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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Small Balloons for Local Aerial Exploration of Mars
A report proposes the use of lightweight balloon-borne instrumentation systems for exploration in the vicinity of a lander on the surface of Mars. Each system would comprise instrumentation with a mass of about 0.2 kg and a balloon with a mass of about 0.8 kg and volume of about 50 m3. The...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An optoelectronic apparatus and a technique for its operation have been developed to facilitate and accelerate the measurement of distances of the order of tens of feet to within...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
A method of processing phase measurements in an unequal-arm laser Michelson interferometer makes it possible to detect phase effects much smaller than the laser phase noise. In the...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Figure 1 schematically depicts an experimental setup in which Rayleigh scattering from molecules of a flowing gas is used to measure the temperature and one component of the velocity...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
The ULTRA SON computer program is designed for use in precise ultrasonic contact scan measurements for nondestructive characterization of materials. This program performs major functions...
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Briefs: Medical
Improved miniature biotelemetric units resembling large pills have been proposed for use in physiological monitoring of the gastrointestinal tract. The broad principles of design, operation,...
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Briefs: Medical
Urine-Sample-Collection Device for Use on the Space Shuttle
The in-flight urine collection absorber (IUCA) is a Johnson Space Center (JSC) breakthrough. It features a lightweight, compact design and is easy to use for collection of urine samples by male and female space shuttle crewmembers. The IUCA is superior to currently available hardware for...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Solar-blind photodetectors respond only to ultraviolet light at wavelengths shorter than those of the solar radiation that can penetrate atmosphere of the Earth. This wavelength range, traditionally...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Parallel 3D EMPIC Algorithm Using Nonorthogonal Grids
Electromagnetic particle-in-cell (EMPIC) codes provide a capability for numerically simulating the motions of electrically charged particles in electromagnetic fields, and hence have become standard software tools in plasma physics research. Most existing EMPIC codes are based on the use of...
Briefs: Software
NASA has developed a system of hardware and software that can accommodate all necessary interfaces between (1) space-station flight computers and (2) a simulation host computer used...
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Briefs: Wearables
Wearable sensor patches — miniature biotelemetric units — have been proposed for use in measuring temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and possibly other physiological parameters. The...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Techniques for Controlling Buoyancy of Balloons on Titan
A report discusses alternative techniques for controlling the buoyancy, and thus the altitude and landings, of a balloon-borne instrumentation system that would be launched to explore the moon Titan of the planet Saturn. Some of the techniques are based on established concepts of heating or...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Lightweight, low-power-consumption, inexpensive ozone sensors based on colorimetric chemical sensing would be developed, according to a proposal. Colorimetric chemical sensing is an...
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Briefs: Medical
A technique for noninvasive determination of the pressure in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has been proposed. This technique would involve two main steps: First, an optical coherence tomographic...
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Briefs: Medical
An improved solution for preserving samples of urine has been formulated. This solution preserves a much broader spectrum of analytes in urine than do other urine-preservative solutions here-tofore in use by NASA,...
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Briefs: Medical
Primers for Amplifying CMV DNA in Body Fluids and Tissue
A novel set of primers has been developed for use in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of cytomegalovirus (CMV). The purpose of this development is to enable faster, more sensitive detection of CMV virus infecting body fluids and tissues.
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A temperature correction has been developed to enable the extraction of pressure images and corresponding pressure data from images of photoluminescence of pressure-sensitive paints (PSPs)....
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
High-Temperature Pressure Sensors Made From Silicon Carbide
Pressure sensors that contain thin diaphragms made from the 6H polytype of silicon carbide (6H-SiC) have been developed. These are prototypes of pressure sensors for use at high temperatures in engines, power plants, material-processing systems, and numerous other applications.
Briefs: Physical Sciences
GFSSP — Program for Analyzing Flows in a Complex Network
The Generalized Fluid System Simulation Program (GFSSP) version 2.01 is a general-purpose computer program for analyzing steady-state and time-dependent flowrates, pressures, temperatures, and concentrations in a complex flow network. The program is capable of modeling phase changes,...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Updates on Optical Diagnosis of Fuel Spray Patterns
A collection of three reports presents an expanded discussion of the topic of "Optical Diagnostics of High-Pressure Liquid Fuel Sprays" (LEW-16701),NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 23, No. 3 (March 1999), page 18a. The reports describe experiments in which fuel sprays representative of those in...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Time-Parallel Solutions of Linear PDEs on a Supercomputer
A paper describes the mathematical basis and some applications of a class of massively parallel algorithms for finite-difference numerical solution of some time-dependent partial differential equations (PDEs) on massively parallel supercomputers. In a radical departure from the traditional...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Forward-scattering particle-image velocimetry (FSPIV) is a technique for measuring velocities in microscopic flow fields as thin liquid films. As in other particle-image-velocimetry (PIV)...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
A telescopic imaging system that includes an optomechanical scanning subsystem is undergoing development. The system is designed for use in scientific observation of the Earth from aboard...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
A proposed technique for color filtering in a liquid-crystal or other flat-panel display device would make it possible to brighten the display without increasing the amount of light...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Ion-Mobility Spectrometric Determination of Hydrazines
Hydrazine, monomethylhydrazine, and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine can be detected and measured at concentrations as low as 10 parts per billion in the presence of ammonia at concentrations as high as 10 parts per million (greater than the odor threshold concentration of ammonia,...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Computer Program for Analysis of Convective Heat Transfer
Glenn-HT is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) computer code for the analysis of three-dimensional flow and convective heat transfer in a gas turbine. Glenn-HT has been evolving during the past few years at Glenn Research Center, and at least 35 technical papers relative to this code have...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Continuous Electrolytic Generation of Hydrogen Peroxide
Electrolytic cells for the continuous generation of hydrogen peroxide in streams of water have been developed. Cells of this type could be incorporated into wastewater-treatment systems based on advanced oxidation processes that utilize hydroxyl radicals. In addition to H2O2- generating...
Briefs: Materials
Improved evaporators for loop heat pipes have been developed by incorporating bidisperse structures (in place of older monodisperse structures) into evaporator wicks. As explained...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Software for Probabilistic Thermal and Structural Analysis
NESTEM is a computer code that is a combination of a heat-transfer-analysis subprogram and a NASA in-house probabilistic-analysis code called "NESSUS" (for Numerical Evaluation of StochasticStructures Under Stress). NESTEM can be used to analyze a complex combustor thermal environment with...

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