News from March 2008
By USDA Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: Based on a close look at the everyday eating habits of a large group of men and women, researchers have found that people whose diets were most similar to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) were least likely to have metabolic syndrome. For the study, metabolic syndrome was defined as a...
By DOL Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: WASHINGTON, DC- Today, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, released the following statement in response to the FDA’s announcement that they have identified the contaminant in the blood thinner heparin, a chemical compound called oversulfated chondroitin...
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: A new report identifies and describes research and development priorities for the future of three critical, high-tech U.S. manufacturing areas-hydrogen energy technologies, nanomanufacturing and intelligent and integrated manufacturing. The report, Manufacturing the Future: Federal Priorities for Manufacturing R&D, was prepared by the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Manufacturing R&D of the National Science and Technology Council's (NSTC) Committee on Technology.
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland have developed a new optical method that can detect individual neutrons and record them over a range of intensities at least 100 times greater than existing detectors. The new detector, described at...
By Interior Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: Saturday, March 22, 7:00 p.m. Modeling Permafrost Distribution. There are many questions about permafrost, or ground that remains below 0 degrees Celsius for two consecutive years, and its extent along the Colorado Front Range Mountains. Permafrost has been investigated using various field techniques.
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: Washington, DC - Finance Chairman Baucus this afternoon called a new outline of proposed spending for this year’s farm bill “dead on arrival" with him and with other Senators. Baucus has led the Finance Committee in creating a fully paid-for $5.1 billion fund for permanent agriculture disaster assistance...
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: A clever new microscope design allows nanotechnology researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to track the motions of nanoparticles in solution as they dart around in three dimensions. The researchers hope the technology, which NIST plans to patent, will lead to a better understanding of the dynamics of nanoparticles in fluids and, ultimately, process control techniques to optimize the assembly of nanotech devices.
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: Some 46 million people suffer from arthritis in the United States alone. The worst cases require painful surgeries to drill holes in and reinforce joints. Now researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are studying an unusually pliant yet strong synthetic cartilage...
By DOL Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: WASHINGTON, DC- Today, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chairman of Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, released the following statement in response to Secretary Spelling’s announcement on No Child Left Behind this morning. “I’m glad that Secretary Spellings recognizes the need to adjust the No...
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) fire protection engineers turned an abandoned New York City (NYC) brick high-rise into a seven-story fire laboratory last month to better understand the fast-moving spread of wind-driven flames, smoke and toxic gases through corridors and stairways...
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: Ultracold atoms moving through a carefully designed arrangement of laser beams will jiggle slightly as they go, two NIST scientists have predicted.* If observed, this never-before-seen "jitterbug" motion would shed light on a little-known oddity of quantum mechanics arising from Paul Dirac's 80-year-old theory of the electron.
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Joint Quantum Institute (NIST/University of Maryland) have developed a new method for creating pairs of entangled photons, particles of light whose properties are interlinked in a very unusual way dictated by the rules of quantum physics. The researchers used the photons to test fundamental concepts in quantum theory.
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: An atomic clock that uses an aluminum atom to apply the logic of computers to the peculiarities of the quantum world now rivals the world's most accurate clock, based on a single mercury atom. Both clocks are at least 10 times more accurate than the current U.S. time standard.
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: The Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking public comments on its proposed regulations (rule) for operating the Technology Innovation Program (TIP) created as part of the America COMPETES Act passed in August. The proposed rule describing evaluation and award criteria and other specifics of the new competitive funding program was published in the Federal Register on March 7, 2008.
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: In yet another twist on the strangeness of the nanoworld, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland-College Park have discovered that materials such as silica that are quite brittle in bulk form behave as ductile as gold at the nanoscale. Their results may affect the design of future nanomachines.
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: Recent research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has demonstrated that thin films made of "metamaterials"-manmade composites engineered to offer strange combinations of electromagnetic properties-can reduce the size of resonating circuits that generate microwaves. The work is a step forward in the worldwide quest to further shrink electronic devices such as cell phones, radios, and radar equipment.
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: The Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has voted for U.S. approval of a modified version of the proposed international standard known as Office Open XML (OOXML). NIST is one of 17 voting members of the U.S. body known as the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards Executive Board (INCITS EB). This NIST vote comes in response to modifications made to OOXML at an international meeting last month.
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: The Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the agency's primary private-sector advisory group, has sent its 2007 Annual Report to the Congress.
By US DOT Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: Washington, DC - U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation Safety, Infrastructure Security, and Water Quality, wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to ...
By Commerce Newswire | Mar 18, 2008
News Release: In response to the electronics industry's rallying cry of "smaller and faster," the next breakthroughs in the electronics size barrier are likely to come from microchips and data storage devices created out of novel materials such as organic molecules and polymers. With innovative measurement techniques...
