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Optical
Panasonic reveals DMC-ZR3 super slim versatile compact
By Paul Ridden
18:26 February 2, 2010 PST
Panasonic has revealed a new addition to its LUMIX family of cameras, the DMC-ZR3 slim compact digital. The successor to the ZR1, optical zoom has been boosted to eight times, the addition of AVCHD Lite video should extend recording time, the pixel count now stands at 14 megapixels and it supports the new SDXC card format. Read More
Wireless optical system offers one gigabit per second transmission
By Paul Ridden
19:31 January 28, 2010 PST
Sending and receiving data over a wireless network is generally undertaken via radio waves. But that's not the only method. Using the optical spectrum offers the advantage of better security and blisteringly fast transfer rates to boot. Engineers from Pennsylvania State University have now succeeded in moving data outside the usual line of sight restrictions at speeds of over one gigabit per second, more than double that achieved by Siemens recently. Read More
AirMouse - the mouse that fits you like a glove
By Ben Coxworth
12:36 January 27, 2010 PST
It’s no secret... Studies have shown that excessive mouse usage can cause repetitive stress injuries. Unfortunately for most of us, “excessive” can mean anything more than a few hours a day. Fortunately, however, there are alternative styles of mice out there designed to be easier on the hands and arms. One of the more interesting ones to come along in a while is the AirMouse, made by Canadian firm Deanmark Ltd. What makes it unique is the fact that you wear it like a glove. Read More
Store, sort and share - the Kodak Slice Touchscreen digital camera (and pocket photo album)
By Mick Webb
21:10 January 8, 2010 PST
No longer just a device intended to capture images, the digital camera becomes a veritable pocket photo album with the latest offering from Kodak, the Slice Touchscreen. Featuring a 3.5” LCD touchscreen 5X optical zoom and 14MP resolution, the Slice also packs a 2GB internal memory with tagging functionality. This not only recognizes up to 20 faces allowing the user to tag photos by person, place, date or occasion, but also lets the user tag photos for easy uploading to sites like Flickr and Facebook. Read More
Sustail clockwork mouse concept
By Paul Ridden
01:59 January 5, 2010 PST
Designer Ahmet Bektes is proposing using centuries-old technology to provide the power for a familiar modern device. Rather than drawing energy from a computer or batteries, a user will need to remove a key from below the Sustail mouse and wind it up before being able to use it. It is hoped that the Bluetooth-connected input device would also encourage users to take regular breaks and have a more responsible attitude towards power consumption. Read More
Gestural interfaces make touch screens look so ‘last year’
By Jeff Salton
21:21 December 13, 2009 PST
The gestural interface used by Tom Cruise in the movie Minority Report was based on work by MIT Media Lab’s Hiroshi Ishii, who has already commercialized similar large-scale gestural interface systems. However, such systems comprise many expensive cameras or require the user to wear tracking devices on their fingers. To develop a similar yet cost effective gestural interface system that is within reach of many more people other researchers at MIT have instead been working to develop screens with embedded optical sensors to track the movement of the user’s fingers that could quickly make touch screens seem outdated. Read More
Scientists squeeze more out of light
By Jeff Salton
20:23 December 9, 2009 PST
Scientists at the University of Adelaide, Australia, have put the squeeze on light. By discovering that light within optical fibers can be squeezed into much tighter spaces than was previously believed possible, the researchers at the University's Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) have claimed a breakthrough that could change the world's thinking on light’s capabilities, especially when it comes to its use in telecommunications, such as fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), computing and other light sources. Read More
What invisible objects will actually look like
By Darren Quick
19:52 November 12, 2009 PST
Over the last few years we’ve covered the development of “invisibility cloaks” using metamaterials – man-made structured composite materials exhibiting optical properties not found in nature that can guide light to achieve cloaking and other optical effects. In 2006, scientists at Duke University demonstrated in the laboratory that an object made of metamaterials can be partially invisible to particular wavelengths of light - not visible light, but rather microwaves. A few groups have even managed to achieve a microscopically-sized carpet-cloak. Now researchers have developed software that can show what such a cloaked object will actually look like. Read More
'Hyperspectral Remote Sensor' senses disasters from space
By Darren Quick
23:59 October 25, 2009 PDT
Combining sophisticated sensors in orbit with sensors on the ground and in the air has led researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) to create a “Hyperspectral Remote Sensor” (HRS) that can give advance warnings about water contamination after a forest fire, alert authorities of a pollution spill long before a red flag is raised on Earth, or inform the population where a monsoon will strike. Read More
A cheap way to increase capacity and improve download speeds of strained broadband networks
By Darren Quick
23:19 October 18, 2009 PDT
A new technology that applies the same principles used by ADSL to improve the capacity of data transfer over copper and wireless broadband could potentially increase the data capacity of optical fiber cables tenfold. It’s creators say the technology, known as optical Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (oOFDM), offers an inexpensive way drastically boost the capacity of increasingly strained broadband networks and improve download times around the world. Read More
MIT's one-way road for microwave light makes efficient lightwave circuits closer
19:13 October 13, 2009 PDT
Light normally bounces off obstacles in its way, and the part of the beam that is reflected back and captured by our eyes contributes to our perception of the world around us. However, every reflection dissipates a small part of the beam's energy, and can eventually weaken it significantly. A team of MIT researchers have developed an innovative waveguide that allows microwave light to travel one way only and without reflections, paving the way to much more efficient lightwave circuits and connections. Read More
Replicating nano structure of butterfly wings could lead to better solar cells
By Darren Quick
20:19 October 11, 2009 PDT
Researchers have developed a technique to replicate biological structures, such as butterfly wings, on a nano scale. They focused on the tiny nano-sized photonic structures that are found in the insects’ cuticle, and which give insects their iridescence - that slightly metallic sheen that also seems to shift in color depending on the viewing angle. By replicating the biotemplate of butterfly wings, the researchers hope to be able to make various optically-active structures, such as optical diffusers or coverings that maximize solar cell absorption. Read More
'Time telescope' speeds up optical transmission by 27 times
22:17 October 4, 2009 PDT
Most of today's telecommunication data is encoded at a speed of 10 Gbit/s, but researchers are constantly looking for new ways to push this limit even further. A group of researchers at Cornell University have recently come up with the "time telescope," a sophisticated system that can speed up optical communication by 27 times to an outstanding 270 Gbits/s by squeezing more information into a single flash of light and that, unlike previous solutions, does so in an energy-efficient manner. Read More
New advances in excitonics promise faster computers
16:44 October 1, 2009 PDT
Much of today's research in electronics is geared towards obtaining faster computing and higher communication speeds. Researchers at UC San Diego are no exception, and have recently announced they have made another important step towards achieving exciton-based computation at room temperatures. Excitonics exploits the unique properties of excitons instead of the usual electrons, and promises much faster performance by interfacing more naturally with optical communications such as fiber optics. Read More
Intel predicts optical future for consumer gadgets with 10Gb/s Light Peak interface
By Paul Lester
06:44 September 28, 2009 PDT
Though it may not make it into everyone’s ‘top ten’ list of most desirable technological developments, replacing the spaghetti-junction of wires that typically gathers behind a desk or workspace would undoubtedly be a welcome advance. Wireless peripherals are helping the situation somewhat and wireless power will be a massive boon once perfected but, in the meantime, we’re looking to technologies like optical cables to handle high-volume data transfer. Intel’s recent research in this area should be of particular interest, since it’s designed to replace or augment connections used in consumer-based electronics, such as USB2.0, HDMI, Firewire, DVI and the like. Read More
Nanoscale lasers continue to shrink, heralding new era in optical science
By Darren Quick
20:28 August 31, 2009 PDT
Breakthroughs are coming thick and fast – or should that be thin and fast – in the field of nanoscale lasers. It wasn’t even a month ago that we reported on the development of a laser emitting 'metal-semiconductor-metal sandwich', made up of a semiconductor as thin as 80 nanometers laying between 20-nanometer dielectric layers. But now researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have reached a new milestone in laser physics by creating the world's smallest semiconductor laser, capable of generating visible light in a space smaller than a single protein molecule. Read More
Tiny lasers hold key to nano-circuitry
18:31 August 23, 2009 PDT
Researchers at Cornell, Purdue and Norfolk State University have reported the successful creation of a 'spaser', a new kind of nanoscale laser that breaks dimensional limits previously thought to be insurmountable, leading the way to significantly faster and more efficient computer processing and data transfer rates. Read More
Ytterbium times its run for next-gen atomic clocks
By Darren Quick
23:44 August 17, 2009 PDT
Technically, no clock can be more accurate than cesium standards such as NIST-F1 – the cesium fountain atomic clock that serves as the United States' primary time and frequency standard. But researchers have managed to develop an experimental atomic clock based on ytterbium atoms that boasts precision comparable to that of NIST-F1. The humble second was chosen as the International System of Units' (SI) base unit of time since it is based on the properties of the cesium atom (one second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom). Read More
Harnessing blowflies to teach robots how to see
19:24 August 11, 2009 PDT
One of the biggest challenges facing robotics is teaching machines to perceive surroundings and make sense of what they see. Attempting to duplicate the complexity of human perception is next to impossible, so researchers at Cognition for Technical Systems (CoTeSys) in Munich are, instead, studying how blowflies process images using a 'flight simulator'. Despite having a brain the size of a pinhead, a fly can process and interpret 100 discrete images per second – four times better than humans. Read More
Wink Glasses - there won't be a dry eye in the house
By Mick Webb
19:49 August 4, 2009 PDT
The eye strain and resulting damage that often afflicts those who forget to blink while on a gaming marathon or glued to the Internet is a widespread problem. To combat this, Japan’s Masunaga Optical Manufacturing has unveiled Wink Glasses, which feature blink-sensing lenses that start to fog if the wearer neglects to keep their peepers hydrated. Read More
Canon announces new Hybrid Image Stablization technology
By Jeff Salton
01:41 July 23, 2009 PDT
Canon has developed optical image stabilization technology that compensates for angle camera shake and shift camera shake. The Hybrid Image Stabilizer (IS) technology will be incorporated in interchangeable single lens reflex (SLR) camera lens planned for commercial release before the end of 2009. The company says this is the first lens of its kind to incorporate technology that addresses both types of camera shake. Read More
Vikuiti Rear Projection Film turns shop windows into very big screen TVs
By Darren Quick
01:31 July 13, 2009 PDT
Taking a stroll through your average city shopping precinct will see you bombarded with a plethora of advertising messages. Making their particular message cut through the visual noise can be a tough prospect for advertisers and plain old billboards and static signs just don’t seem to cut the mustard anymore. Those looking to grab people’s attention might want to take a look at 3M’s Vikuiti Rear Projection Film, which can be laminated onto transparent glass or plastic to act as an eye-catching rear projection screen. Read More
Quantum computer closer: Optical transistor made from single molecule
23:51 July 6, 2009 PDT
Quantum photonics is a particularly attractive field to scientists and engineers alike in that it could, once some core issues have been resolved, allow for the production of integrated circuits that operate on the basis of photons instead of electrons, which would in turn enable considerably higher data transfer rates as well as dramatically reduced heat dissipation. Now in yet another important achievement on the road to quantum computing, researchers from ETH Zurich have managed to create an optical transistor from a single molecule. Read More
Video perfection tool catches up with TV cop technology
By Darren Quick
03:39 July 3, 2009 PDT
Anyone who has watched CSI or any of the Law & Order franchises has no doubt witnessed a well groomed police technician magically clean up fuzzy security camera vision, thereby providing the detectives with the vital number plate or the face of a criminal at the push of a button. The truth is, of course, far removed from such TV fantasy – at least it has been until now. A new video “perfection tool” developed by researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) helps investigators enhance raw video images to improve the quality at which the images were originally recorded. Read More
Researchers create acoustic metamaterial ‘superlens’
By Jeff Salton
04:48 July 1, 2009 PDT
A team at the University of Illinois, Chicago, has developed the world’s first acoustic ‘super lens’. It is proposed that this innovation could be used for high-resolution ultrasound imaging, non-destructive structural testing of buildings and bridges, and underwater stealth technology or "acoustic cloaking". Read More
Mr Stiffy
- February 9, 2010 @ 06:26 UTC
