Photonics for a Better World

Three aspiring biophotonics  entrepreneurs working on potentially life-saving techniques for detecting cancer and malaria have won some expert help in moving their ideas to market. As winners of a Biophotonics Startup Challenge at SPIE Photonics West in January, the three are being sponsored by Newport Spectra-Physics to attend the Biomedical Engineering Entrepreneurship Academy at the University of California, Davis, next summer. A cheek-swab test for lung cancer would be "a paradigm shift, in that we don't need to examine the tumor itself to determine the presence of cancer," said Hariharan Subramanian (Northwestern University) of the technique he and colleagues including Hemant Roy (North Shore University Health System) and Vadim Backman (Northwestern) have developed. Hariharan Subramanian describes for Biophotonics Startup Challenge judges the technology behind a cheek-swab test for lung cancer. A system based on total internal reflection principles that...

The work of rebuilding after last week’s powerful earthquakes and tsunami in Japan is underway already, even as aid organizations reach out to the injured and those whose homes were damaged or destroyed. Efforts to stabilize nuclear reactors continue amid continuing earthquakes and aftershocks around the country. Among the many organizations on hand to help are: AmeriCares www.americares.org/ Global Giving www.globalgiving.org/projects/japan-earthquake-tsunami-relief International Medical Corps www.internationalmedicalcorps.org/ Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders www.msf.org/ Oxfam International www.oxfam.org.uk/ Red Cross www.redcross.org/ Salvation Army International www.salvationarmy.org Save the Children www.savethechildren.org Shelterbox www.shelterbox.org/ United Nations World Food Programme www.wfp.org/ World Vision International www.wvi.org/wvi/wviweb.ns f Media coverage in a wide variety of formats provides updates as well as technology in...