Tag Archives: light

Super-fine Sound Beam could one Day be an Invisible Scalpel

By Guest PostDecember 27, 2012Health, Sciencecarbon nanotube, cellular texture, coated lens, cosmetic surgery, device, higher frequency, hyoung won baac, invisible knife, jay guo, kidney stones, light, michigan, microbubbles, millimetres, nerve fibers, noninvasive surgery, project, prostate tumors, shockwaves, sound, sound waves, therapeutic ultrasound approach, thomas edison, time, ultrasound technology, university, vasculature

ANN ARBOR — A carbon-nanotube-coated lens that converts light to sound can focus high-pressure sound waves to finer points than ever before. The University of Michigan engineering researchers who developed the new therapeutic ultrasound approach say it could lead to an invisible knife for noninvasive surgery.

Today’s ultrasound technology enables far more than glimpses into the womb. Doctors routinely use focused sound waves to blast apart kidney stones and prostate tumors, for example. The tools work primarily by focusing sound waves tightly enough to generate heat, says Jay Guo, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, mechanical engineering, and macromolecular science and engineering. Guo is a co-author of a paper on the new technique published in the current issue of Nature’s journal Scientific Reports. (more…)

Interstellar Travelers of the Future May be Helped by MU Physicist’s Calculations

By Guest PostOctober 12, 2012Scienceastrophysicists, bill clinton, expansion, future, gravity, heat, human expansion, interstellar travel, light, mechanical explanation, missouri, movement, newtonian law, photon, physics, pioneer spacecraft, puzzle, radio wave, research project, researcher, sergei kopeikin, Space, spaceship symposium, star system, theory, time, universe, university

University of Missouri’s Sergei Kopeikin may have solved the Pioneer anomaly

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Former President Bill Clinton recently expressed his support for interstellar travel at the 100 Year Spaceship Symposium, an international event advocating for human expansion into other star systems. Interstellar travel will depend upon extremely precise measurements of every factor involved in the mission. The knowledge of those factors may be improved by the solution a University of Missouri researcher found to a puzzle that has stumped astrophysicists for decades.

“The Pioneer spacecraft, two probes launched into space in the early 70s, seemed to violate the Newtonian law of gravity by decelerating anomalously as they traveled, but there was nothing in physics to explain why this happened,” said Sergei Kopeikin, professor of physics and astronomy in MU’s College of Arts and Science. “My study suggests that this so-called Pioneer anomaly was not anything strange. The confusion can be explained by the effect of the expansion of the universe on the movement of photons that make up light and radio waves.” (more…)

Questions for Rashid Zia: Brown to Lead Multi-University Quantum Metamaterials Research

By Guest PostOctober 4, 2012Scienceair force, arto nurmikko, Diamond, electric dipole, encrypted communication, harry atwater, interaction, jelena vuckovic, kevin stacey, light, light wave, mark brongersma, matter, multidisciplinary, muri, nader engheta, nanometer, nicholas fang, office, optical memory, optical microprocessor, optical wavelength, quantum emitter, quantum metamaterials, quantum metaphotonics, quantum optics, quantum scale, rashid zia, research initiative, scalable technology, semiconductor, seth bank, shanhui fan, spatial variation, telecommunication, university, xiang zhang

Through a new Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) awarded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Brown will lead an effort to study new optical materials and their interactions with light at the quantum scale. The initiative, which includes six other top universities, will receive $4.5 million over three years, with a possible two-year extension.

Harnessing the power of light at the quantum scale could clear the way for superfast optical microprocessors, high-capacity optical memory, securely encrypted communication, and untold other technologies. But before any of these potential applications sees the light of day, substantial obstacles must be overcome — not the least of which is the fact that the wavelength of light is larger than quantum-scale objects, limiting the range of possible light-matter interactions. (more…)

Infant Galaxy Offers Peek at Early Universe

By Guest PostSeptember 25, 2012Science1149 jd, astronomer, big bang, clash, cluster, cosmic, dark matter, Galaxy, gravitational lens, gravity, hubble telescope, light, macs, mass, megan donahue, michigan, Milky Way, NASA, northern hemisphere, object, ordinary galaxy, sky, space telescope, spitzer, state university, universe, zoom lens

EAST LANSING, Mich. — A Michigan State University astronomer is part of an international team of scientists that has discovered a galaxy so far, far away that its light was emitted not all that long after the Big Bang occurred.

The research of MSU’s physics and astronomy professor Megan Donahue and colleagues is detailed in the recent issue of the journal Nature. They found that this galaxy began emitting light “just” 490 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 3.6 percent of its present age. (more…)

Good Vibrations

By Guest PostAugust 17, 2012Scienceabsolute zero, amplification, attometer scale, berkeley lab, cavity optomechanics, dan stamper kurn, daniel brooks, death star, eit, electromagnetically induced transparency, electron, fabry pferot, frequency, good vibrations, gravitational wave, light, mechanical motion, mechanical resonator, microfabricated atom chip, millennium falcon, motions of objects, nathan brahms, nonclassical light, optical cavity, optomechanical amplifier, optomechanical system, optomechanical systems, optomechanics, picowatts, ponderomotive force, quantum fluctuation, quantum mechanics, quantum optical device, quantum optical effects, radiation, science fiction, squeezing, star wars, sydney schreppler, Technology, thierry botter, thomas purdy, tractor beam, ultracold atoms, ultrasensitive force sensors

Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley Researchers Record First Direct Observations of Quantum Effects in an Optomechanical System

A long-time staple of science fiction is the tractor beam, a technology in which light is used to move massive objects – recall the tractor beam in the movie Star Wars that captured the Millennium Falcon and pulled it into the Death Star. While tractor beams of this sort remain science fiction, beams of light today are being used to mechanically manipulate atoms or tiny glass beads, with rapid progress being made to control increasingly larger objects. Those who see major roles for optomechanical systems in a host of future technologies will take heart in the latest results from a first-of-its-kind experiment.

Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley, using a unique optical trapping system that provides ensembles of ultracold atoms, have recorded the first direct observations of distinctly quantum optical effects – amplification and squeezing – in an optomechanical system. Their findings point the way toward low-power quantum optical devices and enhanced detection of gravitational waves among other possibilities. (more…)

Some Harmful Effects of Light at Night Can Be Reversed, Study Finds

By Guest PostJuly 27, 2012Sciencebrain, chronic exposure, depression, depressive disorder, depressive symptom, drug, hamster, harmful effects, hippocampus, light, light cycle, light dark cycle, night, protein, randy nelson, rodent, siberian hamsters, tnf, tnf inhibitor, tracy bedrosian, tumor necrosis factor, xpro1595, zachary weil

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Chronic exposure to dim light at night can lead to depressive symptoms in rodents – but these negative effects can be reversed simply by returning to a standard light-dark cycle, a new study suggests.

While hamsters exposed to light at night for four weeks showed evidence of depressive symptoms, those symptoms essentially disappeared after about two weeks if they returned to normal lighting conditions.

Even changes in the brain that occurred after hamsters lived with chronic light at night reversed themselves after returning to a more normal light cycle. (more…)

Modern Defense

By Guest PostJune 26, 2012Education, Generalafrican countries, burt abrams, business strategy, cita, economic development, economic growth, fdi, foreign direct investment, france, gdp growth, hiv, hiv situation, internet, jim butkiewicz, laurence seidman, light, modern defense, newark campus, parameter, pearson hall, robert schweitzer, samuel mathey, sheldon demby, skype, speed of connection, stacy weile, time lag, university of delaware, video conference, voice, west africa

First UD student successfully defends doctoral dissertation via Skype

Samuel Mathey, a graduate student in the Department of Economics at the University of Delaware, has become the first doctoral student in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics to successfully defend a dissertation via Skype.

On Tuesday, June 12, Mathey’s dissertation committee sat in a Pearson Hall video conference room on UD’s Newark campus while he attended his defense virtually from France.

Committee members for Mathey’s defense included Burt Abrams (chair), professor of economics; Jim Butkiewicz, professor of economics; Laurence Seidman, professor of economics; and Robert Schweitzer, professor of finance. (more…)

A Half-Billion Stars And Galaxies From NASA’s WISE Mission Revealed — Many For First Time

By Guest PostMarch 17, 2012Scienceall sky catalog, asteroids, atlas, catalog, comets, cosmos, david saxon, distant galaxies, echo, edward l wright, exploded star, galaxies, goggles, great sky, infrared detectors, infrared sky, infrared wavelength, jet propulsion laboratory, jupiter, light, mars, mission, NASA, planet, principal investigator, roc cutri, saturn, stars, supernova explosion, wise, y dwarfs

A new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky with more than a half-billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission was unveiled by NASA Wednesday.

“Today WISE delivers the fruit of 14 years of effort to the astronomical community,” said Edward L. (Ned) Wright, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and the mission’s principal investigator, who began working on the mission in 1998. (more…)