AM signals: Utah researchers build flat lens, AT&T plans 5G trial
Doctors today lack personal connections with their patients, according to Jerald Winakur, an author who practiced internal and geriatric medicine from 1976 to 2012. In The Washington Post, he writes, “Physicians are now insulated from knowing too much about their patients. It is all about the technology, the testing, the imaging, the electronic health record, the data—once collected by the doctor, but now so regulated and overwhelming that paramedical professionals have been enlisted to record the so-called minutiae, the often rote information in which may lie important clues.” Unfortunately, he offers no solutions.
AT&T said it is working with Ericsson and Intel as it plans to begin its first trials of 5G technology this year. Thomas Gryta in The Wall Street Journal writes, “As part of the program, AT&T is testing fixed wireless connections—essentially providing broadband to households through the cellular network—and could make such a service commercially available by year-end.”
University of Utah electrical and computer engineering professor Rajesh Menon and his team have developed a method of creating optics that are flat and thin yet can still perform the function of bending polychromatic light to a single point. His findings were published Friday February 12 in the paper “Chromatic-Aberration-Corrected Diffractive Lenses for Ultra-Broadband Focusing,” in Scientific Reports. “Instead of the lens having a curvature, it can be very flat so you get completely new design opportunities for imaging systems like the ones in your mobile phone,” Menon said. “Our results correct a widespread misconception that flat, diffractive lenses cannot be corrected for all colors simultaneously.” Potential applications include medical imaging.
