R & D articles from November 2002

R & D archives from November 2002

Techno-economic change. (Editorial).(Editorial)
November 1, 2002... Technology does not operate in a vacuum. The current weak economic climate, among other issues, has had a strong effect on technology development and its implementation into the marketplace. While researchers can develop numerous technologies...

Laser-coded fibers tag explosives. (Lasers & Optics).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... A method of tagging explosives in such a way that the identification would survive an explosion has been devised by NanoVia LP, Londonderry, N.H. The company has applied its laser imaging techniques to developing sub-micron markings on fiber...

Illinois site selected for advanced water purification center. (Analytical Instruments).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Under the auspices of a grant from the National Science Foundation, the Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will create a science and technology center to develop advanced materials and technologies for water purification. The funding, $4...

Disassembling the Tokamak. (Bulletin).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... The Tokamak fusion test reactor, in operation for 15 years, was successfully disassembled and cleared away in September. One of the world's largest and most successful fusion machines, the Tokamak was at the Dept. of Energy's Princeton's Plasma...

Meeting to highlight proteomics. (Conferences & Events).(Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities )(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... The Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities Annual Meeting: Translating Biology Using Proteomics and Functional Genomics will be held in Denver Feb. 10-13, 2003. Sessions will include SNP analysis, disease markers, high-throughput...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
November 1, 2002... Correction: In September's issue (p. 67), MKS Instruments Inc. should have been listed as being in Andover, Mass. The volume of MKS's PICO device is 0.005 [m.sup.3], making it the smallest leak detector currently available.

Los Alamos gets `the science appliance'. (High-Performance Computing).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Linux NetworX, Salt Lake City, will build, integrate, and deliver a 2,048-processor Linux cluster for Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory. The cluster is a model for future supercomputing systems that will support the lab's mission of...

Combining research and manufacturing. (Laboratory Design).(Strathmann Biotec AG)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... A new facility built by Strathmann Biotec AG, Dengelsberg, Germany, was inaugurated in July and became operational this autumn. It houses 50 scientists engaged in the manufacture of biotechnologically produced and pharmaceutically active...

Licensing agreement to aid proteomics. (Laboratory Equipment).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Agilent Technologies Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., and Large Scale Biology Corp., Vacaville, Calif., have announced a worldwide licensing agreement that will allow Agilent to exclusively develop new technologies for the separation of low-abundance...

Enzyme demand to increase. (Life Science).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... According to a report from The Freedonia Group Inc., Cleveland, US demand for enzymes is expected to increase 6.7% annually to $1.6 billion in 2006. This demand is fueled by the commercialization of novel, high-value enzymes designed for...

Diamond coatings market shows growth. (Materials).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Since the mid-1990s, the market for U diamond, diamond*like, and cubic boron nitride thin films and coated products began to grow, in part because of the materials' characteristics. It is the hardest material known and has the highest thermal...

Nanomuscles show promise. (Micro/Nano Technology).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Nanomuscles, based on either shape memory alloys (SMAs) or carbon nanotube fibers, are gaining attention due to their potential for use in the human body or to replace small motors in industry. According to Technical Insights, a business unit...

Online instrument purchases increase. (Microscopy).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... According to a recent report from Microscopy/Marketing & Education Inc., Springfield, Mass., there is an increasing reliance on the Web for microscopy and imaging purchases. The report also notes that there is new interest in combined infrared...

SNP market expanding. (Pharmaceutical).(single nucleotide polymorphism)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Scientists most closely associate companies such as Applied Biosystems, Affymetrix, Illumina, Orchid Biosciences, Sequenom, and QIAGEN with single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping services, reports a recent survey. The report from...

Engineers to use Ethernet, Linux. (Test & Measurement).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Communications protocols like Ethernet are seeing widespread adoption by engineers responsible for electronics measurement reports, states a report by Keithley Instruments Inc., Cleveland. According to the measurement trends survey done by...

Controlled nanotube fabrication. (Vacuum/Thin Film).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, N.Y., have discovered how to weld together single-walled carbon nanotubes, pure carbon cylinders with remarkable electronic properties. The discovery could pave the way for...

Program integrates searches. (Data Management & Analysis).
November 1, 2002... Many businesses and government agencies must constantly search the Internet and other sources to stay abreast of critical information and research trends on a wide range of subjects. The Enterprise Search Server (ESS) 4.0 software application...

PXI AutoCAD library accessible online. (Data Management & Analysis).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... VI Technology, Austin, Texas, has made their PXI AutoCAD library available online for developers that need to document their PXI test systems quickly in such applications as semiconductor, communications, defense, automotive, medical, consumer,...

Number of industrial robots. (Data Management & Analysis).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Intelligent sensor and image-process technologies are making the robot a universal automation tool. One example is using robots that give off-site service personnel a status report via their own hompage. It is estimated that 965,000 industrial...

World sensor market growing. (Data Management & Analysis).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Billions of dollars The global market for sensors has tripled--from less than $10 billion in 1999 to $30 billion in 2001. The number of sensors sold increased to 400 million in 2001. [GRAPHIC OMITTED] More info: www.ad.siemens.de

Customizable, scalable software enhances life science collaborations. (Data Management & Analysis).(eRoom 6.0 )
November 1, 2002... eRoom Technology Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., provider of digital workplace solutions for extended enterprise collaborations has recently announced a major upgrade to its flagship product, eRoom v. 6.0. The Web-based product creates a...

Integrated decision support tool accelerates product development. (Data Management & Analysis).(Accolade 4.0 )
November 1, 2002... Product development is the core process of most manufacturing companies. It is the key to future growth and profitability of the enterprise. As important an issue as this is, it is surprising how few resources are put against the process to...

Biosafety analysis takes on added importance: research into the agents of bioterrorism has become a fact of the 21st century that must be dealt with in a scientific manner in order to protect our citizens. (Keywords: life science lab equipment safety).
November 1, 2002... Ever since the terrorist events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the anthrax attacks soon thereafter, the public has been concerned about our preparedness for future attacks. For researchers working in biosafety labs (BSL), this increased "publicity,"...

Math, the universe, and Stephen: the author of Mathematica created a whirlwind of scientific controversy this year when, after more than 10 years of research, he published his treatise on the ability of simple structures to create unpredictable complex patterns. (2002 Scientist Of The Year).(Stephen Wolfram)
November 1, 2002... Stephen Wolfram's selection as R&D Magazine's 37th Annual Scientist of the Year follows in the tradition of past scientists making substantial contributions to the fundamental advancement of science and technology. His much-anticipated "A New...

Protect yourself: millions of people are injured on the job each year. Yet the proper use of personal protection equipment (PPE) can cut these rates of injuries in half. (Keywords: safety lab equipment personal protection equipment).
November 1, 2002... Each day, an average of 9,000 US workers sustain disabling injuries on the job, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). More than 100 workers will die from a work-related injury or disease on a daily...

Good lab hygiene vital to workforce: hygiene and contamination issues are hot topics in any lab or health care environment. Specific safety standards have been set when using chemicals, working with humans, or in other environments where hygiene is important. (Keywords: hygiene lab equipment cleaning).
November 1, 2002... It seems like such a simple thing. When something gets dirty, you wash it. But how clean do your hands, for example, really get if you use just soap and water? A series of standards have been set for the safe removal of chemicals, pathogenic...

Weathering machine speeds durability tests: this 2002 R&D 100 Awards winner is a weathering instrument that assesses the durability of coatings against solar radiation, temperature, and water--all in the lab at a fraction of the time and cost of normal weathering. (R&D 100 Awards).
November 1, 2002... This 2002 R&D 100 wards winner was omitted from the September issue, which featured the other winners. R&D Magazine regrets the omission. Weathering machines used to take up to three months to simulate an automotive coating's durability...

Page revs up Google's engine: the Google search engine is virtually a household name among computer users, and Larry Page, its developer, was voted R&D's Innovator of the Year for bringing it to fruition. Not only is Google a powerful finder, its spinoffs may change computing history. (Innovator Of The Year).
November 1, 2002... Larry Page, named 2002 Innovator of the Year by R&D Magazine, is the major developer the Google search engine. A mainstay of World Wide Web users, Google is a muscular engine that millions of users depend on. With colleague Sergey Brin, Page...

DoD shares R&D with emergency response community. (Regulatory Update).(Dept. of Defense )(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... In order to contribute technologies and equipment that can be used by civilian fire and emergency response services, Congress has directed the Dept. of Defense (DoD) to share unclassified, DoD-funded R&D with local emergency response...

Smoothing the e-submission process. (Regulatory Update).(PAREXEL International Corp., Boston, and Datafarm Inc. market services for electronic regulatory submissions by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies )(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... In order to make the electronic regulatory submission process more efficient, PAREXEL International Corp., Boston, and Datafarm Inc., Marlborough, Mass., are collaborating to co-market services related to these submissions, increasingly a key...

NIST scrutinizes building failures .(National Institute of Standards and Technology)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... On Oct. 1, new legislation gave the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) the authority to investigate major US building failures. The authority, modeled after another agency's authority for investigating transportation...

Hazardous waste business decreases.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Because of more sophisticated reduction and pollution prevention strategies, the volume of commercial hazardous waste is likely to decrease in the next five years. A study from Business Communications Co. Inc., Norwalk, Conn., calculates that...

Progress on water quality.(Clean Water Act accomplishments)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... October marked the 30th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, legislation enacted in 1972 to restore and protect valuable US water resources. At that time, many of the US waters were too dirty for swimming, fishing, and drinking. And in 1968,...

`Frustrated' magnets assimilate. (Academia: emerging technologies).(geometrically frustrated magnets)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Magnetic atoms--when "frustrated" by their arrangement--surrender their individuality, stop competing with their neighbors, and then practice a group version of spin control, acting collectively to achieve local magnetic order. Scientists from...

Mini-battery solves mega-problems. (Academia: emerging technologies).(microscopic device draws energy from radioactive isotope)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Researchers at Cornell Univ., Ithaca, N.Y., have built a microscopic device that could supply power for decades to remote sensors or implantable medical devices by drawing energy from a radioactive isotope. The device converts the energy...

LECs future for flat-panel displays.(light-emitting electrochemical cells)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Polymer light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) may be the answer to low-cost color displays that do not drain a computer's battery. According to researchers from Pennsylvania State Univ., State College, polymer LECs are made of a blend of...

Nanotubes diversify.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Purdue Univ. scientists have learned to created multiple species of nanotubes that possess unprecedented physical and chemical properties, each of which could lead to a different industrial application. The team, lead by chemist Hicham Fenniri,...

Ultra-dense CDs predicted.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... At the Near-Filed Optics conference at the Univ. of Rochester (N.Y.), experts predicted that near-field optics will dramatically expand the capacity of CD-and hard drive-type storage media in less than 10 years. Using near-filed optical...

NIH group organizes central repository for protein data. (Industrial: emerging technologies).(National Human Genome Research Institute )(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), in cooperation with five other institutes and centers at the National Institutes of Health, all in Bethesda, Md., has awarded a three-year, $15 million grant to combine three of the world's...

PDA usage begins upward tilt. (Industrial: emerging technologies).(personal digital assistants)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Demand for personal digital assistants (PDAs) is moving out of the early adopter and mobile professional markets into mainstream consumer and corporate markets, according to In-Stat/ MDR, Scottsdale, Ariz. Although growth in the PDA market has...

Companies arrange complementary conjunction.(TA Instruments Inc. purchasing rheology division of Rheometric Scientific Inc.)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... TA Instruments Inc., New Castle, Del., is purchasing the rheology division of Rheometric Scientific Inc., Piscataway, N.J. The latter is a supplier of rheometers used to measure a wide range of fluid properties--viscosity and viscoelasticity....

NASA seeks innovations.(National Aeronatuics and Space Administration seeks aero-capture, advanced chemical propulsion, solar electric propulsion, space-based tether propulsion, and plasma sail and solar sail technologies proposals)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... NASA's Office of Space Sciences, Washington, D.C., has issued an invitation to academic and industry researchers to propose new cost-effective propulsion technology innovations that could help revolutionize exploration and scientific study of...

DNA unzipping takes two proteins. (Eureka: emerging technologies).
November 1, 2002... Scientists have argued for years about whether it takes a single protein or multiple proteins to unzip DNA. By using an optical fluorescence microscope to monitor enzyme activity, researchers resolved the long-running disagreement. It takes at...

Chemist creates structure in amorphous materials.(James Martin)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... James Martin, associate professor of chemistry at North Carolina (Raleigh) State Univ., has discovered chemical principals that allow the writing of new "symphonic compositions" in amorphous materials by introducing molecules of a different...

NMR shows spoiled wine.(nuclear magnetic resonance used to check unopened wine for spoilage)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Some bottles of wine are worth thousands of dollars. But if oxygen has leaked past the cork, it could be thousand-dollar vinegar--and there's no way to tell without opening the bottle. Chemists at the Univ. of California, Davis, found a way to...

Lithium is a superconductor.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Experiments have transformed the lightest metallic element, lithium, into a superconductor under pressures consistent with theory, but with temperatures that are much lower than once expected. The results suggest that similar theories on...

DMM/Data acquisition system. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... The model 2701 Ethernet-based digital multimeter/data acquisition system is a multipoint measurement and control system that fully integrates instrument quality, 22-bit (6 1/2-digit) resolution and sensitivity with Ethernet long-distance...

General purpose water baths. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... Available with filling volumes of up to 8, 12, and 20 L, the EcoTemp water baths have temperatures that range up to 100[degrees]C, temperature stability of [+ or -] 0.2[degrees]C, and 1,000-and2,000-W built-in heaters. Other features include a...

Material transfer control. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... Q.i is a package of software and services that combines predictive adaptive control technology with a material transfer controller. It monitors material transfer operations by measuring the flow rate of a material at periodic points, building a...

BET surface area analyzer. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... The NOVA BET surface area analyzer system is 21 CFR Part 11 compliant and meets regulatory requirements for electronic records within the pharmaceutical industry. NOVA adopts new hardware and software design to allow for easy integration into...

Semiconductor processing technology. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... Membranes in 0.03 [micro]m pore size can meet the critical needs of advanced cleaning technology and next-generation semiconductor processing. These membranes permit a greater reduction of particles in photoresist, strippers, and high- and...

Flow rate transmitter. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... The Series 9200 Smart Flow Transmitter is a microprocessor-based flow rate indicator/ totalizer designed to receive and process the flow signal from the Thermal Instrument Series 600-9 in-line and 62-9 flow probe thermal mass flowmeters. The...

Low particle, ultra-high vacuum gate valves. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... Quiet, low particle operation can be achieved in such applications as lasers, optics, magnetic storage, and semiconductors with the UHV SoftShut gate valves. Featuring a track-guided gate mechanism and metal body seals, these valves are ideal...

Sulfur-in-oil analyzer. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... The SLFA-UV21 uses combustion ultraviolet fluorescence to achieve levels of sulfur down to 1 ppm. Therefore, it meets the growing demand of low-level gasoline and diesel. The SLFA-UV21 ranges from 0 to 1 WT%, with a detector limit of 30 ppb....

High-speed microvolume reagent dispenser. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... The Multidrop Micro high-speed microvolume reagent dispenser rapidly, accurately, and precisely dispenses microvolumes over a volume range of 1 to 50 [micro]L into 96- and 384-well microplates. Using precision increments of 1 [micro]L, up to...

Recirculating chillers. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... Kodiak recirculating chillers offer temperature stability (typically [+ or -] 0.05[degrees]C) and immediate response to setpoint changes. They feature a pressure display, reservoir level indicator, and low flow sensing. Available options...

PCR Workstations. (New Products).
November 1, 2002... Designed specifically for polymerase chain reaction (PCR applications, the ESCO PCR Workstations offer HEPA filtered clean air in the work zone. Each work-station offers a stainless steel work surface, ultraviolet timer, variable speed fan,...