May 2006

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Briefs: Semiconductors & ICs

A waveguide power-amplifier module capable of operating over the frequency range from 80 to 150 GHz has been constructed. The module comprises a previously reported power amplifier packaged...

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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Improved Traps for Removing Gases From Coolant Liquids

Two documents discuss improvements in traps for removing noncondensable gases (e.g., air) from heat-transfer liquids (e.g., water) in spacecraft cooling systems. Noncondensable gases must be removed because they can interfere with operation. A typical trap includes a cylindrical hydrophobic...

Briefs: Medical

Cochlear implants have been used successfully to provide auditory information for bilaterally profoundly deaf patients. This is achieved by electrically...

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Briefs: Semiconductors & ICs

Improved low-resistance, semitransparent back contacts, and a method of fabricating them, have been developed for solar photovoltaic cells that are made from thin films of I-III-VI2...

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Briefs: Information Technology

A method of automation, and a system of computer hardware and software to implement the method, have been invented to assist en-route air-traffic controllers in the issuance of...

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Articles: Photonics/Optics

Mechanical CAD (computer-aided design) programs have become very sophisticated during the past few years. Unfortunately, there is still a portion of the engineering spectrum that cannot be...

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Articles: Photonics/Optics

Photonics Tech Briefs (PTB) recently presented the 2005 Readers’ Choice Products of the Year at a special awards dinner held at The Water Club in New York City. The top three...

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Briefs: Photonics/Optics

Practical space-based coherent laser radar systems envisioned for global winds measurement must be very efficient and must contend with unique problems associated with the large platform...

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Briefs: Physical Sciences

An alternative design for dielectric optical microresonators and a relatively simple process to fabricate them have been proposed. The proposed microresonators would exploit the same...

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Briefs: Physical Sciences

In one of several alternative approaches to the design and fabrication of a "whispering-gallery" optical microresonator of high resonance quality (high Q), the index of...

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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Graded-Index “Whispering-Gallery” Optical Microresonators

Graded-index-of- refraction dielectric optical microresonators have been proposed as a superior alternative to prior dielectric optical microresonators, which include microspheres (described in several prior NASA Tech Briefs articles) and microtori wherein electromagnetic waves...

Briefs: Photonics/Optics

The stimulation of nerve tissue is a technique that is used in both research and clinical applications. Neuroscientists use nerve stimulation to study the fundamental principles of the nervous system...

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Briefs: Photonics/Optics

Nitrogen lasers have been used for more than 15 years in life science and forensic applications and will continue to play a role in many scientific and industrial applications. But...

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Briefs: Photonics/Optics

A method of adaptive signal processing has been proposed as the basis of a new generation of interferometric optical profilometers for measuring surfaces. Many current optical...

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Briefs: Photonics/Optics

Faced with increasing demand, manufacturers of power devices, microdisplays, and high-brightness light-emitting diodes (HB-LEDs) are focusing on tightening manufacturing...

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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Improved Photon-Emission-Microscope System

An improved photon-emission-microscope (PEM) instrumentation system has been developed for use in diagnosing failure conditions in semiconductor devices, including complex integrated circuits. This system is designed primarily to image areas that emit photons, at wavelengths from 400 to 1,100 nm,...

Products: Photonics/Optics

The MirusTM diode pumped solid-state laser system from Northrop Grumman Space Cutting Edge Optronics (St. Charles, MO) is available with 450 watts of output power. It...

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Products: Photonics/Optics

Photonic Products (Huntington Beach, CA) has launched 8-mm-diameter laser diode modules for use in prepress plate alignment and laser alignment for label and wrapper cutting machinery, and medical applications...

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Products: Photonics/Optics

The SAR500x silicon avalanche photodiodes (Si-APD) from Laser Components (Hudson, NH) feature a 500-μm detector chip with a “reach-through” structure. This structure is responsible for sensitivity in the...

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Products: Photonics/Optics

Optical Surfaces Ltd. (Surrey, UK) offers laser beam expanders for high-power laser and Doppler shift LIDAR applications. Manufactured to better than lambda/10 surface accuracy, the off-axis design of the beam expanders...

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Products: Photonics/Optics
Interferogram Analysis Software

IntelliWave 5.0 interferometry analysis software from Engineering Synthesis Design (Tucson, AZ) features a new scientific programming language. The automation/client server architecture allows bidirectional communication and data transfer between other programs for industrial systems automation. Wizards provide...

Products: Photonics/Optics

Coherent (Santa Clara, CA) has introduced the LAMBDA SX 315C excimer laser designed for low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) crystallization used in the manufacture of flat-panel displays (FPD). The laser features pulse energy of...

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Products: Photonics/Optics
Handheld Photometer

Designed for measuring area illumination, projector output, screen brightness, architecture lighting, room lighting, and color uniformity, Photo Research (Chatsworth, CA) has developed the PR-524 LiteMate illuminance handheld photometer system. The PR-524 features a cosine corrected receptor and measures illuminance. The...

Products: Photonics/Optics

The ESD-380DR high-speed color dome from ELMO USA Corp. (Plainview, NY) provides 360° continuous pan rotation at a travel speed from 5° to 400°/second. It operates from presets with 180° auto turnaround. The ESD-380DR features...

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Products: Photonics/Optics

Lasson Technologies (Culver City, CA) has released the AIR-1550-TWM laser ultrasonic receiver for component inspection and nondestructive evaluation of material properties. Part of the AIR family of receivers, the...

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Products: Photonics/Optics

MetroLaser (Irvine, CA) has announced the VibroMet 500V single-beam laser Doppler vibrometer that features a sensitivity range of 2 microns/sec, and a vibration velocity measurement range of 1 meter/sec. The laser is...

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Products

Watlow, St. Louis, MO, has introduced the EZ-ZONE™ ST integrated control loop that integrates temperature control, power control, safety shutdown, and power disconnect in a single package. The system features a PID...

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Products: Photonics/Optics

Sensors Unlimited, Goodrich Corp. (Princeton, NJ) has announced the SU640SDWH-1.7RT high-frame-rate, high-resolution, shortwave infrared (SWIR) camera. The indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) camera has regions of...

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Products: Photonics/Optics

The LV-1000 LED-based microscope light source from Micro-Lite® (Three Rivers, MA) incorporates LEDs as the light source. The illuminator features 360-degree, shadow-free uniform illumination; low voltage; and reduced glare....

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Application Briefs: Physical Sciences
Advanced Automotive Manikin
(ADAM) human physiological model
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Golden, CO
303-275-3000
www.nrel.gov
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Products: Photonics/Optics

LightSmyth Technologies (Eugene, OR) offers an integrated, single-mode-compatible, coarse WDM (CWDM) multiplexer based on the company’s nanophotonic filtering technology. The unit is passively athermal and polarization...

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Application Briefs: Imaging

Micromachined deformable mirror (DM)
Boston Micromachines Corp.
Watertown, MA
617-926-4178
www.bostonmicromachines.com
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Who's Who: Sensors/Data Acquisition

Using high-tech remote sensing methods, a collection of artifacts has been unearthed at Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, MS. The objects uncovered during...

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Briefs: Materials

A class of thermally stable piezoelectric and pyroelectric polymers, and an improved method of making them, have been invented. These polymers can be used as substrates for a wide...

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Briefs: Materials
Combustion Synthesis of Ca₃(PO₄)₂ Net-Shape Surgical Implants

ASelf-propagating high-temperature combustion synthesis (SHS) is the basis of a method of making components of porous tricalcium phosphate [Ca3(PO4)2] and related compounds in net sizes and shapes for use as surgical implants that are compatible...

Briefs: Software
Robust Control for the Mercury Laser Altimeter

Mercury Laser Altimeter Science Algorithms is a software system for controlling the laser altimeter aboard the Messenger spacecraft, which is to enter into orbit about Mercury in 2011. The software will control the altimeter by dynamically modifying hardware inputs for gain, threshold, channel-...

Briefs: Software
DAVE-ML Utility Programs

DAVEtools is a set of Java archives (*.jar files) that embodies tools for manipulating flight-dynamics models that have been encoded in dynamic aerospace vehicle exchange markup language (DAVE-ML). [DAVE-ML is an application program, written in Extensible Markup Language (XML), for encoding complete computational models...

Briefs: Software
Software for Alignment of Segments of a Telescope Mirror

The Segment Alignment Maintenance System (SAMS) software is designed to maintain the overall focus and figure of the large segmented primary mirror of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. This software reads measurements made by sensors attached to the segments of the primary mirror and from these...

Briefs: Software
Simulation of Dropping of Cargo With Parachutes

Decelerator System Simulation (DSS) is a computer program for predicting and analyzing the dynamics of a load of cargo dropped with parachutes from an aircraft. A DSS simulation runs from the first motion in the aircraft until the payload reaches the ground. Intended for use in support of airdrop...

Briefs: Software
Aspect-Oriented Subprogram Synthesizes UML Sequence Diagrams

The Rational Sequence computer program described in the immediately preceding article includes a subprogram that utilizes the capability for aspect-oriented programming when that capability is present. This subprogram is denoted the Rational Sequence (AspectJ) component because it uses...

Briefs: Software
Program Synthesizes UML Sequence Diagrams

A computer program called "Rational Sequence" generates Universal Modeling Language (UML) sequence diagrams of a target Java program running on a Java virtual machine (JVM). Rational Sequence thereby performs a reverse engineering function that aids in the design documentation of the target Java program....

Briefs: Software
Updated Computational Model of Cosmic Rays Near Earth

An updated computational model of the galactic-cosmic-ray (GCR) environment in the vicinity of the Earth, Earth's Moon, and Mars has been developed, and updated software has been developed to implement the updated model. The GCR model and software in their original forms, developed during the...

Articles
Reduce Your Product Launch Time With "Lean" Principles

The Business Briefs series of articles takes you through the basics of developing and presenting a design idea, obtaining funding, protecting and licensing your intellectual property, and getting your ideas to market. This month, learn how Lean Product Development and Marketing can help...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Lightweight Electronic Camera for Research on Clouds

"Micro-CPI" (wherein "CPI" signifies "cloud-particle imager") is the name of a small, lightweight electronic camera that has been proposed for use in research on clouds. The Micro-CPI would be incorporated into a small autonomous or remotely piloted airplane of a type that is now used in...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers

An improved method of estimating the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a phase-shift keying (PSK) communication link is founded on a rigorous statistical analysis of the input to, and the...

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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Pilot Weather Advisor System Nears Realtime

The Pilot Weather Advisor (PWA) system is an automated satellite radio-broadcasting system that provides nearly realtime weather data to pilots of aircraft in flight anywhere in the continental United States. The system was designed to enhance safety in two distinct ways: First, the automated receipt...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers

Metal emitter structures in a class of developmental InP-based high-speed heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) have been redesigned to have Tshaped cross sections. More precisely, the modified...

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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Two High-Temperature Foil Journal Bearings

An enlarged, high-temperature -compliant foil bearing has been built and tested to demonstrate the feasibility of such bearings for use in aircraft gas turbine engines. At 150 mm in diameter, this is the largest foil bearing known to date. This bearing is a scaled-up version of a patented...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers

Filters that suppress electromagnetic interference (EMI) on signal cables connected to cryogenic electronic equipment can be made from cores consisting of high-permeability materials. The basic...

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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Using Plates To Represent Fillets in Finite-Element Modeling

A method that involves the use of fictitious plate elements denoted bridge plates has been developed for representing the stiffnesses of fillets in finiteelement calculations of deflections, stresses, and strains in structures. In the absence of this method, it would be necessary to...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers

A proposed Ka-band transmitting/ receiving system would embody a unique combination of established and semi-proven design features. Although this system is intended primarily for...

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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems

A nonlinear version of the Liouville equation based on terminal attractors is part of a mathematical formalism for describing postinstability motions of dynamical systems...

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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Lunar Constellation of Frozen Elliptical Inclined Orbits

A document discusses the design of orbits of spacecraft for relaying communications between Earth stations and robotic and human explorers in craters in one of the polar regions on the Moon. In simplest terms, the basic problem is to design a constellation of orbits to provide continuous...

Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Repairing Chipped Silicide Coatings on Refractory Metal Substrates

The space shuttle orbiter's reaction control system (RCS) is a series of small thrusters that use hypergolic fuels to orient the orbiter in space. The RCS thrusters are constructed from a special niobium-based alloy — the C-103. This alloy retains excellent mechanical...

Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Simplified Fabrication of Helical Copper Antennas

A simplified technique has been devised for fabricating helical antennas for use in experiments on radio-frequency generation and acceleration of plasmas. These antennas are typically made of copper (for electrical conductivity) and must have a specific helical shape and precise diameter.

Webcasts

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On-Demand Webinars: Defense

From Data to Decision: How AI Enhances Warfighter Readiness

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Upcoming Webinars: Aerospace

April Battery & Electrification Summit

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Upcoming Webinars: Manufacturing & Prototyping

Tech Update: 3D Printing for Transportation in 2024

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Upcoming Webinars: Materials

Unleashing Epoxy's Potential: Ensuring Hermetic Sealing in Modern...

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Upcoming Webinars: Test & Measurement

Building an Automotive EMC Test Plan

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Upcoming Webinars: Aerospace

The Moon and Beyond from a Thermal Perspective

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