Programming Light on a Chip

A new integrated photonics platform that can store light and electrically control its frequency (or color) in an integrated circuit.
Credit: Loncar Lab/HarvardSEAS

Research opens doors in photonic quantum information processing, optical signal processing and microwave photonics. Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new integrated photonics platform that can store light and electrically control its frequency (or color) in an integrated circuit.

The platform draws inspiration from atomic systems and could have a wide range of applications including photonic quantum information processing, optical signal processing, and microwave photonics...

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New Materials could ‘Drive Wound Healing’ by harnessing natural healing methods

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Bioinspired aptamers enable the creation of synthetic mimics of the natural TGF‐β1 large latent complex (LLC).

Materials are widely used to help heal wounds: Collagen sponges help treat burns and pressure sores, and scaffold-like implants are used to repair bones. However, the process of tissue repair changes over time, so scientists are developing biomaterials that interact with tissues as healing takes place.

Now, Dr Ben Almquist and his team at Imperial College London have created a new molecule that could change the way traditional materials work with the body. Known as traction force-activated payloads (TrAPs), their method lets materials talk to the body’s natural repair systems to drive healing.

The researchers say incorporating TrAPs into existing medical materials c...

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TESS discovers its third new planet, with longest orbit yet

Measurements indicate a dense, gaseous, ‘sub-Neptune’ world, three times the size of Earth. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, has discovered a third small planet outside our solar system, scientists announced this week at the annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

The new planet, named HD 21749b, orbits a bright, nearby dwarf star about 53 light years away, in the constellation Reticulum, and appears to have the longest orbital period of the three planets so far identified by TESS...

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Hubble takes Gigantic Image of the Triangulum Galaxy

This gigantic image of the Triangulum Galaxy – also known as Messier 33 – is a composite of about 54 different pointings with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. With a staggering size of 34 372 times 19 345 pixels, it is the second-largest image ever released by Hubble. It is only dwarfed by the image of the Andromeda Galaxy, released in 2016.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Durbin, J. Dalcanton, and B. F. Williams (University of Washington)

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed image yet of a close neighbour of the Milky Way – the Triangulum Galaxy, a spiral galaxy located at a distance of only 3 million light-years...

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