Government plans to drop the regulation of lasers used by beauty salons for cosmetic treatments, such as the removal of wrinkles, hair and tattoos, would pose a serious risk to patients’ health, doctors said yesterday.
Leading cosmetic surgeons said that the proposals, set out by the Department of Health, would allow anyone without qualifications to start using lasers and other light techniques.
Hundreds of salons in England use lasers for treating lines and wrinkles, removing hair and eliminating tattoos and birthmarks.
Another technique, intense pulsed light (IPL), is used for removing hair from larger areas such as the back or the legs.
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Lasers that pulsate at fantastically fast speeds have applications in engineering, computing and medicine.
Even the blink of an eye is nowhere near fast enough. To get an idea of how quickly the latest ultra-fast lasers operate, try an F-16 fighter. With the throttles fully open at supersonic speed the jet would barely traverse an atom in the same time as a pulse from one of today’s fastest lasers.
Instead of emitting a continuous beam, a pulsed laser concentrates its energy into brief bursts. An ultra-fast laser produces fantastically short bursts in which the intensity and power of the pulses can reach mind-boggling levels. Because the pulses happen so quickly, the effects are concentrated in time. This gives ultra-fast lasers valuable properties that their slower predecessors do not have.
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Colorado-based India born animation and laser artist Manick Sorcar beat 99 contenders worldwide to bag the prestigious International Laser Display Association (ILDA) 2007 Artistic Award for his entry “Reflection” in the category for best laser photography.
ILDA’s awards for artistic and technical excellence is the industry’s equivalent to Hollywood’s Oscars and the organisers each year honour companies from around the world for artistic and technological achievement.
“I am extremely happy having made it for the second time,” Manick, son of legendary Indian magician, the late P C Sorcar, told IANS on Sunday from Denver.
On March 27, the ILDA officially announced a list of the 2007 artistic award winners in their annual international laser display competition. Manick’s company LaserLight Magic won the ILDA 2007 Artistic-Award for their entry “Reflection”.
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In recent years the bulk of the scientific sessions at the SPIE Biomedical Optics (BiOS) conference have focused on optical imaging for diagnostic and biological applications. This year, however, saw the resurgence of more targeted “cause and effect” uses of lasers and optics, on a much finer scale than traditional therapeutic procedures such as vision correction, hair removal, and skin resurfacing.
In fact, one of the hottest “Hot Topics” at the 2008 BiOS conference (Jan. 19–24; San Jose, CA) was nerve stimulation.
Neuroscientists use nerve stimulation to study the fundamental principles of the nervous system and to research causes and treatments of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and nerve regeneration, among other things. Medical professionals use nerve stimulation for everything from pain and depression management to brain mapping.
These applications traditionally involve stimulating the nerves with electrical current, which has some limitations given the ability of electrical current to transmit in wet media.
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The Airborne Tactical Laser is a Special Operations Command (SOCOM) sponsored Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) program, designed to demonstrate the use of high power tactical lasers from an airborne platform.
Under the program, a chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL) will be installed on a modified C-130H transport aircraft, simulating a future AC-130 laser equipped gunship. The airborne tactical laser will be able to destroy, damage or disable targets at tactical ranges with little to no collateral damage, supporting missions on the battlefield and in urban operations.
The laser will be able to place a 10-centimeter-wide beam with enough energy to melt and slice through a metal target from a distance of 15 kilometers.
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Improved efficiency of diode lasers and the growing photovoltaic market have accelerated interest in power beaming (wireless power transfer). The NASA-sponsored Space Elevator competition is currently the most popular application of power beaming.
Power beaming – the wireless transmission of energy from one location to another – has come a long way since Nikola Tesla’s experiments on couple-tuned-circuit oscillators. Although wireless power beaming is less efficient than using a conductor, it is the only way to power remote locations when laying power lines is not feasible, such as when a vehicle climbs 100,000 km into space from the Earth’s surface, also called the space elevator.
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Lord Rayleigh wrote about the two-dimensional whispering gallery mode (WGM) in 1910 after a visit to the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The whispering cave mode (WCM) is a three-dimensional (3-D) effect – a toroid with circular helix symmetry which recent studies have shown can be used to create photonic-quantum-ring (PQR) lasers that emit in the blue-violet part of the spectrum.
A research team at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH, Pohang, Korea) first created 3-D WCM lasers that emit in the infrared and red part of the spectrum.
To achieve this, Professor O’Dae Kwon and his group stacked mesas of vertically reflecting distributed-Bragg-reflector (DBR) structures above and below a few active 80 Å gallium arsenide and gallium indium phosphide quantum wells.
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Pilots have welcomed moves to ban the importation of laser pointers, after another serious incident where lasers were shone at a flight on approach to Sydney Airport.
Aircraft were forced to divert approaches because of a coordinated, 15 minute attack involving four powerful green lasers last Friday.
The Australian and International Pilots Association says it has been talking to the government about a ban on importation of the lasers, with exemptions for legitimate use.
“I am pleased to say that they (the government) are moving to do that,” the association’s general manager Peter Somerville told ABC radio.
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UK football star Michael Owen gets treatment for a hamstring injury with Low Level Laser Therapy
see more videos of Michael Owen on YouTube
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