Photonics is the science of light. It is the technology of generating, controlling, and detecting light. Scientists have been studying light for hundreds of years. At the beginning of the 20th century, Max Planck and later Albert Einstein proposed that light behaves as a wave as well as a particle, which was a very controversial theory at the time. How can light be two completely different things at the same time? With experimentation, this duality of light was confirmed. The word Photonics appeared around 1960, when the laser was invented by Theodore Maiman. It brings together physics, electrical engineering, and [...]

Phylogenetics is the study of evolutionary history and relationships between groups of organisms. Phylo is defined as “race or tribe, or a group of organisms” and genetics is the scientific study of “genes and hereditary”. Phylogenetic relationships are often shown through trees (figure below) in which the pattern of branching is an evolutionary reflection of a particular species from its common ancestor. One such phylogenetic tree we are all familiar with are family trees. Family Trees visually map relationships of kin through understanding the origin that makes up our unique self. Growing up, people would often comment that I look [...]

The medical field is constantly evolving in both technique and technology. The diagnosis process is vastly different today in comparison to its shaky, unreliable nature merely a century ago. The arrival of the X-Ray in the 1890s and scans such as the CT or MRI scan following in the 1970s, has brought forth a greater sense of security in the practices of the healthcare field. Of course, the field aims to continue growing such confidence, hence why medical technology is constantly being improved and evaluated. One such product of this exponentially increasing pursuit for improvement would be the gradual onset [...]