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Fabrication of Novel Transparent PMMA Composites for Optical Tagging

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Thursday, December 01 2011

Optically clear composites are used in tags and decals to easily identify vehicles from a distance.

The emerging threats caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have drastically increased concerns about soldier survivability. The ability to identify “friend vs. foe” of any approaching vehicles clearly, quickly, and from a distance, is invaluable to ensure a soldier’s safety, as well as critical to providing protection of facilities at strategic locations. The current state-of-the-art uses externally applied coatings or markings onto vehicles that are not seen in the visible light spectrum, yet are detectable with the use of an ultraviolet (UV) or infrared (IR) interrogation device. However, coatings can wear off or wash off, and are susceptible to being counterfeited or tempered.

This Brief includes a Technical Support Package (TSP).

Novel Transparent PMMA Composites for Optical Tagging (reference ARL-0121) is currently available for download from the TSP library.

Please Login at the top of the page to download.

 

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Laser Materials

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Thursday, December 01 2011

Cleveland Crystals (Cleveland, OH) has developed a domestic source of material for tunable lasers and high-average-power Pockels cells. The material provides a variety of features and a wide transmission frequency range critical for supporting a variety of applications, including medicine, spectroscopy, LIDAR, and materials processing.

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Choosing a Capacitor for Use as a Switch-Mode Power Supply Filter

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Thursday, December 01 2011

Two key functions of switch-mode power supply (SMPS) filter caps are input filtering and output filtering.

Input filter caps need to be able to supply a quick burst of energy and to suppress noise generated in the switch circuit. Important considerations for the input filter cap are ESR, ESL, and ripple current. High CV density is preferred in the input filter caps to reduce board space, although it is more critical for the output filter caps.

Read more: Choosing a Capacitor for Use as a Switch-Mode Power Supply Filter

   

NASA Awards Historic Green Aviation Prize

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Thursday, December 01 2011

NASA has awarded the largest prize in aviation history, created to inspire the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft and spark the start of a new electric airplane industry. The CAFE Green Flight Challenge, sponsored by Google, was managed by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation under an agreement with NASA.

Read more: NASA Awards Historic Green Aviation Prize

 

PMA-PhyloChip DNA Microarray To Elucidate Viable Microbial Community Structure

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Thursday, December 01 2011

This technology has applications in pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturing, and food processing.

Since the Viking missions in the mid- 1970s, traditional culture-based methods have been used for microbial enumeration by various NASA programs. Viable microbes are of particular concern for spacecraft cleanliness, for forward contamination of extraterrestrial bodies (proliferation of microbes), and for crew health/safety (viable pathogenic microbes). However, a “true” estimation of viable microbial population and differentiation from their dead cells using the most sensitive molecular methods is a challenge, because of the stability of DNA from dead cells.

Read more: PMA-PhyloChip DNA Microarray To Elucidate Viable Microbial Community Structure

   

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