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The 2013 Create the Future Design Contest — sponsored by COMSOL, SAE International, and Tech Briefs Media Group (publishers of NASA Tech Briefs) — recognized innovation in product design in eight categories: Aerospace & Defense (new this year), Consumer Products, Electronics, Machinery & Equipment,...

A client seeks new synthetic (chemical-based) control agents for insects such as aphids and spider mites. The piercing and sucking insects damage plants by inserting their mouthpart into plant tissues and feeding on the juices. Heavily infested plants become yellow, wilted, deformed, or stunted, and may eventually...

There is a need to acquire autonomously cryogenic hydrocarbon liquid sample from remote planetary locations such as the lakes of Titan for instruments such as mass spectrometers. There are several problems that had to be solved relative to collecting the right amount of...

The conventional method for integrating a radiometer into radar hardware is to share the RF front end between the instruments, and to have separate IF receivers that take data at separate times. Alternatively, the radar and radiometer...

The bad news: the U.S. Government is shut down.The good news: the deadline has been extended to enter the Speed2Design Exploration & Discovery contest for a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.In August, I was able to attend the Speed2Design event at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, and it was an...

New York, NY – ChemoPatch, a low-cost, disposable, electronic patch-based cancer chemotherapy device designed to be simple, automated, and easy-to-use by cancer patients outside of the hospital, has been awarded the grand prize of $20,000 in the 2013...

In their quest for better helmet technologies to keep soldiers and marines safe on the battlefield, researchers at Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center are making a "HEaDS-UP" play.

During cryogenic vacuum testing of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM), the global alignment of the ISIM with respect to the designed interface of the JWST optical telescope element (OTE) will be measured through a series of optical...

Pulse compression has been widely used in radars so that low-power, long RF pulses can be transmitted, rather than a high-power short pulse. Pulse compression radars offer a number of advantages over high-power short pulsed radars, such as no need of highpower RF circuitry,...

A common problem in optical detection is determining the arrival time of a weak optical pulse that may comprise only one to a few photons. Currently, this problem is solved by using a photodetector to convert the optical signal to an electronic signal. The timing of the...

The presence of the Poisson Spot, also known as the spot of Arago, has been known since the 18th century. This spot is the consequence of constructive interference of light diffracted by the edge of the obstacle where the central position can be determined by symmetry of the...

X-type zeolites use an ion-exchange mechanism to capture and retain heavy metals for soil and water remediation. Zeolites are hydrated aluminosilicate minerals characterized by a three-dimensional open structure. Their cation exchange capacity (CEC), large surface area, and porosity allow the...

The growing scarcity of resources to produce increasingly demanded ingredients, such as soybean meal and animal protein meals, has doubled feed costs in the recent years. Thus, alternative protein sources, including insects, are urgently needed. Insects must be introduced in the feed chain, and...

University of Washington researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with researcher Rajesh Rao able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of fellow researcher Andrea Stocco.