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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Graphite/Cyanate Ester Face Sheets for Adaptive Optics
It has been proposed that thin face sheets of wide-aperture deformable mirrors in adaptive-optics systems be made from a composite material consisting of cyanate ester filled with graphite. This composite material appears to offer an attractive alternative to low-thermal-expansion glasses that...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
A passive porous treatment has been proposed as a means of suppressing noise generated by the airflow around the side edges of partial-span flaps on airplane wings when the flaps are...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
A design concept for a beam for a specific application permits variations and options for satisfying competing requirements to minimize certain deflections under load and to minimize the...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Figure 1 depicts an experimental inchworm- type linear microactuator. This microactuator is a successor to the one described in "MEMS-Based Piezoelectric/ Electrostatic Inchworm Actuator" (NPO- 30672), NASA...
Briefs: Medical
When Spinal USA, a manufacturer and distributor of advanced surgical spinal products, designed a new series of spinal implants called vertebral body replacement...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An improved thermal modulator has been invented for use in a variant of gas chromatography (GC). The variant in question — denoted as two-dimensional gas chromatography (2DGC) or GC-GC...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An experimental nuclear-spin gyroscope is based on an alkali-metal/noblegas co-magnetometer, which automatically cancels the effects of magnetic fields. Whereas the performances of prior...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A method is being developed for utilizing readings of an ion-mobility spectrometer (IMS) to estimate molecular masses of ions that have passed through the spectrometer. The method...
Briefs: Information Technology
Algorithm Optimally Orders Forward-Chaining Inference Rules
People typically develop knowledge bases in a somewhat ad hoc manner by incrementally adding rules with no specific organization. This often results in a very inefficient execution of those rules since they are so often order sensitive. This is relevant to tasks like Deep Space Network in...
Briefs: Information Technology
Project Integration Architecture
The Project Integration Architecture (PIA) is a distributed, object- oriented, conceptual, software framework for the generation, organization, publication, integration, and consumption of all information involved in any complex technological process in a manner that is intelligible to both computers and humans. As...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Assemblies containing curved piezoceramic fiber composite actuators have been invented as means of stretching optical fibers by amounts that depend on applied drive voltages....
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Optical Displacement Sensor for Sub-Hertz Applications
A document discusses a sensor made from off-the-shelf electro-optical photo-diodes and electronics that achieves 20 nm/(Hz)1/2 displacement sensitivity at 1 mHz. This innovation was created using a fiber-coupled laser diode (or Nd:YAG) through a collimator and an aperture as the illumination...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Since their market introduction in 1995, fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) [wherein “fiber” signifies optical fiber] have emerged as excellent means of measuring such parameters as strain and...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
The use of piezoelectric devices has become widespread since Pierre and Jacques Curie discovered the piezoelectric effect in 1880. Examples of current applications of piezoelectric devices...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
The figure schematically depicts two versions of an opto-electronic system, undergoing development at the time of reporting the information for this article, that is expected to be...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
The figure depicts a breadboard version of an optical beam combiner that makes it possible to use the outputs of any or all of four multimode laser diodes to pump a non-planar ring...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Web-Enabled Optoelectronic Particle-Fallout Monitor
A Web-enabled optoelectronic particle-fallout monitor has been developed as a prototype of future such instruments that (l) would be installed in multiple locations for which assurance of cleanliness is required and (2) could be interrogated and controlled in nearly real time by multiple remote...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An induction charge detector with multiple sensing stages has been conceived for use in characterizing sprayed droplets, dust particles, large ionized molecules, and the like. Like related...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Generic Helicopter-Based Testbed for Surface Terrain Imaging Sensors
To be certain that a candidate sensor system will perform as expected during missions, we have developed a field test system and have executed test flights with a helicopter- mounted sensor platform over desert terrains, which simulate Lunar features. A key advantage to this...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An optimized geometry has been proposed for superconducting sensing coils that are used in conjunction with superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) in magnetic resonance imaging...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Robot Electronics Architecture
An electronics architecture has been developed to enable the rapid construction and testing of prototypes of robotic systems. This architecture is designed to be a research vehicle of great stability, reliability, and versatility. A system according to this architecture can easily be reconfigured (including expanded...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Sensing a Changing Chemical Mixture Using an Electronic Nose
A method of using an electronic nose to detect an airborne mixture of known chemical compounds and measure the temporally varying concentrations of the individual compounds is undergoing development. In a typical intended application, the method would be used to monitor the air in an...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A class of inertial- sensor systems with drift compensation has been invented for use in measuring the orientations of human heads (and perhaps other, similarly sized objects). These systems...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A proposed microstrip Yagi antenna would operate at a frequency of 8.4 GHz (which is in the X band) and would feature a mechanically simpler, more elegant design, relative to a prior...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Tunable microwave devices based on metal terminals connected by thin ferroelectric films (see Figure 1) can be made to perform better by patterning the films to include suitably...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A free-space optical beam combiner now undergoing development makes it possible to use the outputs of multiple multimode laser diodes to pump a neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet...
Briefs: Semiconductors & ICs
A total of 81 optimal logic circuits based on four-gate field-effect transistors (G4FETs) have been designed to implement all Boolean functions of up to three variables. The purpose of this development was...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A relatively rapid, economical process has been devised for patterning a thin film of indium tin oxide (ITO) that has been deposited on a polyester film. ITO is a transparent, electrically conductive...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
In a proposed improvement of tooling for friction stir welding, gimballed shoulders would supplant shoulders that, heretofore, have been fixedly aligned with pins. The proposal is especially...
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