Replace the ordnance with a fiber-optic laser and you can destroy 60mm mortar rounds 500 yards away, as Raytheon demonstrated last June.

FORBES: Light Warfare

This advance in the realm of medicine comes, oddly enough, from the digital world of fiber optics and laser printers, courtesy of engineers and scientists at Xerox Corp.

FORBES: Scanning For Cancer

The new single-laser fiber-optic speed record was set using a technique called fast Fourier transform that pulses light at an incredibly high rate with data encoded in 325 distinct colors across the spectrum.

ENGADGET: blogger-avatar

The resulting laser-fiber-microscope combo can spot such 1-in-10 million traveling cancer cells in 30 minutes.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Three years ago PARC scientists stumbled onto a surprising insight: Combining laser techniques with a whisk-broom bundle of fiber-optic threads enables incredibly accurate detection of traveling cancer cells, at a much faster pace than current screening allows.

FORBES: Magazine Article

To activate the altered neurons, they usually use a laser tuned to the proper wavelength and pipe the beam through a fiber-optic cable implanted in the brain tissue.

WSJ: Scientists Cast Light Onto Roots of Illness Deep in the Brain

Lucent's 30, 000 techies work on such advances as plastic fiber flexible enough to wire your home, a new over-the-air laser system for local optical transmission and routers with mind-boggling capacity.

FORBES: Wired and restless