13 posts · 11,606 views
Optical Futures aims to bring together the latest and greatest news on all things optical, whether it be scientific research, new technology or the natural world, demonstrating that solutions involving light truly are the way of the future.
Stuart Watson
13 posts
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- September 26, 2009
- 02:52 PM
- 587 views
Vitamin D and sun bed UV
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
Light is good for your health. Most notably, there are significant health benefits from vitamin D, which is produced in our bodies by the absorption into the skin of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. There are also dietary sources of vitamin D, but one of the best and most enjoyable involves simply sitting back and soaking up the sun's rays.
† Moan, J., Lagunova, Z., Cicarma, E., Aksnes, L., Dahlback, A., Grant, W., & Porojnicu, A. (2009). Sunbeds as Vitamin D Sources Photochemistry and Photobiology DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-1097.2009.00607.x
‡ Image by robigouk. (Creative Commons Attribution).
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Moan, J., Lagunova, Z., Cicarma, E., Aksnes, L., Dahlback, A., Grant, W., & Porojnicu, A. (2009) Sunbeds as Vitamin D Sources. Photochemistry and Photobiology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-1097.2009.00607.x
- September 12, 2009
- 02:50 AM
- 650 views
Improved image quality from your camera phone
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
The demand for consumer electronics to get smaller, lighter and cheaper, is a stimulus for great ingenuity. Cell phones are a classic example where electrical engineers and designers are constantly working to put a whole lot more into ever smaller spaces. And now that cameras are almost as standard a feature in these devices as the ring tone, optical engineers must also devise increasingly clever ways to shrink the optics while improving their performance.
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Zhou, G., Leung, H., Yu, H., Kumar, A., & Chau, F. (2009) Liquid tunable diffractive/refractive hybrid lens. Optics Letters, 34(18), 2793. DOI: 10.1364/OL.34.002793
- September 5, 2009
- 11:53 AM
- 635 views
Particle sorting with a miniature light railway
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
Lasers which can control the movement of particles are still confined to the microscopic world, but if you have an over-reactive imagination, you might wonder just what the limits are on the size of bodies which these devices can control and whether science fiction's tractor beams are becoming a reality. Today's technology may not be capable of producing force fields that lock on to starships and guide them in to land, but the size of particles which can be manipulated by light are getting larger.
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Applegate Jr., R., Marr, D., Squier, J., & Graves, S. (2009) Particle size limits when using optical trapping and deflection of particles for sorting using diode laser bars. Optics Express, 17(19), 16731. DOI: 10.1364/OE.17.016731
- February 28, 2009
- 05:57 PM
- 973 views
Laser identification
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
Counterfeit and smuggled goods are said to be one of the fuels that drive organised crime, so it is essential that products can be identified to determine if they are genuine and where they came from. Some manufacturers go to extreme lengths to incorporate hard to replicate anti-counterfeit labels or devices into their products, but it's a game of catch up and it isn't long before the criminals find a way of defeating those measures. So how about using no anti-counterfeit measures at all? This is the approach being promoted by Russell Cowburn at Imperial College in London, who is researching a method called Laser Surface Authentication (LSA), which relies on unique, microscopic identifiers already inherent in products or their packaging.
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Russell Cowburn. (2008) Laser surface authentication - reading Nature's own security code. Contemporary Physics, 49(5), 331-342. DOI: 10.1080/00107510802583948
James D. R. Buchanan, Russell P. Cowburn, Ana-Vanessa Jausovec, Dorothée Petit, Peter Seem, Gang Xiong, Del Atkinson, Kate Fenton, Dan A. Allwood, & Matthew T. Bryan. (2005) Forgery: ‘Fingerprinting’ documents and packaging. Nature, 436(7050), 475-475. DOI: 10.1038/436475a
- December 21, 2008
- 07:35 PM
- 1,039 views
Miniature temperature sensors take the heat
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
Fibre optic sensors really do shine. No, I don't just mean when you pass light down one end and see it come out of the other, I mean they can be made to perform some pretty clever tasks, often triumphing over their electronic rivals. A fibre sensor fabricated by splicing together three different types of optical fibre and capable of measuring temperatures up to 1000°C, has recently been demonstrated by scientists in South Korea†.
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Hae Young Choi, Kwan Seob Park, Seong Jun Park, Un-Chul Paek, Byeong Ha Lee, & Eun Seo Choi. (2008) Miniature fiber-optic high temperature sensor based on a hybrid structured Fabry–Perot interferometer. Optics Letters, 33(21), 2455. DOI: 10.1364/OL.33.002455
- December 4, 2008
- 07:00 PM
- 1,126 views
Harvesting the sun's energy with lasers
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
A novel approach to harvesting the energy of the sun is described in a recent paper in the Journal of Applied Physics, which reports on one of the key components in the system: a solar powered laser1.
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T. Yabe, B. Bagheri, T. Ohkubo, S. Uchida, K. Yoshida, T. Funatsu, T. Oishi, K. Daito, M. Ishioka, N. Yasunaga.... (2008) 100 W-class solar pumped laser for sustainable magnesium-hydrogen energy cycle. Journal of Applied Physics, 104(8), 83104. DOI: 10.1063/1.2998981
T. Yabe, S. Uchida, K. Ikuta, K. Yoshida, C. Baasandash, M. S. Mohamed, Y. Sakurai, Y. Ogata, M. Tuji, Y. Mori.... (2006) Demonstrated fossil-fuel-free energy cycle using magnesium and laser. Applied Physics Letters, 89(26), 261107. DOI: 10.1063/1.2423320
T. Yabe, M. S. Mohamed, S. Uchida, C. Baasandash, Y. Sato, M. Tsuji, & Y. Mori. (2007) Noncatalytic dissociation of MgO by laser pulses towards sustainable energy cycle. Journal of Applied Physics, 101(12), 123106. DOI: 10.1063/1.2743730
- November 12, 2008
- 12:08 AM
- 1,098 views
Optical spit roast
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
Researchers in Germany and the UK have devised a new method for the optical manipulation of microscopic particles and demonstrated it by rotating biological cells under a microscope†.
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Moritz K. Kreysing, Tobias Kieβling, Anatol Fritsch, Christian Dietrich, Jochen R. Guck, & Josef A. Käs. (2008) The optical cell rotator. Optics Express, 16(21), 16984. DOI: 10.1364/OE.16.016984
- October 15, 2008
- 07:55 PM
- 1,047 views
Particle clearance with Airy light beams
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
It has been likened to an optically driven snowblower for microscopic particles and could see practical use for the sorting of micrometre sized particles. Researchers from the University of Saint Andrews in the UK have reported on their work using Airy beams for particle clearing, in an advance online publication for Nature Photonics†.
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Jörg Baumgartl, Michael Mazilu, & Kishan Dholakia. (2008) Optically mediated particle clearing using Airy wavepackets. Nature Photonics. DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2008.201
- July 7, 2008
- 01:07 PM
- 894 views
Fibre sensor operates at extreme temperatures
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
Optical fibres can be used in a variety of ways to perform remote sensing operations. Take the case of the Fibre Fabry-Pérot (FFP) interferometer, for example. Working on the principle of light interference produced by two parallel reflecting surfaces either side of a small cavity, they can be constructed in different ways, either with an external cavity, or with the cavity located within the body of the fibre itself. They can be used to measure pressure, temperature or strain, all by detecting changes in the optical path length of the cavity due to environmental influences. They can even be used as chemical sensors because the optical path length in the cavity is related to the refractive index of the medium inside. Researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology have come up with a way in which to do just that, in such a way that produces a highly robust device suitable for chemical sensing1.
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Tao Wei, Yukun Han, Hai-Lung Tsai, & Hai Xiao. (2008) Miniaturized fiber inline Fabry-Perot interferometer fabricated with a femtosecond laser. Optics Letters, 33(6), 536. DOI: 10.1364/OL.33.000536
- June 26, 2008
- 06:30 PM
- 881 views
Photo-acoustics to detect explosives
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
After having just reported on a new and novel use of the photo-acoustic effect for use in the printing industry (Photo-acoustics measure ink thickness), here's another story that's (cliché alert!) hot of the press: Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee have used
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C Van Neste, L R Senesac, & T Thundat. (2008) Standoff photoacoustic spectroscopy. Applied Physics Letters, 92(23), 234102. DOI: 10.1063/1.2945288
- June 21, 2008
- 03:53 PM
- 943 views
Photo-acoustics measure ink thickness
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
In an effort to add a little variety and step away from all the new biomedical applications out there that exploit the endless wonder of light, here's a paper describing the use of light to make measurements of ink thickness! Okay, that might seem a little mundane, but it’s a classic example of the way in which light is used to solve an everyday problem, in this case to measure the thickness of black ink, typically a few microns or so, whilst it is spinning on the roller of a printing press at 300 rpm1.
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Koichi Kurita. (2008) A non-contact and online ink thickness sensor for printing machines using the photoacoustic effect. Measurement Science and Technology, 19(7), 75206. DOI: 10.1088/0957-0233/19/7/075206
- June 16, 2008
- 11:04 AM
- 870 views
Targeted closure of blood vessels
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
One treatment for abnormal tissue growths, including cancerous tumours, is to close off the vessels supplying blood to that region, thereby killing it off. In some parts of the body, such as the eye and the brain, this requires an extraordinary level of precision. Researchers in the UK, Canada and the US, have recently produced a photo-activated drug and demonstrated that it is able to achieve far greater precision than any existing techniques, without causing damage beyond the treated region1.
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Hazel Collins, Mamta Khurana, Eduardo H Moriyama, Adrian Mariampillai, Emma Dahlstedt, Milan Balaz, Marina K Kuimova, Mikhail Drobizhev, Victor X Yang, David Phillips.... (2008) Blood-vessel closure using photosensitizers engineered for two-photon excitation. Nature Photonics. DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2008.100
- June 6, 2008
- 05:56 PM
- 863 views
Microscopic particle manipulation for screening operations
by Stuart Watson in Optical Futures
Controlling the movement of microscopic particles is tough; controlling the movement of thousands of tiny particles is a challenge indeed. Chemical and biological screening are two applications that would benefit from a technique which involves the manipulation of large numbers of droplets contained in a small quantity of fluid, and researchers in the US and Austria have recently demonstrated that they can steer those tiny droplets within an electrically insulating fluid using light1.
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Sungyong Park, Chenlu Pan, Ting-Hsiang Wu, Christoph Kloss, Sheraz Kalim, Caitlin Callahan, Michael Teitell, & Eric Chiou. (2008) Floating electrode optoelectronic tweezers: Light-driven dielectrophoretic droplet manipulation in electrically insulating oil medium. Applied Physics Letters, 92(15), 151101. DOI: 10.1063/1.2906362
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