Researchers fully sequence the Y chromosome for the first time

30-Aug-2023 - What was once the final frontier of the human genome — the Y chromosome — has just been mapped out in its entirety. Led by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), a team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and many other organizations used ...

Molecules have an orientation, and scientists have a new way to measure it

Molecular orientation is key to designing better materials

12-Dec-2022 - In some materials, the molecules line up in a regular, repeating pattern. In others, they all point in random directions. But in many advanced materials used in medicine, computer chip manufacturing and other industries, the molecules arrange themselves in complex patterns that dictate the ...

Crystalline supermirrors for trace gas detection in environmental science and medicine

Analysis of particularly complex gas mixtures with unprecedented accuracy

25-May-2021 - In an international cooperation with partners from industry and research, physicists from the University of Vienna, together with Thorlabs, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the University of Kansas, have now succeeded for the first time in demonstrating ...

Simulations Suggest Graphene Can Stretch to Be a Tunable Ion Filter

28-Nov-2018 - Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have conducted simulations suggesting that graphene, in addition to its many other useful features, can be modified with special pores to act as a tunable filter or strainer for ions (charged atoms) in a liquid. The concept, ...

A new way to measure nearly nothing

Prototype design uses ultracold trapped atoms to measure pressure

23-Oct-2018 - Many semiconductor fabricators and research labs are under increasing pressure from, of all things, vacuum. These facilities need to remove greater amounts of gas molecules and particles from their setups as new technologies and processes demand lower and lower pressures. For example, the vacuum ...

New method measures 3D polymer processing precisely

11-Oct-2018 - Recipes for three-dimensional (3D) printing, or additive manufacturing, of parts have required as much guesswork as science. Until now. Resins and other materials that react under light to form polymers, or long chains of molecules, are attractive for 3D printing of parts ranging from ...

Long-Sought Workaround to Helium Shortage?

Neutron Detection Method

12-Jun-2018 - Doctors use X-rays to see inside people, and scientists use neutrons to peer inside advanced materials and devices such as fuel cells to better understand and improve them. But a critical shortage of a rare form of helium used for detecting neutrons—which are difficult to spot directly—threatens ...

Atomic blasting creates new devices to measure nanoparticles

18-Dec-2017 - Like sandblasting at the nanometer scale, focused beams of ions ablate hard materials to form intricate three-dimensional patterns. The beams can create tiny features in the lateral dimensions--length and width, but to create the next generation of nanometer-scale devices, the energetic ions must ...

How to switch liver cancer cell growth from 2-D to 3-D structures

17-Nov-2017 - Paving the way for testing experimental drugs in more realistic environments, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have discovered how to make tiny colonies of cells grow in useful new ways inside petri dishes. The research team's discoveries might help ...

Color me purple, or red, or green, or ...

10-Nov-2017 - Imagine a miniature device that suffuses each room in your house with a different hue of the rainbow--purple for the living room, perhaps, blue for the bedroom, green for the kitchen. A team led by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has, for the first time, ...