Science

In a discovery shaped by more than a decade of steady, incremental effort rather than a dramatic breakthrough, scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and their collaborators demonstrated that great ideas flourish when paired with patience.

Flashback to 2011: a small group of young researchers gathered around an aging optical bench at the NUS Department of Chemistry, watching a faint, flickering glow on a screen. Their goal seemed deceptively simple: make an insulating crystal emit light when electricity flowed through it. The challenge, however, was nearly impossible.

Breakthrough in water-based light generation: 1,000-fold enhancement of white-light output using non-harmonic two-color femtosecond lasers Experimental demonstration that non-harmonic two-color femtosecond excitation produces a ~1,000× stronger supercontinuum in water compared to conventional single-color excitation. Credit: Institute for Molecular Science / Tsuneto Kanai

Scientists at Japan's Institute for Molecular Science have achieved a 1,000-fold enhancement in white-light generation inside water by using non-harmonic two-color femtosecond laser excitation. This previously unexplored approach in liquids unlocks new nonlinear optical pathways, enabling a dramatic boost in supercontinuum generation. The breakthrough lays a foundation for next-generation bioimaging, aqueous-phase spectroscopy, and attosecond science in water.

Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Science (NINS, Japan) and SOKENDAI have discovered a new optical principle that enables dramatically stronger light generation in water, achieving a 1,000-fold enhancement in broadband white-light output compared to conventional methods.

The team used non-harmonic two-color femtosecond laser excitation, where the two laser wavelengths do not share an integer frequency ratio. While harmonic combinations (such as fundamental and second-harmonic light) are widely employed in nonlinear optics, this is the first demonstration that non-harmonic excitation in water can unlock a powerful regime of light-matter interaction.

A new gene therapy using patients’ own stem cells has safely cured ADA-SCID — the “bubble boy” disease — in 95% of children, restoring full immune function.

A source at NASA familiar with the operation told The Post that the images from the Mars orbiter, taken in October and delayed due the government shutdown, will be released in next week.

Over the past several decades, researchers have been making rapid progress in harnessing light to enable all sorts of scientific and industrial applications. From creating stupendously accurate clocks to processing the petabytes of information zipping through data centers, the demand for turnkey technologies that can reliably generate and manipulate light has become a global market worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

One challenge that has stymied scientists is the creation of a compact source of light that fits onto a chip, which makes it much easier to integrate with existing hardware. In particular, researchers have long sought to design chips that can convert one color of laser light into a rainbow of additional colors—a necessary ingredient for building certain kinds of quantum computers and making precision measurements of frequency or time.

Unlike modern crocodiles, which mostly lurk in rivers and swamps, mekosuchines were an extraordinarily diverse and adaptable group. They filled ecological roles unlike any reptiles alive today. Some species were small and land-dwelling, while others may have hunted in forests rather than waterways.

UNSW paleontologist Professor Michael Archer describes them with a kind of gleeful disbelief. “It’s a bizarre idea,” he says, “but some of them appear to have been terrestrial hunters in the forests.”

Even more astonishing are the “drop crocs”—semi-arboreal species that, according to fossil evidence, may have climbed trees and leapt down on unsuspecting prey below. Archer likens them to reptilian leopards. “They were perhaps hunting like big cats—dropping out of trees on any unsuspecting thing they fancied for dinner,” he says.

Such behavior challenges our assumptions about crocodiles, painting a picture of ancient ecosystems filled with agile, cunning predators unlike anything in Australia today.

Via BBC news

Illustration from Science News