“It doesn’t matter where you are, it doesn’t matter where you go, If it’s a million miles away, or just a mile up the road. Take it in. Take it with you when you go. Who says you can’t go home?” So says New Jersey-born rocker Jon Bon Jovi in a hit song he penned several years ago. I don’t know if...

The number of application examples from the COMSOL user community is soaring: We saw a record-breaking 350 papers presented at the annual user conferences. While we couldn’t fit every paper into this magazine, you can access all 350 papers through the Multiphysics Community web site, www.comsol.com/community.In this issue of...

This week's question concerns the concept of time travel. Usually the topic of science fiction books and movies, two of the world's most respected physicists, Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku, assert that time travel could become a scientific reality. In a recent AOL Science article, both scientists cited Einstein's belief...

This week’s question concerns the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. After a rig leased by BP Plc exploded and sank last week in the Gulf, many have indicated that the President may experience a setback in his plan to expand offshore drilling. The plan is...

This week's question concerns the concept of "digital actors." They've appeared in "Avatar," "The Matrix," and "The Lord of the Rings," to name a few. And with the recent surge of 3D technology in filmmaking, it appears that digital actors will be working a lot more in Hollywood. What do you...

This work deals with the performance of coupled microstripline phase shifters (CMPS) fabricated using BaxSr1-xTiO3 (BST) ferroelectric thin films. The CMPS were fabricated using commercially available pulsed laser deposition BST films with Ba:Sr ratios of...

A device has been developed for coherent detection of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). A two-stage amplifier has been designed that covers 75–110 GHz. The device uses the emerging 35-nm InP HEMT technology recently developed at Northrop Grumman Corporation primarily for use at...

This oscillator uses a single-emitter 0.3-μm InP heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) device with maximum frequency of oscillation (fmax) greater than 500 GHz. Due to high conductor and substrate losses at submillimeter-wave frequencies, a primary challenge is to efficiently use the...

A multi-angle spectro-polarimetric imager (MSPI) is an advanced camera system currently under development at JPL for possible future consideration on a satellite-based Aerosol-Cloud-Environment (ACE) interaction study. The light in the optical system is subjected to a...

The Integrated Budget Office Toolbox (IBOT) combines budgeting, resource allocation, organizational funding, and reporting features in an automated, integrated tool that provides data from a single source for Johnson Space Center (JSC) personnel. Using a common interface, concurrent users can utilize the data...

The PLOT3D export tool for Tecplot solves the problem of modified data being impossible to output for use by another computational science solver. The PLOT3D Exporter add-on enables the use of the most commonly available visualization tools to engineers for output of a standard format. The exportation of PLOT3D data...

The Math Description Engine Software Development Kit (MDE SDK) can be used by software developers to make computer-rendered graphs more accessible to blind and visually-impaired users. The MDE SDK generates alternative graph descriptions in two forms: textual descriptions and non-verbal sound...

AOSS is a highly efficient scheduling application that uses various tools to schedule astronauts’ weekly appointment information. This program represents an integration of many technologies into a single application to facilitate schedule sharing and management. It is a Windows-based application...

The International Space Station (ISS) Solar Array Management (SAM) software toolset provides the capabilities necessary to operate a spacecraft with complex solar array constraints. It monitors spacecraft telemetry and provides interpretations of solar array constraint data in an intuitive manner. The toolset provides...

NASA/NESSUS 6.2c is a general-purpose, probabilistic analysis program that computes probability of failure and probabilistic sensitivity measures of engineered systems. Because NASA/NESSUS uses highly computationally efficient and accurate analysis techniques, probabilistic solutions can be obtained even...

A Spacecraft Position Optimal Tracking (SPOT) program was developed to process Global Positioning System (GPS) data, sent via telemetry from a spacecraft, to generate accurate navigation estimates of the vehicle position and velocity (state vector) using a Kalman filter. This program uses the GPS onboard receiver measurements to...

A conceptual design has been announced of an expert-system computer program, and the development of a prototype of the program, intended for use as a project-management tool. The program integrates schedule and risk data for the purpose of determining the schedule applications of safety risks...