Fluorescent

In order to smuggle illegal drugs into prisons, people are now soaking materials like paper and fabric in such drugs, letting the materials dry, then passing them along to inmates. A new portable device, however, sees through that ruse.

When lightweight composite materials are used in fields such as aerospace, it's vitally important to know if they're experiencing mechanical stress – before they fail. A new composite is able to do so, simply by fluorescing under UV light.

A team of scientists has managed to produce what are described as the brightest fluorescent materials in existence, opening up new possibilities in everything from the development of next-generation solar cells to advanced lasers.

Although many fossils are simply lying exposed on the soil's surface, finding all of them would require a great deal of walking over varying terrain. A new autonomous hexacopter drone could help, as it uses a laser to hunt for fossils at night.

Researchers have incorporated living microbes into 3D printed objects. The resin material is embedded with chemical “instructions” that tell a layer of microbes to fluoresce in particular colors, producing a stunning array of patterns and designs.

​It's always helpful if materials let you know when they're under stress, so that changes can be made before catastrophic failures occur. A new polymer is designed to provide such a warning, as it glows when stretched.

Phosphors are essential to fluorescent lighting, and thus office parks the world over, but their use of rare-earth elements makes them less than ideal. Now new types of phosphors have been developed that use substantially less rare-earth elements than current phosphors found in fluorescent bulbs.

This year's winners of the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell, and William E. Moerner, are honored for their discovery of two methods to bypass the physical limits of optical microscopes to create the field of nanomicroscopy.

Scientists have created what they claim is a flicker-free, shatterproof, non-toxic alternative to fluorescent lights.

Casio has announced its line of Green Slim projectors, that are lightweight, energy efficient and thanks to a hybrid LED laser light source, mercury free.