Phys .org: Researchers use quantum mechanics to see objects without looking at them

Phys .org: Researchers use quantum mechanics to see objects without looking at them . “Imagine that you have a camera cartridge that might contain a roll of photographic film. The roll is so sensitive that coming into contact with even a single photon would destroy it. With our everyday classical means there is no way there’s no way to know whether there’s film in the cartridge, but in the quantum world it can be done.”

Hackaday: Inexpensive Reading Glasses Become Stereoscope

Hackaday: Inexpensive Reading Glasses Become Stereoscope. “It’s an unfortunate consequence of growing older, that no longer are you able to read the print on a SOT-23 package or solder a QFN without magnification. Your eyes inexorably start to fail, and to have any hope of continuing a set of reading glasses is required. We have this in common with [Niklas Roy], who noticed while shopping for cheap reading glasses that their lenses were of surprisingly good quality. The result of this observation was a stereoscope made from card and a few euros worth of eyewear.”

Seeing the light: researchers develop new AI system using light to learn associatively (University of Oxford)

University of Oxford: Seeing the light: researchers develop new AI system using light to learn associatively . “Researchers at Oxford University’s Department of Materials, working in collaboration with colleagues from Exeter and Munster have developed an on-chip optical processor capable of detecting similarities in datasets up to 1,000 times faster than conventional machine learning algorithms running on electronic processors.”

South China Morning Post: A stunning 16th-century Chinese ‘magic mirror’ was found in a US art museum after being tucked away in storage

South China Morning Post: A stunning 16th-century Chinese ‘magic mirror’ was found in a US art museum after being tucked away in storage. “Buddhist magic mirrors, also called ‘transparent’ and ‘light-penetrating’ mirrors, were first made in China during the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) and were also a notable artefact from Japan’s Edo period (1603–1867)….When the mirror is held to light from the correct angle, the bronze reflects the light to reveal the secret image, a buddha in the case of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s relic.”

Amateur Photographer: Brian May Reveals Plans For First International Stereoscopy Day

Amateur Photographer: Brian May Reveals Plans For First International Stereoscopy Day. “The event is planned to be a new international celebration of the birth of stereoscopic 3D. It will celebrate the inventor of stereoscopy, the British genius and polymath Sir Charles Wheatstone (who revealed his stereoscope in 1838), its early pioneers and their successors up to the present day.”

Pro Video Coalition: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gets Cooke Archive

Pro Video Coalition: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gets Cooke Archive. “Cooke Optics, the award-winning manufacturer of precision lenses for film and television, has transferred the Cooke Archive, an historic collection dating from 1886, and that covers covers development of lens design for photography and film through the 20th century, to a new permanent home at the Margaret Herrick Library, the main repository of research materials of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, located in Beverly Hills, California.”

Scientific American: Light-Based Quantum Computer Exceeds Fastest Classical Supercomputers

Scientific American: Light-Based Quantum Computer Exceeds Fastest Classical Supercomputers. “For the first time, a quantum computer made from photons—particles of light—has outperformed even the fastest classical supercomputers. Physicists led by Chao-Yang Lu and Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Shanghai performed a technique called Gaussian boson sampling with their quantum computer, named Jiŭzhāng. The result, reported in the journal Science, was 76 detected photons—far above and beyond the previous record of five detected photons and the capabilities of classical supercomputers.”

EurekAlert: SPIE announces partnership with global open-knowledge platform The Lens

EurekAlert: SPIE announces partnership with global open-knowledge platform The Lens. “Under the agreement, all scholarly citation and patent citation data for SPIE publications curated by The Lens will be integrated into the SPIE Digital Library and available to readers. The SPIE Digital Library, the world’s largest collection of optics and photonics applied research, comprises more than 500,000 publications which cover topical areas ranging from biomedical optics and neuroscience, to physics and astronomy-related technology.”

Optics .org: SPIE Optics + Photonics Digital Forum opens with free access to 2,000 talks

Optics .org: SPIE Optics + Photonics Digital Forum opens with free access to 2,000 talks. “The online conference, which runs through Friday, 28 August, after which presentations will continue to be accessible via the website, includes over 1,200 on-demand technical presentations, 300 posters, and 900 manuscripts across three tracks: Nanoscience and Engineering Applications, Organic Photonics and Electronics, and Optical Engineering and Applications.”

Cornell Chronicle: Research reflects how AI sees through the looking glass

Cornell Chronicle: Research reflects how AI sees through the looking glass. “Things are different on the other side of the mirror. Text is backward. Clocks run counterclockwise. Cars drive on the wrong side of the road. Right hands become left hands. Intrigued by how reflection changes images in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, a team of Cornell researchers used artificial intelligence to investigate what sets originals apart from their reflections. Their algorithms learned to pick up on unexpected clues such as hair parts, gaze direction and, surprisingly, beards – findings with implications for training machine learning models and detecting faked images.”

BusinessWire: SPIE Digital Library to Reduce Institutional Subscription Prices by 10% for 2021 (PRESS RELEASE)

BusinessWire: SPIE Digital Library to Reduce Institutional Subscription Prices by 10% for 2021 (PRESS RELEASE). “SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, today announced a 10% price reduction for 2021 SPIE Digital Library and SPIE Journal institutional subscriptions….The SPIE Digital Library, the world’s largest collection of optics and photonics applied research, comprises more than 525,000 publications. SPIE is committed to enabling the broadest possible dissemination of information to researchers, engineers, and academics worldwide.”

Tarsier Goggles: a virtual reality tool for experiencing the optics of a dark-adapted primate visual system (Dartmouth Digital Commons)

Dartmouth Digital Commons: Tarsier Goggles: a virtual reality tool for experiencing the optics of a dark-adapted primate visual system . “Tarsier Goggles is a virtual reality (VR) project that allows everyone to experience how a tarsier might see. It serves as a tool to engage in hands-on scientific concepts in optics, perceptual science, and evolutionary biology, and also challenges our own thinking about our environment. The experience is self-guided and allows users to toggle between human and tarsier in order to explore different realistic environments with both sets of eyes. Built in Unity3D with SteamVR for the HTC Vive Pro. For various functionalities like teleportation, splash screens, and tooltips for our tutorial, we use Virtual Reality Toolkit (VRTK), an open source library.” Tarsiers are those primates with enormous eyes. MNN has a good overview.