 making REAL Glass in 10-mm-thick rods and plates, establishing a basis for inexpensive, large-scale production of sheet and rod products. "The REAL Glass products are a new family of optical materials," says Weber, who adds that CRI is already meeting with businesses to talk about requirements for laser, infrared window, and other optical applications and supplying finished products or licensing the material for use. "The REAL Glass technology combines properties of competing materials into one [material]," says NSF's Sargeant. "With these glasses," he adds, "researchers can design smaller laser devices, because of the high-power density that can be achieved, and can provide small, high-bandwidth devices for applications in the emerging fiber-to-the-home telecom market." Because the glass can incorporate a variety of rare-earth elements into its structure, CRI can craft the glasses to yield specific properties, such as the ability to tune a laser across multiple light wavelengths, which can have impor- tant implications for the lasers used in dental procedures and surgery, for example, providing more control for operations involving skin shaping or cauterization. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research is supporting CRI's research into applications, including materials for infrared waveguides and sensors needed to identify chemical components. CRI is also continuing basic research on fragile oxide liquids, which they believe still offer much potential for generating new materials and ultimately optical devices. 4.2.2 Optical Fibers in Sponges Scientists at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have found that a deep-sea sponge contains optical fiber that is remarkably similar to the optical fiber found in today's state-of-the-art telecommunications networks. The deep-sea sponge's glass fiber, designed through the course of evolution, may possess certain technological advantages over industrial optical fiber. "We believe this novel biological optical fiber may shed light upon new bio-inspired processes that may lead