New lens manufacturing technique

Researchers from Washington State University and Ohio State University have developed a low-cost, easy way to make custom lenses that could help manufacturers avoid the expensive molds required for optical manufacturing.

Led by Lei Li, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and graduate student, Mojtaba Falahati, the researchers developed a liquid mold from droplets that they can manipulate with magnets to create lenses in a variety of shapes and sizes. Their work is featured on the cover of the journal, Applied Physics Letters.

High-quality lenses are increasingly used in everything from cameras, to self-driving cars, and virtually all robotics, but the traditional molding and casting processes used in their manufacturing require sophisticated and expensive metal molds. So, manufacturers are mostly limited to mass producing one kind of lens.

"The molds are precisely finished and are difficult to make," said Li. "It isn't worthwhile to make a mold for low-volume production."

The researchers ran into the problem firsthand as they searched for lenses for their work to develop a portable laboratory reader on a phone.

They first tried to make their own lenses using 3D printing but found it difficult to control the lens shape. They then came up with the idea of using magnets and the surface tension of liquids to literally create free-flowing molds.

They placed tiny, magnetic iron particles into liquid droplets and built a device to surround the droplets with magnets. They then poured the plastic material used in lenses over the droplet. As they applied a magnetic field, the droplet took on a conical lens shape -- creating a mold for the plastic lens material. Once they cured the plastic, it hardened and had the same optical properties and imaging quality as a commercially purchased lens. The liquid droplet remains separate and can be re-used.

The magnets can be moved to change the magnetic field, the shape of the mold, and the resulting lens. The researchers also used bigger or smaller droplets to create lenses of varying sizes.

"We brought the concept of interfacial tension to the field of optics by introducing an innovative controllable liquid mold," said Li. "This novel process allowed us to regulate the shape of a magnetic drop and to create lenses without having to fabricate expensive molds."

From Science Daily

Counter-intuitive climate change solution

Gas burning.

A relatively simple process could help turn the tide of climate change while also turning a healthy profit. That's one of the hopeful visions outlined in a new Stanford-led paper that highlights a seemingly counterintuitive solution: converting one greenhouse gas into another.

The study, published in Nature Sustainability on May 20, describes a potential process for converting the extremely potent greenhouse gas methane into carbon dioxide, which is a much less potent driver of global warming. The idea of intentionally releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere may seem surprising, but the authors argue that swapping methane for carbon dioxide is a significant net benefit for the climate.

"If perfected, this technology could return the atmosphere to pre-industrial concentrations of methane and other gases," said lead author Rob Jackson, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor in Earth System Science in Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

The basic idea is that some sources of methane emissions -- from rice cultivation or cattle, for example -- may be very difficult or expensive to eliminate. "An alternative is to offset these emissions via methane removal, so there is no net effect on warming the atmosphere," said study coauthor Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

A problem and a possible solution

In 2018, methane -- about 60 percent of which is generated by humans -- reached atmospheric concentrations two and a half times greater than pre-industrial levels. Although the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is much greater, methane is 84 times more potent in terms of warming the climate system over the first 20 years after its release.

Most scenarios for stabilizing average global temperatures at 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels depend on strategies for both reducing the overall amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere and removing what's already in the atmosphere through approaches such as tree planting or underground sequestration. However, removing other greenhouse gases, particularly methane, could provide a complementary approach, according to the study's authors, who point to the gas's outsized influence on the climate.

Most scenarios for removing carbon dioxide typically assume hundreds of billions of tons removed over decades and do not restore the atmosphere to pre-industrial levels. In contrast, methane concentrations could be restored to pre-industrial levels by removing about 3.2 billion tons of the gas from the atmosphere and converting it into an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to a few months of global industrial emissions, according to the researchers. If successful, the approach would eliminate approximately one-sixth of all causes of global warming to date.

Methane is challenging to capture from air because its concentration is so low. However, the authors point out that zeolite, a crystalline material that consists primarily of aluminum, silicon and oxygen, could act essentially as a sponge to soak up methane. "The porous molecular structure, relatively large surface area and ability to host copper and iron in zeolites make them promising catalysts for capturing methane and other gases," said Ed Solomon, the Monroe E. Spaght Professor of Chemistry in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

The whole process might take the form of a giant contraption with electric fans forcing air through tumbling chambers or reactors full of powdered or pelletized zeolites and other catalysts. The trapped methane could then be heated to form and release carbon dioxide, the authors suggest.

A profitable future

The process of converting methane to carbon dioxide could be profitable with a price on carbon emissions or an appropriate policy. If market prices for carbon offsets rise to $500 or more per ton this century, as predicted by most relevant assessment models, each ton of methane removed from the atmosphere could be worth more than $12,000.

A zeolite array about the size of a football field could generate millions of dollars a year in income while removing harmful methane from the air. In principle, the researchers argue that the approach of converting a more harmful greenhouse gas to one that's less potent could also apply to other greenhouse gases.

Read more at Science Daily

Formation of the moon brought water to Earth

Earth seen from the moon.

The Earth is unique in our solar system: It is the only terrestrial planet with a large amount of water and a relatively large moon, which stabilizes the Earth's axis. Both were essential for Earth to develop life.

Planetologists at the University of Münster (Germany) have now been able to show, for the first time, that water came to Earth with the formation of the Moon some 4.4 billion years ago. The Moon was formed when Earth was hit by a body about the size of Mars, also called Theia. Until now, scientists had assumed that Theia originated in the inner solar system near the Earth. However, researchers from Münster can now show that Theia comes from the outer solar system, and it delivered large quantities of water to Earth. The results are published in the current issue of Nature Astronomy.

From the outer into the inner solar system

The Earth formed in the 'dry' inner solar system, and so it is somewhat surprising that there is water on Earth. To understand why this the case, we have to go back in time when the solar system was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. From earlier studies, we know that the solar system became structured such that the 'dry' materials were separated from the 'wet' materials: the so-called 'carbonaceous' meteorites, which are relatively rich in water, come from the outer solar system, whereas the drier 'non-carbonaceous' meteorites come from the inner solar system. While previous studies have shown that carbonaceous materials were likely responsible for delivering the water to Earth, it was unknown when and how this carbonaceous material -- and thus the water -- came to Earth.

"We have used molybdenum isotopes to answer this question. The molybdenum isotopes allow us to clearly distinguish carbonaceous and non-carbonaceous material, and as such represent a 'genetic fingerprint' of material from the outer and inner solar system," explains Dr. Gerrit Budde of the Institute of Planetology in Münster and lead author of the study.

The measurements made by the researchers from Münster show that the molybdenum isotopic composition of the Earth lies between those of the carbonaceous and non-carbonaceous meteorites, demonstrating that some of Earth's molybdenum originated in the outer solar system. In this context, the chemical properties of molybdenum play a key role because, as it is an iron-loving element, most of the Earth's molybdenum is located in the core.

"The molybdenum which is accessible today in the Earth's mantle, therefore, originates from the late stages of Earth's formation, while the molybdenum from earlier phases is entirely in the core," explains Dr. Christoph Burkhardt, second author of the study. The scientists' results therefore show, for the first time, that carbonaceous material from the outer solar system arrived on Earth late.

But the scientists are going one step further. They show that most of the molybdenum in Earth's mantle was supplied by the protoplanet Theia, whose collision with Earth 4.4 billion years ago led to the formation of the Moon. However, since a large part of the molybdenum in Earth's mantle originates from the outer solar system, this means that Theia itself also originated from the outer solar system. According to the scientists, the collision provided sufficient carbonaceous material to account for the entire amount of water on Earth.

Read more at Science Daily

Bonobo mothers help their sons to have more offspring

Bonobos.

In many social animal species individuals share child-rearing duties, but new research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, finds that bonobo mothers go the extra step and actually take action to ensure their sons will become fathers. This way bonobo mothers increase their sons' chance of fatherhood three-fold.

"This is the first time that we can show the impact of the mother's presence on a very important male fitness trait, which is their fertility," says Martin Surbeck, a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "We were surprised to see that the mothers have such a strong, direct influence on the number of grandchildren they get."

Surbeck and his colleagues observed wild populations of bonobos in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as wild populations of chimpanzees in Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Uganda. They found that while both bonobo and chimpanzee mothers would advocate for their sons in male-on-male conflicts, bonobo moms went the extra mile to aid their sons' copulation efforts. This involved protecting their sons' mating attempts from other males and intervening in other male's mating attempts.

The bonobo mothers were also able to use their rank in the bonobo's matriarchal society to give their sons access to popular spots within social groups in the community and help them achieve higher male status -- and therefore, better mating opportunities. The authors note that these interactions were rare in chimpanzee societies and did not have an effect on male fertility; in chimpanzees males hold dominant positions over females, making the actions of chimp mothers less influential than those of bonobo mothers.

Interestingly, bonobo moms did not extend similar help to their daughters, nor were there any observations of daughters receiving assistance in rearing their offspring. "In bonobo social systems, the daughters disperse from the native community and the sons stay," Surbeck says. "And for the few daughters that stay in the community, which we don't have many examples of, we don't see them receiving much help from their mothers."

Moving forward, Surbeck and his team would like to better understand the benefits these behaviors confer on bonobo mothers. Currently, they think that it allows for an indirect continuation of their genes. "These females have found a way to increase their reproductive success without having more offspring themselves," he says, noting that the prolongation of the post-reproductive human female lifespan, as well as the early-age at which human women can no longer bare children, may have evolved from this indirect method of continuing their genetic line.

Surbeck acknowledges that gathering data on post-reproductive lifespans of females in chimp and bonobo communities will require a long-term, collaborative study, similar to this one. "Without the help and participation from all of the field sites where data was collected, these important interactions could have been overlooked," he says. "Now as the director of a bonobo field site, I'm looking forward to further exploring this topic."

Read more at Science Daily

Evolution in the gut

They are a part of us: we all carry about ten times as many bacteria and archaea as our own cells. The bacterial ecosystem in our digestive tract, the so-called microbiome, is not only of great importance for our metabolism, but also for the immune system and even our behaviour. The same is true to animals, but the composition of the microbiome differs greatly between animal species. For the first time, a large-scale study was carried out to explain the development of the microbiome using faecal samples from free-living animals. 128 different species from very classes fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals were examined. The research groups involved were able to show how evolution and dietary habits interact and determine the composition of bacteria in the digestive tract. Many microorganisms in the intestine seem to have developed in sync with their host animals over millions of years. These results should also help in the characterisation of faecal pollution in water by allowing attribution to certain animal species in a much more precise way in the future.

Samples from all branches of the family tree

"So far there have been studies on the microbiome of humans, or special data for individual species such as rats. However, we wanted to select many animal species that were as representative as possible of the entire evolutionary tree of vertebrates -- from birds to mammals to fish," says Prof. Andreas Farnleitner, Co-Leader of the Interuniversity Research Centre "Water and Health" at the TU Wien (ICC Water & Health) and Professor of Microbiological Diagnostics in extension of the ICC Water & Health group at Karl Landsteiner Private University in Krems.

It was important to get samples from wild animals, as zoo animals can have a completely different microbiome than their wild counterparts. The Institute for Wildlife Science and Ecology of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna was the lead partner for the sample collection. The DNA of the microorganisms studied was then sequenced -- partly at the TU Wien and partly at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen.

"A total of more than 400 samples from 180 different species were analysed, resulting in 20 million gene sequences," said Dr. Georg Reischer (TU Vienna). The cooperation partners of the MPI in Tübingen contributed their know-how in bioinformatic data analysis and evolutionary biology to the study. This revealed striking relationships that can be explained by evolutionary history: The microbiome has developed over many millions of years in co-evolution with the host animals. Closely related species that are close to the evolutionary family tree also have similarities in the microbiome. "Nutrition also plays a role, but it is never the only decisive factor," explains Georg Reischer. "If a mammal eats the same food as a bird, it still does not have the same bacteria in its intestines."

The contamination bio-detector
The data collected in this study not only allows the interpretation of the co-evolution of host animals and the microorganisms in their digestive tract, it also facilitates the development of methods to assist in the provision of clean water. In recent years, a technology has been developed at the TU Wien that uses DNA tests to provide information on the source of fecal pollution in water. Thus it became possible to find out whether the contamination was caused by human wastewater or grazing animals. "Now we have a very extensive data set at our disposal that will make such tests possible in a much more comprehensive and accurate way," says Andreas Farnleitner.

From Science Daily

True identity of imposter 'pigs' on 17th century map overturns early colonial history of Barbados

Peccary.

Which came first, the pigs or the pioneers? In Barbados, that has been a historical mystery ever since the first English colonists arrived on the island in 1627 to encounter what they thought was a herd of wild European pigs.

A recent discovery by an SFU archaeologist is shedding new light on the matter. Christina Giovas uncovered the jaw bone of a peccary, a South American mammal that resembles a wild pig, while researching a larger project on prehistoric animal introductions in the Caribbean.

"I didn't give it much notice at the time, but simply collected it along with other bones," says Giovas, the lead author of a study just published in PLOS ONE. "It was completely unexpected and I honestly thought I must have made a mistake with the species identification."

Giovas and collaborators George Kamenov and John Krigbaum of the University of Florida radiocarbon-dated the bone and conducted strontium isotope analysis to determine the age and whether the peccary was born on Barbados or had been imported from elsewhere.

The results showed the peccary was local and dated to 1645-1670, when the English wrote their account of finding wild European pigs on the Caribbean island. The researchers were not only able to show there had been a previously undetected historic peccary introduction but that the region's earliest celebrated maps depicted peccaries that had been mistaken for pigs by the English.

Giovas says the findings upend Barbados' accepted colonial history and reflect how quickly Europeans began to alter New World environments by altering species distributions.

"Checking historical and archaeological records, we determined the most likely source of peccary introduction was from Spanish or Portuguese ships passing the island in the 16th century -- and most likely left as a source of meat for future visiting sailors," she says.

From Science Daily

Gas insulation could be protecting an ocean inside Pluto

Pluto.

A gassy insulating layer beneath the icy surfaces of distant celestial objects could mean there are more oceans in the universe than previously thought.

Computer simulations provide compelling evidence that an insulating layer of gas hydrates could keep a subsurface ocean from freezing beneath Pluto's icy exterior, according to a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

In July 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew through Pluto's system, providing the first-ever close-up images of this distant dwarf planet and its moons. The images showed Pluto's unexpected topography, including a white-colored ellipsoidal basin named Sputnik Planitia, located near the equator and roughly the size of Texas.

Because of its location and topography, scientists believe a subsurface ocean exists beneath the ice shell which is thinned at Sputnik Planitia. However, these observations are contradictory to the age of the dwarf planet because the ocean should have frozen a long time ago and the inner surface of the ice shell facing the ocean should have also been flattened.

Researchers at Japan's Hokkaido University, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokushima University, Osaka University, Kobe University, and at the University of California, Santa Cruz, considered what could keep the subsurface ocean warm while keeping the ice shell's inner surface frozen and uneven on Pluto. The team hypothesized that an "insulating layer" of gas hydrates exists beneath the icy surface of Sputnik Planitia. Gas hydrates are crystalline ice-like solids formed of gas trapped within molecular water cages. They are highly viscous, have low thermal conductivity, and could therefore provide insulating properties.

The researchers conducted computer simulations covering a timescale of 4.6 billion years, when the solar system began to form. The simulations showed the thermal and structural evolution of Pluto's interior and the time required for a subsurface ocean to freeze and for the icy shell covering it to become uniformly thick. They simulated two scenarios: one where an insulating layer of gas hydrates existed between the ocean and the icy shell, and one where it did not.

The simulations showed that, without a gas hydrate insulating layer, the subsurface sea would have frozen completely hundreds of millions of years ago; but with one, it hardly freezes at all. Also, it takes about one million years for a uniformly thick ice crust to completely form over the ocean, but with a gas hydrate insulating layer, it takes more than one billion years.

The simulation's results support the possibility of a long-lived liquid ocean existing beneath the icy crust of Sputnik Planitia.

The team believes that the most likely gas within the hypothesized insulating layer is methane originating from Pluto's rocky core. This theory, in which methane is trapped as a gas hydrate, is consistent with the unusual composition of Pluto's atmosphere -- methane-poor and nitrogen-rich.

Read more at Science Daily

Giant impact caused difference between Moon's hemispheres

Moon.

The stark difference between the Moon's heavily-cratered farside and the lower-lying open basins of the Earth-facing nearside has puzzled scientists for decades.

Now, new evidence about the Moon's crust suggests the differences were caused by a wayward dwarf planet colliding with the Moon in the early history of the solar system. A report on the new research has been published in AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

The mystery of the Moon's two faces began in the Apollo era when the first views of its farside revealed the surprising differences. Measurements made by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission in 2012 filled in more details about the structure of the Moon -- including how its crust is thicker and includes an extra layer of material on its farside.

There are a number of ideas that have been used to try and explain the Moon's asymmetry. One is that there were once two moons orbiting Earth and they merged in the very early days of the Moon's formation. Another idea is that a large body, perhaps a young dwarf planet, found itself in an orbit around the Sun that put it on a collision course with the Moon. This latter giant impact idea would have happened somewhat later than a merging-moons scenario and after the Moon had formed a solid crust, said Meng Hua Zhu of the Space Science Institute at Macau University of Science and Technology and lead author of the new study. Signs of such an impact should be visible in the structure of the lunar crust today.

"The detailed gravity data obtained by GRAIL has given new insight into the structure of the lunar crust underneath the surface," Zhu said.

The new findings from GRAIL gave Zhu's team of researchers a clearer target to aim for with the computer simulations they used to test different early-Moon impact scenarios. The study's authors ran 360 computer simulations of giant impacts with the Moon to find out whether such an event millions of years ago could reproduce the crust of today's Moon as detected by GRAIL.

They found the best fit for today's asymmetrical Moon is a large body, about 480 miles (780 kilometers) in diameter, smacking into the nearside of the Moon at 14,000 miles per hour (22,500 kilometers per hour). That would be the equivalent of an object a bit smaller than the dwarf planet Ceres moving at a speed about one-quarter as fast as the meteor pebbles and sand grains that burn up as "shooting stars" in Earth's atmosphere. Another good fit for the impact combinations the team modeled is a slightly smaller, 450-mile (720-kilometer) diameter, object hitting at a mildly faster 15,000 miles per hour (24,500 kilometers per hour).

Under both these scenarios, the model shows the impact would have thrown up vast amounts of material that would fall back on the Moon's surface, burying the primordial crust on the farside in 3 to 6 miles (5 to 10 kilometers) of debris. That is the added layer of crust detected on the farside by GRAIL, according to Zhu.

The new study suggests the impactor was not likely an early second moon of Earth's. Whatever the impactor was -- an asteroid or a dwarf planet -- it was probably on its own orbit around the Sun when it encountered the Moon, said Zhu.

The giant impact model also provides a good explanation for the unexplained differences in isotopes of potassium, phosphorus and rare-earth elements like tungsten-182 between the surfaces of the Earth and Moon, the researchers explain. These elements could have come from the giant impact, which would have added that material to the Moon after its formation, according to the study's authors.

"Our model can thus explain this isotope anomaly in the context of the giant impact scenario of the Moon's origin." the researchers write.

The new study not only suggests an answer to ongoing questions about the Moon, but may also provide insight into the structure of other asymmetrical worlds in our solar system like Mars wrote the researchers.

Read more at Science Daily

Research reveals insulin-producing beta cells may change function in diabetes

Diabetes concept.

A revolutionary new study using only materials derived from humans has revealed that insulin-producing beta cells can change their function in diabetes -- and that this change may be reversible.

Research led by the University of Exeter is the first to look at the cells using an entirely animal-free model, instead using a completely human cell system in laboratories for the first time. The team found that the RNA messaging system which tells proteins how to behave in cells is different in diabetes. The changes lead to some of the beta cells no longer producing insulin which regulates blood sugar, and instead producing somatostatin, which can block the the secretion of other important hormones including insulin itself.

The research is published in Human Molecular Genetics and funded by Animal Free Research UK. The study may give new insights into how high blood sugar can alter the behaviour of important hormone-producing cells, and pave the way to new treatments.

Professor Lorna Harries, of the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the research, said: "These insights are really exciting. Only recently, Exeter researchers discovered that people with type 1 diabetes still retain some insulin-producing cells, but the environment produced by diabetes can be toxic for these cells that remain. Our work could lead to new changes to protect these cells, which could help people maintain some ability to make their own insulin. The method we used of creating an all-human cell system for the first time is significant -- I don't think we'd have seen these changes in mouse cells."

Carla Owen, Chief Executive of Animal Free Research UK which funded the research, said: "This is pioneering research at its best -- we supported the Exeter team to create a novel method to investigate how diabetes affects humans, rather than animals. Their breakthrough findings would never have been discovered in animals, highlighting the importance of using a human-relevant approach to understanding human diseases. We're proud to be supporting the next phase to take this discovery forward and closer to treatments for people living with diabetes."

The team examined what happens to human beta cells when exposed to an environment that replicated type 2 diabetes.

Beta cell loss occurs in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Scientists have previously assumed this was because the microenvironment around the cells causes them to die.

However, the team found for the first time that a proportion of the cells are no longer beta cells that are making insulin. They had actually started to make a different hormone called somatostatin -- characteristic of a delta cell.

The team than analysed post mortem pancreas tissue from people with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes. This revealed that they have more delta cells than they should have, suggesting that diabetes might be causing some of the beta cells to turn into delta cells in people as well as in cells in the laboratory.

Similar findings have been reported in animal models, but the changes are different. In mice, most of the changes are beta to alpha cells, not delta cells. Alpha cells make a different hormone called glucagon. This means that the consequences of changes in cell type might be different between mice and humans.

In the next step, the team investigated why the cells might change from beta cells to delta cells, by looking at gene regulation. They looked at differences in the genes that make the decision as to which type of RNA message is made which helps cells to deal with their environment. In samples from the pancreas of people with type 2 diabetes, they found that about a quarter of genes show disruption to the expected pattern of messages made compared with samples from people with no diabetes. This indicates that the differences in the regulators translate to differences in messages made. The type of RNA message made controls every aspect of cell life or behaviour, and the authors speculate this could be why the treated cells behave differently.

Read more at Science Daily

A new way of diagnosing and treating disease -- without cutting skin

Laser light

University of British Columbia researchers have developed a specialized microscope that has the potential ability to both diagnose diseases that include skin cancer and perform incredibly precise surgery -- all without cutting skin.

The researchers describe the technology in a study published today in Science Advances.

"Our technology allows us to scan tissue quickly, and when we see a suspicious or abnormal cell structure, we can perform ultra-precise surgery and selectively treat the unwanted or diseased structure within the tissue -- without cutting into the skin," said Yimei Huang, co-lead author of the study and a former postdoctoral fellow at the department of dermatology and skin science at UBC and BC Cancer.

Huang co-led the study with Zhenguo Wu, a UBC PhD student.

The device is a specialized type of multiphoton excitation microscope that allows imaging of living tissue up to about one millimeter in depth using an ultrafast infrared laser beam. What sets the researchers' microscope apart from previous technology is that it's capable of not only digitally scanning living tissue, but also treating the tissue by intensifying the heat produced by the laser.

When applied to treating diseases of the skin, the microscope allows medical professionals to pinpoint the exact location of the abnormality, diagnose it and treat it instantly. It could be used to treat any structure of the body that is reached by light and that requires extremely precise treatment, including nerves or blood vessels in the skin, eye, brain or other vital structures.

"We can alter the pathway of blood vessels without impacting any of the surrounding vessels or tissues," said study co-author Harvey Lui, professor at the department of dermatology and skin science at UBC and the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, and a dermatologist at BC Cancer. "For diagnosing and scanning diseases like skin cancer, this could be revolutionary."

The researchers wanted to make multiphoton microscope technology more versatile while also increasing its precision.

"We wanted to be able to identify what was happening under the skin from many different angles and to have the capability of imaging different body sites," said senior author Haishan Zeng, professor of dermatology, pathology and physics at UBC and distinguished scientist with BC Cancer.

"Once we achieved that, we wondered whether we could transform this diagnostic device into a treatment device by simply turning up the power of the laser."

The results were incredibly exciting.

"We are not only the first to achieve fast video-rate imaging that enables clinical applications, but also the first to develop this technology for therapeutic uses," said Zeng.

The researchers have partnered with several UBC departments, including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and ophthalmology, to develop different versions of the technology. Exploration includes research into the development of a miniature version that could be used to perform microscopic examinations and treatment during endoscopy -- a non-surgical procedure used to examine a person's digestive tract using an endoscope, a flexible tube with a light and camera attached to it.

Read more at Science Daily