Impacts
in Progress
A Sampling of Story Ideas from Today's NIST
Helping the Blind Access Electronic Data
For the nearly 11 million blind and visually impaired people in North
America and millions more worldwide, the on-ramp to the Information
Superhighway has been blocked for a long time. Now with NISTs
help, the barricades are coming down.
The NIST Rotating-Wheel Based Refreshable Braille Display is an
instrument that receives digital input from electronic book readers,
personal digital assistants
or desktop computers, and converts it to a continuously updated Braille
output. This gives the blind and visually impaired access to electronic
books, online documents, e-mail and web pages. The latest version
of the NIST device incorporates several design improvements from
the
prototype tested during the year 2000.
For example, many blind and visually impaired people prefer to read
Braille using several fingers, and the original design only allowed
for reading with a single finger. The new NIST Braille Display also
is more compact and mechanically simpler than the original. It also
employs software to translate text into Braille and features variable
speed that allows people to read faster or slower, or to pause the
device. NIST estimates that the device could be manufactured for about
$1,000, significantly less than the up-to-$15,000 for current systems.
Contact: Philip
Bulman, (301) 975-5661.
No-Crash System Stays on Road to Success
Some 3,000 Americans each day doze off or get distracted behind the
wheel of a moving vehicle and run off the road. Lane-departure warning
systemsalready installed on some commercial trucksmay
be options for U.S. car buyers within the next two or three years.
If this smart technology takes off and becomes widely
available, estimates predict it could prevent some 160,000 crashes
and 1,500 deaths annually.
To ensure that the warning systems work as desired, the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently contracted with intelligent-vehicle
researchers at NIST to develop tests that manufacturers and regulators
can use to evaluate system performance. The NIST team is designing
tests for assessing how accurately and reliably the technology alerts
drivers to unintended lane departures before they occur.
Contact: Michael
E. Newman, (301) 975-3025
Everyday Is SUNday Inside the Sphere
Strength, safety and color fastness are important to manufacturers
who test their products ability to withstand UV exposure. However,
outdoor tests take too long, often going for years. Indoor devices
can accelerate testing but do not always provide optimal results.
NIST researchers have developed a spherical device that distributes
UV radiation uniformly into 32 specimen chambers, ensuring reproducible
test results. The device is calculated to accelerate UV exposure 30
to 65 times faster than natural solar exposure. Materials exposed
to the spheres UV light for one day potentially receive the
equivalent of 65 days of sun. Two months could equal more than 10
years of solar exposure.
Contact: John
Blair, (301) 975-4261
Rebuilding Bone with the Help of Technology
The combination of tissue engineering with materials science holds
the promise of producing biomaterials capable of regenerating bone
that has been broken or lost to disease. Researchers at the American
Dental Association Health Foundation/NIST Paffenbarger Research Center
in Gaithersburg, Md., are working to expand the use of bone repair
materialprimarily calcium phosphate cementbeyond whats
possible today.
Calcium phosphate cement, which the body readily accepts, replaces
a section of bone and serves as scaffolding around which new bone
forms in the same shape. Use of this biomaterial is now limited to
those areas of the body that do not move or bear any stress.
The ADA/NIST team hopes to expand these limited capabilities by modifying
existing biomaterials and developing new ones. The goal is to produce
biomaterials that can handle the physical demands on bone where movement
and stress are factors. One benefit would be to shorten the time for
installing dental implants to days rather than months.
Contact: Pamela
Houghtaling, (301) 975-5745
Ensuring Quality for New Therapies
Physicians and physicists have teamed up to bring prostate cancer
and heart patients a new treatment option that could replace many
invasive surgeries and lessen hospital time. Most importantly, this
methodthe implantation of tiny radioactive seeds to treat prostate
tumors and coronary artery blockagecould play a significant
role in reducing the 725,000 heart disease and 32,000 prostate cancer
deaths annually. Physicists at NIST are helping advance this new therapy
by calibrating the radiation doses delivered by the radioactive seeds.
These new treatments, using small (rice-sized) radioactive sources,
offer the advantage of delivering a high radiation dose to the target
cells while minimizing the radiation damage to healthy tissue. NIST
is the only laboratory in the world that offers calibrations of the
radioactive seed sources for prostate cancer. The intravascular applications
of these radioactive sources are still in clinical trials, and FDA
approval will be required before such treatments are available to
the public.
Contact: Michael
Baum, (301) 975-2763
Setting Standards from Chocolate to Bullets
Spinach leaves, whale blubber, pine needles and industrial sludge
are among the nearly 1,300 materials that NIST has characterized for
specific physical and chemical properties using state-of-the-art measurement
methods. Known as Standard Reference Materials, these certified artifacts
are used to establish the quality and reliability of devices, goods,
medical data and scientific results.
An interesting collection of new measurement references is currently
under development at NIST. One example is an SRM of fired bullets
and casings to help connect firearms to specific crimes. Another measures
more precisely a protein that could signal the early stages of a heart
attack. A third, the chocolate SRM, will be used as a benchmark for
determining whether foods really do contain the fat and carbohydrate
content listed on the label. Also in the works are SRMs for additives
in smokeless gunpowder, antibiotics in milk, abrasiveness of toothpaste
and organic contaminants in household dust.
Contact: John
Blair, (301) 975-4261
Retrieving Data from Damaged Magnetic Tape
A new microscopy technique could become an important tool for law
enforcement and accident investigators seeking data (either digital
or analog) from magnetic tracks on damaged, altered or erased tapes
or other storage media. Termed second harmonic magneto-resistive microscopy
(also known as SH-MRM), it makes use of high-resolution magnetic sensors
developed for modern computer hard disk drives.
Researchers at NIST and the National Telecommunication and Information
Administration laboratories in Boulder, Colo., recently demonstrated
that their system could recover audio data from a tape fragment provided
by the National Transportation Safety Board. They also showed that
raw digital data can be read from a very short segment of tape from
a flight data recorder. For the FBI, they revealed magnetic marks
produced by the erase and record heads during the recording process.
They also showed that audio data from test tracks can be reconstructed
and played back directly from the SH-MRM images.
Contact: Fred
McGehan (Boulder), (303) 497-3246
NIST Teams with EPA to Clear the Air
In 2000, NIST joined an interagency effort led by the Environmental
Protection Agencythe National Particulate Matter Research Programaimed
at improving the nations air quality and public health.
Particulate matter is a mix of coarse and fine particles in the air
produced by natural processes as well as human activities. About 10
to 100 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, fine particulate
matter can consist of dust, ashes, soot and sea salt aerosols. The
challenge is to identify and measure accurately the chemical componentsspecifically,
the toxic onesand collect enough particulate to constitute a
representative sample. NIST and its NPMRP partners will develop urban
particulate matter reference materials, a special thin-film glass
standard for X-ray fluorescence analysis and technology for large-scale
collection of fine airborne particulate matter. This will enable the
accurate measurement of emissions from various pollutant sources such
as industrial plants and vehicles.
Contact: Pamela
Houghtaling, (301) 975-5745
Quality Pays Off Six Straight Years
Although you wont find it listed in the financial section of
the newspaper, the Baldrige Index once again (for the
sixth consecutive year) outperformed the Standard & Poors
500 in a report issued in February 2000. The year 2000 margin of 4.8
to 1 was one of the highest returns since NIST started doing the study
in 1995.
The Baldrige Index is a fictitious stock fund made up
of publicly traded US companies that have received the Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award. NIST invested a hypothetical $1,000
in each of the whole company winners, and the investments were tracked
from the first business day of the month following the announcement
of award recipients through Dec. 1, 1999. Adjustments were made for
stock splits. Another $1,000 hypothetically was invested in the S&P
500 for the same time period.
The Baldrige Index achieved a 1,101 percent return on
investment, compared to a 228 percent return for the S&P 500.
More recently, NIST compared the Baldrige Award whole company winners
to large cap blend funds, a category of mutual funds monitored by
Morningstar Inc. that best matches the Baldrige index. This comparison
showed the group of Baldrige winners outperforming the average return
(148 percent) for these funds by 7.4 to 1.
Contact: Jan
Kosko, (301) 975-2767
ATP Jump Starts Innovative Technologies
Since 1990, the NIST Advanced Technology Program has worked to spur
the development of path-breaking new technologies by providing cost-shared
funding for potentially valuable but high-risk R&D projects. Nearly
200 projects have been completed, and more than 200 currently are
under way. In industry after industrymedical diagnostics, semiconductor
manufacturing, automobiles, telecommunications, information technology,
electronics, high-performance composites, biotechnologythe United
States can offer the worlds markets many leading-edge technologies
that wouldnt exist without the ATP.
In 2000, the NIST ATP chose 54 industrial research projects for
cost-shared support ($130 million from private industry matched by
approximately $144 million from the ATP). The selected projects enable
a broad array of technologies, including pharmaceutical design, tissue
engineering, industrial catalysts, energy generation and storage,
manufacturing technologies, electronics manufacturing, computer software
and electro-optics.
One recent ATP success story is CuraGen Corp., a New Haven, Conn.,
company, that has built what are believed to be the worlds smallest
working pumps. With individual components only a micrometer or less
wide, the tiny pumps are engineered like integrated circuits on silicon
wafers in order to move fragments of DNA from one place to another.
Developed with support from the ATP, the tiny pumps are potential
components in DNA analysis chipsminiaturized devices that combine
the functions of an entire DNA laboratory on a chip similar to a computer
microchip. Along with moving DNA across chips, the CuraGen researchers
believe that the micropumps also may be useful in separating DNA fragments
by size, since the smaller pieces tend to go through the pump faster.
Contact: Michael
Baum, (301) 975-2763
Small Manufacturers Spell Success M-E-P
The NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership is a nationwide system
of resources assisting smaller manufacturers in becoming more competitive
by addressing their most critical and often unique needs. Started
in 1989, todays NIST MEP network consists of more than 400 manufacturing
extension centers and field offices delivering services to manufacturers
in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Each center represents a unique
blend of federal, state and local resources.
Many studies are finding that small manufacturers who work with
their local NIST MEP center show dramatic improvements. For example,
in a recent survey of NIST MEP client companies served in the last
nine months of FY 1999, 2,942 firms reported that, as a result of
NIST MEP services, they: (1) created or retained 18,153 jobs; (2)
increased or retained $1.4 billion in sales; and (3) realized $364
million in cost savings.
Just ask Chilly Willee, the Belvidere, Ill., company that produces
machines that dispense frozen drinks in convenience stores and concession
stands, what a difference the NIST MEP can make. The companys
machines are often operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As
a result, gearbox parts required frequent upkeep and replacement.
Complaints from customers about maintenance problems became all too
common.
Chilly Willee contacted the Illinois Manufacturing Extension Center,
for help in designing an improved gearbox. IMEC and a local engineering
consultant, Creative Design Solutions Inc., developed a self-lubricating,
virtually maintenance-free gearbox. The new design will save about
$15,000 in annual labor costs, decrease downtime of the machines and
increase customer satisfaction.
Contact: Jan
Kosko, (301) 975-2767
The impacts listed in this fact sheet were all taken
from recent issues of NISTs two newsletters, NIST
Update and NIST Tech
Beat. NIST Update, published every two weeks, highlights
NIST research, activities, services and people. NIST Tech Beat,
published monthly, is a lay language tip sheet for science writers,
To subscribe to either the print or electronic versions of both newsletters,
fill out the online form at www.nist.gov/public_affairs/mailform.htm.
Created on
January 9, 2001
Contact: inquiries@nist.gov
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