Glasgow, Scotland--The UK-based Business Growth Fund has invested £3.85 million of capital in M Squared Lasers, taking a minority stake in the company and joining the board of directors.

Garching, Germany and Grenoble, France--A team of European researchers has discovered "significant" refraction of gamma rays by silicon.

Essonne, France--Physicists from France and Canada are using isolated, precisely timed attosecond pulses of light to study the fleeting motions of electrons.

Durham, NC--LED maker Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE) has created an experimental white-light LED that has a luminous efficacy of 254 lumens per watt.

Washington, DC--Next year's Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), held annually in San Jose, CA, will take place in June rather than its usual May, moving to June 9–14, 2013.

Atlanta, GA--Georgia Tech physicists developed a new way to rapidly and efficiently create single photons for optical quantum information processing and other applications.

Menlo Park, CA--The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) camera received "Critical Decision 1" approval by the DOE to move into the next stage of the project.

Cambridge, England--A new process developed by scientists at the University of Cambridge has the potential to drive down the cost of manufacturing solar-grade silicon by a factor of five or more.