Latest news with #optics
BBC News
8 minutes ago
- Business
- BBC News
Zelensky leaves White House unscathed as he buys more time
The optics could not have been more different this time. Unlike the shockingly ill-tempered previous meeting in February, US President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky seemed determined not to look confrontational - despite their remaining wore a collared suit (although not of the classical variety), and Trump complimented his attire. The Ukrainian president also repeatedly said "thank you", which must have pleased his host, his opening appearance in the Oval Office, Zelensky spoke little - or maybe he was not keen to, fearing that what he had to say was different from what Trump wanted to showed later, when the US and Ukrainian presidents appeared before journalists together with European leaders. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron both said a ceasefire in Ukraine should be the next step, even though Trump had argued that it was not necessary before a more permanent solution is found. Zelensky remained conspicuously quiet on the issue. What we heard from the leaders suggests that their discussions behind closed doors focused on security guarantees for Ukraine and prospects for a meeting between Zelensky and details were revealed about what guarantees were discussed, or how being face-to-face in the same room with Putin will help end the following the day of talks, Zelensky described security guarantees as a necessary "starting point for ending war". At an earlier news conference outside the White House, he said security guarantees could include a $90bn (£67bn) deal between Kyiv and Washington to acquire US weapons, including aviation systems, anti-missile systems and other weapons he declined to disclose. Zelensky also said the US would purchase Ukrainian drones, which would help boost domestic production of the unmanned aircraft. Though no formal agreement has been reached, Zelensky said a deal could be worked out over the next 10 days. The Ukranian leader, however, was more willing to talk about his possible meeting with Putin, telling reporters he was ready to meet directly with his Russian counterpart, and if Moscow agreed, Trump could join the negotiations. Putin has so far resisted a direct meeting with Zelensky. "Ukraine will never stop on the way to peace," he told reporters, adding that no date had been set. One issue the leaders seemed reluctant to bring up before the media were possible territorial concessions by also mentioned how he showed his US counterpart a map of Ukraine, stressing that Russia has managed to occupy less than 1% of the Ukrainian territory in the last 1,000 days. This was news to the White House, he said. And it helped swing Trump's mood, apparently."I have been fighting with what is on that map," Zelensky told reporters, adding that he pushed back on what the Oval Office map showed as Russian-captured territories. "It isn't possible to say this much territory has been taken over this time. These points are important." The Ukrainian leader seemed mostly upbeat about his latest White House appearance, describing his meeting with Trump as "warm". His optimism, however, appeared deliberate as he sought to avoid a repeat of his last Oval Office visit and convince his American hosts to embrace the European position on ending the war. But perhaps the key outcome of the trip was that it helped Ukraine to buy more time. The call that Trump had with Putin following his first meeting with the European leaders suggests that Russia has managed to do just the widespread fears, no catastrophe has happened at the summits in Alaska and Washington - at least nothing from what has been made status quo remains.
Gizmodo
5 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Researchers Harness Black Metal to Turbocharge Solar Power
Several years ago, an optics expert developed a technique for turning shiny metals pitch black. The trick resulted in a material perfectly suited for absorbing sunlight—so much so that generators built with it produced 15 times more power than comparable devices. The team used black metal to develop a new design for solar thermoelectric generators. Known as STEGs, they can convert various types of thermal energy into electricity. However, technological limitations significantly curbed their potential, with energy output converting just 1% of sunlight into electricity—mediocre compared to about 20% for residential solar panel systems. The new design, published on August 12 in Light: Science & Applications, overcomes this challenge by allowing for very precise control over each layer of the device, some of which were constructed from black metal. STEGs normally have 'hot' and 'cold' sides sandwiched by semiconductor materials, and the temperature difference between the two sides generates electricity through a phenomenon called the Seebeck effect. For decades, the focus was on improving the semiconductor materials to better control the heat difference, as Chunlei Guo, the study's senior author and material scientist at the University of Rochester, explained in a statement. That approach had limited success, which was why Guo—the creator of black metal technology—explored other elements, namely these hot and cold sides. Guo's design hinged on three fabrication strategies that relied heavily on lasers. First, his team treated tungsten with femtosecond laser pulses—ultrashort beams flashing the metal at scales of one quadrillionth of a second—to transform it into black metal. Specifically, they engineered the material so that it would be optimized to absorb sunlight while minimizing the possibility of unwanted heat losses. Next, they covered the treated tungsten with a piece of plastic, making a 'mini greenhouse' that maximized the hot side's capacity to trap heat, Guo said. Finally, to balance things out, the team once again used femtosecond lasers to manufacture a special heat sink from aluminum. These nanostructures doubled the cooling performance of the cold side, the researchers explained. To validate their design, the team performed a simple experiment in which they tested this thermal management design by lighting LEDs. As expected, their setup allowed the STEG to fully power the LED at maximum brightness at considerably lower illumination levels, the researchers wrote in the study. The device is also compact and relatively lightweight, meaning it could 'potentially power microelectronic devices, such as autonomous sensors for weather monitoring and agriculture applications, and smart devices,' the study states. For fans of metal music and solar power, this research should come as no surprise. When it comes to clean energy, black metal really does go hard.
Yahoo
24-07-2025
- General
- Yahoo
With great sadness and deep gratitude for a life well-lived,
Jul. 23—With great sadness and deep gratitude for a life well-lived, we announce the peaceful passing of Joe Orlando Torres, age 90, on July 16, 2025, at his home in Socorro, NM. He was surrounded by the love and prayers of his family as he was called home to be with the Lord. Joe was born August 30,1934 in Socorro, NM to Vicente and Anna Maria Torres. He was a man of faith, love, and service-devoted to his family, proud of his heritage, and guided by strong values that never wavered. He served his country with honor through 6 years in the Army National Guard, including 2 years of active duty in the US Army. After his military service he dedicated 32 years of hard work as an Optics Technician at White Sands Missile Range. Joe had a heart full of life and a soul anchored in joy. He found God's presence in the simple pleasures: the stillness of a fishing trip, the joy of hunting and camping, the rhythm of music as he played his accordion or harmonica, and the laughter shared during a game of bowling. He tended the land with care and cherished the beauty of God's creation through farming. Joe will be remembered for his generosity, unwavering kindness, and the way he made everyone feel welcome. He was a jokester and a dancer, but above all, he was a devoted husband, father, grandfather, and friend. He poured love into his family and built a legacy of warmth, faith, and laughter that will live on through generations. He is survived by his beloved wife of 69 years, Rosalie Torres; daughters Darlene Torres, Connie (Daniel) Gallegos: seven grandchildren, 8 great-grandchildren, and 3 great-great grandchildren; and his siblings Eddie Torres, Vincent Torres, and Elaine Valdez, and many nieces and nephews that he loved dearly. He is reunited in eternal peace with his parents Vicente and Anna Maria, his beloved son Joseph "Seppie" Torres, and his siblings Lucas, Felix, Leopoldo, Tommy, Kate, Virginia, Rita, and Mary. As we grieve his passing, we take comfort in knowing he has entered the gates of Heaven, welcomed by those who went before him. His faith, laughter, and love will continue to guide us. Services for Joe will be held on Friday, August 1, 2025, at the San Miguel Church. A visitation will take place at 9:00 am followed by the rosary at 9:30 am. Mass will then be held at 10:00 am. Inurnment will take place immediately following the services at the San Miguel Cemetery. All are welcome to join in prayer and remembrance. "Well done, good and faithful into the joy of your Lord."-Matthew 25:21 Arrangements are being handled by the caring professionals at the Noblin Funeral Service Belen Chapel, where an online guest register is available at Solve the daily Crossword
Globe and Mail
23-07-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Marvell Technology's Optics Business Expands: What's on the Horizon?
Marvell Technology 's MRVL optics business is experiencing robust growth as the industry is transitioning to 1.6 Terabit optical interconnects. The company, in its first-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings, reported that its electro-optics products used in AI and cloud computing are one of the proponents that are experiencing this traction. Its latest introduction, the co-packaged optics solutions, which feature higher interconnect densities, longer reach and scalable networking architecture, are an upgrade over the slower the previous generation. These products have optical fibres instead of copper connections, which are optimum for networking needs in AI systems. Marvell Technology's Silicon Photonics Light Engines support speeds up to 6.4T by combining several parts into compact modules, making them ideal for both plug-in and co-packaged uses. These features can help enterprises to scale their large AI workloads. MRVL expects its optics solutions to drive its business in the second quarter of fiscal 2026. Traction in its optics business is a contributing factor in Marvell Technology's top-line growth. Its first-quarter fiscal 2026 revenues grew 63% year over year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Marvell Technology's fiscal year 2026 revenues is pegged at $8.22 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 42.6%. How Competitors Fare Against MRVL As optics are gaining traction among next-generation AI infrastructure, Cloud Data Centers and Scale-Up and Scale-Out Networking, companies like Broadcom AVGO and Coherent Corp. COHR have become Marvell Technology's formidable competitors in this space. Broadcom is a dominant player in the pluggable optics space with offerings, including PAM4 DSPs and optical transceivers. Broadcom directly competes with Marvell Technology across high-speed PAM4, Ethernet PHYs, and optics used in hyperscale AI networks. Coherent also offers optical components, transceivers, coherent optics and optical engines used in data centers, overlapping with Marvell Technology's light engine offerings. Recent growth in AI and ML workloads has ramped up its sales of 800G transceivers and active optical cables. MRVL's Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates Shares of Marvell Technology have lost 34.8% year to date against the Electronics - Semiconductors industry's growth of 14.9%. Marvell Technology YTD Performance Chart From a valuation standpoint, Marvell Technology trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 6.95X, lower than the industry's average of 8.66X. Marvell Technology Forward 12 Month (P/S) Chart The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Marvell Technology's fiscal 2026 and 2027 earnings implies year-over-year growth of 77.7% and 27.73%, respectively. The estimates for fiscal 2026 and 2027 have been revised upward in the past 60 days. Marvell Technology currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. 5 Stocks Set to Double Each was handpicked by a Zacks expert as the #1 favorite stock to gain +100% or more in the coming year. While not all picks can be winners, previous recommendations have soared +112%, +171%, +209% and +232%. Most of the stocks in this report are flying under Wall Street radar, which provides a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor. Today, See These 5 Potential Home Runs >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Marvell Technology, Inc. (MRVL): Free Stock Analysis Report Broadcom Inc. (AVGO): Free Stock Analysis Report Coherent Corp. (COHR): Free Stock Analysis Report
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Oakley Looks to Define the Future as It Celebrates 50th Anniversary
It all started 50 years ago when Jim Jannard, a motorcycle enthusiast, started a company selling motorcycle parts out of his car at motocross events. He named this nascent business Oakley after his English setter Oakley Anne. Soon after, he began developing his own products, starting with a motorcycle grip featuring an ergonomic cam shape design and an octopus tread pattern that he named the Oakley Grip. Five years later, he entered the optics business by creating a protective goggle for the motocross industry called the O Frame MX. More from WWD EXCLUSIVE: Jonathan Bailey Releasing His 'Sluttly Little Glasses' in Partnership With Cubitts for LGBTQIA+ Charity Oakley Appoints Travis Scott Chief Visionary Inside VivaTech: LVMH Spotlights AI and Sustainability at Innovation Awards But the real turning point came in 1984 when Jannard was riding along the Pacific Coast Highway at sunset and saw that the rays streamed into the side of his sunglasses. So he took a coat hanger, Lexan goggle lens and some electrical tape and created a prototype for a sport performance sunglass that he named Eyeshade. The business thrived and in 1995, Oakley went public, and then in 2001, it was purchased by Italy's Luxottica Group SpA for about $2.1 billion. Today, the Foothill Ranch, Calif.-based Oakley operates as a separate division of what is now EssilorLuxottica. The company continues to be focused on developing innovative eyewear — its most recent category is a line of AI glasses developed in partnership with Meta (which, according to Bloomberg reports, recently invested $3.5 billion for a small minority stake in the Italian eyewear group) — and has also expanded into apparel, accessories and even footwear. 'Oakley is a brand known for innovation and the way we move sports and culture forward,' said Caio Amato, global president of Oakley and the Sports Performance Hub. 'Our credo is: 'We create for the future and deliver to the present.' As much as we have been born out of the mountain bike and motocross industry, the ethos of the company has always been to redefine the future. It's basically physics elevated to an art form.' This weekend, Oakley is hosting editors at its California headquarters for a behind-the-scenes look at the company's past, present and future. Amato claimed that over the past half-century Oakley has developed three values that set it apart from other brands. First is authenticity. 'Since the beginning,' he said, 'Oakley has been born to serve the misfits, the underdogs. The way we choose our athletes and our partners, we always want to show the blood, sweat and tears that their sport and culture bring to the table. To be honest, we lose business because of it: to be authentic means we're not going to copy whatever is selling. We are going to create our own version of what we think is right.' Second, he said, is innovation. And third, is the fact that it is 'a disruptive brand. We love to do things differently.' Amato said Oakley views itself as 'very rebellious, but in an optimistic way. We are unapologetically authentic.' The brand is still rooted in sports but lifestyle product has become more important in recent years, he said. 'Sports is what we breathe. It's who we are, it's where we started. So every single year, we bring two or three innovations for sports that are going to resolve unsolved problems.' One example, he said, is the company's high-definition optics lenses. 'Oakley was the first brand in history to develop a lens that was optically correct,' Amato claimed. In layman's terms, before the development, lenses were all created from flat pieces of glass. Oakley created glass that followed the angle of the eye, effectively cutting down on eye fatigue. The brand today is most popular in snow sports, cycling, surf and skate, Amato said. Although Oakley got its start in motorsports, because it's based in California, it was embraced early on by athletes playing beach volleyball, surfing and skating. More recently, he said, the brand is seeing football as a growth opportunity. Oakley produces all the visors, or face shields, for the NFL as well as licensed eyewear for the league. Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is also an ambassador. 'The NFL came to us with a problem,' Amato said. 'That was the safety of the athletes, and we turned that problem into a solution and an opportunity.' When athletes such as Mahomes — and Michael Jordan before him — became ambassadors, it helped Oakley cross over into lifestyle. 'This is the moment Oakley progressed outside of sports towards culture,' Amato said. 'But we learned that to be a sports brand that we wanted to be, we needed to take the ethos that we developed for sports and find partners and ways to progress these towards culture.' That includes Travis Scott, who was just named chief visionary of the company. Under the terms of the deal, the rapper and entrepreneur and his Cactus Jack team will work to push the brand further into the cultural arena. 'We opened the door of the bunker for him because he is a creator,' Amato said. 'He's someone who envisions the future the same way we do.' Oakley also produces prescription sunglasses, an area Amato termed a huge opportunity for the company. 'We are not known as a prescription brand, and we even created a campaign two years ago that we still run, that says: 'And you thought we only did sunglasses?' Prescription is a very relevant part of our business because people trust Oakley as a performance brand. We just needed to tell them.' Apparel is a growing part of the business as well. Amato said for the past five years, Oakley has sought to bring the 'transformative, disruptive, innovative ethos of Oakley into footwear and apparel.' Since then, the category has become 'a substantial part of the collection,' he said, pointing to a recent collaboration with Brain Dead on footwear that 'brought us to the epicenter of culture and subculture. We hope by the 2028 Olympic Games that it's going to be half of our business. We're bringing forward some very cool shoes and pieces of apparel.' That includes a Travis Scott collection, some of which the company has already begun teasing. Amato said to expect some teams in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina, Italy, to be sporting Oakley apparel on the snow as well. The company has a strong wholesale business with Luxottica-owned retailers, Sunglass Hut and Lenscrafters, as well as some other smaller optical retailers. It operates 183 of its own stores in North America as well as units in other countries where the apparel and footwear are on display along with the eyewear. He said that while some of the back office operations of the company are run by Luxottica, which does not break out sales for its individual divisions, the parent company gives Oakley management 'full autonomy to drive the brand in the way it should be driven.' As a result, its headquarters remain in California and its design team is headquartered there. The company is also free to sign ambassadors that are right for the brand such as Mahomes, Scott, NBA star Jaylen Brown, skier Mikaela Shiffrin, and soccer players Alessia Russo and Kylian Mbappé, among others. Looking ahead to the next 50 years, Amato said the goal is to keep trying to create for the future and inviting consumers to be a part of that journey. He pointed to the company's most-recent innovation, the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses collection, as an example. The glasses have a camera built into the frame, can play music and get responses using Meta AI. The glasses, which retail for $399 and up, launch on Friday. 'We always dreamed about making your eyewear a sort of human amplifying device,' Amato said. 'So when we were talking with Meta about how to create eyewear that amplifies human potential, we challenged ourselves about artificial intelligence. Is it artificial? And we landed on a name that it's actually eclectic intelligence.' He said rather than using a phone to capture a moment, the wearer can simply say: 'Meta, capture what I'm seeing.' Or it can be asked to play a certain musical artist. In addition, in celebration of its 50th anniversary, the company is debuting the Oakley Ellipse 50th Anniversary eyewear collection. The glasses are shaped like the Oakley logo and are designed to be reminiscent of the brand's history with the curved lines referencing the aesthetic of the '90s, a stem jog inspired by today's bestselling Radar EV, and a futuristic lens shape crafted with PhysioMorphic Geometry, the company said. The glasses are available in a Midas Fleck colorway, with a black lucid treatment and gold details, featuring Prizm 24K lenses. 'The Oakley Ellipse 50th Anniversary celebrates half a century of Oakley innovation by taking the most iconic bit of our branding and putting it front and center as a design element,' said Nick Garfias, Oakley's vice president of design. 'What's more is it plants a flag for us and our fans about what lies ahead. Oakley designs are about progression and advancement, but just as things will continue to evolve, certain things will remain the same: our DNA.' Amato summed it up this way: 'We believe in being an enabler for you to express yourself and amplify what you can do while doing sports or in your life.' Best of WWD Lexxola Launches New Style: The Neo Chrome Hearts Debuts High-performance Ski Goggles Marchon and Lacoste Extend Eyewear Licensing Agreement Sign in to access your portfolio
