Researchers from the School of Electronic Science and Engineering at Southeast University, led by Prof. Zhenhua Ni and Prof. Junpeng Lu, have developed a pioneering computational spectrometer recently published in PhotoniX. The device utilizes a silicon photonic "Vernier Caliper" concept to overcome the fundamental trade-off between device footprint, bandwidth, and resolution. Operating within an ultra-compact footprint of only 55*35 µm², the spectrometer achieves an expansive bandwidth exceeding 160 nm and an average algorithm-enhanced spectral resolution of 1.35 pm. This performance establishes a record-breaking bandwidth-to-resolution-to-footprint ratio of over 61.5 µm^-2, demonstrating a significant advance for integrated spectrometers.

This breakthrough is achieved through a deep co-design of photonic hardware and computational science, moving beyond simple algorithmic compensation. The hardware architecture features cascaded Trapezoidal Subwavelength Grating Microring Resonators (TSWG-MRRs) that utilize dispersion engineering to suppress resonant periodicity. This deterministic design allows the device to scan a working window over 16 times larger than a standard microring's free spectral range. The system treats the intrinsic resonance peaks as orthogonal measurement bases and integrates an Nvidia Jetson GPU-accelerated unit to achieve real-time reconstruction. The team successfully resolved 49 absorption lines of hydrogen cyanide (H¹³C¹⁴N) with an accuracy exceeding commercial benchtop optical spectrum analyzers, validating its potential for gas sensing, chemical analysis, and lab-on-a-chip applications.

The University of Louisville has begun construction of a transformative new building that will serve as a cornerstone for education, engagement and research at the UofL Health Sciences Center and as a resource for the broader university and healthcare communities. The Health Sciences Building is designed to provide a rich environment for innovative and collaborative education that will equip existing and future health professionals to provide superior care and discover solutions to our most pressing health challenges.

Small engine maintenance and repair is a topic many agricultural educators are expected to teach. Yet, it remains one of the least emphasized subjects at the post-secondary level. Researchers with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas set out to examine instructional strategies to enhance learning quality in small-engine coursework with short-form video self-reflection.

Steven Elmlinger from Princeton University has studied human infants and zebra finches to understand how immature babbling transitions into adultlike speech. He and his colleagues found that human caregiver responses to sequential vocalizations significantly increased the rate at which infants learned to produce those sequences. Elmlinger repeated this experiment with zebra finches, with the same finding. He will present this work as part of the 190th ASA Meeting.