March 2014

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Sea Change: The Challenges Facing Submarine Optical Communications

Valerie C. Coffey

Cable providers are maximizing fiber optic network capacity, reach and value for increasingly advanced intercontinental communications. How vulnerable is an all-optical network to interruptions?

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Optical Wireless Communications: The New “Hot Spots”?

Patricia Daukantas

Soon, indoor solid-state lighting may feed data to our electronic devices. “Li-Fi” could take some of the burden off crowded radio frequencies and open up new possibilities for communications and positioning applications.

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Multimodal Nonlinear Optical Microscopy: From Biophotonics to Geophotonics

Marco Andreana and Albert Stolow

Nonlinear optical spectroscopies such as CARS and SRS offer rapid, label-free, chemical-specific imaging. And the ability to simultaneously deploy multiple modes of nonlinear imaging on a single sample is creating some striking new views of natural materials.