Robots and cameras of the future could be made of liquid crystals, thanks to a new discovery that significantly expands the potential of the chemicals already common in computer displays and digital watches. The findings are a simple and inexpensive way to manipulate the molecular properties of liquid crystals with light exposure ..read more

RMIT University’s Arnan Mitchell and University of Adelaide’s Dr. Andy Boes led an international team to review lithium niobate’s capabilities and potential applications in the journal Science. The team is working to make navigation systems that help rovers drive on the Moon — where GPS is unable to work — later this decade ..read more

Usually developing slowly over time, many cases of glaucoma are only picked up during routine eye tests, by which time lasting damage may already have been caused. But this could change in the future as academics from the U.K. and Türkiye have developed a contact lens which can detect changes in eye pressure which signal possible glaucoma ..read more

After hurricanes and other disasters, it is becoming more common for people to fly drones to record the damage and post videos on social media. Those videos are a resource for rapid damage assessment. By using artificial intelligence, researchers are developing a system that can automatically identify buildings and make an initial determination of whether they are damaged and how serious that damage might be ..read more

As anyone who has ever skimmed a book or magazine can tell you, sometimes you don’t have to read every word to grasp the essence. Inspired by this notion, scientists are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to enable a form of “speed reading” in microscopy. This could revolutionize the way researchers acquire data and allow them to preserve the integrity of precious samples ..read more

For years, researchers at SEAS have engineered metasurfaces to manipulate light based on its polarization state. That research has contributed to advances in polarization technology but metasurface technology has proven more powerful than even the researchers themselves realized. Now, they have uncovered hidden potential in these metasurfaces and demonstrated optical devices that manipulate light’s polarization state with an unprecedented degree of control ..read more

Researchers have created a device that enables them to electronically steer and focus a beam of terahertz electromagnetic energy with extreme precision. This opens the door to high-resolution, real-time imaging devices that are hundredths the size of other radar systems and more robust than other optical systems ..read more

An international team of scientists reports a novel technique for a high-brightness coherent and few-cycle duration source spanning seven optical octaves from the UV to the THz ..read more

The NIST camera is made up of grids of ultrathin electrical wires, cooled to near absolute zero, in which current moves with no resistance until a wire is struck by a photon. In these superconducting-nanowire cameras, the energy imparted by even a single photon can be detected because it shuts down the superconductivity at a particular location (pixel) on the grid. Combining all the locations and intensities of all the photons makes up an image ..read more

For wealthy countries like Switzerland, having a dense network of earthquake monitoring stations is a matter of course. This is not the case in less developed countries and on the floor of the world’s oceans. While poorer regions lack the money for the necessary number of sensors, the oceans require complex systems that can reliably measure minimal pressure changes at depths of thousands of meters and bring the data signals to the surface ..read more