Tag Archives: National Institute of Standards and Technology

The National Archives preserve JFK assassination bullets with 3D scans

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The 56th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination is later this month. Early next year, you'll be able to see, in almost nauseating detail, the bullets that took his life. The National Archives will upload high-definition 3D images of...

Scientist Create New Most Accurate Atomic Clock

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Forget the Apple Watch. There is a new atomic clock that will not show the wrong time for about 15 billion years. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed a...

Reported new DARPA chief brings true geek, dash of green tech controversy

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Reported new DARPA chief brings true geek, dash of green controversy

Running DARPA has always demanded a certain amount of tech-savviness -- it created what ultimately became the internet, after all -- but it may get an extra coat of green paint with a new leader. The agency has reportedly taken on Arati Prabhakar as its new director, and Wired notes that she has a lot more than just the agency itself under her belt. Along with going so far as to found DARPA's Microelectronics Technology Office, she ran the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and eventually signed on with Interval Research the venture capital firm that backed the solar power company Solyndra as well as numerous other green tech projects. That last decision has drawn a fair share of flak: Solyndra got about $500 million of public funding and still went under. With that in mind, an anonymous senior military staffer claims that Prabhakar wasn't involved in the questionable government loan and went through "extensive vetting," so it's doubtful that the funding will cast the same shadow over her DARPA technology investments as it did for the outgoing director, Regina Dugan. Even so, there will no doubt be a close watch over Prabhakar if the appointment is made public, both for those who want to keep her honest as well as for the potentially huge amount of insight into clean energy and general technology that she can wield.

[Image credit: SRI]

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Reported new DARPA chief brings true geek, dash of green tech controversy originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jul 2012 06:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NIST researchers store two images in a cloud of gas, open new possibilities for quantum memory

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Physicists have already been able to store a single image in a cloud of rubidium gas, but researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland have now made a new breakthrough that could open up some new possibilities for quantum memory. As Technology Review's Physics arXiv blog reports, they've managed to store two sequential images in the cloud (not to be confused with "the cloud") and retrieve (or view) them at different times with about 90 percent accuracy -- something that could technically be called a movie. That was done using much the same technique that allows a single image to be stored in the gas, although storing multiple images apparently has the side effect of causing them to be retrieved in the reverse order of how they went in. As TR notes, however, even with that quirk, this new method could give rubidium gas a leg up over something like holographic storage, which has only been able to store and retrieve multiple images at the same time.

NIST researchers store two images in a cloud of gas, open new possibilities for quantum memory originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 18:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceTechnology Review  | Email this | Comments