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Search News by Jennifer Lauren Lee

Displaying 51 - 75 of 94

A Standard for Lighting Color Preference?

March 10, 2017

One of the goals of artificial lighting is to make things look natural. White light can make an otherwise appetizing sandwich look like garbage, if the reds...

Introducing Xenos, NIST’s Largest Coordinate Measuring Machine

February 22, 2017

When you walk into the laboratory that houses NIST’s newest coordinate measuring machine (CMM), you might be puzzled at first about how engineers got it into...

Gauging Multi-Kilowatt Laser Power with the Pressure of Light

January 24, 2017

A multi-kilowatt laser beam can cut through steel and melt bricks into glass. Many industries use high-power lasers like these to precisely cut and weld metals...

Wearable ‘Watches’ to Monitor Your Blood Pressure

January 24, 2017

What if there were a wearable fitness device that could monitor your blood pressure continuously, 24 hours a day? Unfortunately, blood pressure (BP)...

In Search of ‘Sterile’ Neutrinos

December 9, 2016

Lately, neutrinos – the tiny, nearly massless particles that many scientists study to better understand the fundamental workings of the universe – have been...

Man standing behind big silver equipment

Disseminating the New Kilogram: An International ‘Dry Run’

November 28, 2016

When the kilogram, the world’s basic unit of mass, gets a new definition in 2018, it will be based not on a physical artifact but a constant of nature. However...

Big G Redux: Solving the Mystery of a Perplexing Result

November 16, 2016

If you spend time in physics research circles, you may have heard of the big G controversy. The universal constant of gravitation, G – affectionately known as...

Meet Bob, PML's Second "Primary" Coordinate Measuring Machine

September 21, 2016

Until recently, if a company wanted the best measurements in the world for the physical dimensions of one of its dimensional standards, it had to book time on...

Measuring Tiny Forces with Light

August 24, 2016

Photons are bizarre: They have no mass, but they do have momentum. And that allows researchers to do counterintuitive things with photons, such as using light...

Million-Pound Deadweight Machine Officially Open for Business

June 2, 2016

The last few bolts were tightened just weeks ago – by hand. Now fully restored, NIST's 4.45 meganewton (one million pounds-force) deadweight machine – the...

New Chip-Based Sensor Finds Power in Versatility

April 26, 2016

Whether you're using a landline or cell phone, there's a good chance that the signal spends at least some time traveling over fiber-optic cables. To ensure that...

NIST's Million-Pound Weight Stack Restoration is Complete

April 25, 2016

It's official: NIST's 4.45-million newton (equivalent to one million pounds-force) deadweight machine – the largest in the world – is back in one piece after a...

Head to Head: Photonic Pressure Sensors vs. Mercury-Based Standard

April 21, 2016

When a team of researchers at NIST's Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) first tested a new kind of pressure sensor two years ago, initial results showed it...

Neutron Microscope: Waiting for the Lens to Come

March 30, 2016

When the world's first workhorse neutron microscope – currently being designed and built by a collaboration including NIST's Physical Measurement Laboratory...

Quantum Spin Squeezing Gets Real

February 26, 2016

Today's atomic clocks are ridiculously accurate. The best of them tell time so well that if they had been running since the Big Bang, by now they would not have...

Vaccine Fridge Field Study 'Opens Doors' to New Standards

February 23, 2016

Recipients of an annual flu shot may be surprised to learn that there is currently no official standard for vaccine storage equipment in clinics, pharmacies...

Transforming Welding with Comprehensive NIST Metrology

February 2, 2016

Welding has been around, in some form, for centuries. Today it enables a large percentage of the U.S. economy,* thanks to its role in the creation of a diverse...

Thinking Outside the Cuvette: To Measure Dimensions of Skinny Glass Container, PML Scientists Get Creative

February 1, 2016

Let's say you're a biotechnologist working to develop new medicines or a better test for forensic analysis. You might find yourself frequently using absorbance...

New 'Quick Test' Station May Speed Commercialization of Photonic Thermometers

January 29, 2016

Physicists in NIST's Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) have been working on a new class of chip-based photonic thermometers that measure temperature with...

On the Road to a Neutron Microscope: First Light for World-Class Neutron Imaging Facility

November 20, 2015

Neutrons, the charge-less constituents of atomic nuclei, are nifty imagers. Since the 1950s, scientists have been using these particles' eerie ability to non...

New Ballistics Control Chart for Forensic Imaging

October 28, 2015

You've probably seen it on TV: To determine whether a single weapon was used in multiple crimes, forensics labs run images of a spent bullet through a database...

NIST Calibrates Quartz Crystals for Fusion Device

September 29, 2015

Last spring, PML's x-ray calibration facilities were used in a pinch – a Z pinch, that is. The Sandia National Laboratories' Z Pulsed Power Facility, or "Z...

SPS Interns Get the NIST Experience

September 17, 2015

It's not every day that undergraduate students contribute in a meaningful way to research at a national lab in the span of a few weeks. But that's what happened...

Raising restored deadweight component from truck

Progress Report with Photos: Restoration of NIST's Million-Pound Deadweight Machine

June 30, 2015

Restoration is well underway for NIST's 4.45-million newton (equivalent to one million pounds-force) deadweight machine, the largest in the world. The three...

NIST-led Effort Yields New International Standard for Dynamic Liquid Measuring Systems

June 26, 2015

When measuring large volumes of relatively expensive liquids such as gasoline, beer, and milk, even small inaccuracies can mean large losses for companies and...

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