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Taking Measure

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Man at WannaCry computer

Things That Make Me Wannacry

June 21, 2017
Pat Toth
… at least to their parents, seem to have a natural relationship with technology and an intuitive grasp of how it works. At the same time, … Information technology …
young woman in a lab coat looks at vials with a small amount of green liquid in them before putting them into a machine

Rewritten in Our DNA: Measurements for Genome Editing

September 23, 2019
Samantha Maragh
… going strong. We are living in the genome era, in which we have the technology to “read” the four letters (A, C, T and G) of our DNA, the … culture. The ability to efficiently read the genome has accelerated technology and medicine and given us access to life-changing knowledge, … quality and confidence in the measurements and data underpinning this technology. While there are many things that need careful consideration, …
black background with many multicolored symbols representing a clipboard, a computer screen, test tubes, gears and a petri dish. On the computer screen it reads "World Metrology Day 2020"

World Metrology Day: Measurements for Medicine

May 19, 2020
Walter Copan
… and humbled to be part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), America’s national metrology institute, in supporting … and therapies. NIST and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) are leading efforts in artificial intelligence … In response to COVID-19, researchers are working to move medical technology from the laboratory to the health-care sector at …
Tytus Mak sitting at his desk and while colleague Arun Moorthy and he look at a computer screen

Shaping the Future of the NIST Mass Spectral Library

June 9, 2020
Tytus Mak
… things that many of us at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have devoted our careers to. And though many of us … make up the individual steps. Processing this overwhelming amount of information, otherwise known as genomics, necessitated a whole new class … ‘genes’ While genomics focuses on analyzing the totality of information at the genetic level of an organism, metabolomics focuses on …
man operating a coordinate measuring machine

When a Manufacturer Asks ‘How Do We Get Smart?’

September 25, 2019
Michael Brundage
… manually analyzed the data, we discovered a treasure trove of hidden information. Hydraulic leaks had occurred more than 40 times in three … base,” “base clean,” or “cleaned base.” After we presented this information to the company's leaders, they realized they had the data to … journey. The paper, titled “ Where do we start? Guidance for technology implementation in maintenance management for manufacturing ” …
A line of cars with fire and smoke nearby

Fighting Fire with Fire-Breathing Dragons

June 22, 2016
Sam Manzello
… —but we just call it the Dragon. You can learn more about our Dragon technology by watching the video below.   We use the Dragon to generate … Dragon, which we call the Baby Dragon. The marriage of NIST’s Dragon technology and these experimental facilities is helping us gain new … that other research laboratories worldwide are reproducing our Dragon technology. For example, the Insurance Institute for Business and Home …
Five speed skaters making a turn on the track. A clock reading "11:39:50" is visible on the wall in front of them.

The Romance of Precision Measurement

February 5, 2018
Walter Copan
… accurate measurement. Advanced measurements enable advances in technology, as well as human performance. Father of modern chemistry … The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and other institutes like it around the world are …
group portrait of the NIST machine shop crew

NIST’s Invention Machine: Making the Perfect Parts

May 30, 2018
Alison Gillespie
… is often slow and takes a large team of people working together. Technology helps move the process along. But in the end, you are still … a mistake on the drawing or wants to adapt the design based on new information, it isn’t always easy to correct problems or make changes … in the shop because “we know 10 years from now, in the future as technology matures, that’s going to be an option and it is going to be …
Scott Glancy, a sandy blonde-haired Caucasian man with blue eyes, standing in his office wearing a black T-shirt that reads "Quantum physics: The Dreams Stuff is Made of

Local Realism, Bell’s Inequality, and T-Shirts: An Entangled Tale

April 26, 2018
Scott Glancy
… wear the T-shirt now. I am a physicist who does research in quantum information theory. One of the things that other physicists love to do … quantum mechanics is now essential for nearly every modern technology. We trust our lives to quantum mechanics every day, in the … is advancing from an exotic test of fundamental physics to a useful technology.   After decades of work, the predictions of quantum theory …
collage showing rubble from the collapse of the towers, a mock up of a section of the towers, scientists looking at structural steel and the words Building and Fire Codes

20 Years Later: NIST's World Trade Center Investigation and Its Legacy

August 5, 2021
S. Shyam Sunder
… A few weeks later, other National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) leaders and I began briefing policy leaders at the … years after I had joined NIST from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I embraced this immense new responsibility to help … the people who worked with NIST, provided photos and other critical information, and gave unstintingly of their time to support and help us …
Historical photo shows two rows of women working at long tables.

New Jersey’s ‘Radium Girls’ and the NIST-Trained Scientist Who Came to Their Aid

March 7, 2022
Ron Cowen
… in the Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Below is a condensed version of the full story that you can … days on the job, Dorsey had alerted her to the hazards of radium — information not known to the public. He had firsthand knowledge about … independent of her former work with radium. Hughes died in 1988. Information for this blog post came from an article in the  Journal of …
Woman with long dark hair wearing safety goggle stands in front of a table that has a series of lenses on stands

What’s a Physicist? My Summer as a Student Intern at NIST

August 26, 2022
Valeria Viteri-Pflucker
… shaped my answer to this question. My primary sources of information have been (1) doing physics and (2) meeting physicists. This … It should yield higher precision than other current methods, extract information on a wide range of colors in a single measurement, and work … scientist.  Meeting Physicists   With regard to the second source of information, I learned a lot about physics outside of the classroom in a …
PSCR firefighters for a day post for a photo in full gear in front of a fire truck

Making Fighting Fires in Virtual Reality More Like Real Reality

December 18, 2018
Scott Ledgerwood
… day, so he knew PSCR had a strong interest in communications and technology. We’d talked about the potential of virtual reality and how it could assess the usability of new technology for first responders in a safe, low-cost manner. It’s a very … it allows us to easily measure the performance of new public safety technology, restart a scenario with the click of a usa-button, and all …
Graphic showing login screen with shadow of person in hoodie behind it

Protecting Businesses and Consumers from Email Scams

October 21, 2016
William "Curt" Barker
… Founded in 2012 as part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the NCCoE is dedicated to improving cybersecurity … After entering your customer ID and password to update your profile information, you close the page thinking you’ve just protected yourself … or modifying email. This project aims to use currently available technology to close the gaps in email security through the service …
woman loads small plastic vials containing human DNA into a large machine

Human DNA Standard: A Q&A With NIST’s Becky Steffen

July 15, 2019
Becky Steffen
… forensic scientists would analyze. So it’s physical material plus information about that material that we guarantee is correct. These … that our whole team worked really hard on and is proud of. DNA technology is always changing, with new techniques coming out, and new … investigators solve crimes and keep people safe by providing new information to crime labs that they may not have had access to before. …
A bearded man poses smiling next to an open cabinet of equipment in a lab.

Laser Focused: How Light Reflections Could Revolutionize 3D Printing of Metals

August 13, 2025
Brian Gutierrez
… before committing to mass production. But 3D-printed metal is a new technology, and the results don’t come out perfectly every time. … of the metal. The pattern of this reflection can give the researchers information about the shape of the liquid metal’s surface. Deisenroth … with an even faster camera, up to 825,000 frames per second.  This technology isn’t quite ready to be used in a commercial 3D printer. The …
NIST Charleston researchers Ashley Boggs-Russell (sitting) and Amanda Moors (standing) work with researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Mammal Foundation to process tissue samples during veterinary assessments of wild bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. No dolphins were harmed in this process.

Tracking Hormones on Land and at Sea

September 22, 2020
Ashley Boggs
… and fish, to name a few. At the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), I work on measurement science for endocrinology. … their bodies weren’t responding correctly. NOAA and NMMF had this information but needed to keep tracking the dolphins to see if they … using a remote biopsy dart collection system, but the existing technology was limiting in how many hormones could be measured. The …
Ming Zheng stands outside smiling and holding a model of a nanotube made of a lattice of smaller tubes.

To See Life in a Drop of Blood

July 7, 2022
Ming Zheng
… spanning several orders of magnitude. A blood test provides lots of information to your doctor regarding your physiological state, but a … other accomplishments, Mijin was recently recognized as one of MIT Technology Review’ s 2022 “Innovators Under 35.”  Turning Science …
Blonde woman in black top sitting at desk with laptop across from man in blue shirt

Sizing Up the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

October 31, 2016
Carrie Johnson
… responders and the public rely upon the safe and reliable transfer of information traversing SDN’s network. SDN had a cybersecurity program in … team members beyond the usual cast of characters involved in information assurance (IT, network operations, etc.). Participation from … Information technology …
collage of images from the WTC disaster, a blueprint of an airplane, a representation of one of the towers, the word modeling

Analyzing the Aftermath of the Twin Towers Aircraft Impacts

August 12, 2021
Steven W. Kirkpatrick
… the work we did as part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) World Trade Center (WTC) investigation is one such … team at NIST was supportive of our efforts and had collected all the information needed for the analysis of the tower structures. They … to be overcome, such as getting access to detailed structural design information on the aircraft, modifying the aircraft geometry data …
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