At the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, scientists and engineers have been studying how they can make higher-performance materials for soldiers at lighter weights. The challenge has led to the ARL Enterprise for Multiscale Research of Materials, made up of in-house research and most...

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne master’s student Thibault Kuntzer has focused his efforts on an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope – the most distant photo of the universe ever taken. As part of a semester project, he tested and increased the efficiency of an...

Mikel Abasolo, a researcher of the University of the Basque Country, has built a simplified simulation model for wind turbines. All one has to do is enter the characteristics that the tower and its parts will have, and in a matter of seconds, the model predicts the load that has to be given to each...

A team of experts in mechanics, materials science, and tissue engineering at Harvard has created an extremely stretchy and tough gel that has potential as a replacement for damaged cartilage in human joints.

A team of engineers at Stanford has demonstrated the feasibility of a super-small, implantable cardiac device that gets its power not from batteries but from radio waves transmitted from a small power device on the surface of the body.

Many wireless-monitor products today track daily activity, including a person's steps and calories burned. Wearable sensors, and even internal ones, however, may also be used to monitor one's specific biological processes. "Stretchable electronics," for example,...

Scientists working at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source have captured the first single-shot X-ray microscope image of a magnetic nanostructure and shown that it can be done without damaging the material.This result not only demonstrates the success of a powerful new X-ray technique, but it...

NASA's Mars Curiosity has debuted the first recorded human voice that traveled from Earth to another planet and back. The voice playback was released along with new telephoto camera views of the varied Martian landscape during a news conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The...

By modifying the rate at which chemical reactions take place, nanoparticle catalysts fulfill myriad roles in industry, the biomedical arena, and everyday life. They may be used for the production of polymers and biofuels, improving pollution and emission control devices,...

Applied physicists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created an ultrathin, flat lens that focuses light without imparting the distortions of conventional lenses. At 60 nanometers thick, the flat lens is essentially two-dimensional, yet its focusing power...

Using smartphones' GPS and imaging capabilities, University of Missouri researchers have developed new software that determines the exact location of distant objects, as well as monitors the speed and direction of moving objects. The software could eventually allow smartphone-armed soldiers...

With a whistle and a roar, the "Mighty Eagle," a NASA robotic prototype lander, sailed to an altitude of 100 feet. During the 35-second run, the vehicle was "open loop," navigating autonomously without the command of the onboard camera and flying on a preprogrammed flight profile.Once it reached the...

PML researchers have devised a novel source of portable sunlight that may fill an urgent need in renewable energy research – namely, light sources that generate a near-perfect solar spectrum to be used in testing the performance and efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) materials.The team’s...

The first commercially licensed grid-connected wave-energy device in the United States, designed by the New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies, is in its final weeks of testing before a planned launch in October. The computer-equipped buoy captures the energy created by a wave, which is fueled by the...

accurate inertial navigation system (INS) is coupled with GPS receivers to provide stable and highly accurate positioning, attitude, and inertial measurements while being subjected to highly dynamic maneuvers. In contrast to conventional methods that use extensive, ground-based, real-time tracking...

This process is designed to estimate the thickness change of a material through data analysis of a digitized version of an xray (or a digital x-ray) containing the material (with the thickness in question) and various tooling. Using this process, it is...

This device provides non-invasive beat-to-beat blood pressure measurements and can be worn over the upper arm for prolonged durations. Phase and waveform analyses are performed on filtered proximal and distal photoplethysmographic (PPG) waveforms obtained from the brachial artery. The phase analysis is used...

NASA is in the process of modernizing its communications infrastructure to accompany the development of a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) to replace the shuttle. With this effort comes the opportunity to infuse more advanced coded modulation techniques, including low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that...

A concept has been developed for a new fuel cell individual-cell-voltage monitor that can be directly connected to a multi-cell fuel cell stack for direct substack power provisioning. It can also provide voltage isolation for applications in high-voltage fuel cell stacks. The technology consists of...

Online detection techniques to monitor the health of rotating engine components are becoming increasingly attractive to aircraft engine manufacturers in order to increase safety of operation and lower maintenance costs. Health monitoring remains a challenge...

Large cryogenic liquid hydrogen tanks are composed of inner and outer shells. The outer shell is exposed to the ambient environment while the inner shell holds the liquid hydrogen. The region between these two shells is evacuated and typically filled with a powder-like...

A document describes the Antenna Calibration & Measurement Equipment (ACME) system that will provide the Deep Space Network (DSN) with instrumentation enabling a trained RF engineer at each complex to perform antenna calibration measurements and to generate antenna calibration data. This data includes...

In order to reduce the effect of gain and noise instabilities in the RF chain of a microwave radiometer, a Dicke radiometer topology is often used, as in the case of the proposed surface water and ocean topography (SWOT) radiometer instrument. For this topology, a single-pole...

On Shaft Data Acquisition System (OSDAS) is a rugged, compact, multiple-channel data acquisition computer system that is designed to record data from instrumentation while operating under extreme rotational centrifugal or gravitational acceleration forces. This system, which was developed for the Heritage...