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Engineers Are Working Toward Designing A Better Handcuff
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Law Enforcement
Engineers Are Working Toward Designing A Better Handcuff
James Worthey does not aspire to be the next Houdini. But law enforcement officials might want to catch his act the next time they happen to be visiting the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md. Worthey, an engineer in NIST's Office of Law Enforcement Standards, shows how easy it is to pick a conventional handcuff with an ordinary paper clip. The problem is well known to police officers--and to many prisoners. A few years ago, sheriff's officials in California came to the National Institute of Justice, OLES's sponsor, asking for help in designing more secure handcuffs.
Worthey developed a computerized instrument based on a force-torque transducer, a device that can measure small forces, such as those required to lock and unlock a handcuff. It also will be used to measure the larger torque necessary to break the handcuff. The instrument can display data graphically and save them in a computer. It is now on loan to Touchstone Research Laboratory, Inc., in Triadelphia, W.Va. Under contract with NIST, Touchstone will measure and analyze a variety of handcuffs and offer ideas for improved future designs.
Media Contact:
Emil Venere, (301) 975-5745
Gene Sequencing
'DNA Chips' and Tiny Tubes Make Genetic Studies Practical
Powerful technologies that offer extraordinary advances in the speed and convenience of DNA analysis are boosting our abilities to decode genes, manage diseases, discover new drugs and cut costs in the trillion-dollar U.S. healthcare industry. These systems are initial spin-offs of an ongoing joint venture co-funded by the Advanced Technology Program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The project is aimed at making low-cost, hand-held diagnostic devices for quickly analyzing DNA samples in doctors' offices.
The devices will feature a combination of the technologies developed in the ATP project by two small biotechnology firms in California: Affymetrix, Inc., and Molecular Dynamics. The ATP funding has enabled advances in sample preparation and data analysis and has helped validate components. ATP-funded work continues to combine and miniaturize features and make the resulting devices easy to produce.
Affymetrix, Inc., adapted a photolithography manufacturing process to make postage stamp-sized DNA chips, which contain hundreds of thousands of gene sequences that detect matches in blood or tissue samples up to 100 times faster than conventional methods.
Molecular Dynamics recently introduced a system that sorts and sequences DNA in 96 tiny capillaries (tubes the size of a human hair) faster and more efficiently than traditional methods.
Media Contact:
Michael Baum, (301) 975-2763
Information Technology
NIST Software Makes Remote Computing a Snap
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed a computer program that may fundamentally alter the way people use the Internet.
WebSubmit allows even novices to tap into the power of remote computers via the World Wide Web and use them to do calculations as if they had direct connections to the machines. The Web currently is used primarily as a way to transmit documents and images or download software. WebSubmit makes it easy for people to use applications software--the computer programs that make calculations and do other chores--on the Web. This could transform the Web from a medium primarily geared toward information exchange to one in which actual computing takes place.
WebSubmit grew out of a seamless computing project at NIST designed to give staff researchers easier access to supercomputers. Many scientists were frustrated by the time required to learn how to use different supercomputers. WebSubmit eliminates much of the difficulty in learning new systems. Websubmit is being tested internally at NIST and will be placed in the public domain by the end of the year.
Media Contact:
Philip Bulman, (301) 975-5661
Metallurgy
New Technique Helps Manufacturers Cast Better Dies
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology are the first to succeed in using a new technique that shows precisely what happens to a metal when its shape is deformed, an advance that could help manufacturers save hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
A single automaker alone will spend as much as $2 billion each year perfecting molds--called dies--to press sheet steel into body parts for new car models. That's because processing steel into sheets and then pressing the metal into dies to make auto parts creates a myriad of imperfections in the atomic structure of the metal. These defects, known as dislocations, make it impossible to predict precisely how the metal will behave when pressed into specific dies. Consequently, manufacturers must resort to trial and error, sometimes redesigning a die as many as 10 times before discovering the mold that forms the proper shape.
What they need is better computer models with which to design the dies. The NIST research offers hope of one day providing the data for such computer models. Now, 47 years after it was first proposed by a French scientist, NIST researchers have learned how to apply an advanced measurement technique that uses intense X-ray beams to study how the defects form and evolve.
Media Contact:
Emil Venere, (301) 975-5745
Weights and Measures
New Web Museum Exhibit Describes History of the Meter
Between Barcelona, Spain, and Dunkirk, France, the meter--the international unit of length--was born, albeit somewhat illegitimately. Tasked to measure this segment of an imaginary arc, or meridian, extending over the Earth's surface, a team of surveyors missed their mark. Nonetheless, their measurement provided the raw data used to calculate one ten-millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the equator--the definition of the meter decreed by the new Republican Government of France in August 1793. With this calculation, the French fashioned a platinum bar that from end to polished end was intended to be the physical replication of the meter.
After the surveyors' mistake was discovered, the meter was redefined to be the platinum bar, despite its tenuous connection to the original definition. Thus begins the tale of the meter as distilled by Howard Layer and William Penzes in a new feature that appears on the home page of the National Institute of Standards and Technology on the World Wide Web. In narrative and chronology form, the researchers trace the evolution of the meter, one of the original cornerstones of the International System of Units, from its somewhat confused beginning to its current incarnation as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. For the full-length version of "Length" and "Time for the Definition of the Meter," surf on over to http://www.mel.nist.gov/div821/museum/length.htm.
Media Contact:
Mark Bello, (301) 975-3776
Chemistry
No More Yucky Chemical Build Up
Semiconductor manufacturers are a fastidious bunch. They have to be. Even micrometer-size contaminants can ruin a microcircuit. The vacuum chambers where microcircuits are made must be thoroughly cleaned at regular intervals. Molecules from gases used in these chambers gradually build up on the inside walls and on electrodes at the top and bottom of the chamber.
To remove this build up, chip makers use an ionized fluorocarbon gas called a plasma. Reactive molecules in the cleaning gas combine with silicon-containing deposits on the chamber surfaces and carry them out of the chamber. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology recently used a sheet of ultraviolet laser light to track the concentration of the reactive fluorocarbon molecules during the cleaning process. At low pressures, higher concentrations of the reactive gas were found closer to the walls of the chamber. At higher pressures, it was more concentrated nearer the electrodes. The researchers plan to correlate their findings with simpler plasma monitoring systems used in industry to help manufacturers improve the efficiency of their operations and hopefully reduce their usage of fluorocarbon gases, which contribute to global warming.
Media Contact:
Linda Joy, (301) 975-4403
Tech Trivia
Hugh L. Dryden, one of the fathers of the U.S. space program and the deputy administrator of NASA from its start in 1958 until his death in 1965, worked at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) from 1918 until he joined the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, NASA's predecessor, in 1946. He was NACA director from 1949-1958.
For more than 50 years starting in the 1920s, the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) was involved in research for slip-resistant walkways. NBS measured coefficients of friction as well as the complex array of factors that affect the risk of a slip or fall on a walkway surface.
When the crown jewels and coronation robe of St. Stephen were returned to Hungary in 1978, few knew that a National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) scientist had escorted the relics to the United States for safekeeping following WWII. The ornate robe and jewels were kept safe in protective containers designed and built at NBS.
U.S. Department of
Commerce
Technology Administration
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Editor: Linda Joy
HTML conversion: Crissy Wines
Last update: July 28, 1998
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