Cover Story
Next-Generation Cell Phone Cameras
Tim Hayes
The mobile camera market is being driven by consumers’ desire for big imaging capability in smaller and smaller packages. Despite the limitations imposed by these competing demands—or perhaps because of them—many companies are unleashing... more>>
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High-Performance Sensing Using Fiber Lasers
Gary A. Miller, Geoffrey A. Cranch and Clay K. Kirkendall
Fiber laser sensors are capable of achieving fundamentally limited strain resolution. Their high sensitivity per unit length enables new sensing possibilities, miniaturization of existing sensors and simplification of sensing mechanisms. more>>
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Recycled Fiber Optics: How Old Ideas Drove New Technology
Jeff Hecht
When it comes to fiber optics, everything old is new again. Crucial building blocks of modern technology were once written off as impractical, including single-mode fiber and wavelength-division multiplexing. Now coherent communication systems, abandoned in the 1980s, have become cutting-edge high-performance systems. more>>
Following Protein Folding
Yvonne Carts-Powell
Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (Germany) used single-molecule force spectroscopy with ultrastable optical tweezers to measure the length of a single protein and the force required to cause a change in the folding state. more>>