Photonics for a Better World

The photograph "Studying" by Handi Laksono captured in a home in Wae Rebo, Flores NTT, Indonesia, on  1 September 2014, is the People's Choice Award winner in the SPIE International Year of Light Photo Contest. A photo of a 5-year-old boy studying in a dark hut, with only natural morning light streaming through a small window, has been selected for the People's Choice Award in the SPIE International Year of Light Photo Contest. The contest was sponsored by SPIE Professional , the quarterly magazine of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, as part of the International Year of Light observance. SPIE is a Founding Partner. Captured by Javanese travel and landscape photographer Handi Laksono , the winning photo was taken after Laksono hiked three hours to the remote village of Wae Rebo on Flores Island in Indonesia. Wae Rebo's only lighting source is solar, either direct sunlight or a few small solar panels, Laksono said. He n

Mars Curiosity Rover scientist Melissa Rice inspires the next generation with talk of exploring the Red Planet: see the video on SPIE. tv [23:55]. (Above, Rice at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab with a model of the Curiosity.) If it wanted to, NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover could stretch its 7-foot arm up from its 10-foot-high body and slam-dunk a basketball. Admittedly, it isn’t likely that any of NASA’s Rovers -– cars on Mars, as some call them –- will find any basketball hoops on the Red Planet. But the space agency’s newest robotic Mars explorer, the Curiosity, has found evidence of ancient lakes, captured images that reveal the composition of rocks on the planet’s surface, and done something many of us have done: taken selfies to post on FaceBook. Curiosity’s discoveries are far from over. The robot is just now reaching the foothills of the lofty (5.5 km, or 18,000 feet) Mount Sharp, with its mission to scale the peak and report back about what it finds along the way