AT&T team invents optical microscope that should aid in study of living cells

Article Abstract:

AT&T Bell Laboratories reports that it has invented a new optical microscope that can view living cells. Up until now electron microscopes have not been used for observing living cells because living matter could not survive the powerful beams. The microscope uses a laser and optical fiber to create an image only 12 nanometers in diameter. Optical microscopes have been around for 300 years, and work by shining a light upwards through an object. The object appears as a shadow to the viewing microscope. Electron microscopes can pick up far tinier objects than conventional optical microscopes, and operates as a scanner, converting the light received from the specimen into data that is processed by a computer and assembled into an image on a video screen. The main problem to be overcome is the microscopes' slow scanning abilities. It can currently only scan two frames a second compared to television's thirty.

Innovations, Product introduction, Optics, Microscope and microscopy, Microscopes, Microscopy, Computer Industry, New Technique

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Ignoring the bottom line: NEC's U.S. research lab has a theory: the freedom not to worry about products may lead to the best products of all

Article Abstract:

NEC Corp's NEC Research Institute, Princeton, NJ, under its president, C. William Gear, has the mission to do basic research whether such research leads to salable products or not. NEC, a Japanese computer company, has given its research organization this freedom on the theory that sometimes the best strategy for making money is not to worry about money. The notion is that a research agency cannot provide an organization with direction into the future if the organization tells its research agency what to do. NEC Research currently employs 94 researchers. Forty of them hold doctorates. Worldwide, NEC has 15,000 scientists and engineers and spends $3 billion every year on research and development. AT and T has 1,200 basic and applied researchers, IBM has 3,200 and General Electric Co has 1,050.

Electronic computers, Management Style, Industry-Sponsored Research, Scientific Research, NEC Research Institute Inc.

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Scientists at AT&T's Bell Labs double record for fiber-optic transmission

Article Abstract:

AT and T Bell Laboratories announces that a team of researchers has sent error-free communications signals 13,000 kilometers at 20 billion bits per second. That rate is double the previous record for long-distance transmission and 100 times the capacity of the most powerful underwater system. The transmissions use electronically induced 'soliton' waves. Physicist Linn Mollenauer, who headed the research team, says that solitons are the key to low-cost, ultra-high-capacity transmission in the future. To obtain error-free transmission, Mollenauer and his team used a 'sliding-frequency guiding filter.' Further tests are needed before long-distance carriers can commit to underwater systems using soliton technology.

Telecommunications services industry, Telecommunications industry, Fiber optic networks, Fiber optics, Communications protocols, Transmission Speed, Optical Communication

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