By David Nugent | Posted: 20 May 2010
In an homage to that great Intel ad (see below), and to lift lift your spirits from today’s stock market rout (NASDAQ is off 2.4% as I write), I want to propose a uniquely CLEO/QELS joke-for-the-day.
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By James Van Howe | Posted: 19 May 2010
At the very first conference I attended as a new graduate student, I asked my advisor, “So what talks are you going to?” To my surprise he said, “Talks? I don’t go to any talks, I catch up with my friends and colleagues and go to the expo to get ideas.” My graduate advisor was exaggerating. He did, and still does, go to talks, but his advice then, which I still take to heart, made me realize how important it is to talk to colleagues after and in between talks, as well as the importance of the expo.
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By Ksenia Dolgaleva | Posted: 19 May 2010
And scientists do to. It was a blast last night! The concert was great! The performances were so professional that I could not believe these people scientists, not full-time performers. We were truly spoiled to have Sir Peter Knight as the program announcer.
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By Ksenia Dolgaleva | Posted: 19 May 2010
Yesterday and today I’ve been attending very interesting sections on novel phenomena. There have been a lot of works done in waveguide arrays lately, especially in 2D arrays, produced by femtosecond laser writing. I would like to especially mention the talk on 2D Dynamic Localization of Light, given by Dr. Alexander Szameit on Monday (QMA7). In that presentation, he told us about the observation of approximate dynamic localization in a 2D waveguide array, in which there were two layers of periodic structures, staggered with respect to each other. Optical analog of Bloch oscillations and dynamic localizations can be observed in coupled waveguide arrays under the condition of a gradient in the effective index from waveguide to waveguide, produced by the change of the waveguide width or by curving the waveguide array. You can excite one waveguide, and the light, instead of spreading all over the array because of diffraction, would relocalize in that initially excited waveguide periodically. This phenomenon has both fundamental and practical implications. E. g., one can make a narrow-band filter by properly design the waveguide array to exhibit the relocalization for a certain wavelength, so that at the output of the structure all the light would exit through the initially excited waveguide. … (May 18, 2010) Click here to read the complete post.
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By Ksenia Dolgaleva | Posted: 18 May 2010
I’ve been looking forward to the 50th Anniversary of Laser symposium. Like many of you, I am sure. It was surprising how many people succeeded to arrive that early to attend this remarkable event. I almost felt spoiled having so many distinguished scientists in one session."CLEO Conference", "QELS Conference"
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By James Van Howe | Posted: 18 May 2010
I arrived at CLEO this afternoon bleary-eyed from a long plane ride and lack of sleep. However, three talks in CLEO Applications: Spectroscopy and Imaging held my attention firmly. What impressed me the most was how much information the particular researchers extracted from tissue or a tumor using what seemed like a small amount of data or rudimentary tools.
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By James Van Howe | Posted: 18 May 2010
All you have to do is flip to the schedule-at-a-glance in the conference program to see that today is a Mega-day or maybe I should say Tera-day at CLEO. Besides the technical program, the expo opens at 10:00 am, so does the history of the laser exhibit in the exhibition hall, the market focus presentations begin at 10:30 am, the welcome reception begins at 6:30 pm, and the day concludes with the Lasers Rock concert in the San Jose Civic auditorium (the Spanish mission-style building across from the convention center).
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By David Nugent | Posted: 18 May 2010
This year (as with every year) I will be interested to see how near (or far) the THz community is from acheiving the stand-off imaging distance stipulated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. I also expect I’ll have my opinions of time-domain versus frequency-domain spectroscopy exercised. Overall, much to look forward to during the THz Imaging session (Wednesday, 4.45 pm to 6.30pm) presided by Dan Mittleman.
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By David Nugent | Posted: 17 May 2010
I’m not usually susceptible to pangs of jealousy, but some papers presented at CLEO really make me think I chose the wrong career. I am referring to the veritable banquet of talks on anti-reflection and light trapping methods for solar cell enhancement.
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By David Nugent | Posted: 17 May 2010
Perhaps I have a warped sense of humor, but I did snigger somewhat when I noticed that the CLEO 14: Optical Metrology papers will narrowly miss being presented on the same day as the World Metrology Day. For a community that gave us the optical lattice clock, whose precision approaches 0.01 nanosecond per day, you would think they could have done a better job synchronising with this international celebration of measurement science. Cheap gag, I know. Sorry.
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