Researchers at Tohoku University's Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering (Sendai, Miyagi, Japan) have developed a method to measure blood glucose using far-infrared (FIR) light, which is both harmless and noninvasive.

A team of researchers at McGill University has developed nanoparticles that only release a drug when exposed to near-infrared light, which doctors could beam onto a specific site within, for example, a cancerous tumor. The approach allows medicine to go only where needed and without harm to healthy cells.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) have developed an adaptive light therapy approach to halt antibiotic-resistant infections from salmonella, E. coli, and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, among others.

Using strands of nucleic acid and a fluorescence reporter, scientists at Georgia Tech and colleagues have demonstrated basic computing operations inside a living mammalian cell. The research could lead to an artificial sensing system that could control a cell’s behavior in response to such stimuli as the presence of toxins or the development of cancer.

An international team of researchers used optical tweezers (a concentrated laser beam) to demonstrate how red blood cells move, showing that they actively "wriggle" rather than being moved by external forces.

Congratulations to 2014 Nobel Laureate Eric Betzig and colleagues at the HHMI Janelia Campus, whose lattice light-sheet microscopy method has garnered them the AAAS 2014-2015 Newcomb Cleveland Prize!

Doctors at the Duke University School of Medicine have tested a new injectable agent that causes cancer cells in a tumor to fluoresce, potentially increasing a surgeon's ability to locate and remove all of a cancerous tumor on the first attempt. 

A team of researchers at the University of California Irvine, the Beckman Laser Institute, and N8 Medical demonstrated that optical coherence tomography (OCT) can be used to better detect and assess biofilm linked to a form of pneumonia prevalent in hospital intensive care units (ICUs).

Recognizing that monitoring early-stage embryos during in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a complicated process, a team of researchers at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP) and the University of Adelaide has developed a fiber-optic sensor that can measure hydrogen peroxide and pH in solution in a simpler manner and noninvasively.