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  • Volume 51, Issue 08

    More content from Volume 51, Issue 08

    (Image courtesy of Fraunhofer ICT-IMM)
    The measuring channel (visible at right) forms the key component of the PoCyton flow cytometer.
    Cancerous growths release circulating tumor cells (CTCs) into the bloodstream, and their number indicates the effectiveness of therapy: A decrease during treatment means success...
    Aug. 6, 2015
    Barbaragoode2
    Plenty of news reports this summer demonstrate how the smartphone is increasingly being leveraged as a platform for biomedicine.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    FIGURE 1. A selection of diamond-tipped machining tools is used for shaping nonmetallic component for optical systems (a); an edge of a nonmetallic component is beveled (b).
    Incorporating glass and ceramic components into optical systems benefits from making the right choices in materials, design, and fabrication.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    FIGURE 1. A pick-up is used to make both sides of a lens the same radius of curvature.
    Optical simulation software based on downhill simplex optimization allows engineers to efficiently find optimal designs for products with integrated LEDs or light pipes.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    ESPROS Photonics' epc610 monolithic CCD-CMOS time-of-flight backside-illuminated imagers improve NIR optical performance in time-delayed imaging (TDI) and fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM).
    While maintaining full charge-handling capacity and low noise operation, monolithic CCD system-on-chip technology is now integrated within a CMOS environment in which backside...
    Aug. 6, 2015
    FIGURE 1. A schematic shows the basic implementation of C-OTDR technology that measures the coherent sum of the light scattered from the Rayleigh scatterers within the footprint of the optical pulse as it travels down the fiber. Length or index of refraction changes between pulses change the magnitude and phase of the returned pulse, yielding the time series at the pulse repetition rate for each virtual sensor in the range bin defined by the round-trip time.
    Fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) provides an effective method of monitoring highways, railroads, and pipelines. With persistent gapless monitoring, this new capability...
    Aug. 6, 2015
    (Credit: STL QCC)
    FIGURE 1. Charles Kao measuring attenuation of bulk silica at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories.
    By providing the backbone for the global telecommunications network, fiber optics helped create the Internet and helped us learn more about the rest of the world.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    FIGURE 1. Laser-system optics can be damaged from repeated exposure to high-peak-power laser pulses: (left panels) damaged optic surface; and (right panels) repaired, or mitigated site. The upper panel shows the result of a 'slow annealing' process, while the lower panel shows a 'rapid microshaping' technique, currently employed at NIF. Several repair techniques have been developed at LLNL with the aim of extending the useable life of the optics.
    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers use multiphysics simulation to develop techniques to repair fused-silica optics.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    An electrically pumped random laser with an efficient source of both electrons and holes is formed by zinc oxide (ZnO)-based core-shell nanowires grown on a sapphire substrate and placed in contact with a boron-doped diamond. As the current is raised from below to above threshold, sharp peaks appear in the electroluminescence (EL) spectrum. The lasing threshold of the device is 13.8 mA (inset).
    A random laser contains a gain material in which scattered light takes random paths, forming many small laser cavities and resulting in diffuse laser light.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    (Image credit: UT Dallas)
    An equivalent circuit shows the cross-section operation of the poly-gate-separated (PGS) Schottky diode (a) and a photomicrograph reveals its physical form after fabrication (b) for a 5 and 10 THz far-IR diode detector.
    Researchers are using Schottky barrier diodes in a 130 nm CMOS process operating above their cutoff frequency for detection of terahertz radiation at 9.74 THz.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    (Image credit: Lionel Kimerling, MIT)
    As summarized by the cost per interconnection for different link distances, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge, MA) says that the threshold where the optical interconnect improves over electrical (the E-to-O transition) is when the bandwidth-distance product is greater than 1 Tbit-cm/s (or 10 Gbit-cm/s), eventually making optics compelling-even for board-level interconnects.
    On March 22, 2015, the fifth workshop in a series featuring optical networking and chaired by OSA Industry Development Associates, in collaboration with the Center for Integrated...
    Aug. 6, 2015
    (Credit: YoungJu Jo and YongKeun Park/KAIST)
    Seen here are representative major light scattering patterns of a single bacterium, from which its species (Lactobacillus casei) was identified from a machine-learning algorithm.
    Researchers have developed a new way to exploit optical microscopy for identifying bacteria.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    Content Dam Lfw Print Articles 2015 08 1508lfw Nb 1
    The trends of miniaturization and high-speed performance place demands on a product's thermal and optical properties.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    Content Dam Lfw Print Articles 2015 08 1508lfw Nb 3b
    A new interferometric absorption design has pixels that can be tuned through a continuum of colors.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    Content Dam Lfw Print Articles 2015 08 1508lfw Nb 2
    A group in Canada has reported a mid-IR femtosecond fiber laser, a device emitting at a 2.8 μm wavelength.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    Content Dam Lfw Print Articles 2015 08 1508lfw Nb 3
    Engineers at Quantel USA set out to measure the laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) of a substrate at different wavelengths.
    Aug. 6, 2015
    Conard Holton2
    When old hands in photonics talk about the telecom boom at the turn of the century, they tend to get a little misty-eyed.
    Aug. 6, 2015