NIST Tech Beat - May 12, 2006

A soldier’s after-action mission report can sometimes leave out vital observations and experiences that could be valuable in planning future operations. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is exploring the use of soldier-worn sensors and recorders to augment a soldier’s recall and reporting capability. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is acting as an independent evaluator for the “Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology” (ASSIST) project. NIST researchers are designing tests to measure the technical capability of such information gathering devices.

This week NIST is testing five different sensor systems* at the United States Army Aberdeen Test Center in Aberdeen, Md. The tests, ending May 12, involve sensor-clad soldiers on unscripted foot patrol through simulated Iraqi villages populated with “bystanders,” “shopkeepers,” and “insurgents.” The sensors are expected to capture, classify and store such data as the sound of acceleration and deceleration of vehicles, images of people (including suspicious movements that might not be seen by the soldiers), speech and specific types of weapon fire.

A capacity to give GPS locations, an ability to translate Arabic signs and text into English, as well as on-command video recording also are being demonstrated in Aberdeen. Sensor system software is expected to extract keywords and create an indexed multimedia representation of information collected by different soldiers. For comparison purposes, the soldiers wearing the sensors will make an after-action report based on memory and then supplement that after-action report with information learned from the sensor data.

The Aberdeen tests end the first year of ASSIST’s approximately five-year development effort. The ASSIST plan envisions increasingly sophisticated data collection systems that can learn from experiences, improving performance with accumulated knowledge.

“Soldiers endure tremendous physical and psychological stresses which can make it difficult to remember details about what they experienced over prolonged missions,” said Craig Schlenoff, NIST’s ASSIST project coordinator. “We hope that ASSIST will keep our soldiers safer and increase the probability of mission success.”

Like coal-mine canaries, fish DNA can serve as a measure of the biological impact of water and sediment pollution—or pollution clean-up. That’s one of the conclusions of a new study* by researchers from the Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Research over the past several years has demonstrated the adverse effects of industrial pollutants in water and sediment on the health of fish in the lower Duwamish River. The Duwamish flows through an industrialized section of south Seattle, Wash., and in 2001 a section of the lower river was added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list because of contaminants including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), mercury and other metals, and phthalates. In previous research on Duwamish fish, PNRI used an infrared spectroscopy method to document DNA damage in the gills of English sole.

In a new joint paper, the researchers report on several biomarkers, including pollution-induced P450 enzyme changes, and on infrared spectral analysis of DNA and measurements of specific modifications to DNA from fish gills and livers using liquid and gas chromatography combined with mass spectrometry (LC/MS,GC/MS). Precision chemical analysis techniques at NIST allowed the researchers to identify and measure damage to adenine and guanine, specific chemical components or bases of DNA, at extraordinarily low levels—five lesions out of a 100 million bases in one case. The results correlated well with earlier research and revealed similar damage to liver DNA (more likely tied to the fish’s food) and gill DNA (more probably reflecting pollutants in water).

The results suggest that these DNA lesions, and others like them, can be used as very sensitive biomarkers to provide a direct measure of the impact of contaminants on fish populations. Moreover, since natural DNA repair processes may gradually reverse the damage in the absence of further insults, these biomarkers also might be used to help assess the efficacy of pollution remediation efforts. The work was funded in part by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH).

*D.C. Malins, K.M. Anderson, J.J. Stegeman, P. Jaruga, V.M. Green, N.K. Gilman and M. Dizdaroglu. Biomarkers signal contaminant effects on the organs of English sole (Parophrys vetulus) from Puget Sound. Environmental Health Perspectives EHP-in-Press. Available at http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2006/8544/abstract.pdf (.pdf; download Acrobat Reader).

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health have begun a program to develop measurement assessment materials needed to evaluate and assess advanced proteomic technologies, such as mass spectrometry, that will play a large role in the discovery and validation of cancer-related proteins found in readily accessible body fluids.

The discovery that the appearance of specific proteins (or changes in the structure or concentration of a protein) in body fluids could be associated with the presence of particular cancers goes back to the 19th century, but actually identifying and validating these proteins has been difficult. Humans are estimated to have roughly 400,000 different proteins, with the specifics constantly changing with age, health and environment. In the 159 years since the discovery of the first protein cancer biomarker, only nine proteins have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as diagnostic markers for cancer.

The rapidly developing field of proteomics—the large-scale study of proteins and their interactions through methods such as multidimensional separations, mass spectrometry and protein arrays—could significantly advance the search for novel cancer-related proteins. However, there is a shortage of rigorous measurement quality assurance tools for proteomics to ensure reliable and reproducible research results. NCI has begun a $104 million, 5-year program called the Clinical Proteomic Technology Initiative for Cancer (http://proteomics.cancer.gov) to refine and standardize proteomic technologies, reagents and methods to establish the measurement technology needed to validate protein discoveries and move these technologies into a clinical setting.

Under an agreement finalized on May 5, NIST will develop a measurement assessment material composed of proteins mimicking the complexity and dynamic range of the human plasma proteome. The mixtures will be used as references by the network of research centers organized by the NCI to evaluate existing proteomic technologies and develop new ones. NIST also will assist in the overall study design and, as research progresses, develop more advanced proteomic reference materials. Examples may include well-characterized human plasma and other clinical specimens, standard test data sets and a mass spectra library of peptides from human plasma proteins.

Media Contact:
Michael Baum, michael.baum@nist.gov, (301) 975-2763

Low-Cost Microfluidics Can Be a Sticky Problem

A deceptively simple approach to bonding thermoplastic microchannel plates together with solvent could be used for low-cost, high-volume production of disposable “lab-on-a-chip” devices, according to researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and George Mason University (GMU).

Microfluidics is considered a highly promising technology for performing rapid and inexpensive chemical and biochemical analyses. The defining feature of microfluidics is the use of tiny channels less than a fraction of a millimeter wide to move samples and reagents through the device. For high-volume production, the channels likely will be molded or embossed in high-quality thermoplastic and then sealed with a cover plate. Bonding the two pieces together securely without blocking or altering the tiny channels is a key manufacturing issue.

One approach is to weld the two plates together by clamping them and heating the plastic to the point where the polymer chains begin to diffuse together. This requires just the right combination of time, pressure and temperature—which unfortunately has to be fine-tuned for each new lot of plastic. The other method is to weld the pieces with a solvent-type glue, like a model plane, but as model-builders will appreciate, the problem is keeping the glue where you want it and away from where you don’t want it.

In a recent paper in Analytical Chemistry,* a team from NIST and GMU suggest that the answer is simple: use the channels. They clamp the two plates together, inject a tiny amount of solvent at one end of the network of channels and apply vacuum at the other end. As the solvent is sucked through the channels, too fast to clog them, a minute amount is drawn between the plates by capillary action and welds them together. Total welding and incubating time: about 8 minutes. To demonstrate utility, the team successfully performed high-efficiency electrophoretic separation of 400-base single-strand DNA ladders, a typical microfluidics application, in the devices fabricated using the technique.

*J.J. Shah, J. Geist, L.E. Locascio, M. Gaitan, M.V. Rao and W.N. Vreeland. Capillarity induced solvent-actuated bonding of polymeric microfluidic devices. Analytical Chemistry ASAP Article, available on-line at http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/ancham/asap/abs/ac051883l.html.

Media Contact:
Michael Baum, michael.baum@nist.gov, (301) 975-2763

Quick Links

Furlani Named Director of NIST’s IT Lab

Cita M. Furlani has been named director of the Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Furlani brings a broad range of management and information technology (IT) expertise to her new position. Prior to being named director of ITL, Furlani was NIST’s chief information officer and advised the NIST director on the planning, execution, evaluation and delivery of IT services and support.

Previously, Furlani served on detail from NIST as director of the National Coordination Office for Information Technology Research and Development, which reported to the White House. Other positions include serving as director of the Information Technology and Electronics Office within NIST’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP) and coordinating Department of Commerce activities in the area of enterprise integration. Furlani also served as acting director of ATP. Furlani’s educational background includes a Master of Science degree in electronics and computer engineering from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and mathematics from Texas Christian University.

For more information on Furlani and ITL, see http://www.itl.nist.gov.

2005 Baldrige Award Winners Applications Available

Recipients of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award are respected and widely emulated because of their innovative management practices and exceptional results. To learn more about the six 2005 Baldrige Award recipients—Sunny Fresh Foods, DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations Company, Park Place Lexus, Jenks Public Schools, Richland College and Bronson Methodist Hospital—see their recently released award application summaries at http://baldrige.nist.gov/2005_Application_Summaries.htm.

(Return to NIST News Page)

Editor: Michael Baum

Date created: 5/10/06
Date updated: 5/11/06
Contact: inquiries@nist.gov