Kenley, UK -- Optical Surfaces Ltd. has received a sizeable repeat order from Photonis SAS (Brive, France) for production of high-precision microchannel plate blanks to be used in a series of space research projects.

The combination of high efficiency of design, manufacture and precision polishing have made microchannel plates from Photonis SAS/Optical Surfaces Ltd. the preferred detector element in single-photon UV and X-ray space imaging projects.

Dr Aris Kouris - sales manager at Optical Surfaces Ltd commented, "The multichannel plates offer particular production challenges including maintaining tight control of the physical dimensions (thickness and parallelism) and also avoiding staining that is easily introduced during the polishing process".


Read full article: 'Precision Microchannel Plates For Deep Space'

(Click here for high resolution image)
[Carbon nanotubes form the inner lining of NIST’s new laser power meter, enabling the copper instrument to withstand the intensity of military lasers while precisely measuring their power - Credit: C. Cromer/NIST]
Gaithersburg MD, USA -- The U.S. military can now calibrate high-power laser systems, such as those intended to defuse unexploded mines, more quickly and easily thanks to a novel nanotube-coated power measurement device developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The new laser power meter, tested at a U.S. Air Force base recently will be used to measure the light emitted by 10-kilowatt (kW) laser systems.

Light focused from a 10 kW laser is more than a million times more intense than sunlight reaching the Earth. Until now, NIST-built power meters, just like the lasers they were intended to measure, were barely portable and operated slowly.

The new power meter is much smaller—about the size of a crock pot rather than a refrigerator. It also features a new design that enables it to make continuous power measurements.

A key innovation is the use of a sprayed-on coating of carbon nanotubes—tiny cylinders made of carbon atoms—which conduct heat hundreds of times better than conventional detector coating materials.

Read full article: 'New Nanotube Coating Enables Novel Laser Power Meter'

Gaithersburg MD, USA -- Chip manufacturers beware: There’s a newfound flaw in our understanding of transistor noise, a phenomenon affecting the electronic on-off switch that makes computer circuits possible.

According to the engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who discovered the problem, it will soon stand in the way of creating more efficient, lower-powered devices like cell phones and pacemakers unless we solve it.

While exploring transistor behavior, the team found evidence that a widely accepted model explaining errors caused by electronic “noise” in the switches does not fit the facts.

A transistor must be made from highly purified materials to function; defects in these materials, like rocks in a stream, can divert the flow of electricity and cause the device to malfunction. This, in turn, makes it appear to fluctuate erratically between “on” and “off” states.

For decades, the engineering community has largely accepted a theoretical model that identifies these defects and helps guide designers’ efforts to mitigate them.


Read full article: 'NIST Engineers Discover Fundamental Flaw in Transistor Noise Theory'

Geneva, Switzerland & Santa Clara, CA, USA -- Symyx Technologies, Inc. has announced the launch of the Symyx Contract Development and Manufacturing Organisation (CDMO). The Symyx CDMO helps biopharmaceutical companies move promising drug candidates to clinical trials faster and more reliably with integrated formulation development, and preclinical and CGMP fill/finish manufacturing.

"After discovery, the next critical milestone in drug development is getting to clinical trials quickly with a reliable formulation. The Symyx CDMO provides clients a faster, more reliable route to clinical trials," said Richard Boehner, president of Symyx High Productivity Research (HPR). "We do this by combining unsurpassed formulation expertise, high-productivity research technology and CGMP clinical manufacturing in a single facility."


Read full article: 'Moving promising drug candidates to clinical trials faster and more reliably...'

Isentris Personal Edition software available for a no-charge 30-day trial

Geneva, Switzerland & Santa Clara CA, USA -- Symyx Technologies, Inc. has announced the release of Symyx Isentris® Personal Edition scientific software.

Designed for small to mid-size R&D organisations and for individuals, Isentris Personal Edition brings advanced scientific information management, exploration, and sharing capabilities to scientists without requiring an enterprise deployment.

As the successor to the ISIS desktop system (replacing ISIS/Base, ISIS for Excel, and ISIS/Draw), Isentris Personal Edition surpasses ISIS in meeting scientists' needs for storing, searching, viewing, and sharing personal experimental results while still providing the powerful functionality of an enterprise scientific informatics system.


Read full article: 'Powerful suite of scientific informatics software for desktop use'

Abingdon, UK -- Cellufine™ pre-packed Mini-Columns from AMSBIO provide a new level of convenience and productivity for isolating, purifying and concentrating biomolecules from aqueous samples.

Available in a range of pre-packed 1ml columns for ion-exchange, affinity and hydrophobic interaction - Cellufine Mini-Columns from AMSBIO offer an optimised solution for initial screening of biomolecules, pre-optimisation of protocols in drug discovery and preclinical applications.

Cellufine is a novel, high performance liquid chromatography media optimised for the purification of proteins, enzymes, endotoxins and other biomolecules.


Read full article: 'Isolating, Purifying and Concentrating Biomolecules...'

[CAPTION: Micrograph of a prototype NIST detector that will be used to seek B-mode polarization, the signature of the rapid inflation of the universe after the Big Bang. Cosmic radiation will be received by the arrow-shaped antennas in the middle of the detector. The antennas separate the radiation into two different polarization directions at a frequency of 145 gigahertz. (All light has two polarization directions.)

Finally, the radiation for each polarization will be converted to heat by transition-edge sensors (top and right sides of the image), which precisely measure the energy using a superconducting metal that changes resistance in response to heat. The resulting data will be mapped to identify the polarization patterns. Credit: NIST]

Denver CO, USA -- What happened in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang? Super-sensitive microwave detectors, built at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), may soon help scientists find out.

The new sensors, described at a meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) in Denver,* were made for a potentially ground-breaking experiment scheduled for a year from now to make new measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)—the faint afterglow of the Big Bang that still fills the universe.


Read full article: 'NIST Super-Sensors to Measure ‘Signature’ of Inflationary Universe'

The most important prize for metrology is awarded to Tobias J. Kippenberg, Ronald Holzwarth and Pascal Del Haye – for a completely new approach in the exact measurement of frequencies

Berlin, Germany -- [ptb] An optical comb which allows high frequencies to be transmitted into low frequencies and, at the same time, to be measured with extreme accuracy is not only a physical masterpiece, but also a prize collector, after it had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (awarded to Theodor Hänsch and John L. Hall in 2005).

The Helmholtz Prize, the most important European metrology prize, will now be awarded for an alternative procedure for an optical comb.

For the development of an optical comb on a chip – which is, moreover, based on a completely different physical principle than its predecessor – Dr. Tobias J. Kippenberg and his colleagues Dr. Ronald Holzwarth and Pascal Del Haye from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching will now be awarded the Helmholtz Prize 2009.


Read full article: 'Helmholtz Prize for the discoverer of the "mini optical comb" '

Abingdon, UK -- AMSBIO has announced the Iso-Gold™ Rapid Mouse Monoclonal isotyping kits. Iso-Gold is a rapid-format isotyping kit that reduces the labour of the traditional ELISA protocol from a day-and-a-half procedure to a 5-minute assay.

Determining the class and subclass of a monoclonal antibody is valuable in selecting the best immunoglobulin purification method. The Iso-Gold kit is a rapid lateral flow assay, with leading edge sensitivity (10ng/ml), that can be run on both tissue culture supernatant as well as mouse ascites fluid.

Unlike ELISA based isotyping kits, that require considerable sample preparation and kit development, Iso-Gold is very easy-to-use. In a single step - your diluted antibody sample is simply added into the loading well of the cassette.

In less than 5 minutes the Iso-Gold kit will then provide a colour readout of the mouse monoclonal antibody isotope (IgG1, IgG2a, IgG2b, IgG3, IgA or IgM).


Read full article: 'Rapid Mouse-Monoclonal Isotyping Kits...'

Spindle Error Analyzer Software Version 8.4
St. Paul MN, USA -- Lion Precision’s Spindle Error Analyzer (SEA) uses noncontact probes to measure errors in spindles in three axes while at full operating speeds. The software analyzes the data and presents results in linear and polar plots as well as calculated values of error motion.

The system has been used in the machine tool and disk drive industries for over ten years. A new software release (SEA 8.4) streamlines some of the tool’s most used features.

The Lion Precision Spindle Error Analyzer has been used around the world by research universities, national laboratories, machine tool builders, and manufacturers to measure spindle errors and predict capabilities of the spindle performance when in operation.


Read full article: 'Spindle Error Measurement Made Easier with Software Update'