Courtesy: News-Media.net

MRI scans that detect shrinkage in specific regions of the mid-brain attacked by Alzheimer’s disease accurately diagnose the neurodegenerative disease, even before symptoms interfere with daily function, a study by the Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) in Miami and Tampa found. (More…)

Courtesy: Therapeutics Daily

Amid the economic carnage of 2008, the biotech industry stands as a survivor, although with roughly 5,000 jobs lost, a number of shelved programs and no promises of an easier time for financings in the new year, the victory is melancholy at best.

At least five companies filed for bankruptcy this year, including AtheroGenics Inc. and Accentia Biopharmaceuticals Inc. The industry lost a number of longtime CEOs, such as Metabasis Therapeutics Inc.’s Paul Laikind; and nearly 100 companies faced stock delistings due to their inability to comply with the minimum requirements.

Source: Industrial Laser solutions

An ultracompact picosecond laser meets production demands of the thin film solar cell industry

Ultrashort pulse lasers are used for high-precision structuring of many materials because of their non-thermal or “cold” ablation processing ability. However, compared to conventional laser sources established in industry, these systems are said to suffer from higher investment and operating costs. In the materials processing market picosecond laser sources are garnering more attention because conventional laser sources have reached their limits in ablation quality. To read more, click here.

Source: Industrial Laser solutions

Shorter laser pulses produce cleaner results and minimize wavelength dependence

We have previously reported on processing a variety of materials using different lasers (see ILS Dec. 2004, Dec. 2006, Feb. 2007, and Feb. and May 2008). Generally, the shorter the wavelength and the higher the peak power intensity on target, the better the results will be. In fact, wavelength dependence is more important at long pulse lengths in the tens of nanoseconds range. As the pulse length gets shorter, the wavelength dependence is minimized. This article explores some interesting observations related to using shorter-pulse lasers for materials processing and micromachining applications. To read more, click here.

Source: Industrail alser solutions

Onefive GmbH, a developer and manufacturer of ultrafast and single-frequency lasers, signed an agreement for the acquisition of Advanced Laser Diode Systems (ALS) GmbH in a cash transaction.

Founded in 2002, ALS is a manufacturer of picosecond gain switched laser diode systems and ultra-broadband high speed photo detectors, serving a wide range of industries. Additionally, the company brings in a knowhow in diode-pumped solid-state laser technology, including a license to manufacture Thin-Disk based laser systems.

Source: Industrial laser solutions

The global laser market will end 2008 at an estimated $7.1 billion in sales, a growth of 3.7% over 2007, despite slowing sales in the second half of 2008. This figure includes both diode and non-diode lasers, for use in applications as varied as metal cutting, vision correction, fiber communications, and DVD players.

Based on recent sales trends, 2009 is forecast to show a decline of 11% from 2008. The downturn is expected to be longer than the last brief contraction in early 2007, and will mark the first annual decline in the overall market since 2000-2002.

These findings are based on the Laser Focus World annual review and forecast of the laser marketplace, to be presented at the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar in San Jose, CA on January 26, 2009 (see www.marketplaceseminar.com).

“Most laser manufacturers reported healthy sales growth in early 2008,” said Dr. Tom Hausken, analyst at Strategies Unlimited who conducted the survey. “The market was buoyed by strong demand for new equipment in several industries, including solar and other energy related products, farm machinery, food processing, military and aerospace, and telecom,” he said. This boosted sales in early 2008 for laser companies like Trumpf and Rofin-Sinar.

To know more, click here.

Source: Laser Focus Decembre

Belle pub pour Imagine Optic en p.53 pour l’HASO UV. On notera aussi la pub d’une page entiere sur l’analyseur de front d’onde d’AMO/Waverfront sciences, visiblement en vente…p.81

Source: Industrial Laser solutions

Belle pub de Quantel pour YLIA en p.4

Source: Laser Focus de decembre - en version papier, mais nous pouvons vous scanner les articles. Ils seront accessibles sur le web le mois prochain.

P.25: Non classical OCT images biological sample

p.37 Fentosecond pulses reach terawatt power via Yb: CaF2 (on en avait deja parle)

p.45 et suivantes Photonics West hailed as essential Photonics event. Plus de 17 500 personnes sont attendues. Le symposium BIOS est le plus important des 4 symposia techniques, avec une augmentation des presentations scientifiques de 15%.

p.55 et suivantes: Ultra hih resolution optical coherence tomographe gets adaptive optic “glasses”…On y parle de Shack Hartmann wavefront sensors mais Imagine Optic n’est pas cite. Interessant, a voir: la liste des contacts ayant participe a la recherche, a l’universite UC Davis, Indiana University, LLNL, Duke University (fin d’article)

p.61 Femtosecond fiber laser enables reliable wafer-level processing. On y cite IMRA.

Source: R&D magasine
A visionner ici.
Tough Time ahead for government lab, p.10 et suivantes
Un article sur les projections de budgets R&D pour 2009, P.27 et suivantes
Le nouveau visage de la R&D aux US: p.34 et suivantes
Tendances de la R&D: d’ou vient le cash, p.43 et suivantes

Source: optics.org

US President-elect Barack Obama had selected laser expert and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as his energy secretary. Chu is director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and has sponsored research into biofuels and solar energy. He has been a strong advocate of controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: optics.org

Trop fort, Imagine Optic….vous etes sans cesse dans la presse. Encore un bel article par Xavier Levecq: ” Going beyond pass/fail characterization”

To read the article, click here.

Source: optics.org

A team of researchers from Germany has published details of what it believes is the first direct diode-pumped laser to produce terawatt peak powers. The system relies on a ytterbium-doped calcium fluoride (Yb:CaF2) crystal to amplify femtosecond pulses to the terawatt level, a milestone of particular interest to the laser fusion community (Optics Letters 33 2770).

Alternative ways of reaching the terawatt regime are high-energy Nd:glass or short-pulse Ti:Sapphire laser systems, although both of these methods rely on mature flash-lamp technology. To know more, click here.

Courtesy of: The Economist

FIFTY years ago a soldier injured on the battlefield would be sewn up by medics using sheep’s gut. A hundred years earlier they would have used silk; before that, metal wire. Today, surgeons often prefer plastics such as polypropylene. Sutures have a long and bizarre history, dating back to ancient Egypt, where everything from tree bark to hair was used to stitch human flesh back together again.(More…)

Lieu: The Boston University Photonics Center

Date: 5 Decembre 2008

L’evenement annuel du Photonic Center portait cette annee sur les nanotechnologies. Pour plus d’information sur cet evenement auquel H21 a participe, vou spouvez consulter la page “event” de notre blog.

Source: OPN December 2008 - numero special: optics 2008

Nous recevons ce magasine dans le cadre de notre membership OSA, en version papier. Nous pouvons vous scanner l’un des articles s’il vous interesse.

Phase Mask Could boost iris recognition Systems, p.8 (0n y parle d’optique adaptative)

Colorizing Metals with femtosecond laser pulses, p.30

Real Time Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Microscopy for clinical applications, p.32

Single-fiber Optical tweezers for cellular Micro-manipulation, p.42

Shaped femtosecond pulses for remote chemical detection, p.47

Source: Biophotonics International - november 2008

Researchers plan to use photthermal OCT to study laser heat treatments with gold nanparticles.

Researchers at Duke University in Durham, NC, have developed an imaging method based on optical coherence tomography (OCT) to monitor proteins that cause cancer.They used the technique to observe as they gently heated a solution of gold nanoparticles that they inserted into cells and into artificial material meant to represent tissue.

To know more, let us know and we’ll scan the article.

See p.36-37

Source: Bio Optics World

Researchers report promising results for the viability of a portable, handheld device using Raman spectroscopy that may enhance the differential diagnosis of non-melanoma cancer lesions, inflamed scar tissue, and healthy skin in vivo. Recently published in Lasers in Surgery and Medicine, the peer-reviewed professional journal of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery, the retrospective study discussed the advantages of using Raman microspectroscopy to examine and classify pathologic skin cells.

In his article entitled “In Vivo Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer Diagnosis Using Raman Microspectroscopy,” author Chad A. Lieber, PhD, a biomedical engineer and head of the bio-optics laboratory at CHOC Research Institute, Children’s Hospital of Orange County, explains how his research team from Vanderbilt University used the Raman technique to noninvasively classify nonmelanoma skin cancers.

To know more, click here.

Courtesy: Yahoo! News

Consumers should be wary of Web sites from clinics that offer stem cell treatments, says a study that found a lack of firm medical evidence to back up their claims. The Web sites in the study generally portrayed their therapies as safe, effective and ready for routine use, but published research doesn’t support that “overoptimistic” picture, the study authors said.(More…)

Courtesy: Reuters

Researchers have long been looking for ways to repair the brain damage from stroke, which can cause permanent disability. Studies have shown that transplanting brain cells produced from human embryonic stem cells have helped fix such damage in the brains of rats. (More…)

Un article sur l’histoire de Quantronix, dans Laser Systemes Europe de ce mois-ci, p.8 a 10

Speed to Market or FDA compliance: It must be both, dans Medical Design Technology de Novembre, p32-34

Approaches to aspheric metrology become more diverse, p.67a 69

Coustery: Fierce Biotech

Personalized medicine is often described as “the right drug for the right person.” It uses an individual’s genetic information to improve health outcomes. Consider for example the fact that, according to a study quoted in a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, most drugs prescribed today are effective for less than 60% of patients who take them. As an alternative, personalized medicine offers many potential benefits – from safer, more efficient drugs better tailored to meet an individual’s needs to huge healthcare savings due to better prevention, diagnostics and treatment. (More…)

Courtesy: Guardian

French genome engineering company Cellectis has launched its first gene research kit, which it said allows scientists to produce stable cell clones more quickly and precisely than was previously possible.

Cellectis said on Monday the gene surgery precision tools in the kit enable the development of stable cell clones in four weeks instead of the six to 12 months it usually takes using other methods. (More…)

Source: Laser Focus World

Theoretical physicist Uwe Thumm and colleagues Feng He and Andreas Becker have found a way to control the motion of hydrogen molecules’ electrons and nuclei.

Thumm is a professor of physics at Kansas State University (K-State; Manhattan, KS). Feng is a research associate at the K-State physics department, and Becker is a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The colleagues were able to model the steering of electrons in a hydrogen molecule using attosecond laser pulses.

To know more, click here.

Courtesy: Lead Discovery

In 2008, the six tumor types covered in this report are forecast to account for over 1.2m new cases of cancer. Collectively, the 36 different drugs in Phase III development for the six tumor types are forecast to achieve $7,049m in sales by 2017. This constitutes a significant proportion of the oncology market, thus representing ample commercial opportunities for drug developers. (More…)

Source: optics.org

Ultrafast laser developer Raydiance bucks the downward economic trend by raising $20 million in new funding.

US firm Raydiance, a developer of compact and fully programmable ultrafast laser systems, has secured $20 million in new funding. The company plans to use the cash to scale up its infrastructure, develop its technology and enhance its ability to address larger commercial markets.

“After four successful years of developing the Raydiance ultrafast laser platform, bringing the technology to market and establishing a solid client base, this new round of funding will allow us to execute fully on our next stage of growth and development,” said Raydiance co-founder and president Scott Davison.

To date, Raydiance has secured over $25 million in venture capital financing and $10 million in government funded R&D contracts, which enabled the launch of its first commercial product in 2007.

Source: optics.org

Techniques for measuring ultrashort pulses have come a long way in the last 10 years. Marie Freebody speaks to Rick Trebino about the intricacies of working at femtosecond timescales and how the devices that characterize such pulses can be commercialized

Rick Trebino

Rick Trebino is the Georgia Research Alliance-Eminent Scholar and chair of Ultrafast Optical Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, US. He is the co-inventor of frequency-resolved optical grating (FROG) and the inventor of grating eliminated no-nonsense observation of ultrafast incident laser light E-fields (GRENOUILLE) – two methods for measuring ultrashort laser pulses. In 2001, Trebino founded Swamp Optics, a US company that offers innovative and cost-effective devices for measuring ultrashort laser pulses.

To know more, click here.

Source: optics.org

The optical technology giant’s CEO resigns, but not before he slashes seven test and measurement research centres and merges two laser diode-based divisions.

To know more, click here.

Source: optics.org

Bulky terahertz spectroscopy systems based on ultrafast lasers could be superseded by a miniature design based on a semiconductor source.

An all-semiconductor room-temperature terahertz time-domain spectrometer has been unveiled by researchers in the UK. The team believes that its spectrometer is the first to use an all-semiconductor construction, which gives it both cost and size advantages over traditional designs based on ultrafast lasers (Optics Letters 33 2125).

Terahertz researchers

“Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy is traditionally based on Ti:sapphire lasers, which although have excellent performance, are cost- and size-expensive,” Vasileios Apostolopoulos from the University of Southampton told optics.org. “Here we are using a miniature semiconductor laser source developed by Anne Tropper’s group at Southampton. It has a very high repetition rate, and the potential to produce sub-200 fs pulses in the next 1–2 years.”

To know more, click here.

Source: optics.org

optics.org speaks to the team that has produced 3.7 femtosecond pulses in the deep ultraviolet, the shortest duration ever reported in this waveband.

Deep ultraviolet femtosecond pulses

Deep ultraviolet (DUV) pulses with a duration of just 3.7 femtoseconds have been generated by researchers at the Max-Planck-Institute for Quantum Optics in Germany. The pulses are said to be the shortest ever observed at this wavelength range and could allow the team to influence the outcome of chemical reactions by controlling the motion of electrons in molecules. (Optics Express 16 18956)

To know more, click here.

Source: optics org

A visible supercontinuum created by a continuous-wave low-power fibre laser could be ideal for spectroscopy, microscopy and optical coherence tomography.

By modifying the zero-dispersion wavelength (ZDW) along a photonic crystal fibre (PCF), researchers in France have used a continuous-wave (CW) laser to create a supercontinuum that extends into the visible region of the spectrum. The supercontinuum spans from 670 to 1350 nm and has an output power of 9.5 W for a pump of just 20 W (Optics Letters 33 2407).

To know more, click here.