Photonics for a Better World

Optical technologies and the people who work with them have brought tangible social, environmental, health, and economic gains to humanity. A prime example is the solar cooker, designed for sunny and dry climates. Varieties of these have provided thousands of people with alternative sources for cooking fuel. The top five countries with ideal solar cooking climates are India, China, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. In the photo above, Sandipan Mukherjee demonstrates the popular use of solar cookers in a remote village in Nubra Valley, India. Off the national power grid, Nubra Valley is tucked away in a high-altitude, cold desert between the Himalaya and Karakoram mountain ranges. Solar-based technology plays a crucial role inthe village. Although it can be bitterly cold in Turtuk during the winter, the area still receives strong sun rays. The three types of solar cookers are heat-trap boxes, curved concentrators, and panel cookers. The solar cooker shown above is a curved ...

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which kicks off each year in Las Vegas and did so again last week, is a mega-event that identifies trends and gives some of the biggest gurus in technology a platform. The mainstream media covers it all with gusto. Of course the tech media is all over it too, with everything from product specs to analysis of tweets to see who the biggest “influencers” are . The good thing about CES is that there is something for everyone – but that’s also the bad thing. Significant developments or important new products might just be overshadowed by something with a bigger flash, but possibly not much substance. And there’s also the paradox of constant monitoring. As Junko Yoshida says in EE Times : “While consumers see the Orwellian implications of constant monitoring, they can’t resist the temptations to see or hear things that wouldn’t be on the radar without embedded cameras or microphones.” Of course photonics plays a big role in just about everything toute...

This past weekend marked the conclusion of the 2013 Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, held in Irvine, California. It was the sixth time the DOE-sponsored event has been held in the United States, but the first time outside of Washington, DC. Besides the obvious benefits of exposure to a new audience, the contest made the best of the more dependable California sunshine, although there was some rain one day, and the first weekend was a challenge with hot temperatures and 50 mph Santa Ana winds. In any case each team was able to tally a full 100 points for the Energy Conversion part of the competition – meaning every house produced more energy than it consumed – for the first time ever. SPIE Newsroom and SPIE.TV spent some time in Irvine and focused on the technical aspects of some of the houses. We had an expert commentator to help – Adam Plesniak of Amonix, the concentrating PV company located in nearby Seal Beach. Adam’s view, and that of many others we encountered, is tha...

What better opportunity than Earth Day to point out another way that photonics plays a role in improving the planet? Awareness of the importance of taking care of the earth is becoming more widespread, and most importantly, not just in the affluent countries of the world. In fact, the developing nations are where some of the most innovative efforts are taking place. We've highlighted micro-solar projects in Africa and elsewhere, and the previous post about the LEDs being used to protect livestock from lions shows another brilliant but simple use of photonics. Here's one that combines solar energy and an expanding communications infrastructure in India. AirJaldi Networks, a company that provides solar-powered Wi-Fi for the rural masses, was plagued by the difficulty of maintaining power to its mobile phone towers in remote areas, especially during the monsoon season. Battery backups were expensive and frequently necessary. As GreenTech Solar reports : Here’s how it works: ...

Experts in STEM education (science, technology, education, and mathematics) point out that in teaching, the “how” of science is more important that the “what.” As Shannon Warren , director of a science education partnership grant program in Washington State, noted in a recent magazine feature, learning science means exploring and analyzing, not just memorizing facts and listening to lectures. The “why” is an equally key question, and one that evokes very personalized responses. Professor Jin Kang in his lab at Johns Hopkins University Take Jin Kang ’s story, for example. Twenty years ago, Kang was an undergraduate physics student discovering that while he found the theory behind optics and photonics interesting, what he really loved was building lasers and other optical devices. Kang is now a professor and the chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Johns Hopkins University. He conducts research in biophotonics, fiber optics, and optoelectronic ...

"Light is at the origin of all of life," proponents of the declaration of 2015 as the International Year of Light (IYOL) told the UNESCO Executive Board last week. The board agreed at its meeting in Paris, giving its enthusiastic support to an international effort to recognize optics and photonics technologies through a year-long observance in 2015. The rainbow is expected to be the symbol for the International Year of Light. Although a final declaration by the UN General Assembly is not quite a done deal, the UNESCO support paves the way for a large-scale effort to raise awareness of the essential role light-based technologies play in driving industry and enhancing life. Why is awareness so important?. "The science and technology of light have revolutionized medicine, have opened up international communication via the Internet, and are central to linking cultural, economic and political aspects of global society," SPIE Fellow Paul Buah-Bass...

October 2012 issue of SPIE Professional It's estimated that three billion people — more than 40% of the world’s population — use wood, coal, charcoal, and other matter for cooking and heating and that 1.5 billion people lack access to electricity. The human, social, economic, and environmental costs of this inequity are tremendous because energy is fundamental to health, safety, comfort, and progress for all seven billion people on Planet Earth. Yet access to energy varies widely depending on whether people live in a wealthy or a poor country. But more attention is being paid to this growing problem. As Steve Eglash (Stanford University Energy and Environment Affiliates Program) and Kara Fisher (Duke University) write in the October issue of SPIE Professional , the optics and photonics community are finding sustainable ways to generate, convert, store, and use energy without destroying the planet. The importance of sustainable energy was reinforced when the ...

Photonics enjoyed the spotlight in Washington, D.C., last week First, on Wednesday morning leaders from the optics and photonics community give an enthusiastic launch to the new National Research Council report “Optics and Photonics, Essential Technologies for Our Nation,” aided by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and former Intel CEO Craig Barrett. Chu and Barrett were featured speakers at a briefing for agency leaders. Their remarks included references to several important benefits enabled by photonics: economic strength sustainable energy sources new methods for medical detection and treatment of diseases and chronic conditions more efficient lighting, computing, manufacturing, automobiles, and very much more. Wednesday afternoon, the House R&D caucus heard from leaders of four societies in the sector about the report’s findings on economic impacts of optics and photonics, the importance of improved STEM education, and the committee’s recommendations on...

Governments in Asia, Europe, North America, and elsewhere are finding new ways to prioritize their efforts to support optics technologies and industries and to advance their own national competitiveness and economic success. A recent article in the SPIE Professional magazine surveyed the latest developments around the world. This post shares some of the magazine's report on what is happening in Asia, where a major focus is on efficient energy. Future posts will focus on Europe and North America. Asian governments have taken varied approaches in their support of optics and photonics industries. Last year, the Chinese government announced the 12th iteration of its Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development. The plan, which runs through 2015, includes a focus on the economic value of seven “strategic emerging industries.” Recent reports have estimated that the Chinese government will spend $1.5 trillion US on subsidies in the fields of biotechnology,...

Eco-metamaterials engineered by optics and photonics researchers can lighten our environmental footprint and just may be -- ironically -- more sustainable than materials found in nature. So say Nerac analysts Rosemarie Szostak and Michael Kapralos in their article in the July 2012 issue of SPIE Professional magazine. Metamaterials combine micro or nano structural features instead of relying on composition alone to achieve the desired properties. They have sparked the imagination of the optics and photonics community with their unusual characteristics, and researchers are developing unique metamaterials for their potential as invisibility cloaks, high-efficiency photovoltaics, super-antennas, and ultrabright LEDs. Eco-metamaterials may not yet be "green" based on their composition. However, the reduced quantities of materials, especially toxic ones, used in their development and metamaterials’ inherent potential for exotic properties allow technologists to...

This is just the sort of thing Theodore Maiman said he had in mind when was interviewed 50 years ago, after being the first to successfully demonstrate the laser: medical procedures that would change or even save lives in ways as yet unimagined. This time, the laser has been used to perform surgery on an unborn fetus. Surgeons at the University of Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital reported they have performed the first-ever in utero surgery on a fetus . A rare tumor diagnosed about halfway through the pregnancy via ultrasound was removed from the roof of the mouth using laesr technology. A few months later, the baby was born at full-term and healthy. Never mind that one newspaper at the time called Maiman’s pioneering ruby laser “a solution in search of a problem.” Applications have been developed in nearly every facet of life, and the list of medical solutions that lasers provide is impressive. Starting from the beginning, medical applications of lasers were life-enh...

This image of the Small Magellanic Cloud located 163,000 light-years from Earth, was rendered from data acquired by Ryan Hannahoe and processed by Robert Gendler, from equipment at the Fair Dinkum Skies Observatory in Australia -- an example of both the dazzling images we now have from space and the collaboration that characterizes space exploration and astronomy. Through the capabilities of optics and photonics, astronomical telescopes and instrumentation systems have vastly increased humankind’s knowledge about the physical composition and history of the universe -- including our own planet and its natural phenomena. And, again thanks to optics and photonics, these mind-bending data and dazzling images are not the purview of only astronomers and physicists. Images in particular -- arriving at Earth, as Nobel Laureate Saul Perlmutter observed in a recent talk, on light that left its origin in the cosmos in some cases before our solar system was formed-- are rendered on ...

Remote sensing technologies provide solutions to numerous and varied problems around the world. Here are six recent applications: How can a remote yet vital wetland be monitored? Problem: The socio-economically vital Sudd wetland in southern Sudan’s Nile River swamps is threatened by overgrazing and by loss of vegetation during the wet season. But its remoteness and inaccessibility due to civil war prevents field studies. Solution: Using geospatial data-authoring software to quantify wetland cover changes, researchers from Ain Shams University in Cairo developed a process to interpret Landsat-generated imagery, map land-cover types and compare the images to produce change-detection maps. Read more in the team’s article in the SPIE Newsroom .  What happens to land stability after coal is mined? Problem: Extracting coal from underground mines generally leads to subsidence of the overlaying land within days or sometimes years. Local governments need information about land s...

How I spent my summer vacation: volunteering in the tropics. Three student friends of SPIE Fellow Dr. Carmiña Londoño will have some great stories to tell about their summer break as they go back to school in the next few weeks. They spent a week this summer as volunteers teaching optics and other topics at an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. Supported financially by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and the Optical Society of America, and by Kreischer Optics who provided lenses and prisms, Londoño’s group added an optics component to the arts and crafts, sports, language classes, and other activities organized by Orphanage Outreach . The students -- Lillian, Nora, and Matthew -- also spent part of the week hoeing, weeding, and preparing the orphanage’s gardens for future planting. For Londoño and Lillian -- her daughter -- this was the second such trip, and part of their tradition of taking a one-week volunteer vacation each sum...

Not only does Philips Lighting North America ’s 10-watt LED bulb have the potential for saving billions of dollars in U.S. energy consumption and avoiding millions of metric tons of carbon emissions: it’s dimmable as well.   The bulb has earned the San Jose, California, company the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) — the L Prize — for a 10-watt replacement for the 60-watt incandescent bulb. Replacing every 60-watt incandescent bulb in the U.S. with Philips’10-watt LED bulb would save 35 terawatt-hours of electricity or $3.9 billion in one year and avoid 20 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to the DOE prize announcement (enough electricity to power the lights of nearly 18 million U.S. households , or nearly triple the annual electricity consumption in Washington, D.C.).  Steve Landau of Philips talks about the prize-winning bulb in this SPIE Newsroom video: LEDs for wireless, too Researchers at the Fraunhofe...

The recent news from Brussels that the European Commission is proposing to increase research and innovation funding to €80.2 billion for the 2014-2020 budget has a decidedly green tint. Some of the money in the proposal to fund the EU’s newly named Horizon 2020 strategy would be earmarked for energy, and some to make the economy greener and more competitive. Examples of how photonics -- one of the six Key Enabling Technologies identified by the European Commission -- drives innovation in support of sustainability are everywhere. As an overview, Steve Eglash (Stanford University and Precourt Institute for Energy) explains in this video just what "green photonics" is, and talks about the integration of disciplines such as psychology, law, business, and physics. In a keynote paper presented last March at SPIE Eco-Photonics in Strasbourg, Berit Wessler (OSRAM) and Ursula Tober (VDI Technologiezentrum) provided a comprehensive look at the direct environmental bene...