Threshold Cryptography...

This artist’s conception of threshold cryptography shows a lock that can only be opened by three people working together. When the threshold cryptosystem receives a request to process information with a secret key, it initially splits the key into shares and sends them to the entire group, each share to a different participant. The three people must agree to work together and also perform their own secret operations on the incoming message. From these actions, each person uses their share key — represented by the three colored circles — to process the message, and then sends the result back to the system. Only the combination of all three partial results can open the lock, reducing the likelihood that a single corrupt party could compromise the system.

Topics: Cryptography, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, NIST

A new publication by cryptography experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) proposes the direction the technical agency will take to develop a more secure approach to encryption. This approach, called threshold cryptography, could overcome some of the limitations of conventional methods for protecting sensitive transactions and data.

The document, released today in a final version as NIST Roadmap Toward Criteria for Threshold Schemes for Cryptographic Primitives (NISTIR 8214A), offers an outline for developing a new way to implement the cryptographic tools that developers use to secure their systems. Its authors are inviting the cryptography community to collaborate with them on NIST’s budding Threshold Cryptography project, which in part seeks to ensure that threshold implementations are interoperable.

“We are kicking the threshold cryptography development effort into high gear,” said Apostol Vassilev, a NIST computer scientist. “Over the coming months, the Threshold Cryptography project will be engaging with the public to define criteria for this work. We want to get feedback from the community so we can consider a variety of threshold schemes and standardization paths.”

Threshold cryptography takes its name from the idea that individual keyholders cannot open a lock on their own, as is common in conventional cryptography. Instead, out of a group of keyholders, there must be a minimum number of them — a “threshold” number — working together to open the lock. In practice, this lock is an electronic cryptosystem that protects confidential information, such as a bank account number or an authorization to transfer money from that account.

NIST Kick-Starts ‘Threshold Cryptography’ Development Effort

Comb on a Chip...

Experimental setup to generate a set of stable frequencies in a cryogenically cooled laser microresonator frequency comb. The ring-shaped microresonator, small enough to fit on a microchip, operates at very low laser power and is made from the semiconductor aluminum gallium arsenide.

Topics: Applied Physics, Instrumentation, NIST, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology

Just as a meter stick with hundreds of tick marks can be used to measure distances with great precision, a device known as a laser frequency comb, with its hundreds of evenly spaced, sharply defined frequencies, can be used to measure the colors of light waves with great precision.

Small enough to fit on a chip, miniature versions of these combs — so named because their set of uniformly spaced frequencies resembles the teeth of a comb — are making possible a new generation of atomic clocks, a great increase in the number of signals traveling through optical fibers, and the ability to discern tiny frequency shifts in starlight that hint at the presence of unseen planets. The newest version of these chip-based “microcombs,” created by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), is poised to further advance time and frequency measurements by improving and extending the capabilities of these tiny devices.

Comb on a Chip: New Design for ‘Optical Ruler’ Could Revolutionize Clocks, Telescopes, Telecommunications, NIST

Paper: G. Moille, L. Chang, W. Xie, A. Rao, X. Lu, M. Davanco, J.E. Bowers and K. Srinivasan. Dissipative Kerr Solitons in a III-V Microresonator. Laser and Photonics Reviews. June 2020. DOI: 10.1002/lpor.202000022

Touchless Print Scanning...

Credit: N. Hanacek/NIST NIST evaluated several commercially available contactless fingerprint scanning technologies in its May 2020 report.

Topics: NIST, Optics, Research

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has evaluated several commercially available contactless fingerprint scanning technologies, allowing users to compare their performance to conventional devices that require physical contact between a person’s fingers and the scanner.

The results of the study, published today as NIST Interagency Report (NISTIR) 8307: Interoperability Assessment 2019: Contactless-to-Contact Fingerprint Capture, show that devices requiring physical contact remain superior to contactless technology at matching scanned prints to images in a database. However, when contactless devices scan multiple fingers on a hand, it improves their performance. Contactless devices that scanned multiple fingers also seldom made “false positive” errors that incorrectly matched one person’s print with another’s record.

The publication updates NIST’s July 2018 study on contactless capture and is intended to assist organizations that use fingerprint-scanning technology.

“The report summarizes the state of the art of contactless fingerprint scanning,” said John Libert, one of the report’s authors. “It can help anyone interested in adopting contactless technology to evaluate the cost in performance they might pay by switching to contactless fingerprint capture.”

NIST Study Measures Performance Accuracy of Contactless Fingerprinting Tech

Dunamis Novem...

Image source: "Dunamis Novem" link below

Topics: NIST, Quantum Mechanics, Research, STEAM

Quantum physics drives much of the research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Explaining this research is a challenge, because quantum physics—nature's rules for the smallest particles of matter and light—inspires words like weird, curious, and counter-intuitive. The quantum world is strange and invisible in the context of everyday life. And yet, quantum physics can be explained and at least partially demonstrated visually.

NIST physicist Ray Simmonds recently collaborated with MFA graduate candidate Sam Mitchell of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), to create a dance piece based on the laws of quantum physics. The piece, Dunamis Novem (Latin for "the chance happening of nine things"),* premiered at The La Jolla Playhouse Forum Theatre in January, as a part of Mitchell's thesis work.

The project has practical benefits such as education, Simmonds says.

"While quantum mechanics is a well-established theory, proven true overwhelmingly by experiments, it is still confounding to most people, even those in science," Simmonds and Mitchell noted in describing their work.

“Quantum Statistics: Affects on Human Dancers and the Observer”

Abstract

The Arts and Sciences may seem to be immiscible fields of study, even at odds with each other. In Leonardo Da Vinci’s time these two fields were not polarized, in fact, they coexisted naturally. Despite the appearance of being far distant cousins, both artists and scientists share a creative gene, a passion for their work, and a brave curiosity that pushes them past current boundaries to explore the unknown. In this lecture, we will present some recent examples of those mixing these two worlds and our own attempts to do so with Dance Theater and Quantum Physics. While quantum mechanics is a well-established theory, proven true overwhelmingly by experiments, it is still confounding to most people, even those in science. At its heart, it describes nature in terms of possible realities with probable outcomes, with almost no predictable certainty. Experts still struggle to interpret its philosophical consequences and the notion that there may be no “objective reality”. Even Albert Einstein, one of its co-creators, disapproved of its bizarre properties, saying that “God does not play dice with the universe”. In the creation of this work, “Dunamis Novem”, we have taken some of the probabilistic rules that govern quantum systems and integrated them into a creative process. The results are then born from an artistic aesthetic and an algorithmic code that produces dynamics that embody in some way randomness, concepts of “quantum entanglement”, and the effects of observation or “measurement”. Our work shows that “Science” can inspire and direct new forms of “Art”, and we hope that the liminal world of “Art” can be an effective medium to transmit the sometimes counterintuitive results of empirical “Science” to a broader audience, also generating a dialogue between the two. We will describe the scientific concepts that currently inspire us, the process by which we convert quantum principles into movements, and the challenges of distilling this into a theatrical setting.

What is Quantum Physics? Dancers Explain, NIST
Sam Mitchel Dance: Dunamis Novem

Ionic Clock...

Physics World: A brief history of timekeeping

Topics: Atomic Physics, Laser, NIST, Quantum Mechanics, Research

By confining single ions of aluminum and magnesium in an electric trap, cooling them to near absolute zero and probing them with laser beams, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado have built what is in effect the world’s most accurate clock. Having fractionally improved on the performance of another clock at NIST, the researchers have shown that their device would neither gain nor lose a second in 33 billion years (if it could run for that long). Such accurate timekeeping, they say, could boost geodesy and lead to new insights in fundamental physics.

The clocks that currently underpin atomic time rely on precisely measuring the frequency of microwaves emitted during a specific transition in cesium atoms. But such devices are limited by the relatively low frequency of that radiation. To keep time even more accurately, and eventually introduce a new definition of the second, physicists are developing clocks based on higher-frequency optical transitions.

The latest work at NIST features what is known as a quantum-logic clock. Built by Samuel Brewer and colleagues, it uses a positive ion of aluminum-27 as its timekeeper. When exposed to ultraviolet laser light at wavelength 267 nm, the ion undergoes a transition with a very narrow line width – making its frequency very well defined. What is more, that transition is largely immune to sources of external noise – such as blackbody radiation – that in other types of optical clock shift the frequency away from its true value.

A magnesium-25 ion is used to cool the aluminum down to the very low temperatures needed to minimize thermal noise. Cooling involves the absorption of photons at another specific frequency, but practical limitations mean that this cannot be done using the aluminum itself. This is because the required frequency in is too high for any practical laser. By entangling the two ions, the magnesium cools the aluminum via Coulomb interactions. This process also allows the quantum state of the aluminum ion to be read-out following exposure to the clock laser.

Entangled aluminum ion is world’s best timekeeper, Edwin Cartlidge, Physics World

Post Mole Day...

Credit: Design: N. Hanacek/NIST

Topics: Chemistry, Education, NIST, Periodic Table, STEM

In suburban Maryland, on the third floor of the Advanced Chemical Sciences Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Bob Vocke and Savelas Rabb are explaining how they are helping to redefine the mole, that mammoth concept we learned in high-school science class.

Mostly, this means using abstract symbols and numbers, dancing along in a long equation that Vocke obviously thinks is beautiful. You can tell because he enthusiastically writes each detail out on the white board for some lab visitors. Every so often, Rabb provides suggestions or tells a joke and sort of eggs Vocke on. It is clear they are having a good time and could do this kind of annotation and explanation all day.

After the mole equation, they add more:

Credit: Design: N. Hanacek/NIST

To fully grasp the new definition of the mole, you must embrace these long equations, which show how that measurement connects to fundamental constants of the universe—such as the speed of light in vacuum and the amount of charge in an electron. In turn, these fundamental constants will completely redefine the modern metric system, known as the International System of Units (SI). The mole is one of the seven base units of the SI.

For Vocke and Rabb, the equation work brings joy. The process is entertaining, and a little fun.

For most others, it seems impossibly cryptic.

On the surface, the mole’s basic definition will remain the same. It’s a measure of stuff—how many molecules or atoms you have of a particular substance such as water, or gold or a protein.

But the current definition is more complicated than it needs to be. In the present metric system, a mole is the amount of substance that contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilograms of the most common form of carbon, known as carbon-12. A further complication: the mole relies on another definition, the definition of the kilogram, which is currently specified by the mass of a platinum-iridium cylinder locked up in a special vault outside Paris, France.

*****

Mole Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated among chemists, chemistry students and chemistry enthusiasts on October 23, between 6:02 a.m. and 6:02 p.m.,[1][2] making the date 6:02 10/23 in the American style of writing dates. The time and date are derived from Avogadro's number, which is approximately 6.02 × 10²³, defining the number of particles (atoms or molecules) in one mole (mol) of substance, one of the seven base SI units.

Mole Day originated in an article in The Science Teacher in the early 1980s. Inspired by this article, Maurice Oehler, now a retired high school chemistry teacher from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, founded the National Mole Day Foundation (NMDF) on May 15, 1991. Wikipedia

Redefining the Mole, NIST

Spectrometers, Silicon Spheres and Statecraft Modernize Chemistry’s Mammoth Measurement Unit

Psst!...

Illustration shows the nanoresonator coating, consisting of thousands of tiny glass beads, deposited on solar cells. The coating enhances both the absorption of sunlight and the amount of current produced by the solar cells.

Credit: K. Dill, D. Ha, G. Holland/NIST

Topics: Alternative Energy, Green Energy, Green Tech, Nanotechnology, NIST, Solar Power

Trapping light with an optical version of a whispering gallery, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a nanoscale coating for solar cells that enables them to absorb about 20 percent more sunlight than uncoated devices. The coating, applied with a technique that could be incorporated into manufacturing, opens a new path for developing low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells with abundant, renewable and environmentally friendly materials.

The coating consists of thousands of tiny glass beads, only about one-hundredth the width of a human hair. When sunlight hits the coating, the light waves are steered around the nanoscale bead, similar to the way sound waves travel around a curved wall such as the dome in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. At such curved structures, known as acoustic whispering galleries, a person standing near one part of the wall easily hears a faint sound originating at any other part of the wall.

Whispering galleries for light were developed about a decade ago, but researchers have only recently explored their use in solar-cell coatings. In the experimental set up devised by a team including Dongheon Ha of NIST and the University of Maryland’s NanoCenter, the light captured by the nanoresonator coating eventually leaks out and is absorbed by an underlying solar cell made of gallium arsenide.

Psst! A Whispering Gallery for Light Boosts Solar Cells, Ben P. Stein, NIST

Detective X...

Wilmer Souder, Physicist, National Bureau of Standards (precursor to NIST)

Topics: Forensics, History, NIST, Physics, Research

An almost quaint alliteration to Malcolm X by one letter and several years before he  would make the Algebraic symbol for unknown famous, this previously unknown history is proof of the usefulness of science in the public sphere for evaluating factual data to precise, legal conclusions, ultimately finding the truth, which has no alternatives.

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32, also prominently displayed at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

In the gangster era of Prohibition and the Great Depression, a physicist at the National Bureau of Standards, now NIST, brought modern ideas to the then-emerging field of forensic science.

It was called the Trial of the Century, and it ended on February 13, 1935. On that winter night, the Hunterdon County Courthouse in Flemington, New Jersey, was surrounded by thousands of people awaiting the verdict. When it came, camera operators on the newsreel trucks launched flares that lit up the night sky and illuminated for their cameras the jeering crowd below. The defendant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, was found guilty of kidnapping and killing the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann would die in the electric chair the following year.

The ransom notes helped seal Hauptmann’s fate. Eight experts testified that the handwriting on the notes matched Hauptmann’s. In the media frenzy that was the Lindbergh trial, one of those experts made a point of avoiding the spotlight, something he did throughout his long career. Years later, when he was nearing retirement, a profile in Reader’s Digest would refer to him as Detective X.

His name was Wilmer Souder. A physicist at the National Bureau of Standards, now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Souder played an important role in the early days of forensic science. He helped send countless murderers, bootleggers, gangsters and thieves to prison, and he kept such a low profile partly out of concern for his and his family’s safety. Perhaps as a result, he was not long remembered for his forensic work, and his influence on the developing field of forensic science was not as great as it might have been.

A scientist and a historian at NIST team up to discover the mostly forgotten history of Wilmer Souder, a scientist who worked at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) from 1911 to 1954. Souder was an early expert in the field of forensic science. His careful analysis of evidence and his expert testimony sent to prison countless murderers, bootleggers, gangsters, and thieves. The most famous case he worked on was the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and this video reveals that his involvement in that case was much greater than previously known.

NIST: Who was Detective X? Rich Press

Subatomic Motion Detector...

Images Sources: See link below

Topics: Atomic Force Microscopy, Nanotechnology, NEMS, NIST, Thin Films

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new device that measures the motion of super-tiny particles traversing distances almost unimaginably small—shorter than the diameter of a hydrogen atom, or less than one-millionth the width of a human hair. Not only can the handheld device sense the atomic-scale motion of its tiny parts with unprecedented precision, but the researchers have devised a method to mass produce the highly sensitive measuring tool.

It’s relatively easy to measure small movements of large objects but much more difficult when the moving parts are on the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter. The ability to accurately measure tiny displacements of microscopic bodies has applications in sensing trace amounts of hazardous biological or chemical agents, perfecting the movement of miniature robots, accurately deploying airbags and detecting extremely weak sound waves traveling through thin films.

NIST physicists Brian Roxworthy and Vladimir Aksyuk describe their work (link is external) in the Dec. 6, 2016, Nature Communications.

The researchers measured subatomic-scale motion in a gold nanoparticle. They did this by engineering a small air gap, about 15 nanometers in width, between the gold nanoparticle and a gold sheet. This gap is so small that laser light cannot penetrate it.

However, the light energized surface plasmons—the collective, wave-like motion of groups of electrons confined to travel along the boundary between the gold surface and the air.

The researchers exploited the light’s wavelength, the distance between successive peaks of the light wave. With the right choice of wavelength, or equivalently, its frequency, the laser light causes plasmons of a particular frequency to oscillate back and forth, or resonate, along the gap, like the reverberations of a plucked guitar string. Meanwhile, as the nanoparticle moves, it changes the width of the gap and, like tuning a guitar string, changes the frequency at which the plasmons resonate.

NIST Device for Detecting Subatomic-Scale Motion Has Potential Robotics, Homeland Security Applications
Ben Stein

Quantum Ampere...

Figure 1: A simplified circuit diagram showing a quantum current source. The circuit connects a Josesphson voltage source (V_J, red) to a conventional resistor (R, orange) whose resistance can be expressed in terms of a quantum Hall resistance, producing a quantum current I_Q. This current is then fed into an amplifier (G, green) that increases the current by a gain factor G. The resistance of the connecting wires (r_lead) limits the accuracy of this simplified approach. [Credit: APS/Alan Stonebraker]

Topics: Electrical Engineering, NIST, Quantum Mechanics, Research, Science

Metrologists are conservative by nature, knowing that the premature adoption of a new measurement standard could lead to confusion in both science and commerce. So it is a big deal that the International System of Units (SI) is poised to undergo its first major overhaul since its birth in 1960. Two years from now at the General Conference on Weights and Measures in Paris, officials will adopt a new SI in which every unit can be obtained from fixed values of several fundamental constants [1]. All eyes are on the kilogram, which will no longer be defined by the mass of a cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy that has been kept in a Parisian vault since it was fabricated in 1889. Somewhat overlooked, however, are advances in standards for electrical resistance and voltage, without which the new SI would not be possible. A new report [2] from Wilfrid Poirier and colleagues at France’s metrology and testing laboratory, LNE, puts these electrical standards in the spotlight by combining them to create a current source based on the electron charge e (as opposed to Ampère’s law). The source, which has an unprecedentedly low uncertainty, will enable current calibrations that are consistent with the redefined SI and boost efforts to close the so-called quantum metrology triangle [3].

The new current source is essentially a quantum realization of Ohm’s law, I=V∕R, where I is current, V is voltage, and R is resistance. The electron charge e enters because V and R are each provided by a quantum electrical device whose outputs involve e [4]. The voltage source is an array of n_J superconducting Josephson junctions, which, when driven by microwaves at frequency f_J, produces a voltage V_J=n_Jf_J(h∕2e)VJ=nJfJ(h∕2e), where h is the Planck constant. The resistance comes from a two-dimensional electron gas that is placed in its i^th quantum Hall state by a large magnetic field, in which it has a Hall resistance R_H=(h∕e²)∕i. Ohm’s law for the quantum current then becomes I_Q=(n_Jf_Ji∕2)e. Since n_J and i are known exactly and the uncertainty of f_J is negligibly small, the uncertainty of I_Q is limited by such seemingly little things as the “lead resistance” contributed by connecting wires and various sources of random noise.

These technical details are, however, the crux of why it’s challenging to make a high-precision quantum current source. To understand the problem, consider a simplified diagram of the device (Fig. 1). Here, a Josephson voltage source connects directly to a conventional resistor whose resistance can be calibrated in terms of the quantum Hall resistance. The output of this circuit is then fed into a conventional current amplifier that provides a variable amount of gain. (An adjustable current for practical calibrations can thereby be achieved by varying the gain and/or the voltage source.) This circuit has two big problems when it comes to producing currents with relative uncertainties below one part in a million. First, the resistance of the leads increases the circuit’s effective resistance by an amount that cannot be determined with high enough accuracy. Second, the gain of even the best conventional amplifier is not sufficiently stable. Poirier and colleagues’ tour de force achievement is realizing a circuit (Fig. 2) that overcomes both hurdles simultaneously.

Figure 2: The quantum current source that Poirier and colleagues implemented. Each element—the Josephson voltage source (V_J), the quantum Hall resistor (R_H), and the amplifier based on a superconducting cryogenic current comparator (CCC)—is in a separate cryostat (blue circle). The quantum Hall resistor must also be placed in a large magnetic field B. Each dotted line on the quantum Hall resistor indicates a uniform electrostatic potential for electrons. The existence of such equipotential lines minimizes the contribution of lead resistance, enabling a more accurate output current than in Fig. 1.

APS Physics Viewpoint: A New Era for the Ampere
Mark W. Keller, Quantum Electromagnetics Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305, USA
José Aumentado, Applied Physics Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305, USA

Neutron Holography...

Interference pattern created by neutron holography.
Credit: NIST

Topics: Holograms, Neutrons, NIST, Research

For the first time, a team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used neutron beams to create holograms of large solid objects, revealing details about their interiors in ways that ordinary laser light-based visual holograms cannot.

Holograms—flat images that change depending on the viewer’s perspective, giving the sense that they are three-dimensional objects—owe their striking capability to what’s called an interference pattern. All matter, such as neutrons and photons of light, has the ability to act like rippling waves with peaks and valleys. Like a water wave hitting a gap between the two rocks, a wave can split up and then re-combine to create information-rich interference patterns.

An optical hologram is made by shining a laser at an object. Instead of merely photographing the light reflected from the object, a hologram is formed by recording how the reflected laser light waves interfere with each other. The resulting patterns, based on the waves’ phase differences (link is external), or relative positions of their peaks and valleys, contain far more information about an object’s appearance than a simple photo does, though they don’t generally tell us much about its hidden interior.

Hidden interiors, however, are just what neutron scientists explore. Neutrons are great at penetrating metals and many other solid things, making neutron beams useful for scientists who create a new substance and want to investigate its properties. But neutrons have limitations, too. They aren’t very good for creating visual images; neutron experiment data is usually expressed as graphs that would look at home in a high school algebra textbook. And this data typically tells them about how a substance is made on average—fine if they want to know broadly about an object built from a bunch of repeating structures like a crystal (link is external), but not so good if they want to know the details about one specific bit of it.

But what if we could have the best of both worlds? The research team has found a way.

NIST:
Move Over, Lasers: Scientists Can Now Create Holograms from Neutrons, Too
Chad T. Boutin

Entanglement Ion Trap...

The ion trap used by Dave Wineland and colleagues at NIST to entangle two different kinds of ions. The gold-on-alumina trap can be seen in the oval window at the centre of the photograph. The oval window is about 2 cm across. (Courtesy: Blakestad/NIST)

Topics: NIST, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

Quantum entanglement has been created and measured between pairs of two different kinds of nuclei for the first time. Carried out by two independent research groups, the work is a key step towards the creation of ion-based quantum computers, in which different nuclei perform different functions. One of the groups is based at the University of Oxford in the UK and the other at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado.

Information in a quantum computer is stored and transmitted in quantum bits (qubits), which can be entities such as photons or ions. Qubits will quickly lose their quantum nature when in contact with the outside world, which is a challenge for those designing quantum computers. Individual qubits must interact with each other for a quantum calculation to proceed, and so cannot be completely isolated from the outside world.

Physics World: Physicists take entanglement beyond identical ions, Hamish Johnston

CSI...

NIST chemist Tom Bruno, who invented a method for recovering trace chemicals such as environmental pollutants and forensic evidence, uses a portable version of the instrument to sample vapor inside an old paint can. The underlying technique is called PLOT-cryoadsorption, or PLOT-cryo - short for porous layer open tubular cryogenic adsorption.

Photo credit: Courtesy NIST/ Photo by Dave Neligh

Topics: Chemistry, Environment, Forensics, NIST, Research

A chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a portable version of his method for recovering trace chemicals such as environmental pollutants and forensic evidence including secret graves and arson fire debris.

If successfully commercialized by industry, the briefcase-sized kit could enable detectives, field inspectors and others to carry with them a convenient version of NIST’s “headspace analysis” technique, which identifies solid or liquid compounds based on the makeup of vapors released into nearby air.

The underlying technique is PLOT-cryoadsorption, or PLOT-cryo—short for porous layer open tubular cryogenic adsorption. PLOT-cryo is sensitive, quantitative and more broadly useful than many competing techniques. It can identify compounds that don’t readily evaporate and is not limited to samples dissolved in water, for example. The method recovers vapors by suction or by sweeping a gas across the air above a sample of interest. The laboratory version of the technique has been used to find traces of explosives, spoiled food, residues in arson debris and gravesoil.

NIST: Portable NIST Kit Can Recover Traces of Chemical Evidence, Laura Ost

Quantum Spin Liquid...

Data taken with synchrotron diffraction indicates a short range, honeycomb-based nanostructure, which is the basis for the anomalous magnetism of Ba3CuSb2O9. NCNR neutron scattering data confirmed this structure and provided evidence for the resulting quantum spin liquid.
Credit: H. Sawa/Nagoya University
View hi-resolution image

Topics: Ferromagnetic, Fluid Mechanics, NIST, Quantum Mechanics, Spin, Superconductivity, Superfluidity

Back from a "blog break." I saw this article last month, but delayed it until the first due to a series of work-related classes (tiring, but very good I might add). I anticipate a few more, as I have that and two family reunions this summer. Not complaining about my people, but as far as my families, they could stagger these...just saying.

Trivia: Today is my wife's birthday; yesterday we went to Shadows Restaurant - her favorite. It's also (to be seen) the expiration of the Patriot Act. CNN and 24-hour cable news was born on this day in 1980. Since I can recall the era of three major network channels, a few UHF stations and television going off at midnight, I don't know if that's a good thing or not. Due to the massive amounts of competition with channels that produce movies on demand, music and reality shows, cable news has trended towards yellow journalism. Happy 35th birthday CNN, for better or worse...

Gaithersburg, Md.—An international team of researchers including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found what may be the first known example of a "spin-orbital liquid," a substance in a never-before-seen quantum mechanical state.

The discovery, reported May 4, 2012, in the journal Science, has been sought for years by the physics community. Though the team does not posit immediate applications for the material, its properties relate to the same quantum effects that give rise to superconductivity, in which electricity flows through a material with no resistance, and superfluidity, in which a liquid flows across a surface with no friction.

The term "spin liquid" can be deceptive, as it describes a substance that in many ways fits our conventional understanding of a solid. Indeed, the material the team studied looks like a chunk of earth, but at the molecular level, it is made of copper, oxygen, barium and antimony atoms arranged in a crystalline lattice structure. In this particular structure the copper atoms exhibit unusual properties generally associated with liquids. Specifically, their magnetic orientation remains in a constant state of flux.

When materials with magnetic atoms—like iron—solidify, they generally do so in crystal structures whose atoms have an orderly arrangement of magnetic orientations. (When magnetic atoms interact "ferromagnetically" you get a refrigerator magnet.) Because magnetism stems from a quantum property in the atom's electrons called spin, another way of saying this is that the spins in these atoms' electrons all line up in a single direction. Ferromagnets feature an orderly, static arrangement of electron spins.

NIST Contributes to Discovery of Novel Quantum Spin-Liquid, Chad Boutin

NIST News...

NIST Director Willie E. May
Credit: NIST

Topics: Chemistry, Diversity in Science, Optics, National Institute of Science and Technology, Photonics

Washington, D.C. – On May 4, 2015, the U.S. Senate confirmed Willie E. May as the second Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and the 15th director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). May has been serving as acting director since June 2014. He has worked at NIST since 1971, leading research activities in chemical and biological measurement science activities prior to serving as associate director for laboratory programs and principal deputy to the NIST director.

“Willie has been a partner and champion in our efforts to strengthen America’s manufacturing sector and promote innovation, key drivers to spurring economic growth, and core pillars of the Department’s ‘Open for Business Agenda.’ In addition to serving as a world-class research institute, NIST has taken the lead on several major Department of Commerce and Obama Administration priorities, including implementing a national network of manufacturing institutes and working with industry and other stakeholders to develop the NIST Cybersecurity Framework,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker.

Among many other awards and honors, May was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2011. He has been recognized with the Department of Commerce's Bronze (1981), Silver (1985) and Gold (1992) medals. The National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) has recognized him with both the Percy Julian Award for outstanding research in organic analytical chemistry and the Henry Hill Award for exemplary work and leadership in the field of chemistry. May received the 2007 Alumnus of the Year Award from the College of Chemical and Life Sciences at the University of Maryland, and in 2010 he was among the first class of inductees into the Knoxville College Alumni Hall of Fame. He was the keynote speaker for the 2002 winter commencement ceremonies for the University of Maryland's College of Life Sciences, and for Wake Forest University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences commencement exercises in 2012. [1]

* * * * *

The science and technology of light are essential to a multitude of applications that have transformed our society, and there is much promise that optics and photonics will remain at the forefront of the world’s innovations well into this century.

Moreover, the general excitement in and impact of optics and photonics is growing dramatically. This presentation will highlight: (a) past breakthroughs, present advances and potential future growth in the science and technology of light, (b) the convergence of the International Year of Light, the Nobel Prizes based on light and the various U.S. government initiatives in photonics, and (c) the critical nature of metrology to harnessing the exquisite capabilities of high-frequency, coherent light for different industries. This talk is part of an afternoon NIST program celebrating World Metrology Day. [2]

1. Senate Confirms May as 15th NIST Director, Jennifer Huergo
2. Optics and Photonics: Essential for Our World, May 20, 2015

One Plus One Equals Three...

Guest blog post by Paul R. Zielinski, MS, MBA, Director, Technology Partnerships Office, National Institute of Standards and Technology & Chair, Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer

Topics: Economy, Industry, Investment, Jobs, NIST, Science, STEM

When you want a plant to grow, you provide water, light, and fertilizer. When you want an economy to grow you provide capital, labor, and innovation.

In today’s global markets, companies that don’t innovate generally don’t survive for long. To keep your current customers and earn new ones, you must continually look for ways to be faster, cheaper, better . . . or all three.

At the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) we specialize in helping industry find those “Wow!” innovation ideas that create jobs and raise everyone’s standard of living.

Commerce.gov: Lab to Market: When One Plus One Equals Three

Dr. William M. Jackson...

Image Source: History Makers [link below]

Topics: Astrophysics, Astrochemistry, Lasers, Mentoring, Photochemistry, Research

Chemist and academic administrator William M. Jackson was born on September 24, 1936 in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from Morehouse College in 1956 and Catholic University of America, CUA in 1961, respectively. His expertise is in photochemistry, lasers chemistry, and astrochemistry.

Jackson has been a research scientist in industry at Martin Co (now Lockheed-Martin) and the government at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). He has been an academician at the University of Pittsburgh (1969-1970), Howard University (1974-1985), and the University of California, Davis (UCD). He joined the faculty at UCD as a chemistry professor in 1985. He then became a distinguished professor in 1998, and chair of the chemistry department from 2000 to 2005. He was awarded millions of dollars in research and education grants and has taught and mentored under representative minority students at Howard University and UCD. Under his direction, the minority student population of the UCD chemistry graduate students increased. He continues to do research, as well as, recruiting and mentoring minority students in chemistry, even though he is officially retired.

History Makers: William M. Jackson, PhD

Novel Sodium Conduction...

Credit: Udovic/NIST

When heated, this sodium-based hydride changes to the more open structure shown here (hydrogen atoms are omitted for clarity), featuring large, connected corridors through which charge-carrying sodium ions (in yellow) can travel with ease.

Rechargeable battery manufacturers may get a jolt from research performed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and several other institutions, where a team of scientists has discovered* a safe, inexpensive, sodium-conducting material that significantly outperforms all others in its class.

The team’s discovery is a sodium-based, complex metal hydride, a material with potential as a much cheaper alternative to the lithium-based conductors used in many rechargeable batteries. Because lithium is a comparatively rare commodity near the earth’s surface, the industry would prefer to build reusable batteries out of common ingredients that are both economical and inexhaustible.

The novel hydride—which has the formula Na₂B₁₀H₁₀—might fit the bill, and not only because it is formed of the three easily obtainable elements of sodium, boron and hydrogen. There are other practical reasons as well: It is a stable inorganic solid, meaning it would pose fewer of the risks carried by many flammable liquids in traditional batteries, such as the potential for leaking or exploding. And compared to other sodium-based solids, it can enable more power output.

NIST:
Novel Sodium-Conducting Material Could Improve Rechargeable Batteries, Chad Boutin

RM 8027...

At left, a structural model of a typical silicon nanocrystal (yellow) stabilized within an organic shell of cyclohexane (blue). At right, a high-resolution transmission electron microscope photograph of a single silicon nanoparticle.

Credit: NIST

If it's true that good things come in small packages, then the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can now make anyone working with nanoparticles very happy. NIST recently issued Reference Material (RM) 8027, the smallest known reference material ever created for validating measurements of these man-made, ultrafine particles between 1 and 100 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in size.

RM 8027 consists of five hermetically sealed ampoules containing one milliliter of silicon nanoparticles—all certified to be close to 2 nanometers in diameter—suspended in toluene. To yield the appropriate sizes for the new RM, the nanocrystals are etched from a silicon wafer, separated using ultrasound and then stabilized within an organic shell. Particle size and chemical composition are determined by dynamic light scattering, analytical centrifugation, electron microscopy and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), a powerful technique that can measure elements at concentrations as low as several parts per billion.

NIST: World’s Smallest Reference Material is Big Plus for Nanotechnology
Michael E. Newman

Polonium-209...

Credit: Irvine/NIST

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have determined* that polonium-209, the longest-lived isotope of this radioactive heavy element, has a half-life about 25 percent longer than the previously determined value, which had been in use for decades.

The new NIST measurements could affect geophysical studies such as the dating of sediment samples from ocean and lake floors. They often employ Po-209 as a tracer. Because sediment cores are used for determining human impact on the environment over the past century, the new measurement could impact these studies as well as other environmental measurements and biological assays.

NIST: Polonium's Most Stable Isotope Gets Revised Half-Life Measurement, Chad Boutin

*R. Collé, R.P. Fitzgerald and L. Laureano-Perez. The half-life of 209Po: revisited. Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics 41 (2014) 105103, doi:10.1088/0954-3899/41/10/105103