A wildfire frontline with emergency services nearby, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada.
[Image Credit: N. Fitzhardinge / Getty Images] |
Wildfires worldwide have dominated recent news headlines—a stark reminder of their destructive power. Climate change increases wildfire frequency and intensity, as drought, high air temperatures, lightning, and strong winds lead to longer, hotter, and drier fire seasons.
Although preventing all wildfires is not possible (and, from an ecological standpoint, not even necessarily desirable), scientists stress that there’s much progress to be made in developing new approaches to fire mitigation. The cover story in the September issue of Optica’s Optics and Photonics News (OPN) offers a few examples of how optical technologies are helping wildfire researchers better understand extreme fire behavior in a changing climate—and limit the impact of future fires. |
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| Image Credit: Fraunhofer IOSB/indigo |
| A recent news release featuring work published in Applied Optics explores a new approach that allows 3D measurements to be acquired with a computational imaging approach known as quantum ghost imaging. A SPAD array detector, shown on the left of the optical setup, is critical to the new technique. |
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| Image Credit: Cuifang Kuang, Zhejiang University |
| A recent news release featuring work published in Optica Letters shows an easy-to-build, low-cost 3D nanoprinting system that can create arbitrary 3D structures with excellent features. It is compatible with most commercial microscopes. |
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Thriving Earth Exchange helps enable community science projects, like this effort in
Cambridge, Ohio to identify contaminants in drinking water.
[Image Credit: Optica] |
| A recent article in the September 2023 Optica blog explains how Optica, through the GEMM Initiative—a joint international project with the American Geophysical Union (AGU)—has joined hands with AGU’s Thriving Earth Exchange (Thriving Earth) to promote community science efforts that provide tools and solutions to community priorities related to climate change and environmental issues. |
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| Image Credit: Getty Images |
| In a recent article in the September 2023 Optica blog, the UK re-joins the €95.5bn Horizon Europe program in a move many scientists have been holding their breath for, signaling that the UK and Europe are ready to collaborate more closely again on research. |
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 Image Credit: Jin-Wei Shi |
Fellow Insight—
Innovation |
| "In a world of belief, there is much deceit, but in a world of doubt, there is truth," is Jin-Wei Shi’s motto. He keeps an open mind and strives to find innovative solutions. |
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 Image Credit: Cristina Masoller |
Fellow Insight—
Research |
| “Being in the crossroads is exciting, but sometimes it's not easy,” says Cristina Masoller about her interdisciplinary research career. |
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| Image Credit: Optica |
| Empowering Visionaries |
| This scholarship annually awards ten Black undergraduate and master's level students. Additionally, awardees will be granted a one-year membership to Optica, access to the foundation's mentorship platform, and an invitation to the 2024 Amplify Optics Immersion Program. |
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