Photonics.com (Oct. 15) – According to Brian Cunningham, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois, "The 'Star Trek' tricorder was absolutely a touchstone as we developed our device -- the TRI Analyzer." His group is one of several across the world exploiting the convergence of smartphone computing and spectroscopy. The TRI Analyzer is a 3D-printed cradle that physically attaches to a smartphone and uses the phone's internal camera as a visible-light spectrometer. The Statesman (Oct. 17)