WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec. 22, 2015 - Researchers at MINAO, a joint lab between The French Aerospace Lab in Palaiseau and the Laboratoire de Photonique et de Nanostructures in Marcoussis, have recently demonstrated metamaterial resonators that allow emission in the infrared to be tuned through the geometry of the resonator.

Their setup uses sub-wavelength scale metal-insulator-metal, or MIM, resonators to spatially and spectrally control emitted light up to its diffraction limit. This allows an array of resonators to be used to form an image in the infrared -- much as way the pixels in a television screen can form a visible light image -- with potential breakthrough applications in infrared televisions, biochemical sensing, optical storage, and anti-counterfeit devices.

When you look at the rainbow, what you see is the prism like effect of the mist (aerosolized water droplets) in the air reflecting the sunlight from different portions of the spheres.  These water droplets when suspended in air as mist will all reflect different colors at different angles.  The angle between you, the mist and the sun, will then determine which color is being refracted back to you from each location resulting in a rainbow.  This color is itself a special form of radiation, more specifically it is non-ionizing radiation with very specific wavelengths.

Few events encapsulate our infatuation with a well-told story as much as Christmas. As a culture, we are dependent on stories as a tool with which to negotiate our daily lives and make sense of the world around us. In particular, we love magical ones because they allow us to temporarily suspend our disbelief and revel in the joys of doing so.

Well, it’s that time of year again – and there it is; just four words into an article on Christmas I’ve used the word ‘time.’

Among the hodge-podge of rituals and holidays that survive in the post-Christian West, Christmas might just be the one that tells us the most about how humans relate to and experience temporality.

Christmas,
narrative,

Walk into any public square or shopping mall at this time of year and an encounter with a traditional Christmas carol is well-nigh unavoidable.

We may not sing them ourselves with anything like the frequency or fervor we once did at church but the tunes themselves defy relegation to our past.

At 3 pm on Christmas Eve, millions of radios around the world will be tuned to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College Chapel in Cambridge in time to hear the pure voice of a single boy chorister singing one of the hardest solos of the church calendar, the first verse of “Once in Royal David’s City”.

For many, this signals the start of Christmas. Broadcasts of the Christmas Eve service from King’s began in 1928, but arguably it was under the guidance of Sir David Willcocks, who died in September 2015, aged 95, that the service – and the choir – became household names.

We don’t need to be Christian to celebrate Christmas. That’s been true for a long time. We don’t even need to be religious. Considering the commercialization of the holiday, that might be an advantage.

But there is no way to get around the religious iconography. Jesus, nativity scenes and Christian symbols are everywhere. So how do you explain this to your children – or someone else’s children – if you and they are not religious?

Every year, almost without thinking about it, we incorporate certain plant species into our Christmas celebrations. The most obvious is the Christmas tree, linked historically in England to Prince Albert – but its use in British homes goes back to at least 1761 when Charlotte wife of George III put up a tree at the royal court. (It’s probably worth noting here that the first artificial-brush Christmas tree was produced using the same machinery that was originally designed to produce toilet brushes.)

During winter it can sometimes feel that the whole day passes in the blink of an eye and that evening darkness comes far too quickly. While more daylight would be a lovely thing, the early darkness has one big advantage: the stars. On a clear evening you can look up and see far into space. I’ve spent many winter evenings with my children, on our way home from activities, looking for Orion (and other constellations), following its path through the seasons.

Stars and space are two of the most popular science topics, whatever the age of the child.

PITTSBURGH, Dec. 22, 2015 - Children younger than 5 who live in economically disadvantaged areas had a greater risk of medication poisoning that resulted in referral to a health care facility, according to scientists at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and the University of California, San Diego. These areas were rural and experienced high unemployment, along with lower rates of high school graduation and lower household income.

The analysis of Pittsburgh Poison Center data, published online and scheduled for print in the January issue of Clinical Toxicology, gives insight into potential geographic targets for poison prevention outreach.