is looking into “frequency modulated continuous wave” (FMCW) lidar to address this issue. Researchers have developed a method for lidar that uses [..]