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Digital holographic microscopy is an imaging modality that can digitally reconstruct the images of 3-D samples from a single hologram by digitally refocusing it through the entire 3-D sample volume. In comparison, scanning through a sample volume with a conventional...

Engineers at the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with Tyndall National Institute in Cork, Ireland, are developing an educational toolkit to bring integrated photonics into the college engineering and science curriculum. The toolkit is designed to teach undergraduates...

Experimental photonic switches tested by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A., show promise toward the goal of fully optical, high-capacity switching for future high-speed data transmission networks. The switch developed and tested for this research demonstrated capabilities not...

Autonomous vehicles relying on light-based image sensors often struggle to see through blinding conditions, such as fog. But Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge, MA) researchers have developed a sub-terahertz-radiation receiving system that could help steer driverless cars when traditional...

The technique of light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) can rapidly provide stunning, 3-D images of intact organs and small organisms, such as zebrafish and mouse brains. But to get those images, the samples usually need to be immobilized in a stiff...

Calcium is a critical signaling molecule for most cells, and it is especially important in neurons. Imaging calcium in brain cells can reveal how neurons communicate with each other; however, current imaging techniques can only penetrate a few millimeters into...

A team of physicists from Immanuel Kant Baltic State University (Kaliningrad, Russia) and colleagues used a spectroscopy method to quickly identify single antibiotic-resistant bacteria cells that are the agents of tuberculosis. The method helps find the bacteria and evaluate their...

A way to produce glass metasurfaces that can be either rigid or flexible, developed by engineers from the EPFL Laboratory of Photonic Materials and Fiber Devices, could be used to fabricate all-dielectric optical metasurfaces quickly, at low temperatures, and with...

Quantum dots, semiconductor particles small enough in size that single electrons can be confined within the structures, are a promising source of laser light for certain applications, but their practical use has posed some challenges. Although the laser output can...

Measuring a fever is usually pretty simple: place a thermometer under a patient’s tongue and get an accurate temperature reading within 30 seconds. But that simplicity does not translate when it comes to measuring the temperatures of specific tissues deep...