John Hammond (our patent agent over at  Patent Innovations) and his colleague Bob Gunderman are the authors of a really nice newsletter called The Limited Monopoly. A few years ago they wrote a hysterical article entitled "Patentability and the 'Long-Felt Unmet Need'—The Christmas Tree Stand as a Case Study." In the spirit of the season, John has given us permission to share it here. Enjoy!

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Dr. Daniel Fletcher's research group at University of California Berkley has developed a microscope attachment for cell phones. Termed the "CellScope", the attachment turns "the camera of a standard cell phone into a diagnostic-quality microscope with a magnification of 5x-50x." We think this is cool. We think it's even cooler that Aardman Animation (the folks behind the fantastic Wallace & Gromit films) have used the CellScope to make the world's smallest stop-motion animated film. Here's a link to the film, "Dot"; and here's a link to how it was made

CNN has a nice glossy article on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The goal of NIF is to generate energy through controlled fusion triggered by laser pulses. NIF is now the largest laser in the world, a title formerly held by the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) here in Rochester, NY. There's some friendly competition between the two projects, but the relationship is fundamentally collaborative. There is a constant flow of technology, knowledge, and even personnel between the two projects. ASE is quite proud of our long history of supporting LLE (almost everyone who works here as also worked at LLE directly or indirectly over ASE's history). My big contribution to the lab was developing the alignment method for the large mirrors that focus the back and side illumination onto the target during some experiments, a topic we may cover in a future entry, as it has a very nice blend of optics and mathematics (which is what I do best). ASE also has had a big hand in developing the many optical diagnostic packages that monitor the quality of the system as a whole.

t's been twenty years since the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched on April 24, 1990. The Connecticut Post has a really nice article describing how the engineers who designed HST still remain emotionally attached to the project.

As is well known, when the first images arrived from HST, it was discovered that the primary mirror was flawed. The flaw was caused because of an error in the reference optics used by Perkin-Elmer to test the mirror. Rochester, NY has two notable connections to fixing this problem. First, Eastman Kodak's Commercial and Government Systems Group (now a part of ITT Space Industries) had independently manufactured a back-up mirror for the HST. Unfortunately it was not feasible to replace the primary mirror while the HST was in orbit. Second, Jim Fienup (now a professor at the University of Rochester Institute of Optics) developed "phase retrieval" computer algorithms that were able to diagnose and digitally correct the images Hubble was sending back. This information was later helpful in designing the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) that was added to Hubble to correct the spherical aberration.

The Giants' Shoulders (originally organized by a colleague over at Skulls in the Stars) is a monthly event in which bloggers from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds all write about science history on the same day (more or less). It's always an interesting read, and this month it's hosted at The Lay Scientist. You can see a list of the articleshere.

Peter Emmel just notified me that the White House has put forth a request for information (RFI) for new "Grand Challenges" for the 21st Century. In essence they are soliciting ideas for a new "Moon Shot." There are no formal formatting instructions, and anyone can participate. It is essentially a public opinion poll on how research dollars will be spent... So speak up! The main PR site is here, but more detailed information is available from the original press release.

I wanted to point people toward a really good article that appeared in the SPIE Professional back in October 2009 entitled "Productive Stupidity" by Martin A. Schwartz. It's a reprint of his article "The importance of stupidity in scientific research", which previously appeared in Journal of Cell Science 121, 1771 (2008). The thrust of the article is that "science is supposed to be hard," and most of the time you're going to be wrong... at least if you're doing it right. That fact can be extremely difficult to accept, especially when we have built our entire education system around getting answers "right" on an exam. Even classroom laboratory research is generally focused on reproducing a certain result, rather than self-discovery. The upshot is that most science students leave college still believing that getting the "wrong" result is bad. If you are truly doing new research, then you are testing things that no one has done before, and that means that most of the time what your experiments reveal will not be quite what you expected. Figuring out the how and the why of unexpected results is what scientific research is really all about. (As Celia recently discovered over at Ph.D.) And just to drive this point home one more time, I encourage folks to listen to this interview with 2009 Physics Nobel Laureate George E. Smith. Around the 11 minute mark he talks about what it was about the Bell Labs environment that made their discovery of the CCD camera possible. He summarizes it this way:

In the exploratory efforts we had... we thought that if half of the projects you started actually worked, you weren't being imaginative enough... not taking enough risks.

Welcome to the blog for ASE Optics, Inc., a contract engineering firm out of Rochester, NY specializing in "inspired optical engineering." We create applied engineering solutions for a wide range of applications. Our focus is on innovative, cost-effective designs. We enjoy solving problems with creativity and collaboration. Our highly skilled PhD, MS, and BS level engineers bring extensive experience and knowledge of both theoretical and applied systems. Drawing on the depth of optical talent in the Rochester, New York region, our team has the expertise to tackle the most complex of challenges.

This is just under the wire, but Greg Gbur over at Skulls in the Stars put up a nice article on women in science that alerted me that today is "Ada Lovelace Day." In the words of the Ada Lovelace Day organizers:

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.

Ada Lovelace is widely regarded as the mother of computer programming, as she was the first person to develop a computational algorithm for Charles Babbage's analytic engine. As it turns out, women have also been a driving force in the field of optics. I would like to take a moment to highlight someone particularly important to Rochester, NY: Hilda Kingslake.

The name "Kingslake" is famous in optics because of Rudolf Kingslake, but, as it turns out, Rudolf actually married into the field. Hilda Conrady, born 1902, was the very first full-time student in the Technical Optics Department of the Royal College of Science, a unit of the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. Furthermore Hilda was already a second-generation optical scientist, as her father was Alexander Eugen Conrady, a professor of optical design.

Rather than recount the story of Hilda and Rudolf Kingslake's amazing 74 year joint career in optics, I will instead point people to a wonderful memorial written by Brian Thompson for the 75th Anniversary of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester. The article is chapter 6 in the book A Jewel in the Crown, edited by Carlos Stroud. (Incidentally, for those considering a career in Optics, you may be further tempted by chapter 37, by David Aronstein: "Mmm... Doughnuts", which traces an Institute of Optics weekly tradition that now spans four decades.)