The innovation consists of a method of producing cone and pillar surfaces on polymethylmethacralate (PMMA) optical fibers for glucose monitoring. The process is a significant improvement over a previous process I disclosed in LEW: 17,642-1. The method consists if using electron beam evaporation to deposit a non contiguous thin film of aluminum on the ends of the PMMA fibers. The partial coverage of aluminum on the fibers is randomly but rather uniformly distributed across the end of the optical fibers. After the aluminum deposition, the ends of the fibers are then exposed to hyperthermal atomic oxygen which oxidizes the areas that are not protected by aluminum. The resulting PMMA fibers have a greatly increased surface area and the cones or pillars are sufficiently close together that the cellular components in blood are excluded from passing into the valleys between the cones and pillars. The optical fibers are then coated with appropriated surface chemistry so that they can optically sense the glucose level in the blood while requiring a much smaller blood sample than that with conventional glucose monitoring.

A friction stir welding device that is configured to perform convention friction stir welding as well as self-reacting friction stir welding. A pin passes through an upper shoulder and can selectively attach to and detach from a lower shoulder in a preferred embodiment. A controller maintains the discrete position of, and/or force applied by, the upper and lower shoulders during self-reacting friction stir welding, or maintains the pin at a desired depth and/or applied force during conventional friction stir welding.

The computer software PUMPDES (PUMP DESign) was written to calculate preliminary design point performance characteristics and impeller size for an axial flow inducer stage, or single or multi-stage shrouded centrifugal pump stages, used to pump hydrogen or oxygen. Modeling in the program is based on the mean streamline in which velocity vector diagrams at the blade meanline are taken as representative of average flow conditions. Analysis involves prediction of impeller inlet and discharge meanline velocity diagrams necessary to produce user input flow and pressure (head) rise requirements. Key impeller geometric parameters necessary to achieve the fluid turning per the diagrams with the predicted loss are calculated during execution. Real-fluid properties are used in the code algorithms.

A method is provided for the fabrication of a protective coating for a crucible with channels being formed in the coating. A material is adhered to the outer wall of the crucible to form a pattern thereon. The outer wall of the crucible along with the pattern of material adhered thereto is next coated with another material. The material used to form the pattern should extend through the outer material coating to define at least one port therein. Next, the crucible with its pattern of material and outer coating material is heated to a temperature of transformation at which the pattern of material is transformed to a fluidic state while the crucible and outer coating material maintain their solid integrity. Such transformation could also be accomplished by using a solvent that causes the pattern of material to dissolve. Finally, the material in its fluidic state is removed via the at least one port formed in the outer material coating thereby leaving channels defined in the coating adjacent the outer wall of the crucible.

Sol-gel pellets are made by an extrusion process where a wet-gel is pushed out of a mold and chopped repetitively in short similar pieces as it emerges from the mold. The resulting small cylindrical or ‘cubic’ objects are collected and can be dried under ambient pressure to xerogels or ambigels, depending on the solvent, or they can be dried from a supercritical fluid yielding aerogels. Advantageously, the sol-gel pellets can be cross-linked by bringing them in contact with a crosslinking agent prior to drying, resulting in mechanically strong sol-gel materials.