Free Republic

A flat lens made of paint whitener on a sliver of glass could revolutionise optics, according to its US inventors. Just 2mm across and finer than a human hair, the tiny device can magnify nanoscale objects and gives a sharper focus than top-end microscope lenses. It is the latest example of the power of metamaterials, whose novel properties emerge from their structure. Shapes on the surface of this lens are smaller than the wavelength of light involved: a thousandth of a millimetre. "In my opinion, this technology will be game-changing," said Federico Capasso of Harvard University, the senior author of...

A superlens would let you see a virus in a drop of blood and open the door to better and cheaper electronics. It might, says Durdu Guney, make ultra-high-resolution microscopes as commonplace as cameras in our cell phones.No one has yet made a superlens, also known as a perfect lens, though people are trying. Optical lenses are limited by the nature of light, the so-called diffraction limit, so even the best won’t usually let us see objects smaller than 200 nanometers across, about the size of the smallest bacterium. Scanning electron microscopes can capture objects that are much smaller,...

.. it is to the Catholic Church more than to any other institution that we owe so many of the treasures of Western civilization. .., scholars operated for two centuries under an Enlightenment prejudice that assumes all progress to come from religious skeptics, and that whatever the church touches is backward, superstitious, even barbaric.</p><p> Since the mid-20th century, this unscholarly prejudice has thankfully begun to melt away, and professors of a variety of religious backgrounds, or none at all, increasingly acknowledge the church's contributions.</p><p> ... modern historians of science freely acknowledge the church's contributions - both theoretical and material -...

There's a tour at the source from the history of microscopes to the present with nine images and captions.

THE firestorm over the memos that figured in the CBS News report on President Bush's National Guard record featured a parade of expert document examiners who weighed in on font types, proportional spacing and superscripts. That kind of scrutiny is common enough that those who perform it have an occupational name: questioned-document examiners. Ordinarily, document examiners' cases are far more mundane than the CBS case. Examiners are hired by lawyers, police departments and individuals to analyze contested wills, determine whether medical or insurance records have been altered and authenticate handwriting and signatures in letters and contracts. Document examination, like virtually...