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Briefs: Information Technology
Institutional Budgeting Tool (IBT)
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Institutional Budgeting Tool (IBT) was designed and developed to meet the needs of JPL's budget planners, numbering 1,600, who required a robust and state-of-the-art budgeting application. JPL's budgeting process had been constrained by legacy tools that presented usability and...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Use of Beam Deflection to Control an Electron Beam Wire Deposition Process
NASA Langley Research Center researchers have a strong technology foundation in the use of electron-beam (e-beam) deposition for freeform fabrication of complex shaped metal parts. While e-beam wire deposition is of interest for rapid prototyping of metal parts,...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Thermal Stir Welding Process
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is developing an improved joining technology called thermal stir welding that improves upon fusion welding and friction stir welding. This new technology enables a superior joining method by allowing manufacturers to join dissimilar materials and to weld at high rates. NASA's...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
NASA'S Langley Research Center has developed a new adhesively bonded joint concept for curved and flat panel sandwich architectures....
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Human susceptibility to the harsh space radiation environment has been identified as a major hurdle for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO). High-energy...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Human-occupied vehicles and autonomous vehicles such as rovers and landers may benefit from the fuel flexibility and high energy density of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs),...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Tool Designs for Friction Stir Welding
Friction stir welding (FSW) is a solidstate welding process that shows promise in the aerospace industry. A new system of experimentation has been used to quickly make and screen new tool designs. After conducting a literature review, friction stir tools were designed to optimize material flow around the tool.
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
NASA has investigated and demonstrated the simultaneous production of methane (CH4) and oxygen (O2)...
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Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a new eddy current inspection device that probes for cracks in parts of metal structures that are often inaccessible without extensive disassembly....
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INSIDER: Materials
Researchers Create Metallic Hydrogen
Nearly a century after it was theorized, scientists from Harvard University have created the first-ever sample of one of the rarest materials on the planet: metallic hydrogen. The atomic metallic hydrogen has a potentially wide range of applications, including as a room-temperature superconductor.
Question of the Week: Materials
Will metallic hydrogen improve transportation?
This week's Question: Today's lead INSIDER story featured the development of metallic hydrogen, a technology that has a range of potential applications, from advanced rocket propellants to room-temperature superconductors. According to the Harvard University researchers, the material could support the...
INSIDER: Robotics, Automation & Control
Designing a soft robot to move organically — to bend like a finger or twist like a wrist — has always been a process of trial and error. Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson...
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INSIDER: Software
A team of researchers from the Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy, is working to improve how industrial electric drives operate. They propose a new control scheme that will not only...
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Articles: Motion Control
Positioning: Resolution and Accuracy An application’s required positioning resolution dictates the choice of encoder resolution. A well-tuned system can maintain the position within one encoder state...
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INSIDER: Materials
Researchers Awaken Graphene's Hidden Superconductivity
Since its discovery in 2004, scientists have believed that graphene contained an innate ability to superconduct. Now researchers from the University of Cambridge have found a way to activate that previously dormant potential, enabling the material to carry an electrical current with zero...
INSIDER Product: Imaging
BEA Lasers (Elk Grove Village, IL) has introduced two new low-profile additions to their rugged MIL Series of laser diode modules. The new MIL RA Model features a right angle, and the new MIL Compact Model features a...
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INSIDER Product: Imaging
Mouser Electronics, Inc., (Mansfield, TX) is now stocking the TDC7201 time-to-digital converter from Texas Instruments (TI). The TDC7201 is designed for use with ultrasonic, laser, and radar range finding equipment...
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INSIDER Product: Imaging
Excelitas Technologies® (Waltham, MA) has introduced SPCM-NIR, a Single Photon Counting Module specifically selected and performance-optimized for the near-infrared (NIR) wavelength spectrum. This NIR-spectrum...
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INSIDER Product: Imaging
LASOS (Jena, Germany) has expanded its range of single-frequency laser sources from the ultra-violet through the red. Wavelength-dependent power levels up to 300 mW are available, with spectral linewidth values less than...
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Who's Who: Sensors/Data Acquisition
During his time with former employer Science and Engineering Services, LLC, Branimir Blagojevic helped build a remote-sensing device that detected biological agents....
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Question of the Week: Automotive
This week's Question: With backup cameras now mandatory in today's vehicles, screens in cars are increasingly becoming a standard feature. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month,...
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INSIDER: Materials
A University of California, Riverside assistant professor has combined photosynthesis and physics to make a key discovery that could help make solar cells more efficient. Nathan Gabor is focused on...
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INSIDER: Photonics/Optics
A Florida State University research team has discovered a new crystal structure of organic-inorganic hybrid materials that could open the door to new applications for...
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INSIDER: Imaging
Theoretical physicists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory used computer simulations to show how special light pulses could create robust channels where electricity...
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INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Researchers Spin Artificial Spider Silk
Researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Karolinska Institutet has, step by step, developed a way of "spinning" artificial spider silk.
Question of the Week: Communications
Would you use a flexible phone?
This week's Question: The Korea Herald reported last week that Samsung is developing a "fold-in" phone. The device's flexible display folds open into a 7-inch tablet. According to the article, the team is expected to ship more than 100,000 units during the third quarter of 2017. The paper reported that the...
INSIDER: Materials
Researchers Design Lightweight, 'Stronger-Than-Steel' Material
A team of engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has successfully designed a new 3D material with five percent the density of steel and ten times the strength. By compressing and fusing flakes of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon, the sponge-link configuration...
Question of the Week: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Will the voice become a mainstream way to control our devices?
This year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas showcased many new consumer products featuring voice control. LG, for example, introduced a smart refrigerator equipped with Amazon's Alexa voice service. Other CES technologies with voice-recognition capabilities included...
Products: Manufacturing & Prototyping
HP, Palo Alto, CA, unveiled the HP Z2 Mini Workstation designed for users in CAD and other compute-intensive industries. The workstation is 2.3” high, and 90% smaller than a traditional business-class tower. It has the...
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