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Briefs: Software
High-Speed Recording of Test Data on Hard Disks
Disk Recording System (DRS) is a systems- integration computer program for a direct-to-disk (DTD) high-speed data-acquisition system (HDAS) that records rocket-engine test data. The HDAS consists partly of equipment originally designed for recording the data on tapes. The tape recorders were replaced...
Briefs: Information Technology
Expert Seeker
Expert Seeker is a computer program of the knowledge- management-system (KMS) type that falls within the category of expertise-locator systems. The main goal of the KMS system implemented by Expert Seeker is to organize and distribute knowledge of who are the domain experts within and without a given institution, company, or other...
Briefs: Information Technology
Software for Allocating Resources in the Deep Space Network
TIGRAS 2.0 is a computer program designed to satisfy a need for improved means for analyzing the tracking demands of interplanetary space-flight missions upon the set of ground antenna resources of the Deep Space Network (DSN) and for allocating those resources. Written in Microsoft Visual...
Briefs: Medical
Spore-Forming Bacteria That Resist Sterilization
A report presents a phenotypic and genotypic characterization of a bacterial species that has been found to be of the genus Bacillus and has been tentatively named B. odysseensis because it was isolated from surfaces of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft as part of continuing research on techniques for...
Briefs: Materials
Rod/coil block copolyimides that exhibit high levels of ionic conduction can be made into diverse products, including dimensionally stable solid electrolyte membranes that function well...
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Briefs: Materials
Processable Polyimides Containing APB and Reactive End Caps
Imide copolymers that contain 1,3-bis (3- aminophenoxy) benzene (APB) and other diamines and dianhydrides and that are terminated with appropriate amounts of reactive end caps have been invented. The reactive end caps investigated thus far include 4-phenylethynyl phthalic anhydride (PEPA),...
Briefs: Materials
Liquid Coatings for Reducing Corrosion of Steel in Concrete
Inorganic coating materials are being developed to slow or stop corrosion of reinforcing steel members inside concrete structures. It is much simpler and easier to use these coating materials than it is to use conventional corrosion-inhibiting systems based on impressed electric currents....
Briefs: Materials
Less-Toxic Coatings for Inhibiting Corrosion of Aluminum
Two recently invented families of conversion- coating processes have been found to be effective in reducing or preventing corrosion of aluminum alloys. These processes offer less-toxic alternatives to prior conversion-coating processes that are highly effective but have fallen out of favor...
Briefs: Materials
A novel class of polymer/clay nanocomposites has been invented in an attempt to develop transparent, lightweight, durable materials for a variety of aerospace applications. As their name...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Test is critical to the board manufacturing process. Effective test ensures quality and customer satisfaction both for the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and the CEM (contract electronics...
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Briefs: Software
Analyzing Aeroelasticity in Turbomachines
ASTROP2-LE is a computer program that predicts flutter and forced responses of blades, vanes, and other components of such turbomachines as fans, compressors, and turbines. ASTROP2-LE is based on the ASTROP2 program, developed previously for analysis of stability of turbomachinery components. In developing...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Modifications have been proposed to effect further improvement of the device described in “Improved Piezo- electrically Actuated Microvalve” (NPO-30158), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 26,...
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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
A proposed normally-closed microvalve would contain a piezoelectric bending actuator instead of a piezoelectric linear actuator like that of the microvalve described in the preceding article....
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Briefs: Motion Control
Designers of deep submersibles are reluctant to use conventional shafts and seals to penetrate the hulls of deep submersible, pressure vessels fearing seal...
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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
The figure depicts the aspects of a proposed deceleration-limiting design for crash walls at the sides of racetracks and highways. The proposal is intended to overcome the dis- advantages of...
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Briefs: Software
Program for User-Friendly Management of Input and Output Data Sets
A computer program manages large, hierarchical sets of input and output (I/O) parameters (typically, sequences of alpha- numeric data) involved in computational simulations in a variety of technological disciplines. This program represents sets of parameters as structures coded in...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A proposed method of implementing cross connections in an optical communication network is based on the use of a spatial light modulator (SLM) to form controlled diffraction patterns that...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
A method of processing digital image data to detect edges includes the use of fuzzy reasoning. The method is completely adaptive and does not require any advance knowledge of an image.
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Briefs: Software
Software for Acquiring Image Data for PIV
PIV Acquisition (PIVACQ) is a computer program for acquisition of data for particle- image velocimetry (PIV). In the PIV system for which PIVACQ was developed, small particles entrained in a flow are illuminated with a sheet of light from a pulsed laser. The illuminated region is monitored by a...
Briefs: Software
Organizing Diverse, Distributed Project Information
SemanticOrganizer is a software application designed to organize and integrate infor- mation generated within a distributed organ- ization or as part of a project that involves multiple, geographically dispersed collaborators. Semantic- Organizer incorporates the capa- bilities of database...
Briefs: Software
Eigensolver for a Sparse, Large Hermitian Matrix
A parallel-processing computer program finds a few eigenvalues in a sparse Hermitian matrix that contains as many as 100 million diagonal elements. This program finds the eigenvalues faster, using less memory, than do other, comparable eigensolver programs. This program implements a Lanczos algorithm...
Briefs: Software
Modified Polar-Format Software for Processing SAR Data
HMPF is a computer program that implements a modified polar-format algorithm for processing data from spaceborne synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) systems. Unlike prior polar-format processing algorithms, this algorithm is based on the assumption that the radar signal wavefronts are spherical...
Briefs: Software
e-Stars Template Builder
e-Stars Template Builder is a computer program that implements a concept of enabling users to rapidly gain access to information on projects of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The information about a given project is not stored in a data base, but rather, in a network that follows the project as it develops. e-Stars...
Briefs: Software
Software for Acoustic Rendering
SLAB is a software system that can be run on a personal computer to simulate an acoustic environment in real time. SLAB was developed to enable computational experimentation in which one can exert low-level control over a variety of signalprocessing parameters, related to spatialization, for conducting psycho-...
Briefs: Materials
Functionally Graded Nanophase Beryllium/Carbon Composites
Beryllium, beryllium alloys, beryllium carbide, and carbon are the ingredients of a class of nanophase Be/Be2C/C composite materials that can be formulated and functionally graded to suit a variety of applications. In a typical case, such a composite consists of a first layer of either pure...
Briefs: Materials
Thermal-insulation blankets of a proposed type would be exceptionally thin and would endure temperatures up to 2,100 °C. These blankets were originally intended to protect components...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Foam Sensor Structures Would Be Self-Deployable and Survive Hard Landings
A document proposes systems of sensors encased in cold hibernated elastic memory (CHEM) structures for exploring remote planets. The CHEM concept was described in two prior NASA Tech Briefs articles, including “Cold Hibernated Elastic Memory (CHEM) Expandable Structures”...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Real-Gas Effects on Binary Mixing Layers
This paper presents a computational study of real-gas effects on the mean flow and temporal stability of heptane/ nitrogen and oxygen/ hydrogen mixing layers at supercritical pressures. These layers consist of two counter- flowing free streams of different composition, temperature, and density. As in related...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Conventional commercial spectrometers or spectrophotometers are usually able to measure optical spectrum from a specified surface area at one point....
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