A large-scale, 12-year study has found that laser ablation with magnetic resonance (MR) guidance is as effective as traditional surgery in the treatment of liver tumors in some patients.
MIT researchers are trying to unleash the promise of an old idea by converting light into electricity more efficiently than ever before.
In work that could lead to completely new devices, systems and applications in computing and telecommunications, MIT researchers are bringing the long-sought goal of "optics on a chip" one step closer to market.
In a radical departure from conventional lens-based optics, MIT scientists have developed a sophisticated optical system made of mesh-like webs of light-detecting fibers.
On 28 January 2006, at 23:07 local time, a laser beam of several watts was launched from Yepun, the fourth 8.2m Unit Telescope of the Very Large Telescope, producing an artificial star, 90 km up in the atmosphere.
Particles of light serving as "quantum keys" — the latest in encryption technology — have been sent over a record-setting 200-kilometer fiber-optic link by researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NTT Corp. in Japan, and Stanford University.
With the exception of lasers and free-electron lasers, there hasn't been another fundamental way to produce coherent light for close to 50 years.
Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia can now detect the spread of skin cancer cells through the blood by literally listening to their sound.
Argonne researchers have successfully laser-cooled and trapped atoms of radium — the first time this rare element has been captured in a magneto-optical trap — with an assist from an unexpected source.
Physicists of the University of Bonn have taken one more important hurdle on the path to what is known as a quantum computer: by using 'laser tweezers' they have succeeded in sorting up to seven atoms and lining them up.
According to a study that appears in the November 2006 issue of the journal Ophthalmology, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and 21 other clinical centers have found that low-intensity laser treatment - thought to be potentially beneficial in slowing or preventing the loss of vision from age-related macular degeneration (AMD) - is ineffective in preventing complications of AMD or vision loss.
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used lasers to cool and trap erbium atoms, a "rare earth" heavy metal with unusual optical, electronic and magnetic properties.
Following up on their well-received first book, Laser Beam Shaping: Theory and Techniques, Sandia National Laboratories researchers Fred Dickey and Scott Holswade have edited (with David Shealy of the University of Alabama at Birmingham) a compact new volume, Laser Beam Shaping Applications.
Engineers and applied scientists from Harvard University have demonstrated a new photonic device with a wide range of potential commercial applications, including dramatically higher capacity for optical data storage.
Fourteen laser ranging stations participated in a campaign to track ESA's GIOVE-A satellite during the spring and summer of 2006, providing invaluable data for the characterisation of the satellite's on-board clock.
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