When the results were double-checked with a laboratory light microscope, the device had managed to pick up 70% of the samples with infections present - and 90% of the heavier infections.

BBC: Worms detected by converted iPhone microscope

The nova is providing a unique stellar laboratory, shedding light on processes normally confined to supernovae that are too slow for Earth-bound astronomers to learn from quickly.

BBC: Gamma rays from nova explosion surprise astronomers

Dr. Freire and his colleagues put Einstein to the test in a cosmic laboratory 7, 000 light years from earth, where two exotic stars are circling each other.

WSJ: Einstein Proved Right on Gravity��Again

Unlike conventional cameras, our femto camera captures an image as one thin slice at a time of one-dimensional space using a "streak tube, " a laboratory instrument that is commonly used by chemists to study light passing through chemical samples.

CNN: A camera that can see around corners

The disc was too fragile to play using a needle so the museum, along with researchers at the US Library of Congress and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, developed an alternative play-back system that used light and a 3D camera to turn its bumps and grooves into sounds.

BBC: Phone pioneer speaks for first time in 128 years

The reason Bose-Einstein condensates may prove useful outside the laboratory is that they are to matter what a laser is to light: all their constituent particles march in step.

ECONOMIST: A new way has been devised to make a peculiar form of matter

He said more research was still needed, but the findings may lead to considerations of light levels during pregnancy and efforts to grow retinas in the laboratory.

BBC: Light in womb 'gives healthy eyes' - in mice

If the signature of an element is found at a wavelength that is slightly to the blue side of what experiments in a laboratory show, this means the star is moving towards the earth, making the wavelength of the light it was emitting slightly shorter.

ECONOMIST: Stellar origins