There are eight herpes viruses that infect humans, causing a wide range of diseases resulting in considerable morbidity and associated costs. Varicella zoster virus (VZV) is a human herpes virus that causes chickenpox in children and shingles in adults. Approximately 1,000,000 new cases of...

A high-speed data recorder and replay equipment has been developed for reliable high-data-rate recording to disk media. It solves problems with slow or faulty disks, multiple disk insertions, high-altitude operation, reliable performance using COTS hardware,...

Datacasting V3.0 provides an RSS-based feed mechanism for publishing the availability of Earth science data records in real time. It also provides a utility for subscribing to these feeds and sifting through all the items in an automatic manner to identify and download the data records that are required for a specific application.

In a high-speed signal transmission system that uses transformer coupling, there is a need to provide increased transmitted signal strength without adding active components. This invention uses additional transformers to achieve the needed gain. The prior art uses stronger drivers...

NASA Stennis Space Center’s (SSC’s) large rocket engine test facility requires the use of liquid propellants, including the use of cryogenic fluids like liquid hydrogen as fuel, and liquid oxygen as an oxidizer (gases which have been liquefied at very low temperatures). These fluids...

Soft x-ray optics can use narrow slots to direct x-rays into a desirable pattern on a focal plane. While square-pack, square-pore, slumped optics exist for this purpose, they are costly. Silicon (Si) is being examined as a possible low-cost replacement. A fabrication method was developed for...

A compact radiometric focal plane assembly (FPA) has been designed in which the filters are individually co-registered over compact thermopile pixels. This allows for construction of an ultralightweight and compact radiometric instrument. The FPA also incorporates micromachined baffles in order to...

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) robotic arm is ten times more massive than any Mars robotic arm before it, yet with similar accuracy and repeatability positioning requirements. In order to assess and validate these requirements, a higher-fidelity model and calibration processes were needed.

This innovation replaces the linear alternator presently used in Stirling engines with a continuous-gradient, impedance-matched, oscillating magnetostrictive transducer that eliminates all moving parts via compression, maintains high efficiency, costs less to manufacture, reduces mass, and eliminates the need for a...

This method uses a photoaffinity label that recognizes DNA and can be used to distinguish populations of bacterial cells from bacterial spores without the use of heat shocking during conventional culture, and live from dead bacterial spores using...

The ability to stabilize and treat patients on exploration missions will depend on access to needed consumables. Intravenous (IV) fluids have been identified as required consumables. A review of the Space Medicine Exploration Medical Condition List (SMEMCL) lists over 400 medical conditions that could present and...

Apart from the fundamental interest of discovering the physical effects that are behind the light-matter interaction processes that make it possible, slowing and storing light currently attracts a lot of attention because the ability to control the propagation speed of optical pulses, to...

The new Helios series of sub-nanosecond solid-state lasers from Coherent, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) offer a pulse repetition frequency of 50 kHz and a pulsewidth of <600 ps. Specific applications include scribing of both thin-film and c-Si solar cells (e.g. selective opening of anti-reflection or passivation...

The 2013 Create the Future Design Contest — sponsored by COMSOL, SAE International, and Tech Briefs Media Group (publishers of NASA Tech Briefs) — recognized innovation in product design in eight categories: Aerospace & Defense (new this year), Consumer Products, Electronics, Machinery & Equipment,...

The overall consumer experience of foods is impacted by various sensory factors including taste, texture, and smell, as well as by ingredients that occur naturally in various foods, which can directly impact one’s mood. Food additives also affect various mood neuro-actives, such as serotonin,...

A client seeks new synthetic (chemical-based) control agents for insects such as aphids and spider mites. The piercing and sucking insects damage plants by inserting their mouthpart into plant tissues and feeding on the juices. Heavily infested plants become yellow, wilted, deformed, or stunted, and may eventually...

Dr. Butler Hine is the project manager of the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft. The vehicle, successfully launched in September, will characterize the dust environment of the moon.

Nik Karpinsky quickly tapped out a few computer commands until Zeus, in all his bearded and statuesque glory, appeared in the middle of a holographic glass panel mounted to an office desk.The white statue stared back at Karpinsky. Then a hand appeared and turned the full-size head to the right and to...

It was a result so unexpected that MIT researchers initially thought it must be a mistake: Under certain conditions, putting a cracked piece of metal under tension — that is, exerting a force that would be expected to pull it apart — has the reverse effect, causing the crack to close and its...

The International Space Station (ISS) Visiting Vehicle Group needed a targeting tool for vehicles that rendezvous with the ISS. The Visiting Vehicle Ground Trajectory targeting tool provides the ability to perform both realtime and planning operations for the Visiting Vehicle Group. This tool provides a...

The Mobile Thread Task Manager (MTTM) is being applied to parallelizing existing flight software to understand the benefits and to develop new techniques and architectural concepts for adapting software to multicore architectures. It allocates and load-balances tasks for a group of threads that migrate across processors...

The Software Developer’s Assistant (SDA) helps software teams more efficiently and accurately conduct or execute software processes associated with NASA mission-critical software. SDA is a process enactment platform that guides software teams through project-specific standards, processes, and...

As remote sensing for scientific purposes has transitioned from an experimental technology to an operational one, the selection of instruments has become more coordinated, so that the scientific community can exploit complementary measurements. However, technological and scientific heterogeneity across devices...

There is a need to acquire autonomously cryogenic hydrocarbon liquid sample from remote planetary locations such as the lakes of Titan for instruments such as mass spectrometers. There are several problems that had to be solved relative to collecting the right amount of...

The conventional method for integrating a radiometer into radar hardware is to share the RF front end between the instruments, and to have separate IF receivers that take data at separate times. Alternatively, the radar and radiometer...

Researchers from the University of Helsinki's Department of Chemistry have manufactured photochemically active polymers which can be dissolved in water or certain alcohols.The effect where light causes the polymer to dissolve completely and be made visible can last several hours depending, for example, on the...

A StarChase system being used by police in Florida and Iowa allows police officers to fire "a miniature GPS module encased in a tracking projectile/tag" from a "launcher" mounted on a police cruiser's grill. The GPS module then sticks to the rear of the fleeing car, allowing dispatch to track the...

As new technologies emerge and new cyber and electronic warfare threats plague soldiers in the field, U.S. Army scientists and engineers continue to define next-generation protocols and system architectures to help develop the technology to combat these threats in an integrated and...

A remote acoustic detection system designed to identify homemade bombs can determine the difference between those that contain low-yield and high-yield explosives. That capability – never before reported in a remote bomb detection system – was recently described in a paper by Vanderbilt engineer Douglas...

Inspired by the way dolphins hunt using bubble nets, scientists at the University of Southampton, in collaboration with University College London and Cobham Technical Services, have developed a new kind of radar that can detect hidden surveillance equipment and explosives. The twin inverted...

Using inexpensive materials configured and tuned to capture microwave signals, researchers at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering have designed a power-harvesting device with efficiency similar to that of modern solar panels.The device wirelessly converts the microwave signal to...

Researchers from Georgia Tech, the University of Tokyo, and Microsoft Research have developed a novel method to rapidly and cheaply make electrical circuits by printing them with commodity inkjet printers and off-the-shelf materials. For about $300 in equipment costs, anyone can produce working electrical...

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research Pittsburgh have devised a motion tracking technology that could eliminate much of the annoying lag that occurs in existing video game systems that use motion tracking, while also being extremely precise and highly affordable. Called Lumitrack,...

Silence isn’t just golden, it’s an absolute necessity for Binghamton University Professor Ron Miles. Miles’ current work involves building a better hearing aid, and for that he needs an extraordinarily quiet room. The University’s new anechoic chamber (a room without echo) is the...

A string of fiber-optic sensors running along a 36-km stretch of high-speed commuter railroad lines connecting Hong Kong to mainland China has taken more than 10 million measurements over the past few years in a demonstration that the system can help safeguard commuter trains and freight cars against...

An in-flight service from Gogo allows travelers to text and talk as if they are on the ground. By using the company's air-to-ground connectivity, calls and texts are routed through the aircraft's wireless network rather than in-flight cell towers, or "picocells."

Researchers have created a “RoboSnail,” which can climb walls and stick to overhead surfaces much like its living counterpart. Such a device has potential uses in invasive surgery and oil well drilling, among other applications.The researchers found that, while digging, the clam’s up-and-down movement...

MIT researchers have come up with a way to cool hot surfaces more effectively by keeping droplets from bouncing. Their solution: Decorate the surface with tiny structures and then coat it with particles about 100 times smaller. Using that approach, they produced textured surfaces that...

Researchers at NJIT have developed a flexible battery made with carbon nanotubes that could potentially power electronic devices with flexible displays.Electronic manufacturers are now making flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, a pioneering technology that allow devices such as cell phones,...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego report a breakthrough in technology that could pave the way for digital systems to record, store, edit and replay information in a dimension that goes beyond what we can see or hear, namely touch. “Touch was largely bypassed by the digital...

Solar cells that produce electricity 24/7, not just when the sun is shining, or mobile phones with built-in power cells that recharge in seconds and work for weeks between charges. These are just two of the possibilities raised by a novel supercapacitor design invented by material scientists at...

A San Francisco startup introduced an all-in-one card, called Coin, meant to store financial information from every other card carried in a wallet. The device, available for preorder, includes a magnetic strip that can change depending on what card one wants to use. What do you think? Would you use an all-in-one...

Stanford researchers have developed an inexpensive device that uses light to split water into oxygen and clean-burning hydrogen. The goal is to supplement solar cells with hydrogen-powered fuel cells that can generate electricity when the sun isn't shining or demand is high.Two semiconducting electrodes...

NASA-developed computer software could help aircraft operators save time and fuel by allowing technology in the cockpit to help determine the most efficient flight paths while planes are in the air - in traffic - en route to their destinations.A concept called Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Requests, or...

Solar panel modules must fulfill certain standards to be approved for operation. This involves exposing them to high temperatures and high mechanical loading. However, the results only predict something about the robustness of a brand-new sample with respect to extreme, short-term loading....

Researchers modeling how changes in air flow patterns affect wind turbine output power have found that the wind can supply energy from an unexpected direction: below. The researchers introduced a mathematical way to measure changes in the flow that gives a more accurate representation of the...

A bee and a jumbo jet: common sense would tell you that the tiny insect couldn't possibly cause any troubles for the massive airplane, right? Actually, no. Bees can cause trouble. When flying insects get in the way of an airplane's wing during takeoff or landing, it's not just the bugs...

During spring break the last five years, a University of Washington class has headed to the Nevada desert to launch rockets and learn more about the science and engineering involved. Sometimes, the launch would fail and a rocket smacked hard into the ground. This year, the session...

Plasmas are a soup of charged particles in an electric field, and are normally found in stars and lightning bolts. With the use of high voltage equipment, very small plasmas can be used to manipulate fluid flows. In recent years, the development of devices known as plasma actuators has advanced the promise of...

Results from a recent study that looked at how battlefield-born vibrations, like those from blasts and heavy armored vehicles, for example, are leading research scientists to rethink military vehicle testing and evaluation methods that could also, eventually, improve automotive and...

Although 3D printing — or direct digital manufacturing — has the potential to revolutionize various industries by providing faster, cheaper, and more accurate manufacturing options, fabrication time and the complexity of multimaterial objects have been a longtime hurdle to its widespread use in the...

A single layer of tin atoms could be the world’s first material to conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency at the temperatures that computer chips operate, according to a team of theoretical physicists led by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National...

Two firms are already planning prospecting missions to passing asteroids. Meteorites contain precious metals, including platinum and rhodium, but the presence of hydrogen and oxygen could also enable 'pit stops' to create fuel for Mars missions.

An envelope laced with ricin intended for the president of the United States was recently intercepted by law enforcement officials when protocols established for mail screenings revealed the threat of a biological weapon. Ricin is a highly toxic, naturally occurring protein found...

Soldiers who have deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation New Dawn, have the shared experience of being issued ballistic plates for their body armor that have been turned in by other soldiers after their combat tours. Part of ensuring plates are combat...

Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) benthic microbial fuel cell (BMFC) extracts electricity from the sea floor using the natural decomposition process of sediment. Most current scientific sensors in the marine environment are battery-powered, but the BMFC offers an attractive alternative to a...