Some improvements have been made in the formulation of holographically formed polymer-dispersed liquid crystals (H-PDLCs) and in the fabrication of devices made from these materials, with resulting improvements in performance. H-PDLCs are essentially volume Bragg gratings. Devices made from HPDLCs function as...

A data-communication protocol has been devised to enable secure, reliable remote control of processes and equipment via a collision-based network, while using minimal bandwidth and computation. The network could be the Internet or an intranet. Control is made secure by use of both a password...

A simple optical setup has been devised to enable safe viewing of the arc and measurement of the interelectrode gap in a process in which carbon nanotubes are produced in an arc between a catalyst-filled carbon anode and a graphite cathode. This setup can be used for visually guided...

An automatic-control system has been devised for a process in which carbon nanotubes are produced in an arc between a catalyst-filled carbon anode and a graphite cathode. The control system includes a motor-driven screw that adjusts the distance between the electrodes. The system also...

The paper “Turbulence and Area Production in Binary-Species, Super- critical Transitional Mixing Layers” presents a more recent account of the research sum- marized at an earlier stage in “Area Production in Super- critical, Transitional Mixing Layers” (NPO-30425), NASA Tech...

Reactive-ion etching (RIE) under conditions described below has been found to be a suitable means for patterning piezoelectric thin films made from such materials as PbZr1-xTixO3 or BaxSr1-xTiO3. In the original application for which this particular RIE process was developed, PbZr1-xTixO3...

A method of characterization of growing of protein crystals involves the utilization of an optical imaging technique known as spatial phase imaging. The methods used heretofore have been, variously, invasive (e.g., adding a dye that is absorbed by the protein of interest), destructive (e.g.,...

Facility Management Tracking System (FMTS) is a computer program for constructing an integrated database that defines any event in a managed facility. FMTS provides a simple user interface for entering all relevant data connected to the event. The entered data, as displayed and processed by...

This paper presents a study of area production in mixing layers undergoing transition to turbulence. These layers evolve from the mixing of two initially segregated counterflowing streams under supercritical conditions. The study may contribute to development of means to control area...

The Automated SAR Ortho-rectification Software System enables users of synthetic-aperture-radar (SAR) data to form processed images that are free of the distortion caused by the SAR imaging geometry and topography. The software consists of four modules:

A technique of automatic bias compensation has been devised to correct errors caused by variations among electronic components in Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers that use the coarse/acquisition (C/A) GPS code. Even though there are large government and commercial markets for such GPS receivers,...

David Spencer (MIT) developed semi-solid material processing through an accidental observation he made while dealing with the processing of metals in their mushy state. The semi-solid material process basically consists of two stages: pre-processing and processing. During pre-processing, the...