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Briefs: Medical
Macroextraction for Purification of Nucleic Acids
A technique for extracting samples of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) for use in diagnosing and studying infectious and genetic diseases has been developed. The technique enables the concentration and purification of nucleic acids from large (in comparison with older...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A single-laser-based, heterodyne optoelectronic system that measures the displacements of two targets along the same lines of sight has been developed. Heretofore, it would have been necessary to...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Simple fiber-optic couplers have been devised for use in coupling light into and out of the "whispering-gallery" electromagnetic modes of transparent microspheres. The need for this type of...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A spatially modulated prism interferometer (SMPI) has been developed that overcomes the complexities of traditional interferometers and the inherent limitations of diffraction gratings, dispersion...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A diffraction grating consisting of a periodic gradient in the index of refraction of a thin surface layer has been shown to be effective as a means of far-field coupling of monochromatic...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Several high-fidelity imaging spectrometers have been designed with convex diffraction gratings for wavelengths ranging from the ultraviolet to the thermal infrared. All the designs...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A method of determining sizes of particles suspended in liquids and engaging in Brownian motion involves statistical analysis of counts of photons of laser light scattered by the...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A stroboscopic scanning electron microscope (SEM) has been proposed as a means of generating still or slow-motion pictures of moving structures in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Such...
Briefs: Test & Measurement
A Mass-Spectrometer System for Detecting Gas Leaks
The Hydrogen Umbilical Mass Spectrometer (HUMS) consists of an integrated sample delivery system, a commercial mass-spectrometer-based gas analyzer, and a set of calibration gas mixtures traceable to NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology). The system, except for the calibration gas...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A proposed optoelectronic system based on imaging-lidar and differential-altimetry techniques would generate data equivalent to a height map of a surface area. Originally conceived for use in...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A new design for a complementary metal oxide/semiconductor (CMOS) snapshot imaging device of the photodiode-based, active-pixel-sensor (APS) type calls for features to prevent...
Briefs: Motion Control
Advanced, Lightweight, Low-Power-Consumption Actuator Brake
An advanced, lightweight, low-power consumption brake has been developed to satisfy NASA's special requirements for use on actuators during spaceflight. This brake can increase the stopping, holding, and parking ability of a spacecraft while reducing its electrical power consumption. Two...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Miniature high-resolution optical-absorption sensors for detecting trace amounts of chemical species of interest in gas and liquid samples are undergoing development. The transducer in a...
Briefs: Motion Control
A method of computing the speed at which to command an autonomous robotic vehicle to travel over rough terrain has been devised. The method amounts to a robotic implementation of the...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A proposed optoelectronic apparatus would perform the combined functions of a confocal microscope and a Raman spectrometer. It would be used to acquire Raman-spectral-image and/or...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A method of coarse alignment has been proposed for a primary telescope mirror that comprises multiple segments mounted on actuators that can be used to tilt and translate the segments to effect...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Experiments have shown that a highly oblate microspheroid made of low-dielectric-loss silica glass can function as a high-performance optical resonator. The shape of this resonator (see...
Briefs: Motion Control
A method of estimating the state of contact between (1) the wheels of a robotic vehicle equipped with a rocker-bogey suspension and (2) the ground has been devised. The contact-state...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Software for Generating Mosaics of Astronomical Images
Software is being developed to "stitch" together multiple astronomical images of small, adjacent patches of the sky into a single mosaic image of a large portion of the sky. These mosaics make data from large areas of the sky readily available for efficient viewing of many types of celestial...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Thin, initially transparent films made of variants of a polymeric cation-exchange material have been found to be useful for facilitating the luminescence detection and...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A proposed method of compressing image data would exploit the well-known capability of a converging lens to generate the Fourier transform of an image by purely optical means, in much less...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
In an alternative to the optical image-compression method of the preceding article, the Fourier transform of the input image would be formed on the output plane by white-light holography,...
Briefs: Information Technology
Algorithms have been developed to enable a robotic vision system to recognize, in real time (at a rate between 0.5 and 2 frames per second), known objects lying on the ground. In the...
Briefs: Information Technology
DVQ (which stands for "digital video quality") is a metric for evaluating the visual quality of digitized video images. Other video-quality metrics have been proposed, but it appears that each of...
Briefs: Software
Infrastructure Software for Mining Image Data Bases
Diamond Eye is a computer program that enables a user equipped with only a personal computer, web-browser software, and a network connection to analyze large collections of scientific image data. The system is based on a distributed applet/server architecture that provides platform-independent...
Briefs: Software
Software for Rapid Processing and Display of Earth Data
Digital Earth Workbench is a computer program that facilitates retrieval of Earth-related imagery and viewing of the imagery on either an ordinary computer video screen or a virtual-reality (head-tracked stereoscopic) display system. Examples of imagery that can be processed bythis software...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A novel micromachined incandescent light source has been designed and fabricated to operate at temperatures exceeding 2,500 K. The high-temperature, tungsten filament-based source has a high-brightness,...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Automatic Bias Compensation in GPS Receivers
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,...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Theoretical calculations verified by experiments have shown that suitably designed ribbons made of alumina can serve as low-loss dielectric waveguides for electromagnetic radiation at...
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