[Credits] [NIST Update
Archives] [Media
Contacts]
[Subscription Information] [NIST Update Search]
Budget
President
Approves FY 2000 Appropriations for NIST
On
Nov. 29, 1999, President Clinton signed into law
NIST's fiscal year 2000 budget appropriation of $638.9 million
(89 percent of, or $132.3 million under, the President's revised
FY 2000 request of $711.2 million). All of NIST's four major programs
were given sufficient funding to continue promoting U.S. economic
growth.
Highlighting
the budget is $278.2 million for the Measurement and Standards
Laboratories (97 percent of, or $6.4 million under, the President's
FY 2000 request); $4.9 million for the Baldrige National Quality
Program (91 percent of, or $0.5 million under, the President's
FY 2000 request); $142.6 million (which with $68.4 million in
carryover and recoveries totals $211 million for FY 2000, 98 percent
of the $215 million total proposed in the revised FY 2000 request)
for the Advanced Technology Program, including $50.7 million for
new awards in FY 2000; and $104.8 million (105 percent of, or
$5 million over, the President's FY 2000 request) for the Manufacturing
Extension Partnership to continue providing the federal share
of funding needed to support the network of centers serving smaller
manufacturers in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of
Columbia.
Finally,
the appropriations provide $108.4 million (98 percent of, or $2
million under the President's FY 2000 request) for upgrading NIST's
30- to 45-year-old research facilities. In this appropriation,
$84.9 million has been marked for the start of construction on
the critically needed Advanced Measurement Laboratory in Gaithersburg,
Md.
As
NIST Update went to press, it was still unknown how a 0.38
percent across-the-board reduction (agreed upon by the White House
and Congress as part of the final budget negotiations) would affect
the NIST FY 2000 appropriation.
A
detailed history of the FY 1999 budget process is available by
faxed request to (301) 926-1630 or on NIST's World Wide Web site
(www.nist.gov; click on "News"
and then "Budget
Updates").
Media
Contact:
Michael
E. Newman, (301) 975-3025 
Y2K
Longer Hours
for Help Center as New Year's Nears
The
Y2K
Help Center for Small Business will be open 24 hours a day
starting on Dec. 30, 1999, through Jan. 7, 2000, to offer free
Y2K assistance to small businesses during the year 2000 date change.
Until Dec. 29, the Y2K Help Center's hours are from 8 a.m. to
8 p.m. (Eastern Time) Monday through Friday. The Y2K Help Center
is managed by NIST's Manufacturing
Extension Partnership.
A
wide variety of free information and tools to help small business
owners plan for or recover from a Y2K problem is available by
calling the center or by downloading from the center's web site
at www.y2khelp.nist.gov.
One
of the tools on the web site is free software, called the Rapid
Response Management Tool, to help a small business that does experience
a Y2K problem control damage and quickly initiate a recovery process.
An accompanying sourcebook contains information on Y2K problems
and fixes for hardware, software and embedded systems that are
commonly used in small businesses and manufacturing facilities.
Contact
the Y2K Help Center by phone at (800)Y2K-7557 (925-7557) or by
e-mail at y2khelp@nist.gov.
Media
Contact:
Jan
Kosko, (301) 975-2767
Technology
Partnerships
ATP Opens
FY 2000 Competition
The
Advanced Technology Program
has announced a new
competition to select challenging, high-risk R&D projects
that accelerate the development of path-breaking new technologies
that are important to the economy. The program expects to have
approximately $50.7 million dollars available in fiscal year 2000
for first-year cost-shared funding of new projects that
can run as long as five years. Based on previous competitions,
this would be expected to translate into a joint industry/government
R&D investment of roughly $300 million through 2004.
In
announcing the competition, Commerce Secretary William M. Daley
said, "The ATP is a true government-industry partnership, and
as such needs industry's strong support if it is to achieve its
goal of strong, continuing economic benefits for our nation. I
call on every sector of American industry to be alive to the possibilities,
to consider how, with ATP support, you can push the envelope of
what you can attempt, and to send us your best ideas."
The
deadline for full proposals to the competition is 3 p.m. Eastern
time on Wednesday, March 8, 2000. The announcement first appeared
in the Nov.
29, 1999, online Commerce Business Daily. NIST will
host a Proposers' Conference for potential proposers and other
interested parties to review general information on the 2000 competition,
the selection process, and ATP rules and procedures on Jan. 27,
2000, at the NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md. To register
for the Proposers'
Conference or for further information call the ATP at (800)
ATP- FUND (287-3863).
Detailed
competition rules and the current ATP
Proposal Preparation Kit (dated November 1999) are available
from the ATP Web site at www.atp.nist.gov,
by sending email to atp@nist.gov,
by calling the phone number listed above, or by faxing a request
to (301) 926-9524 or (301) 590-3053.
Media
Contact:
Michael
Baum, (301) 975-2763
Standards
Natural Constants
Get First Makeover in 13 Years
Need
to know the charge of an electron? Or the gravitational constant?
Or the mass of a proton? Updated values of these and more than
300 other fundamental constants of nature now are available on
the NIST World Wide Web site at physics.nist.gov/constants. The
international Committee on Data for Science and Technology, also
known as CODATA, recently recommended these new values. The constants
will also be published in the April 2000 issue of the Reviews
of Modern Physics and the November/December 1999 issue of
the Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data. NIST
physicists Peter J. Mohr, who is chairman of the CODATA Task Group
on Fundamental Constants, and Barry N. Taylor, whose six-year
term as chairman of the Task Group expired at the end of 1998,
authored the paper.
Mohr
and Taylor spent much of the past four years evaluating experimental
measurements and theoretical calculations relevant to the constants
from researchers worldwide. They considered all results that were
available as of Dec. 31, 1998. The last official CODATA revision
to the fundamental constants was issued in 1986.
Upon
completion of Mohr and Taylor's review and analysis, the CODATA
Task Group concurred that it represented the world's current knowledge
of the values of the constants. The Task Group is a 13-person
committee whose members are precision measurement experts from
Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan, China and Russia.
While
the changes in the recommended values of the fundamental constants
are not dramatic--many just have more decimal places--it is the
changes in uncertainties assigned to the values that are most
noteworthy. Most have been significantly decreased, meaning that
scientists are much more confident in their knowledge of the values.
Media
Contact:
Linda
Joy, (301) 975-4403
Quality
March
Conference to Showcase 1999 Baldrige Winners
The
1999
newly named recipients of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality
Award--STMicroelectronics, Inc.-Region Americas (Carrollton,
Texas); BI (Minneapolis, Minn.); The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company
L.L.C. (Atlanta, Ga.); and Sunny Fresh Foods (Monticello, Minn.)--will
present details of their exceptional business and performance
practices at the Quest for Excellence XII conference. Sunny Fresh
Foods is the first food manufacturer to receive a Baldrige Award.
This is the second Baldrige Award for Ritz-Carlton; the first
was in 1992. Presentations covering all seven categories of the
Baldrige Award criteria will be made by the CEOs and others in
the winning companies.
Education
and health care sessions also will be offered.
The
conference takes place March 12-15, 2000, at the Marriott Wardman
Park Hotel, Washington, D.C. Registration fee is $845 if submitted
by Feb. 11, 2000. After that date, the fee will be $945. To register,
contact the American Society for Quality and Participation, (800)
733-3310, fax: (513) 381-0070, info@aqp.org.
Further
information on the Baldrige Award recipients and the Baldrige
National Quality Program is available by calling (301) 975-2036
or via the World Wide Web at www.quality.nist.gov.
Media
Contact:
Jan
Kosko, (301) 975-2767
Standards
New
Database Seeks ‘Measured Once, Accepted Everywhere'
Measurement-related
questions and disputes, including those that can hinder global
commerce, soon may be resolved with a click of a computer mouse
thanks to a new international
database of measurement comparisons recently unveiled by NIST
and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (also known
as BIPM) in Sèvres, near France.
Developed
by NIST, the Internet-accessible International Comparisons Database
will enable companies, regulators and others to evaluate the equivalence
of calibrations and other measurement services performed by national
metrology institutes (known as NMIs) in nearly all parts of the
globe. In turn, the database will make it easier for businesses
and other organizations that rely on these services to prove compliance
with the measurement-related requirements of regulations and standards,
which affect an estimated 80 percent of global product trade.
An
October 1999 arrangement signed by 38 nations called for "mutual
recognition of national measurement standards" and established
a formal system of "key" measurement comparisons among the NMIs,
or chief measurement organizations, of the signer nations. These
multinational exercises determine how closely a particular measurement
(of voltage, length or mass, for example) performed by one NMI
agrees with results achieved by other participating NMIs.
Initially,
the new database will record and display results of completed
and ongoing key comparisons among the NMIs of nations that signed
the October mutual recognition pact. About 130 of these round-robin
measurement exercises are now under way, according to BIPM, which
is responsible for promoting use of the international system of
measurements and for furthering the system's development. International
teams of measurement experts will evaluate the reliability of
the results before entering them into the database.
Later,
the database will be expanded to include all other NMIs through
their participation in any one of the world's six regional metrology
organizations. The International Comparisons Database can be accessed
from the BIPM web site at www.bipm.fr.
It also can be viewed on the NIST web site at icdb.nist.gov.
Media
Contact:
Mark
Bello, (301) 975-3776
Editor's
Note: This issue will be the final NIST Update published
in 1999. Our next issue will be on Jan. 3, 2000. From all of us
at NIST Update, best wishes for a healthy and happy new
year!
Go back to NIST News Page