Photonics for a Better World

Next week, on 3 April, a new era will begin in remote-sensing-aided disaster response. The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that the Sentinel-1A radar satellite will be launched from the European spaceport in French Guiana. Sentinel-1, the first in the family of Copernicus satellites, will be used to care for many aspects of our environment, from detecting and tracking oil spills and mapping sea ice to monitoring movement in land surfaces and mapping changes in the way land is used. It will also play a crucial role in providing timely information to help respond to natural disasters and assist in emergency response. Photo: ESA/ATG media lab Sentinel-1 is designed for responding rapidly to aid emergencies and disasters such as flooding and earthquakes. The first satellite carries an advanced radar sensor to image Earth’s surface through cloud and rain and regardless of time of day. Each Sentinel mission is based on a constellation of two sat...

What photonics enables the clinician to see: Fig. 2 H&E histology, OCT B-scan images, and three-dimensional (3-D)OCT volume render for (a–c) rectal and (d–f) duodenal biopsies. Bar=0.2  mm. From “Spatially resolved optical and ultrastructural properties of colorectal and pancreatic field carcinogenesis observed by inverse spectroscopic optical coherence tomography,” Journal of Biomedical Optics 19(3), 036013 (Mar 18, 2014). Having a colonoscopy? If you're 50 or older, is there really a question? No question at all -- if you have the means to go in for a colonoscopy, do so. The optics-and-photonics-enabled technology could save your life. So say the results of recent research into the effectiveness of the endoscopic inspection of the colon as a means of detecting and removing cancerous or potentially dangerous growths, reports optics.org on an analysis of clinic data from the American Cancer Society (ACS). In the USA, say ACS authors in the journal CA , colo...