National Institute of Standards and Technology

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is one of the most sensitive and informative surface analysis techniques available. However, XPS requires a high vacuum to operate, which makes analyzing materials in liquid and gaseous environments difficult.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued for public review and comment a draft report summarizing 65 challenges that cloud computing poses to forensics investigators who uncover, gather, examine and interpret digital evidence to help solve crimes.

Particles of soot floating through the air and comets hurtling through space have at least one thing in common: 0.36. That, reports a research group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is the measure of how dense they will get under normal conditions, and it’s a value that seems to be constant for similar aggregates across an impressively wide size range from nanometers to tens of meters.*

This gift from science just keeps on giving. Measurements taken at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) show why a material already known to be good at separating components of natural gas also can do something trickier: help convert one chemical to another, a process called catalysis. The discovery is a rare example of a laboratory-made material easily performing a task that biology usually requires a complex series of steps to accomplish.

JILA physicists used an ultrafast laser and help from German theorists to discover a new semiconductor quasiparticle—a handful of smaller particles that briefly condense into a liquid-like droplet.

Piezoelectrics—materials that can change mechanical stress to electricity and back again—are everywhere in modern life. Computer hard drives. Loud speakers. Medical ultrasound. Sonar. Though piezoelectrics are a widely used technology, there are major gaps in our understanding of how they work.

Heralding a new age of terrific timekeeping, a research group led by a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicist has unveiled an experimental strontium atomic clock that has set new world records for both precision and stability—key metrics for the performance of a clock.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently announced appointments to a newly created National Commission on Forensic Science.

Who cares about old plastic? Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) do, so that you won’t have to years down the road, when today’s plastic concoctions start to break down and disintegrate from weather exposure. Experiments* at NIST may help scientists devise better tests to make sure aging plastics won’t turn into environmental or health hazards as time goes by.

Suggesting that quantum computers might benefit from losing some data, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have entangled—linked the quantum properties of—two ions by leaking judiciously chosen information to the environment.