1. The Development and Promise of a Digital Laser.
A spatial light modulator has been built into a laser where it acts as a dynamically controllable mirror that is able to shape the laser light as it is amplified http://www.technologyreview.com/view/51 ... in-africa/. Many applications for lasers are dependent on the shape of the light beam, which is typically controlled by placing various custom optics like lenses and mirrors in front of the laser. But in this system, not only is the light is already shaped when it leaves the laser, arbitrary shaping of the laser beam can be executed in real-time because the spatial light modulator is able to generate patterns electronically - hence the name ±digital laserµ. As part of the proof-of-concept they used a single laser to generate many different beams with different shapes. Applications for this could be enormous: real-time control of optical aberrations, much improved optical tweezers, possibly improved optical communications, and much more.

2. Tapping the Cloud for Supercomputer Image Processing.
Researchers have implemented a system on Amazon®s Cloud to view molecular machinery in remarkable detail by leveraging the vast computing power to very quickly process large microscope image data http://www.salk.edu/news/pressrelease_d ... ess_id=596.
Such a system should speed up disease and related research by making single-molecule super-resolution microscopy more practical, accessible, and affordable to more laboratories. To demonstrate the power of the system the group reconstructed the images of molecular machines (enzymes) and dropped the time needed to process an image from a whole day to 72 minutes; they also imaged tubulin, a protein essential for building various structures within cells and were able to drop the time from nine days to under three and a half hours. The technique essentially makes it much easier to computationally circumvent the diffraction limit and resolve blurry spots into distinct molecules and structural features.

3. Advances in 3D Printing Structures for Human Embryonic Stem Cells.
Researchers claim to have created a new 3D printing process that is the first to print human embryonic stem cells http://www.hw.ac.uk/news-events/news/pr ... -11075.htm. Printing with cells and even induced stem cells is becoming increasingly common but the methods - until now - have apparently been too harsh for handling embryonic stem cells. The group claims that the technique will allow the creation of more accurate human tissue models that are essential to in vitro drug development and toxicity-testing, and of course help to realise the collective dream of stem cell researchers and tissue engineers everywhere - that of purpose-built replacement organs without the usual problems of organ supply, rejection, or immune suppression. In related news we also had another, different, approach to creating artificial nanostructures to house cells and grow tissue by using a double-laser system that traces out paths in a solution of polymer and cells to form predetermined 3D hydrogel structures http://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_de ... icle/8004/.

4. Nano-antenna Arrays for Ultra-Efficient Solar Power.
A new tweak of standard atomic layer deposition fabrication processes has been employed to create nano-antenna arrays that should enable highly efficient solar power devices http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semi ... ar-devices. By constructing these arrays so that the electrodes are no more than 1 or 2 nanometers apart the individual antennas (±rectennasµ) serve to both absorb and rectify light energy, and in theory should be able to collect up to 70% of the Sun®s incident energy for conversion into electricity. The key advance here is that this new process is the first to actually enable the fabrication of these structures accurately at these tiny scales while simultaneously maintaining the exact nanometer separations that are required. Now that this basic process has been developed the next step will be to scale it up and actually build functional and efficient surfaces for capturing solar energy.

5. Tantalising Flexible Speakers.
Fujifilm has developed a viscoelastic polymer and ceramic material that produces a film that is soft and flexible to touch but which can be made to harden when a voltage is applied, and used this property to create a high quality speaker http://www.technologyreview.com/view/51 ... -speakers/. Rapidly changing the voltage induces controllable vibrations that are transmitted to the entire film to produce audible sound and music - even when bent, twisted, or folded. The company demonstrated a flexible display that they rolled out of a tube and which started playing music, and they even showed a folded origami swan made of the material that also produced uniform music when hooked up to electronics. And if that wasn®t amazing enough, the material even works in reverse - a strip of it is able to translate vibrations into electrical signals and this was used as a basic microphone for a speaker and amplifier for an acoustic guitar. Check out the video embedded in the page - definitely worth watching. While I®d love to see this as part of future flexible phones and tablets I think the applications for this material are huge - I can imagine this stuff being used to pump fluids around the channels of a microfluidic chip for example but this really is one of those things for which we can®t even imagine all of the possible applications.

6. The Latest on Thermoelectric Materials.
Continuing on with Fujifilm, who really impressed this week, and who has gone and developed a new organic polymer thermoelectric material and actually exhibited this as a demo-product for people to use at a conference http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NE ... 06/264517/. The device can apparently generate several milliwatts and is capable of generating this power with a temperature difference of just 1ЧC. Manufacture is supposed to be via a printing process and the company claimed that a module could be attached to the human body to power a health device or even incorporated into the back of a photovoltaic panel to convert waste heat into additional electricity. Heating and cooling applications without any moving parts are also of interest. In related news we had a group demonstrating in nanocomposite materials a type of metameterial effect, dependent on the size and composition of nanoparticles, that seriously enhanced the thermoelectric effect of the material by making it almost ±invisibleµ to electrons passing through it but not to heat-carrying phonons http://phys.org/news/2013-02-invisible- ... vices.html.

7. More Work on Evolving Optimal Gaits for Walking Legged Robots.
Researchers are working on evolving digital ±brainsµ that can be downloaded into robots that when powered-up begin exploring their environment to figure out how to accomplish arbitrary goals that have been assigned http://www.fastcompany.com/3005313/evol ... l-learning. One of the main goals of the work is to evolve gaits for robots in an effort to reduce the time it takes to get them operational and ideally getting them to walk for themselves rather than programming each new and different robot separately. The approach combines neural networks with evolutionary concepts to grow artificial digital brains that could take a simulated or physical robot body, recognize the type of body, and evolve the neural patterns needed to control it. As part of the proof-of-concept the group created neural patterns to make a four-legged robot walk in a coordinated and natural manner within a few hours. This is a simple and elegant system that exploits inbuilt modularity to scale to more complex environments, and according to the team, ±The merging of modularity with AI makes a powerful tool to give robots the adaptation abilities of animal species.µ

8. Nanostructures, Surface Plasmons, and Optical Halos.
A new surface nanostructure has been engineered whose geometric and material properties exploit a novel photonic effect that produces ±plasmonic halosµ of particular output colours http://phys.org/news/2013-02-unique-nan ... halos.html. Light incident to one side of the surface leaks through to the opposite side in a controlled fashion, essentially being filtered, and emerging as coloured halos of light. The different wavelengths of light are correlated to the circumference of the surface microstructures and by varying them, different wavelengths can be produced. This is a nice result, but I®d love to see them be able to vary these microstructures dynamically - possibly a different way to achieve the same as #1 above. In related news we also had the development of a ±super-nanogratingµ that enables a surface-plasmon-resonance spectrometer with order-of-magnitude better light transmission (primary application appears to be better sensors) http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-w ... boundaries.

9. A Molecular Switch to Boost the Formation of Neurons.
A molecule called Dkk1 has been discovered that accumulates with age and which inhibits the formation of new neurons in the brain http://www.kurzweilai.net/blocking-this ... ve-decline. Researchers observed that blocking the Dkk1 in aged mice resulted in youthful performance in spatial memory and recognition tasks - the ability of neural stem cells to self-renew and generate new neurons in the brains of these aged mice was restored to youthful levels. Mice lacking Dkk1 were also less susceptible to developing stress-induced depression. These are obviously early animal studies but successfully translating this into humans in order to prevent age-related cognitive decline would be an incredible capability.

10. Further Development of Rapid Micron-Scale 3D Laser Printing.
A spin-out company called Nanoscribe has demonstrated the fastest 3D printer of micro- and nanostructures, which uses laser lithography to fuse polymers in a 3D structure http://www.kit.edu/visit/pi_2013_12589.php. The group originally demonstrated this work by printing a micro-scale race car with the technique and this new work shows a further improvement, for example producing a high resolution 70 micrometer spacecraft in less than one minute. Such rapid production of arbitrarily complex 3D micro-structures has applications in microfluidic chips, optical waveguides, biomaterials & tissue engineering, and many other areas.

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