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OPTICS PROTOTYPING

Automotive industry drives rapid manufacturing of free-form optics

Optical manufacturers are increasingly pressured to rapidly prototype and test free-form optical parts for consumer photonic systems. Although

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the requirements for accuracy,
smoothness, and finish are demanding,
diamond-machining techniques are up
to the challenge.
CHRISTIAN HOLME AND PALLE G. DINESEN OF
KALEIDO TECHNOLOGY (FARUM, DENMARK)
WWW.LASERFOCUSWORLD.COM/
ARTICLES/303089

SCIENCE AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION
International Physics Olympiad
advances knowledge and builds
connections
U.S. Physics Team wins gold and
silver medals at international physics
competition. GRACE KLONOSKI OF OSA
WWW.LASERFOCUSWORLD.COM/
ARTICLES/302711

WEBCAST: PRECISION MOTION CONTROL
From micropositioning
to nanopositioning
Guy Bouvrée of BC&S discusses
the requirements, components, and
design constraints of motion systems.
WWW.LASERFOCUSWORLD.COM
CLICK ON “WEBCAS TS”

www.laserfocusworld.com

editor’s desk
From the farm to the fork

The winemakers of Bordeaux consider the 2005 vintage to be an extraordinary one … perhaps the greatest in the past 50 years, according to some reports. And while the combination of that year’s weather and soil (called terroir in France) in the Bordeaux region strongly influenced the quality of the grapes, the resulting wine, which is not yet available in stores, is also a product of the centuries old “art” of Bordeaux winemaking. Nowadays though—just as a winemaker may blend several different wines to create a different one—the ancient art of winemaking is increasingly being blended with modern science to provide novel approaches to the overall wine production process.

Goals may include, for instance, improved yield or better controlled flavor profiles.

Driven in part by new analysis techniques and increasingly turnkey instrumentation, this blending of art and science is occurring across the entire food production chain, from the farm to the fork. Food safety

(detection and identification of contaminants) may be an obvious application of the science, but similar analysis techniques can also identify the origin of food or can be used to determine the freshness of eggs (see cover and page 62). Other developments are creating added opportunities. For example, rugged optical fibers enable a spectrometer to be remote from a hostile test environment, so a portable near-IR reflectance spectrometer with a fiber probe can evaluate beef tenderness in a meat processing plant—taking the art of that assessment away from the experienced farmer or butcher (see page 83).

In a very different arena, the progress made developing turnkey ultrafast laser systems is increasingly bringing the technology to the fore. Many materials processing opportunities using ultrafast lasers are being explored, including their use to produce nanoparticles (see page 74), while other researchers are looking at the potential applications of plasma channels, formed by femtosecond pulses, that guide laser filaments over long distances and may have applications in remote sensing and laser lightning rods (see page 87).

Stephen G. Anderson

Associate Publisher/Editor in Chief

stevega@pennwell.com

Editorial Advisory Board

Dan Botez, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Connie Chang-Hasnain, UC Berkeley Center for Opto-electronic Nanostructured Semiconductor Technologies; Pat Edsell, Avanex; Thomas Giallorenzi, Naval Research Laboratory; Ron Gibbs, Ron Gibbs Associates; Ralph R. Jacobs, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Anthony M. Johnson, Center for Advanced Studies in Photonics Research, University of Maryland Baltimore County; Kenneth Kaufmann, Hamamatsu Corp.; Larry Marshall, Private Investor; Jan Melles, Photonics Investments; Masahiro Joe Nagasawa, TEM Co. Ltd.; David Richardson, University of Southampton; Ralph A. Rotolante, Vicon Infrared; Toby Strite, JDS Uniphase.