National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

You may be used to downs in football being measured in yards, but did you know that there was one day in 1977 when that wasn’t the case? The brainchild of Carleton College chemistry professor Jerry Mohrig, Carleton College faced off against St. Olaf College in what was perhaps the nerdiest football game ever: the Liter Bowl on September 17, 1977. For this particular game, the field was set at 100 meters long (109.36 yards) and 50 meters wide (54.68 yards). There were metric meter lines and the referees measured using metric down-chains. The program listed the players’ heights in centimeters and weights in kilograms. They even made sure the football went metric, measuring exactly 29 centimeters long, which was within NCAA regulations. Fans and students alike got very invested in the game, wearing t-shirts that said “Drop Back 10 Meters and Punt!” and carrying signs that read “Hey! Big Ten! Follow the Liter!” Carleton College even made sure they had cheer-liters there to root on the team. And the halftime show honored General Ulysses S. Gram, skier Jean-Claude Kilo and baseball Hall of Famer Harmon Kilogram. Lest you think we were left out of the fun… According to one article online about the game, Ernest Ambler, then-director of NIST – which was called the National Bureau of Standards in the 1970s – was invited to serve as ‘grand marshal’ for the Liter Bowl. Unfortunately, he dropped the ceremonial first pass. (We can’t find any record of this in our archives, but we choose to believe it really happened.) Footnote: Despite being the visionaries behind it, Carleton College ultimately got smashed by their opponents, losing 43-0 to St. Olaf Learn more at https://lnkd.in/eVyai5Bg Photo Credit: Carleton College Archives

Take a look inside the Standard Reference Materials (SRM) Warehouse here at NIST. NIST sells SRM products to customers worldwide, but SRMs are mostly used by labs and manufacturers to check their equipment's measurement accuracy and to perform other quality control tests. Today, we produce more than 1,000 different types of SRMs. These materials enable the accurate measurement of everything from lead in paint and cholesterol in blood to nutrients in your diet and ingredients in your pet's food. For more than 100 years, NIST has been putting truth in a bottle or a box. And as new industries and technologies emerge, NIST's SRMs will follow, quietly working behind the scenes to ensure your safety, health and quality of life. 

Move over atomic clock, there may soon be a new timekeeper in town. Scientists are working on a clock that would tap the secrets hidden inside the atomic nucleus. This clock could someday become the most precise timekeeper ever made and allow scientists to probe deeper than ever into the mysteries of the universe. Check out this video to learn more.

Forensic investigators use computer programs called probabilistic genotyping software to determine the likelihood that a given person’s DNA is part of a particular sample. However, those software programs sometimes give different answers, due to variations in coding or how their algorithms work.   NIST summer intern Edgar Robitaille, a student at Johns Hopkins University, spent his summer researching these programs. The project's goal is to create a visual computer program that allows people to easily test different software programs to learn where the variation in the data is coming from. This could help improve the forensic science field.  Learn more about our summer internship program – and how a student you know could join us next summer – in our latest Taking Measure blog post: https://lnkd.in/eSkCDasx  

If you’re worried about the quality of your indoor air, you might buy an air cleaner. These devices are generally effective at removing harmful particles and microbes from the air, but they also sometimes introduce new, potentially harmful chemicals of their own such as ozone or formaldehyde. A new standard test for measuring the quantities of these byproducts has just been published based on research at NIST. This test is the first step in helping air cleaners live up to their name. https://lnkd.in/ezjPEPd4

From the X-rays that produce mammograms to the extreme ultraviolet rays that create cutting-edge computer chips, radiation plays a critical role in science and technology. So many of NIST’s activities involve the measurement of radiation. In this issue, we learned about a new technique that can measure DNA damage from ionizing radiation. We also recently pioneered a new method for measuring tiny radioactive samples. Precise measurements can help cancer patients live longer, healthier lives, and a new NIST standard is being used by drug companies to prepare optimal doses of cancer-fighting drugs. Much of this work is done in NIST’s Radiation Physics Building, and you can read more about its history here.

NIST summer intern and University of Maryland, College Park student Joy Roberts studied passenger comfort in one of NIST’s self-driving cars — also known as autonomous vehicles — this summer. One challenge to keeping passengers comfortable in a self-driving car is that it sometimes stops suddenly, more often than a human-driven car. So, part of Joy’s internship involved riding in a self-driving car and rating its comfort level. You might even call it a (safe) joy ride!  Learn more about our summer internship program – and how a student you know could join us next summer - in our latest Taking Measure blog post: https://lnkd.in/eSkCDasx #AutonomousVehicles #SelfDrivingCars 

Most software needs updating after its initial release, but software patches and other changes can introduce new cybersecurity and privacy risks and can impair operations if not managed effectively. To support successful, secure software updates and patches, NIST has finalized modifications to its catalog of security and privacy safeguards — Special Publication 800-53 — to assist both the developers who create patches and the organizations that receive and implement them in their own systems.  Learn more: https://lnkd.in/ekZqrvER  

The National Counterintelligence and Security Center and its partners issued new guidance to help U.S. colleges and universities mitigate emerging foreign threats to their research. The new bulletin, “Safeguarding Academia: Protecting Fundamental Research, Intellectual Property, Critical Technology and the U.S. Research Ecosystem,” provides information on threat indicators, impact, mitigation strategies, and where to report incidents. Read the bulletin ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dKmkGhAM

The NIST Nanofabrication Facility, or “NanoFab,” is like a machine shop of the 21st century for high-tech U.S. industries. It provides researchers from industry, academia and other government laboratories with rapid access to state-of-the-art nanotechnology fabrication and measurement tools for applications in nanoelectronics, photonics, microelectromechanical systems and nano-biotechnology. NIST technical experts help NanoFab users make the most of its unique ability to process and characterize a wide range of nanoscale materials, structures and devices, from standard techniques such as thin film deposition and wet etching to more exotic, high-accuracy technologies such as electron beam lithography. The NanoFab allows industry researchers to easily modify nanofabrication processes and to rapidly improve materials and devices, helping to improve American competitiveness by speeding the transition of industrial research to production.