http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists and curiosity seekers who want to know what a partially or completely cloaked object would look like in real life can now get their wish -- virtually. A team of researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany has created a new visualization tool that can render a room containing such an object, showing the visual effects of such a cloaking mechanism and its imperfections. http://www.physorg.com/news177268469.html Physics Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:00:19 EST news177268469 (PhysOrg.com) -- Tomorrow's lasers may come with a bit of bling, thanks to a new technology that uses man-made diamonds to enhance the power and capabilities of lasers. Researchers in Australia have now demonstrated the first laser built with diamonds that has comparable efficiency to lasers built with other materials. http://www.physorg.com/news172497349.html Physics Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:56:20 EST news172497349 In what may prove to be a major development for scientists in fields ranging from forensics to quantum communications, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed a new, highly sensitive, low-cost technique for measuring light in the near-infrared range. http://www.physorg.com/news170516085.html Physics Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:10:01 EST news170516085 A group of researchers in Australia and Taiwan has developed a new way to analyze the health of human teeth using lasers. As described in the latest issue of Optics Express,, by measuring how the surface of a tooth responds to laser-generated ultrasound, they can evaluate the mineral content of tooth enamel -- the semi-translucent outer layer of a tooth that protects the underlying dentin. http://www.physorg.com/news169813870.html Physics Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:50:02 EST news169813870 Using a composite metamaterial to deliver a complex set of instructions to a beam of light, Boston College physicists have created a device to guide electromagnetic waves around objects such as the corner of a building or the profile of the eastern seaboard. http://www.physorg.com/news168263666.html Physics Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:55:25 EST news168263666 (PhysOrg.com) -- We could soon see the potential of laser technology expand dramatically. http://www.physorg.com/news168012151.html Physics Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:03:21 EST news168012151 Physicists at New York University have developed a technique to record three-dimensional movies of microscopic systems, such as biological molecules, through holographic video. The work, which is reported in Optics Express, has potential to improve medical diagnostics and drug discovery. http://www.physorg.com/news167309125.html Physics Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:45:55 EST news167309125 (PhysOrg.com) -- A century after German physicist Gustav Mie derived the math to explain why the colors in some stained glass windows look especially resplendent in the sunlight, a team of Stanford engineers has built upon his work to potentially improve a means of harvesting energy from the sun. http://www.physorg.com/news166207278.html Nanotechnology Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:42:06 EST news166207278 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Centre of Molecular Materials for Photonics and Electronics (CMMPE) (part of the Department's Photonics Research Group at the University of Cambridge) are leading the way towards the development of extremely high colour resolution laser displays using liquid crystal laser technology. http://www.physorg.com/news159458998.html Physics Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:11:08 EST news159458998 (PhysOrg.com) -- Burns or other disorders that disrupt the blood flow in tissues will soon be easier to assess thanks to a camera that is capable of imaging blood circulation in real time. Compared to an earlier version, the new optical perfusion camera (TOPCam) from Twente, the Netherlands, is a significant improvement with regard to speed, so that even small variations in blood circulation are immediately visible. http://www.physorg.com/news156705876.html Physics Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:25:28 EST news156705876 To get a better look at the abnormalities that cause age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss in Americans and Europeans over 50, the research groups of James Fujimoto at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and collaborators Jay Duker of the Tufts University School of Medicine, and Joel Schuman of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have created ultra-detailed 3-D images of the eyes of more than 2,000 people from different ethnic groups, 400 of whom have AMD. Selected electronic data, published in the special Interactive Science Publishing (ISP) issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal, may pave the way for new diagnostic software useful for developing new treatments. http://www.physorg.com/news156704904.html Medicine & Health Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:09:05 EST news156704904 Three members of the faculty at Stevens Institute of Technology recently collaborated on a paper focusing on free-space optical communication, which appears in the latest issue of Optics Express. http://www.physorg.com/news156522480.html Physics Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:28:32 EST news156522480 A group of scientists in California is trying to develop a cheaper, less invasive way to spot the early stages of retinal damage from diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of blindness in American adults, before it leads to blindness. As described in the special Interactive Science Publishing (ISP) issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal, the scientists are using beams of light to measure blood flow in the back of the eye. http://www.physorg.com/news156007813.html Physics Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:30:59 EST news156007813 Future telescopes, with mirrors half the size of a football field, will need special components to deal with the light they collect. Astronomers are turning to photonic devices that guide and manipulate light inside specially-designed materials. The greatest potential, which is described in the latest issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal, may lie in a laser-based technique that carves out micron-sized light pathways in three dimensions. http://www.physorg.com/news153073531.html Physics Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:26:02 EST news153073531 Sliced light is how we communicate now. Millions of phone calls and cable television shows per second are dispatched through fibers in the form of digital zeros and ones formed by chopping laser pulses into bits. This slicing and dicing is generally done with an electro-optic modulator, a device for allowing an electric signal to switch a laser beam on and off at high speeds (the equivalent of putting your hand in front of a flashlight). Reading that fast data stream with a compact and reliable receiver is another matter. A new error-free speed-reading record using a compact ultra-fast component -640 Gbits/second (Gbps, or billion bits per second) -has now been established by a collaboration of scientists from Denmark and Australia, who report their results in the journal Optics Express. http://www.physorg.com/news152803534.html Technology Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:26:02 EST news152803534 (PhysOrg.com) -- A major goal of nanotechnology research is to create a "lab on a chip," in which a tiny biological sample would be carried through microscopic channels for processing. This could make possible portable, fast-acting detectors for disease organisms or food-borne pathogens, rapid DNA sequencing and other tests that now take hours or days. http://www.physorg.com/news150129386.html Nanotechnology Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:36:26 EST news150129386 Deriving plentiful electricity from sunlight at a modest cost is a challenge with immense implications for energy, technology, and climate policy. A paper in a special energy issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal, describes a relatively new approach to solar cells: lacing them with nanoscopic metal particles. As the authors describe in the article, this approach has the potential to greatly improve the ability of solar cells to harvest light efficiently. http://www.physorg.com/news149266955.html Nanotechnology Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:02:35 EST news149266955