New Study Links Outdoor Artificial Light at Night to Increased Risk of Diabetes
A recent study published in Diabetologia has found a link between exposure to outdoor artificial light at night (LAN) and an increased risk of diabetes,…
Light News
20 Times More Intense: New Material Will Help Improve Phone and Television Displays
Researchers have created fluorophores between 2.4 and 20 times more intense than analogs. Scientists have created, synthesized, and analyzed a new class of fluorophores, which…
Seemingly Impossible: Nanostructure Compresses Light 10,000 Times Thinner Than a Human Hair
This major scientific advance has implications for many fields, including energy-efficient computers and quantum technology. Until recently, physicists widely believed that it was impossible to compress…
Breaking an Optical Rule – Engineers Manipulate Light at the Nanoscale
A formula developed by Rice engineers identifies materials for 3D displays and virtual reality. If you’re going to break a rule with style, make sure…
Why Do Plants Grow Towards Light?
An international team is now one step closer to explaining a central observation. Charles Darwin has had a greater influence on science than most. Though…
Turn Off Your Night Light: Keeping Any Light on While Sleeping Is Linked to Obesity, Diabetes, and High Blood Pressure
Night lights, left-on TVs, and smartphones have all been related to dramatically greater disease rates A recent Northwestern Medicine study of older men and women…
New Bioplastic Breaks Down Into Recyclable Components Upon Command
Light-based upcycling: crosslinked polymers produced from biomass Society today would not be able to exist without plastics, from low-cost mass-produced items to specialized high-tech materials….
Researchers Study Enzyme That Repairs DNA Damage from UV Rays
Biochemical ‘action shots’ with SLAC’s X-ray laser could help scientists develop synthetic enzymes for medicine and answer fundamental questions about how enzymes change during chemical…
Ultraviolet Light Could Be a Key for Life Elsewhere in the Universe
A newly published study from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reveals that UV light may have played a critical role in the emergence of life…
Two-Stage Process Makes Incandescent Bulbs More Efficient
Using a two-stage process that captures heat loss and reflects it back to the filament to be re-absorbed and re-emitted as visible light, engineers from…
Quantum-Dot Technology Ready to Improve LCD TVs
New quantum-dot technology is set to make LCD TVs more colorful and energy-efficient, all while costing less than OLED displays and other color gamut boosting…
Photon Devices Could Outperform Traditional Computers
Quantum computers will be able to perform tasks that silicon-based computers wouldn’t be able to do, like cracking the codes that protect bank transactions. Several…
Waveguide Nanoscale Device Makes Light Travel Infinitely Fast
A team of scientists and engineers report that within a nanometer-scale device, visible light can travel infinitely fast. While this won’t lead to instantaneous communication,…
ICARUS Experiment Claims Neutrinos Aren’t Faster Than Light
A new Italian experiment indicates that neutrinos stay within the speed of light. The findings were posted on arXiv.org as a preprint, and contradict rival…
A New Fiber Opens the Possibility of 3-D Displays Woven from Flexible Fibers
A team of scientists at MIT have developed a new light source from a fiber roughly as thick as a human hair. The fiber has…
New Metamaterial Design Extremely Efficient at Capturing Light
Based on computer simulations, new research shows that a new metamaterial design is able to absorb a wide range of light with extremely high efficiency….
Light-Switched Anesthetics Allow Researchers to turn Pain Nerves On and Off
A new study published in the journal Nature Methods, shows that a novel local anesthetic developed by a group of researchers at UC Berkeley, University…
Penn Researchers Build a Circuit with Light
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are pushing circuitry forward by replacing electricity with light. By moving to shorter wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, they…
