Features

Q&A: University of Utah’s Robby Bowles 3D-Prints Cells to Produce Human Tissue

Professor Bowles has developed a method to 3D-print cells to produce human tissue. This replacement tissue can greatly improve the recovery of a person with a...

5 Ws of the Lead-Detection Smartphone System

Who Individuals needing or wanting to examine lead content in their drinking water on-demand and in virtually any environmental setting.

3D Printing: The Impact of Post-Processing

The perception and promise of 3D printing are that it offers a digital workflow that is simple, fast, and automated — a process that is complexity-free. That perception is generally correct up to the...

Products of Tomorrow

This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that innovation.

High-Res Science Made Possible with 8K Footage from Space

REDIrvine, CAwww.red.com NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have delivered the first 8K ultra-high-definition (UHD) video of astronauts living, working, and conducting research...

Design Software Transforms How Commercial Jetliners are Built

Spinoff is NASA's annual publication featuring successfully commercialized NASA technology. This commercialization has contributed to the development of products and services in the...

Vehicle Design with System-Level Modeling

MaplesoftWaterloo, ON, Canadawww.maplesoft.com The demand for innovation is universal across industries, as new products are required to meet higher performance standards without slowing the overall...

Facility Focus: NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center

NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) has been a leader in human space exploration for more than half a century. Established in 1961 in Houston, TX as the Manned Spacecraft Center, the center...

Product of the Month

EFCO, San Diego, CA, introduced the SmartSL Plus embedded box computer with Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) capability. Powered by the 3rd Gen (Bay Trail) Intel® Atom™ or Celeron® processor, the fanless, cable-less computer...

New on the Market: January 2019

Laptop Computers Eurocom, Nepean, ON, Canada offers Sky “C” Series laptop computers based on the Z370 Intel chipset and using CPU-upgrade-able, LGA1151 socket-based processors. They support up to 128 GB of...

Multi-Axis Motion Controller Accelerates Gear Testing

Materials testing and characterization is often a lengthy process. It can take more than a year and billions of testing cycles for a manufacturer to characterize the properties of a new...

One-Cable Automation Streamlines Robotic Non-Destructive Inspection Systems

There are few industries where the demands for material testing and quality assurance are more challenging than in the aerospace industry. Ensuring the safety of all...

New Products

Motor/Drive/Controller Advanced Micro Controls (Terryville, CT) offers a size 17 PLC-based SMD Series integrated stepper motor/drive/controller system. The integrated solutions are suited for new machinery, retrofits, and rapid...

Smart Actuators Deliver on the Promise of Industry 4.0

As Industry 4.0 initiatives bring more and more industrial axes of motion into the realm of automation, the need for cost-effective control across them grows as well. Advances in robotics,...

Q&A: Rice University's Rouzbeh Shahsavari Creates a Stronger, Lighter Cement

Professor Shahsavari and graduate student Sung Hoon have demonstrated a process for producing a cement that is stronger, lighter, and more durable than the traditional...

Products of Tomorrow

This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that innovation.

Crash Test Dummies Get Older and Better with 3D Printing

MarkforgedWatertown, MAmarkforged.com The crash test dummy has come of age over many decades as the gold standard for safety testing of automobiles. Organizations like the National...

Vote for Product of the Year 2018

The 2018 Nominees Are: Each December, we ask our readers to cast their votes in the annual Tech Briefs’ Readers’ Choice Product of the Year Awards. Each month, our editors choose a Product of the Month that...

5 Ws of Spray-On Antennas

Who Manufacturers and users of wearables, functional fabrics, mobile devices, wireless routers, and Internet of Things devices.

Sterilizing Fogger Cleans Ambulances with a Breeze

Spinoff is NASA's annual publication featuring successfully commercialized NASA technology. This commercialization has contributed to the development of products and services in the fields of...

Innovators Recognized for "Creating the Future" 2018

The Create the Future Design Contest was launched in 2002 to help stimulate and reward engineering innovation. In the past 16 years, the annual contest has drawn more than 13,000 product...

New on the Market: December 2018

Data Acquisition Devices The USB-1808 Series simultaneous-sampling data acquisition devices from Measurement Computing Corp., Norton, MA, provides synchronous and concurrent voltage I/O, waveform output,...

Facility Focus: Ames Laboratory

Ames Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), operated by and located on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames, IA. For more than 70...

Five Industry Trends Disrupting the Design and Manufacturing World

The engineering and manufacturing world is rapidly changing — are you changing with it? The claim of “reinventing” the fundamental tools of an industry is a bold one, but...

Simulation for Everyone

With the computational power and software available today, numerical simulation is a real option to quickly get answers to complicated technical, scientific, and engineering questions. Not only has the hardware doubled...

Product of the Month

Yokogawa Corporation of America, Newnan, GA, released the WT5000 power analyzer that achieves accuracy of ±0.03% at 50/60 Hz, allowing precision evaluation of power consumption, loss, and efficiency of electrical and...

Inside Story: S. Himmelstein and Company

S. Himmelstein and Company (Hoffman Estates, IL) has been designing and manufacturing torque measurement transducers and instrumentation since 1960. The company’s products offer significant advantages...

Custom Optomechanics in Industrial UV Lasers

Reliability and longevity directly impact the cost of using Q-switched, diode pumped, solid state, ultraviolet lasers in industrial applications. Damage to the intracavity harmonic crystal is often...

Ray Optics Simulation of Inertial Navigation Systems

Attitude detection is a crucial element in aircraft and spacecraft navigation. The motion of an aircraft consists of a translational component (motion of its center of mass with respect to...