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Briefs: Medical

Unfortunately, blood pressure (BP) measurements currently require the use of a cuff that temporarily stops blood flow. A wearable BP “watch” using today’s...

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Articles: Sensors/Data Acquisition

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.

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Briefs: Test & Measurement

The dependability of energy storage devices — particularly batteries — is becoming increasingly important to consumers, industry, and the military. As battery technology becomes more complex and users'...

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Briefs: Communications
Wideband Retroreflector

There are many known methods of retransmitting radio wave signals intra-building and inter-building, as well as ground-to-aircraft or ground-to-satellite. Some techniques modulate the reflection coefficient of an antenna. Prior art has used frequency multiplication or field effect transistor (FET) mixing to modulate the...

Briefs: Test & Measurement

When performing machine tool setup and maintenance operations, it is frequently necessary to use a position transducer to “sweep” a surface and...

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NASA Spinoff: Photonics/Optics

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

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Briefs: Test & Measurement

Borrowing concepts from medical diagnostic devices, researchers have created a simple, inexpensive set of handheld tests that can detect the presence of many water- or...

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Briefs: Energy

Battery safety is key to the acceptance and penetration of electric vehicles into the marketplace. When battery internal shorts occur, they tend to surface without...

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Briefs: Aerospace
Center/TRACON Automation System Software Suite

Air traffic control within the US is getting more complicated as the number of aircraft increases. There is a great need to increase the efficiency of the system so that flight delays are minimized without having to build new airports or runways. At the same time, safety must be maintained so that...

Briefs: Aerospace

There are two commonly used options to transport large-volume and heavy cargo across the ocean: container ships and airline transport aircraft. Container ships take about 3 to 4 weeks to...

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Briefs: Medical

This chemical detector, based on a miniaturized, pulse-discharged ionization detector (mini-PDID), makes it possible to diagnose illnesses by identifying volatile organic compounds...

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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Microstructural Explorations Inside Fuel Cells

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), a promising technology that can efficiently produce energy using fossil fuels with no moving parts and low emissions, present a particularly perplexing economic challenge: current systems operate at maximum efficiency between 700 and 1000 degrees Celsius, but such...

Briefs: Photonics/Optics

After more than 16 years of operation, NASA’s Earth Observing–1 (EO-1) spacecraft was decommissioned on March 30 of this year. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) developed by...

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Application Briefs: Imaging

The effectiveness of airborne search and rescue, navigation, and situational awareness tasks is predicated on the availability of high-resolution imagery that provides pilots with a clear...

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Articles: Imaging

Achip-scale optical device, developed by a team from the University of Sydney’s Australian Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology (AINST), achieves radio frequency signal...

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Who's Who: Materials

Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) — heatshields — form the outer surface of spacecraft and provide protection as the vehicle plunges through planetary...

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Articles: Sensors/Data Acquisition

ANAHEIM, CA. During this year’s SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing 2017 conference, panelists from industry, academia, and government demonstrated how miniaturized sensing platforms, and the...

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Products: Sensors/Data Acquisition

The following companies will be exhibiting at Sensors Expo & Conference 2017. The event, held in the San Jose, CA-based McEnery Convention Center, runs from June 27-29.

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Articles: Sensors/Data Acquisition

We use touch, the dominant user interface for years, to tap keyboards on laptops and tablets, to communicate with our car’s portable GPS, and to text friends and take photos from our...

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Articles: Sensors/Data Acquisition

Microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based components, such as sensors and actuators, began penetrating the wearable products market about a decade ago, when the first accelerometers replaced...

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Facility Focus: Research Lab

In 1928, physics professor Ernest O. Lawrence left his faculty position at Yale University for a job at the University of California's Berkeley campus. While at Berkeley, Lawrence invented a unique...

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Articles: Electronics & Computers

Over the years, the term “virtual” has become associated with many different domains. Virtual machines are now commonplace as a substitute for physical laptops or desktops, allowing...

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Products: Motion Control
Load Adaptor

Zero-Max (Plymouth, MN) introduced the Model 650 Overhung Load Adaptor that's designed to provide more radial and axial load support for hydraulic motors and pumps. The SAE B Model 650 is in the middle of...

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Articles: Motion Control

Virtually all manufacturing processes incorporate some type of linear motion. A common mistake that designers make when sizing and selecting linear motion systems is to overlook critical application...

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Articles: Motion Control

Pneumatic valves made with piezo technology offer many advantages. They are small, lightweight, extremely precise, durable, fast, and save energy. Piezo valves do not need energy to maintain a switching...

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Articles: Motion Control

Adding vision to a collaborative robot can open a world of possibilities for automation applications. With a vision system, a robot can inspect parts, check specific features of a part,...

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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Low-Pressure Plasma Cleaning of Aerospace Components Using Breathing/Compressed Air

A method for precision cleaning of aerospace components is needed that does not use hazardous or environmentally harmful commodities. Historically, precision cleaning methods have utilized solvents that have contributed to the depletion of the ozone layer or had...

Briefs: Photonics/Optics

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a new radar approach that uses a single phased array antenna and a single-pass configuration to generate interferograms, known as Digital Beamforming...

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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems

The Mars 2020 coring drill will generate a significant amount of dust and debris (known as fines) due to the volume of milled material displaced by the corer's annulus. These cuttings must be removed to ensure that...

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