SCIENCE AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION: Science Educator’s day reaches out to teachers

More than 100 California middle and high school teachers, optics students, and professionals recently attended the Science Educator’s Day (EDAY), an outreach program sponsored annually by the Optical Society of America (OSA).
GRACE KLONOSKI OF OSA

Fiber sensing

FIGURE 1. The transparent zebrafish embryo enables paired patch clamp measurements of spinal neurons and locomotory muscle cells. Two chevron-shaped repetitive segments of tail muscle are shown. The two patch clamp recording electrodes are shown for an individual motoneuron and muscle cell. Only one electrode is visible in the field because placement of the electrodes during formation of whole-cell recording mode is done under very high magnification.

Neuroscience/Bioimaging: Optomechanics reveals transmitter roles in neuromuscular junctions

A diagram shows NIST’s ion trap used for reversible “quantum squeezing” to amplify and measure ion motion. The ion (white ball) is confined 30 microns above the trap surface by voltages applied to the eight gold electrodes and the two red electrodes. Squeezing--that reduces the uncertainty of motion measurements--is achieved by applying a specific signal to the red electrodes. The ion is moved by applying another type of signal to one of the gold electrodes. Then the squeezing is reversed, and the blue electrodes generate magnetic fields used to decode the amplified motion measurements.

NIST quantum squeezing and amplification technique advances quantum computing

LASER World of PHOTONICS 2019: Inspiring

$A nonperiodic pinhole-based photon sieve widens the display angle of a lensless digital dynamic holographic display produced by a liquid-crystal-based spatial light modulator (SLM). At top, a dynamic holographic display without the nonperiodic photon sieve has a narrow viewing angle. At bottom, a holographic display with the nonperiodic photon sieve, which diffracts light at a high angle, has a larger viewing angle. The pinhole array in the sieve is made nonperiodic to avoid creating periodic arrays of diffraction artifacts. The researchers note that the holographic objects to be displayed need to appear within the shaded regions to prevent clipping.$