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Search News by Chad Boutin

Displaying 201 - 225 of 561

Better Accuracy Out of Thin (or Thick) Air

February 17, 2016

NIST scientists have devised and improved a prototype instrument the size of a loaf of bread that can substantially increase the accuracy of length measurements...

Shedding Light on Dark Matter with SQUIDs

February 16, 2016

Perhaps fortunately, most folks haven't noticed that 85% of the Milky Way is missing: The kind of familiar, ordinary matter we know – made up of protons...

Renovating Spaces and Preserving Places with Lasers

February 10, 2016

When you want to preserve a place or enhance a space, sometimes the best approach is to take a laser to it. Not a cosmetic surgeon's scalpel, or a sci-fi...

Quantum Information Transfer: From Microwaves to Motion to Light

January 28, 2016

When a long-awaited quantum information network finally arrives, in whatever form, it will incorporate two essential technologies: a method of generating and...

NIST Requests Comments on Computer Security Publication on Randomness

January 27, 2016

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking public comment on its latest draft of a publication intended to help computer security...

HID Lamps: Getting Brighter Faster

January 6, 2016

NIST has been issued a patent for a novel method to improve the performance and utility of the sort of high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps used for stadium and...

'Squeezed' Motion in a Massive Object

December 22, 2015

Everyone expects objects at the atomic scale to follow the weird rules of quantum mechanics. But in the past few years, scientists at NIST and elsewhere have...

black and white image that looks like a dust bunny

Mixing Modern Materials? NIST Math App Helps You Manage Your Mashup

December 22, 2015

Imagine you're baking a special cake, one in which the shape of each mote of spice mixed into the batter can have a profound effect on your dessert's color, its...

NIST's Cryogenic Flow Measurement Facility at Boulder, CO

The Once and Future Cryogenic Flow Facility

December 14, 2015

As recently as a few months ago, somebody who needed an internationally recognized calibration for a flow meter that operates with very low-temperature fluids...

Seeing Into Cells More Clearly

December 7, 2015

NIST scientists, with collaborators at the University of Michigan, have designed and demonstrated a new and easily tunable, high-contrast scattering agent for...

Measuring Smokestack Emissions Accurately

November 23, 2015

Society is increasingly concerned about exactly how much carbon dioxide and other pollutants are coming out of smokestacks. But current measurements are clouded...

RFPs: The Best and the Brightest

November 20, 2015

How, precisely, does disease begin and progress in a single cell? To fully understand such processes on the smallest scales, scientists need a way to peer deep...

NIST Process Expands Catalyst Options for Electrolysis and Fuel Cells

November 19, 2015

Remember that pair of gold electroplated earrings you bought years ago at the mall? (Oh yes, you do.) Key to crafting their allure was the ability to place an...

NIST Takes (Some of) the Stress Out of Engineering New Materials

November 13, 2015

Stress: What does it feel like to you? Maybe like pressure from multiple directions, trying to push and pull and twist you all at once? If so, you've described...

Fundamental Constants: The Latest . . . and the Last?

October 26, 2015

In a world of incessant change, some things have to stay the same. One is the set of values for the fundamental physical constants – such as the speed of light...

Top-of-the-Atmosphere Sunlight — As Seen from Earth

October 22, 2015

It may seem hard to believe, but we still don't know nearly enough about sunlight. Although people have been splitting the sun's rays into a spectrum and...

A New, World-Class Facility for Infrared Calibrations

October 21, 2015

NIST is about to open the world's most accurate facility for calibrating infrared (IR) detectors. It is made possible by the establishment of an extremely...

cobalt disk (red) atop a thin cobalt-palladium film (light purple background)

NIST, UC Davis Scientists Float New Approach to Creating Computer Memory

October 8, 2015

What can skyrmions do for you? These ghostly quantum rings, heretofore glimpsed only under extreme laboratory conditions, just might be the basis for a new type...

Quantum Simulation: Physics at the Edge

September 25, 2015

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have achieved a major milestone in simulating the dynamics of condensed-matter systems –...

NIST Puts the Twist on Neutrons — Because It Takes One to Know One

September 23, 2015

A team of scientists working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found a way to put a twist on a beam of neutrons—a development...

GaN Nanowires: Knowing Which End Is Up

September 21, 2015

Many people who have heard of gallium nitride (GaN) know it as the semiconductor used in bright light-emitting diodes for flashlights and energy-efficient light...

Hydrogen Storage Formulation Patented

September 21, 2015

The prospect of a "hydrogen economy" – in which vehicles powered by fuel cells would travel the nation's roadways emitting nothing from their tailpipes but...

NIST Releases Draft Framework to Help 'Cyber Physical Systems' Developers

September 18, 2015

Unmanned vehicles, "intelligent" buildings, your cell phone, the fitness bracelet on your wrist—all of these are cyber-physical systems (CPS). Today the...

NIST 'Global City Teams Challenge' Aims to Create Smart Cities

September 15, 2015

The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and several partners are launching a new effort to bring together...

Theodore Sizer of Bell Labs Joins NIST Advisory Committee

September 8, 2015

Theodore (Tod) Sizer has joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST's) Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT), the agency's...

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