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GAITHERSBURG, Md.--When a ballerina pirouettes, twirling a full revolution, she looks just as she did when she started. But for electrons and other subatomic...
Contrary to the popular maxim, resistance is not futile. But it is quantized: The ratings of the heat-making resistors in your hair dryer or toaster ultimately...
Crystalline materials known as perovskites could become the next superstars of solar cells. Over the past few years, researchers have demonstrated that a...
Being a forensic examiner seems glamorous on TV. But working in a crime lab requires long hours of intense focus that are anything but action-packed. This is...
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have produced and precisely measured a spectrum of X-rays using a new, state-of-the-art...
BOULDER, Colo.—National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicists have solved the seemingly intractable puzzle of how to control the quantum...
Dan Kallen, a detective in southern New Jersey, was searching a home with fellow officers in August 2015, when they found a bag of white powder. Kallen removed...
For industry and government labs to ensure their pressure-measurement machines are working correctly, they need a reliable source of pressure. Often, that...
Amantadine hydrochloride may be the most common medication you’ve never heard of. This compound has been around for decades as the basis for antiviral and other...
The air we breathe out can help us improve the quality of the air we breathe in.
Measurements of indoor carbon dioxide (CO 2) concentrations are used to...
President Abraham Lincoln’s first handwritten draft of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, a historic document in the collection of the New York State...
NIST has been granted a patent for technology that may hasten the advent of a long-awaited new generation of high-performance, low-energy computers....
When you suffer a fall, an on-the-field collision or some other traumatic blow, the first thing the doctor will do is take an X-ray, CT scan or MRI to determine...
Roche Sequencing Solutions engineer Juraj Topolancik was looking for a way to decode DNA from cancer patients in a matter of minutes.
Rajesh Krishnamurthy...
NIST scientists have developed a novel automated probe system for evaluating the performance of computer components designed to run 100 times faster than today...
How do jumbo jet designers develop resilient materials for modern airframes, while still bringing in their projects on time and on budget? Before they prototype...
GPS usually works great outdoors, but what if you’re disoriented in a large building such as a museum or a mall? There are no smartphone apps for indoor...
In movies and television, computers can quickly identify a person in a crowded arena from tiny, grainy video images. But that is often not the reality when it...
Using a state-of-the-art microscopy technique, experimenters at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have witnessed a...
BALTIMORE—Noting that “this public-private partnership generates $1 billion per year in economic impact,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross presented four...
By capping liquids with graphene, an ultrathin sheet of pure carbon, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their...
Most people have never seen an accelerometer -- a device that measures change in velocity -- and wouldn’t know where to look. Yet accelerometers have become...
Semiconductors are the cornerstone of modern electronics. They’re used in solar cells, light emitting diodes (LEDs), microprocessors in laptops and cell phones...
Adding to strong recent demonstrations that particles of light perform what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” in which two separated objects can...
How fast will a quantum computer be able to calculate? While fully functional versions of these long-sought technological marvels have yet to be built, one...