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Dr. Michael Escuti

An article written by Drs. Michael Escuti, Jihwan Kim and Yanming Li has been selected for inclusion in "Spotlight on Optics".

Spotlight on Optics (Spotlight) features articles nominated by The Optical Society's (OSA) Topical and Associate Editors to show the breadth and quality of OSA content from six major technical divisions: Information Acquisitions, Processing, and Display; Light-Matter Interactions; Optical Design and Instrumentation; Optics in Biology; Optoelectronics; and Vision and Color.

"In this work," says Dr. Escuti,  "we study a novel optical element that efficiently controls a quantum property of light, its orbital angular momentum (OAM). Among other applications, OAM is useful in studying and manipulating individual cells, molecules, and nanoparticles, as well as in high-capacity optical telecommunication systems. Our new optical element, called a Forked Polarization Grating ("FPG"), can easily change OAM with ~100% efficiency, replacing entire lab benches full of optics in a single thin film. In one configuration, FPGs can nonmechanically switch between various states with simple applied voltages. In another configuration, FPGs can generate and detect OAM states. In our work, we show for the first time that a thin liquid crystal layer, not unlike those in common LCDs, can experimentally realize all of the advantageous properties predicted theoretically, when holographically patterned to include the fork-shaped singularity."

 
Dr. Jihwan Kim

Dr. Escuti is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State University. Dr. Kim is a Post Doctoral Research Scholar in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Dr. Li is a Graduate Research Assistant.

Read the Abstract and Full Article.

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Paul Franzon, Eric Rotenberg, Rhett Davis, James Tuck, Huiyang Zhou and Steven Lipa have been awarded $4,019,617 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency  (DARPA) for research on 3D-Enabled Customizable Embedded Computer.

The award will run from September 19th, 2012 to February 14th, 2018.

Research Abstract

The proposed effort will investigate new approaches to building ultra low power computers.

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Namita Lokare, Wes Snyder & Edgar Lobaton (L to R)

Edgar Lobaton, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State University and Wesley Snyder, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering are working with graduate student Namita Lokare to obtain three-dimensional footprints of large animals for computer-based footprint recognition.

Namita Lokare just started her PhD in Electrical Engineering this fall but is already working with staff from a company named Wildtrack (www.wildtrack.org) which has developed a non-invasive Footprint Identification Technique (FIT). Animals have unique feet, in the same way that humans have unique fingerprints and this process can identify endangered animals at the species, individual, age-class and sex levels. This allows researchers to monitor their status and work with decision-makers in environmental and conservation sciences to implement effective policies.

Once researchers have identified and measured features on the footprint, statistical software provided by SAS completes the identification of the animal. WildTrack staff are actively working with SAS staff on this project. Their algorithm is quite accurate, but requires humans to analyze the footprints, and the process of individually identifying the features of the footprint is very time consuming.

In attempt to speed up the process, Lobaton, Snyder and Lokare are developing image analysis algorithms to automate the feature measurement process. In the past, the footprints have been obtained using conventional cameras. In this photograph, the NC State researchers are shown using a three-dimensional camera to measure both extent and depth of the footprints. The work, if successful, will help to more rapidly identify individual animals, track them, and lead to improvements in the monitoring of their health.

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The federal Office for Human Research Protections announced on Wednesday that it would suspend action against the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which it said in March did not adequately inform parents about the risks to their premature infants of enrollment in a large research trial.

In a letter dated Tuesday, the watchdog office still maintained that researchers had not properly informed parents, and that it could still require that the university and 22 other trial sites, which include many of the country’s top research universities, take corrective action. But it also acknowledged that federal guidelines about a researcher’s obligations needed to be clarified and issued. On the office’s Web site, the federal Department of Health and Human Services announced that a public meeting to debate such guidelines was forthcoming.

The timing of the letter coincided with the publication on the Web site of The New England Journal of Medicine of an opinion article by leaders of the National Institutes of Health that took issue with the agency’s initial condemnation of the Surfactant, Positive Pressure, and Oxygenation Randomized Trial, widely known as Support. Both the agency and the N.I.H. are branches of Health and Human Services.

The Journal also published a letter, signed by 46 doctors and scholars, that criticized the office’s initial action as overreaching and having a potentially chilling effect on essential research.

At the center of the uproar, which has engendered commentary from scientists, is whether researchers needed to disclose to parents the risks of a randomized trial of higher and lower oxygen levels administered to premature infants. The levels of oxygen concentration given to the infants were within the range of 85 percent to 95 percent, the standard treatment recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Researchers wanted to pinpoint more precisely the level at which the risks of eye damage or neurological damage, or even death, were abated.

There were risks to the infants at either end of the narrow band. The results, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2010, showed that lowering the oxygen levels led to greater mortality rates than expected.

But as the office wrote, “Some physicians, recognizing the particular concerns about risks near the low (85 percent) and high (95 percent) ends of that range, might choose to avoid one or both of those regions.”

Dr. Joel E. Frader, a pediatrician and professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern, who signed the letter in The Journal, felt that the office initially did overreach, but also that the researchers did not properly inform parents of all risks. Because there was a band of oxygen saturation levels, he said, there was no clear standard of care for these infants, only an “acceptable range.” And parents should have been told that, he said.

“It’s the obligation of investigators to say, ‘Here’s the debate, here’s how we’re trying to answer the question, and that involves the possibility that there is an additional risk with being a research subject,’ ” he said.

He applauded the effort to clarify guidelines for disclosure, even in standard-of-care trials. Researchers should not shy away from fully informing subjects, he said. “There is no empirical evidence that transparency and clarity decreases participation in clinical research,” he said.

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