Researchers in Carnegie Mellon University's Soft Machines Lab have developed a silver-hydrogel composite that has high electrical conductivity and is capable of delivering direct current while maintaining soft compliance and deformability.
Effect Photonics raises $37M to develop single-chip coherent optics
12 Mar 2021
First close of its Series C round, co-led by Smile Invest and existing investor Innovation Industries.
10Gbps 40km DWDM narrow tunable SFP+ transceiver for mobile fronthaul.Effect Photonics has this week announced the $37M (â¬31M) first close of its Series C funding round, co-led by Smile Invest together with existing investor Innovation Industries Fund, exactly one year after announcing the tape-out of its Manta full photonic integration coherent PIC (photonic integrated circuit).
Smile Invest is joined in backing the Eindhoven, Netherlands-based firm, by existing investors including Innovation Industries Fund, Photon Delta, btov Partners, Brabant Development Agency, and individual investors.
Photonics West 2021: Microendoscopy shows details of neuron responses
11 Mar 2021
Yeka Aponte investigates how behaviors are regulated and the implications for pain relief.
Pain and gain: the brain s response
Studies of neural behavior using microendoscopy techniques are enhancing the understanding of how the brains of mice respond to both appetite and pain.
Presenting in the SPIE Photonics West Digital Forum, Yeka Aponte from the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University discussed how this could ultimately point towards novel pain relief treatments for humans. We are studying the mechanisms by which brain circuits regulate natural or survival behavior, said Aponte. This is relevant to two current global epidemics: obesity, and the crisis of opioid overdoses.
Photonics West 2021: high power ultrafast lasers â quo vadis?
11 Mar 2021
Talk considers challenges in power scaling ultrafast sources; state of the art in thin disk multipass lasers, and their future.
Dr. Marwan Abdou Ahmed from U Stuttgart IFSW.Mondayâs LASE Hot Topics presentation by Dr. Marwan Abdou Ahmed, of the University of Stuttgart, Germany, focused on high-power ultrafast lasers. His talk was enigmatically titled âDevelopment of high power ultrafast lasers: Quo vadis?â
He considered the challenges in power scaling of ultrafast lasers, the state of the art in high power thin disk multipass lasers, and the future of ultrafast lasers with examples from various industrial sources.
Low-voltage, low-power pressure sensors for monitoring health Wearable and implantable sensors that are designed to monitor various indicators of patient health have to be able to respond to very small changes in bodily pressure.
They need to be able to monitor physical functions such as pulse rate, blood pressure and even subtle changes in vocal cord vibrations in real time with a high degree of sensitivity.
These responses are generated when a substance in the sensor gates, or allows selected pressure signals to pass to a transistor, which then conducts and amplifies these signals for detection.
Recently, organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) have been found to exhibit much improved signal amplification capabilities at lower voltages and power consumption. However, to date, there has been little exploration of OECTs for use in pressure sensors because they are usually paired with liquid gating substances, which do not respond well to external pr