Blog

Although it may seem futuristic, the concept of virtual reality has actually been around for a long time. In 1938, playwright Antonin Artaud wrote a series of essays referring to the illusory nature of characters and objects in the theater...

A novel proof-of-concept nanosystem for the visualization of tumors generates bright tumor signals by delivering near-infrared quantum dots (QDs) to cancer cells without any toxic effects. The QDs are delivered intravenously into extravascular tumor tissue and cells to gain bright...

The properties of materials can behave in funny ways. Tweak one aspect to make a device smaller or less leaky, for example, and something else might change in an undesirable way, so that engineers play a game of balancing one...

A new approach to optical imaging makes it possible to quickly and economically monitor multiple molecular interactions in a large area of living tissue – such as an organ or a small animal; technology that could have applications in medical...

When scientists increased the wavelength in a tool for detecting fatty deposit build-up in arteries from IR to NIR, they found that they could use it to selectively identify plaques with internal bleeding, which are typically associated with high-risk plaque...

Researchers have developed a new terahertz imaging approach that, for the first time, can acquire micron-scale resolution images while retaining computational approaches designed to speed up image acquisition. This combination could allow terahertz imaging to be useful for detecting early-stage...

Researchers are on the lookout for rapid, reliable and affordable switches for the opto-electronics of the future. An Empa team now presents a potential solution: dye droplets measuring just a few sub-micrometers in diameter. Scientists from Empa’s Laboratory for Functional...

No single microscope can image all aspects of a sample at the same time and so the use of two or more imaging methods to study a sample – correlative imaging – is common place. Lucy Collinson leads the Electron...

Polymer optics manufacturer Syntec Optics Inc. has successfully consolidated its three different operations and plans to acquire additional optics technologies. “Syntec Optics has always kept an eye on the future,” said Al Kapoor, founder of Syntec Optics. “This is the...

A new terahertz design that can be etched on microchips boosts the power output of chip-mounted terahertz lasers by 80 percent. The novel design shows promise for future industrial imaging and chemical detection applications. The standard method for producing power-efficient...