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Dementia is a crippling disease that not only makes it difficult for the affected person to perform everyday tasks, but also poses myriad challenges for caretakers, whether they are family members or hired health care personnel. This is a situation I’m somewhat familiar with, as my 92 year-old grandmother has...

For many of us on Earth, the Internet is a vital part of our everyday lives. Rapid advances in developing high-bandwidth networks make it possible to communicate with family, friends, and business associates worldwide and rapidly search for and retrieve information, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But in outer...

As an editor, I spend most of my time providing our readers with information. Occasionally it’s interesting to find out what the readers think about things. Like the new products and technology we tell them about, for example. In every issue of Photonics Tech Briefs (PTB), we select one product from the...

It’s a digital world out there, and the key to our survival, in my opinion, is not processing power. It’s data storage. Once all the numbers have been crunched, all the images have been gathered, and all the test results have been compiled, you need to store them somewhere. Somewhere safe, because unlike former means of recording...

Glenn Rakow is the Development Lead for SpaceWire, a high-speed communications protocol for space-flight electronics originally developed in 1999 by the European Space Agency (ESA). Under Rakow's leadership, the SpaceWire standard was developed into a network of nodes and routers interconnected through bi-directional, high-speed...

A team led by Professor Yosi Shacham-Diamand, vice-dean of Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Engineering, has developed a nano-sized laboratory, complete with a microscopic workbench, to measure water quality in real time. This lab-on-a-chip is a breakthrough in the effort to keep water safe from pollution. "We've developed a platform...

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are designing and building the next-generation orbiting tracker for NASA that will supply data to more accurately predict the next hurricane, heat wave, or drought. The 18-inch interferometric receiver being built at UMass...

University of Washington researchers have helped develop a new kind of microscope to visualize cells in three dimensions, an advance that could improve early cancer detection. The technique could also bridge a widening gap between cutting-edge imaging techniques used in research and clinical practices. Known by the trademarked name...

Plasmonics - a possible replacement for current computing approaches - may pave the way for the next generation of computers that operate faster and store more information than electronically-based systems and are smaller than optically-based systems, according to Tony Jun Huang, a Penn State engineer who has developed a...

Researchers at University of Toronto and Bloorview, Canada's largest children's rehabilitation hospital, have developed a technique that uses infrared light brain imaging to decode preference. When children with disabilities can't speak or gesture to control their environment, they may develop a learned helplessness that impedes...

NASA and 11 other research groups are testing two non-petroleum-based fuels in the pursuit of alternative fuels that can power commercial jets and address rising oil costs. The tests, being conducted at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, are measuring the performance and emissions of two synthetic fuels derived...

The nation's infrastructure uses concrete for millions of miles of roadways and 600,000 bridges, many of which are in disrepair. With a project called viscosity enhancers reducing diffusion in concrete technology (VERDICT), Engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) set out to double concrete's lifetime....

Researchers from Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems in Dresden have developed the first-ever biogas plant to run purely on waste instead of edible raw materials - transforming waste into valuable material. The plant generates 30 percent more biogas than its predecessors. A fuel cell efficiently converts the gas...

University of California at San Diego electrical and computer engineering professor Stojan Radic and his team have demonstrated the first real-time sampling of a 320 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) channel, in an effort to meet the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) goal of developing the first Terabit-scale...

Photoactivatable fluorescent proteins (PAFPs) and other advanced fluorescent proteins (FPs) - several of which have been developed by Vladislav Verkhusha, associate professor of anatomy & structural biology at Yeshiva University - spotlight individual cellular molecules and are transforming biomedical research. PAFPs and FPs...

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology have developed a whispering gallery microcavity based on plasmons - electromagnetic waves that race across the surfaces of metals. This plasmonic whispering gallery microcavity consists of a silica...

Over a million people attended the inauguration of President Barack Obama in Washington last week. With extremely tight security restricting access, photographer David Bergman found an ingenious way to photograph the event, with the help of imaging technology used on the Mars Rover. According to an article on his...

A design for bendable electronic devices produces parts that can be wrapped around complex shapes, without reducing electronic function. The technology is based on semiconductor nanomaterials that offer high stretchability and large twistability. Potential uses include electronic devices for eye cameras, smart surgical...

Scientists from Dartmouth College and Ice Engineering LLC have invented a way to cheaply and effectively keep ice off power lines. Called a variable resistance cable (VRC) de-icing system, the technology switches the electrical resistance of a standard power line from low to high. The high resistance automatically creates heat...

Northeastern University was recently awarded a $9 million federal research grant to develop new multi-sensor technology systems for cars and trucks that will allow for real-time assessment of road and bridge infrastructure across the country. Northeastern will lead the five-year VOTERS (Versatile Onboard Traffic Embedded...

According to research performed at Sandia National Laboratories, the current trend of increasing the speed of supercomputers by increasing the number of processor cores on individual chips may actually worsen performance for many complex applications. A Sandia team simulated key algorithms for deriving knowledge from large data...

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a prototype malaria test printed on a disposable Mylar card that could easily slip into your wallet and still work when you took it out, even months later. The cards are a critical step in a long-term project funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates...

Fleeing drivers are a common problem for law enforcement. Existing traps, made from elastic, may halt a Hyundai, but they're no match for a Hummer. In addition, officers put themselves at risk of being run down while setting up the traps. Imaginative design and engineering funded by the Small Business Innovation Research Office of the...

A microscopic biological sensor that detects Salmonella bacteria in lab tests has been developed by an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist and university colleagues. The nanotechnology-based sensor could be adapted to detect other food-borne pathogens as well. The biosensor was developed by ARS engineer...

Johns Hopkins researchers have invented dust-particle-size devices that can be used to grab and remove living cells from hard-to-reach places without the need for electrical wires, tubes, or batteries. Instead, the devices are actuated by thermal or biochemical signals. The mass-producible microgrippers each measure approximately...

University of Florida scientists achieved a new record in the efficiency of blue organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. Because blue is essential to white light, the advance helps pave the way to lighting that is much more efficient than compact fluorescents, but can produce high-quality light similar to standard...

UCLA scientists have used brain-scan technology, along with patient-specific information on Alzheimer's disease risks, to help diagnose brain aging before symptoms appear. The researchers used positron emission tomography (PET), which allows the revealing of plaques and tangles, the hallmarks of neurodegeneration. The PET...

Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and Cornell University have developed a new generation of microscopic particles for molecular imaging, constituting one of the first promising nanoparticle platforms that may be readily adapted for tumor targeting and treatment in the clinic. According to the...

In the comics, the Phantom is a masked crime fighter who protected the innocent from pirates, hijackers and other evildoers. While not as dashing or exciting as its costumed namesake, an electromagnetic phantom - a carbon and polymer mixture that simulates the human body - is being readied by the National Institute of...