Magazine

Wedge indicators have been proposed for measuring thermal radiation that impinges on specimens illuminated by flash lamps for thermographic inspection. Heat fluxes measured by use of these indicators would be used, along with known thermal, radiative, and geometric properties of the specimens, to...

A method of predicting attenuation on microwave Earth/ spacecraft comm- unication links, over wide areas and under various atmospheric conditions, has been developed. In the area around the ground station locations, a nearly horizontally aimed polarimetric S-band ground radar measures the...

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...

A paper presents a study of the contribution of the Dyakonov-Perel (DP) effect to spin dephasing in electron-donor-doped bulk GaAs in the presence of an applied steady, moderate magnetic field perpendicular to the growth axis of the GaAs crystal. (The DP effect is an electron-wave-...

A report proposes a method of utilizing solar-radiation pressure to keep the axis of rotation of a small spin-stabilized spacecraft pointed approximately (typically, within an angle of 10° to 20°) toward the Sun. Axisymmetry is not required. Simple tilted planar vanes would be attached to...

A versatile cable- dispensing cart can support as many as a few dozen reels of cable, wire, and/or rope. The cart can be adjusted to accommodate reels of various diameters and widths, and can be expanded, contracted, or otherwise reconfigured by use of easily installable and removable parts that can be carried onboard. Among...

A simple, effective, easy-to-use device locks a control knob in a set position. In the initial application for which this device was conceived, the control knob to be locked is that of a needle valve. Previously, in that application, it was necessary for one technician to hold the knob to keep the valve at the...

U.S. Patent 6,381,559 presents further information about the method described in "Analyzing Time Series Using EMD and Hilbert Spectra" (GSC-13817), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 24, No. 10 (October 2000), page 63. To recapitulate: The method is especially well suited for analyzing time-series data...

An extender system for MIL-STD-1553 buses transparently couples bus components at multiple developer sites. The bus network extender is a relatively inexpensive system that minimizes the time and cost of integration of avionic systems by providing a convenient mechanism for early testing without the need to...

Nanoelectronic Modeling 3-D (NEMO 3-D) is a computer program for numerical modeling of the electronic structure properties of a semiconductor device that is embodied in a crystal containing as many as 16 million atoms in an arbitrary configuration and that has overall dimensions of the order of tens of...

A computer program recognizes selected patterns in time-series data like digitized samples of seismic or electrophysiological signals. The program implements an artificial neural network (ANN) and a set of N clocks for the purpose of determining whether N or more instances of a certain...

Mixed-Initiative Activity Plan Generator (MAPGEN) is a ground-based computer program for planning and scheduling the scientific activities of instrumented exploratory robotic vehicles, within the limitations of available resources onboard the vehicle. MAPGEN is a combination of two prior software...

The Intelligent Math Tutor (IMT) is a computer program for training students in pre-college and college-level mathe- matics courses, including fundamentals, intermediate algebra, college algebra, and trigonometry. The IMT can be executed on a server computer for access by students via the Internet;...

RoboSim (Robot Simulation) is a computer program that simulates the poses and motions of the Robonaut — a developmental anthropomorphic robot that has a complex system of joints with 43 degrees of freedom and multiple modes of operation and control. RoboSim performs a full kinematic simulation of all...

The Adaptive Indexing and Retrieval Agent (ARNIE) is a code library, designed to be used by an application program, that assists human users in retrieving desired information in a hypertext setting. Using ARNIE, the program implements a comp- utational model for interactively learning what...