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Since their invention, plastics have become ubiquitous in modern societies all around the world, and their impact on the environment has, in recent years, become nearly as well-known. Plastics produced by humans have reached nearly every…

Microplastics (MPs) are ubiquitous in all ecosystems, affecting wildlife and, ultimately, human health. The complexity of natural samples plus the unspecificity of their treatments to isolate polymers renders the characterization of…

The deep learning revolution is touching all scientific disciplines and corners of our lives as a means of harnessing the power of big data. Marine ecology is no exception. These new methods provide analysis of data from sensors, cameras,…

The optical properties of a concentric nanometer-sized spherical shell comprised of an (active) 3-level gain medium core and a surrounding plasmonic metal shell are investigated. Current research in optical metamaterials has demonstrated…

Coral reefs are among the most diverse ecosystems on our planet, and are depended on by hundreds of millions of people. Unfortunately, most coral reefs are existentially threatened by global climate change and local anthropogenic pressures.…

The structural dynamics of macromolecules is important for most microbiological processes, from protein folding to the origins of neurodegenerative disorders. Noninvasive measurements of these dynamics are highly challenging. Recently,…

Ocean acidification is a threat to deep-sea corals and could lead to dramatic and rapid loss of the reef framework habitat they build. Weakening of structurally critical parts of the coral reef framework can lead to physical habitat…

Structural characterization of biologically formed materials is essential for understanding biological phenomena and their environment, and generating new bio-inspired engineering concepts. For example, nacre -- formed by mollusks in the…

Autonomous repair of deep-sea coral reefs is a recent proposed idea to support the oceans ecosystem in which is vital for commercial fishing, tourism and other species. This idea can be operated through using many small autonomous…

Microplastic pollution studies depend on reliable identification of the suspicious particles. Out of the various analytical techniques available to characterize them, infrared transflectance using a tuneable mid-IR quantum cascade laser is…

Nanophotonics, the study of light-matter interaction at scales smaller than the wavelength of radiation, has widespread applications in plasmonic waveguiding, topological photonic crystals, super-lensing, solar absorbers, and infrared…

An interferometric fluorescent microscope and a novel theoretic image reconstruction approach were developed and used to obtain super-resolution images of live biological samples and to enable dynamic real time tracking. The tracking…

Drone-based remote sensing combined with AI-driven methodologies has shown great potential for accurate mapping and monitoring of coral reef ecosystems. This study presents a novel multi-scale approach to coral reef monitoring, integrating…

Biofilms are spatially organized microorganism colonies embedded in a self-produced matrix, conferring to the microbial community resistance to environmental stresses. Motile bacteria have been observed swimming in the matrix of pathogenic…

Micro and nanoscale particles are crucial in various fields, from biomedical imaging to environmental processes. While conventional spectroscopy and microscopy methods for characterizing these particles often involve bulky equipment and…

Microwave sensors can probe intrinsic material properties of analytes in a microfluidic channel at physiologically relevant ion concentrations. While microwave sensors have been used to detect single cells and microparticles in earlier…

Polymer micro- and nano-fibers, made of organic light-emitting materials with optical gain, show interesting lasing properties. Fibers with diameters from few tens of nm to few microns can be fabricated by electrospinning, a method based on…

Optical frequency combs have revolutionised time and frequency metrology [1, 2]. The advent of microresonator-based frequency combs ('microcombs' [3-5]) is set to lead to the miniaturisation of devices that are ideally suited to a wide…

Nanostructured materials have recently emerged as a promising approach for material appearance design. Research has mainly focused on creating structural colours by wave interference, leaving aside other important aspects that constitute…

Environmental fate and toxicity of microplastic particles is dominated by their surface properties. In the environment an adsorbed layer of biomolecules and natural organic matter forms the so-called eco-corona. A quantitative description…