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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Adjustable spreading locking pliers
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The spreading pliers of the invention include a pair of handles, self-locking linkage which rotatably couples together the pair of handles, the self-locking linkage including a shank rotatably coupled to the ends of both handles at respective pivot points ...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Aerosol reactor production of uniform submicron powders
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A method of producing submicron nonagglomerated particles in a single stage reactor includes introducing a reactant or mixture of reactants at one end while varying the temperature along the reactor to initiate reactions at a low rate. As homogeneously sma...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Alpha-particle gas-pressure sensor
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Gas pressure in a chamber is determined by injecting alpha particles. The alpha particles ionize the gas. By determining a number of gas ions which are ionized, the pressure of the gas in the chamber can be determined....
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Array of micro-machined mass energy micro-filters for charged particles
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An energy filter for charged particles includes a stack of micro-machined wafers including plural apertures passing through the stack of wafers, focusing electrodes bounding charged particle paths through the apertures, an entrance orifice to each of the p...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Array processor for morphological image processing
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The array processor includes a grid of individual morphological processing elements formed on a VLSI chip. Each element of the grid includes a photo-detector for directly sensing a pixel of an image projected upon the chip. A signal generated by the photo-...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Autonomous formation flying sensor
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An autonomous formation flying sensor for precise autonomous determination and control of the relative position and attitude for a formation of moving objects....
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Beam scanning reflectarray antenna with circular polarization
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A novel means of scanning a circularly polarized reflectarray antenna. The reflectarray is an array of metallic elements arranged on a surface designed to compensate for the various path lengths of the optical rays from an illuminating feed to the reflecti...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Bipolar battery plate
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A liquid-impermeable plate (10) having through-plate conductivity with essentially zero resistance comprises an insulator sheet (12) having a series of spaced perforations (14) each of which contains a metal element (16) sealingly received into the perfora...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Bipolar battery plate
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A liquid-impermeable plate (10) having throughplate conductivity with essentially zero resistance comprises an insulator sheet (12) having a series of spaced perforations (14) each of which contains a metal element (16) sealingly received into the perforat...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Chip connectivity verification program
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A method for testing electrical connectivity between conductive structures on a chip that is preferably layered with conductive and nonconductive layers. The method includes determining the layer on which each structure is located and defining the perimete...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Data compression neural network with winner-take-all function
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The invention is embodied in an image data system including a lossy image compressor having an image compression ratio in excess of 10 for producing first compressed image data from an original image, the first compressed image data specifying a correspond...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Decoupled six degree-of-freedom teleoperated robot system
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The present invention is a low friction, low inertia, six-axis force feedback input device comprising an arm with double-jointed, tendon-driven revolute joints, a decoupled tendon-driven wrist, and a base with encoders and motors. The input device function...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Digital phase-lock loop
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An improved digital phase lock loop incorporates several distinctive features that attain better performance at high loop gain and better phase accuracy. These features include: phase feedback to a number-controlled oscillator in addition to phase rate; an...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Dual element electron tunneling accelerometer
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The use of a dual element approach provides high resolution position sensors based on electron tunneling. This approach allows miniaturization while utilizing the position sensitivity of electron tunneling to give high resolution. The dual-element tunnelin...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Dual polarized, heat spreading rectenna
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An aperture coupled patch splits energy from two different polarization components to different locations to spread heat. In addition, there is no physical electrical connection between the slot, patch and circuitry. The circuitry is located under a ground...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Durable low surface-energy surfaces
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A formulation for forming a low surface-energy surface on a substrate having (i) a fluoroalkyl silane having a low surface energy part, (ii) a liquid crystal silane operable for enhancing the orientation of the molecules of the fluoroalkyl silane and for c...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Electronic processing and control system with programmable hardware
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A computer system with reprogrammable hardware allowing dynamically allocating hardware resources for different functions and adaptability for different processors and different operating platforms. All hardware resources are physically partitioned into sy...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Forced air heat sink apparatus
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A high efficiency forced air heat sink assembly employs a split feed transverse flow configuration to minimize the length of the air flow path through at least two separated fin structures. Different embodiments use different fin structure material configu...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Front end for GPS receivers
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The front end in GPS receivers has the functions of amplifying, down-converting, filtering and sampling the received signals. In the preferred embodiment, only two operations, A/D conversion and a sum, bring the signal from RF to filtered quadrature baseba...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Gas sensor test chip
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A polymeric gas sensor utilizes a variety of electrode geometries to generate varied responses to selective gases. The characteristic response to various gases of each electrode geometry permits the construction of a gas sensor having desirable and reprodu...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Gas sensor test chip sensing method
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A polymeric gas sensor utilizes a variety of electrode geometries to generate varied responses to selective gases. The characteristic response to various gases of each electrode geometry permits the construction of a gas sensor having desirable and reprodu...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Gridded electron reversal ionizer
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A gridded electron reversal ionizer forms a three dimensional cloud of zero or near-zero energy electrons in a cavity within a filament structure surrounding a central electrode having holes through which the sample gas, at reduced pressure, enters an elon...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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High mobility vehicle
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A vehicle, for driving over a ground surface, has a body with a left side, a right side, a front and a back. The vehicle includes left and right drive mechanisms. Each mechanism includes first and second traction elements for engaging the ground surface an...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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High temperature regenerative H.sub.2 S sorbents
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Efficient, regenerable sorbents for removal of H.sub.2 S from high temperature gas streams comprise porous, high surface area particles. A first class of sorbents comprise a thin film of binary oxides that form a eutectic at the temperature of the gas stre...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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High-efficiency electron ionizer for a mass spectrometer array
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The present invention provides an improved electron ionizer for use in a quadrupole mass spectrometer. The improved electron ionizer includes a repeller plate that ejects sample atoms or molecules, an ionizer chamber, a cathode that emits an electron beam ...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Image enhancement by non-linear extrapolation in frequency space
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An input image is enhanced to include spatial frequency components having frequencies higher than those in an input image. To this end, an edge map is generated from the input image using a high band pass filtering technique. An enhancing map is subsequent...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Image reconstruction
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Am image is reconstructed from x-ray attenuation data or other types of data using fast Fourier circular convolution (FFCC). Reference spectra and mask functions are generated for the FFCC. Also, the data is zero-padded for the FFCC. The data is transforme...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Imaging spectrometer/camera having convex grating
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An imaging spectrometer has fore-optics coupled to a spectral resolving system with an entrance slit extending in a first direction at an imaging location of the fore-optics for receiving the image, a convex diffraction grating for separating the image int...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Interlayer stripline transition
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A improved stripline transition in a planar configuration for coupling signals between two signal planes by electromagnetic coupling....
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Internal impacted screw-locking pellet
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An elongate fastener having an engaging surface engageable with an engaging surface of a fastener's mate includes a hole extending through a portion of the fastener and having a top opening and a bottom floor, a locking pellet disposed near the bottom floo...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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LaNi.sub.5 is-based metal hydride electrode in Ni-MH rechargeable cells
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An at least ternary metal alloy of the formula AB.sub.(Z-Y) X.sub.(Y) is disclosed. In this formula, A is selected from the rare earth elements, B is selected from the elements of Groups 8, 9, and 10 of the Periodic Table of the Elements, and X includes at...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Lead-acid battery construction
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The power characteristics of a lead-acid battery are improved by incorporating a dispersion of 1 to 10% by weight of a thermodynamically stable conductivity additive, such as conductive tin oxide coated glass fibers (34) of filamentary glass wool (42) in t...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Low pressure growth of cubic boron nitride films
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A method for forming thin films of cubic boron nitride on substrates at low pressures and temperatures. A substrate is first coated with polycrystalline diamond to provide a uniform surface upon which cubic boron nitride can be deposited by chemical vapor ...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Low pressure growth of cubic boron nitride films
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A method for forming thin films of cubic boron nitride on substrates at low pressures and temperatures. A substrate is first coated with polycrystalline diamond to provide a uniform surface upon which cubic boron nitride can be deposited by chemical vapor ...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Memory switches based on metal oxide thin films
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MnO.sub.2-x thin films (12) exhibit irreversible memory switching (28) with an "OFF/ON" resistance ratio of at least about 10.sup.3 and the tailorability of "ON" state (20) resistance. Such films are potentially extremely useful as a "connection" element i...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Method for producing capsular polysaccharides
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Structurally altered capsular polysaccharides are produced by mutant bacteria. These polysaccharides are isolated by selecting a wild type bacterial strain and a phage producing degradative enzymes that have substrate specificity for the capsular polysacch...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Method for suppressing noise in measurements
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Techniques of combining separate but correlated measurements to form a second-order or higher order correlation function to suppress the effects of noise in the initial condition of a system capable of retaining memory of an initial state of the system wit...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Method for suppressing noise in measurements
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Methods for suppressing noise in measurements by correlating functions based on at least two different measurements of a system at two different times. In one embodiment, a measurement operation is performed on at least a portion of a system that has a mem...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Microscope using micro-channel filter
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A microscope formed from an image sensor placed against a microchannel filter so that there is one to one correspondence between the sample and the sensor, effectively enlarging the image....
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Multifunction automated crawling system
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The present invention is an automated crawling robot system including a platform, a first leg assembly, a second leg assembly, first and second rails attached to the platform, and an onboard electronic computer controller. The first leg assembly has an int...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Multifunction automated crawling system
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The present invention is an automated crawling robot system including a platform, a first leg assembly, a second leg assembly, first and second rails attached to the platform, and an onboard electronic computer controller. The first leg assembly has an int...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Multiple trellis coded modulation
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A technique for designing trellis codes to minimize bit error performance for a fading channel. The invention provides a criteria which may be used in the design of such codes which is significantly different from that used for average white Gaussian noise...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Near azeotropic mixture substitute
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The present invention comprises a refrigerant mixture consisting of a first mole fraction of 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane (R134a) and a second mole fraction of a component selected from the group consisting of a mixture of CHClFCF.sub.3 (R124) and CH.sub.3 CC...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Near azeotropic mixture substitute for dichlorodifluoromethane
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The present invention comprises a refrigerant mixture having two halocarbon components. The first component is present in a mole fraction of about 0.7 to less than 1.0 while the second component is present in a mole fraction of more than 0.0 to about 0.3. ...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Optical encryption interface
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An analog optical encryption system based on phase scrambling of two-dimensional optical images and holographic transformation for achieving large encryption keys and high encryption speed. An enciphering interface uses a spatial light modulator for conver...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Optical processing in III-V and II-VI compound semiconductors
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Optical processing using photorefractive GaAs and other compound semiconductor crystals (28) is achieved in a four-wave mixing configuration. Potential applications of optical processing include spatial light modulation, phase conjugation, correlation, con...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Optical protocols for communication networks
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The invention is a fiber-optic communication network, including a fiber-optic coupler having multiple fiber-optic ports and multiple optical transceivers which are individually connected to one of the fiber-optic pods. Each optical transceivers includes ap...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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p-MOSFET total dose dosimeter
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A p-MOSFET total dose dosimeter where the gate voltage is proportional to the incident radiation dose. It is configured in an n-WELL of a p-BODY substrate. It is operated in the saturation region which is ensured by connecting the gate to the drain. The n-...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Parallel interference cancellation for CDMA applications
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The present invention provides a method of decoding a spread spectrum composite signal, the composite signal comprising plural user signals that have been spread with plural respective codes, wherein each coded signal is despread, averaged to produce a sig...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Parallel processing spacecraft communication system
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An uplink controlling assembly speeds data processing using a special parallel codeblock technique. A correct start sequence initiates processing of a frame. Two possible start sequences can be used; and the one which is used determines whether data polari...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Particle sensor array
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A particle sensor array which in a preferred embodiment comprises a static random access memory having a plurality of ion-sensitive memory cells, each such cell comprising at least one pull-down field effect transistor having a sensitive drain surface area...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Phase-locked loop FM demodulator
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A conventional phase-locked loop is improved by replacing its phase detector with one comprising a linear ramp generator and a sample-and-hold circuit, thus eliminating the need for a lowpass loop filter, although the output of the sample-and-hold circuit ...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Photovoltaic driven multiple quantum well optical modulator
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Multiple quantum well (MQW) structures (12) are utilized to provide real-time, reliable, high-performance, optically-addressed spatial-light modulators (SLM) (10). The optically-addressed SLM comprises a vertical stack of quantum well layers (12a) within t...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Positive battery plate
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The power characteristics of a lead acid battery are improved by incorporating a dispersion of 1 to 10% by weight of a thermodynamically stable conductivity additive, such as conductive tin oxide coated glass fibers (34) of filamentary glass wool (42) in t...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Power connect safety and connection interlock
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A power connect safety and connection interlock system is shown for use with inverters and other DC loads (16) which include capacitor filter banks (14) at their DC inputs. A safety circuit (20) operates a spring (26) biased, solenoid (22) driven mechanica...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Production of monodisperse, polymeric microspheres
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Very small, individual polymeric microspheres with very precise size and a wide variation in monomer type and properties are produced by deploying a precisely formed liquid monomer droplet, suitably an acrylic compound such as hydroxyethyl methacrylate int...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Pump having pistons and valves made of electroactive actuators
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The present invention provides a pump for inducing a displacement of a fluid from a first medium to a second medium, including a conduit coupled to the first and second media, a transducing material piston defining a pump chamber in the conduit and being t...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Real-time biochemical assay telemetering system
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The present invention is an apparatus and a method of detecting a chemical released by perspiration, typically through sweat and broadcasting the detection to a receiver. The chemical may be a drug of abuse. The device which is attached to the skin of a su...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Reversible non-volatile switch based on a TCNQ charge transfer complex
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A solid-state synaptic memory matrix (10) having switchable weakly conductive connections at each node (24) whose resistances can be selectably increased or decreased over several orders of magnitude by control signals of opposite polarity, and which will ...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Rotary flexure
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A rotary flexure is designed to exhibit very high radial and axial stiffness and to exhibit virtually no movement in its center of rotation. The flexure, which is formed from a single billet of material, includes an outer ring from which three thin flexure...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Self-amplified optical pattern recognition system
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A self amplifying optical pattern recognizer includes a geometric system configuration similar to that of a Vander Lugt holographic matched filter configuration with a photorefractive crystal specifically oriented with respect to the input beams. An extrao...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Semiconductor etching by hyperthermal neutral beams
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An at-least dual chamber apparatus and method in which high flux beams of fast moving neutral reactive species are created, collimated and used to etch semiconductor or metal materials from the surface of a workpiece. Beams including halogen atoms are pref...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Shell forming system
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An apparatus is provided for forming gas-filled spheres of metal, glass or other material, which produces spheres (12) of uniform size and wall thickness in a relatively simple system. The system includes concentric nozzles, including an inner nozzle (18) ...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Six axis force feedback input device
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The present invention is a low friction, low inertia, six-axis force feedback input device comprising an arm with double-jointed, tendon-driven revolute joints, a decoupled tendon-driven wrist, and a base with encoders and motors. The input device function...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Size selective hydrophobic adsorbent for organic molecules
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The present invention relates to an adsorbent formed by the pyrolysis of a hydrophobic silica with a pore size greater than 5 .ANG., such as SILICALITE.TM., with a molecular sieving polymer precursor such as polyfurfuryl alcohol, polyacrylonitrile, polyvin...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Spacecraft Reed-Solomon downlink module
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Apparatus and method for providing downlink frames to be transmitted from a spacecraft to a ground station. Each downlink frame includes a synchronization pattern and a transfer frame. The apparatus may comprise a monolithic Reed-Solomon downlink (RSDL) en...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Stable metallization for diamond and other materials
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An adherent and metallurgically stable metallization system for diamond is presented. The big improvement in metallurgical stability is attributed to the use of a ternary, amorphous Ti--Si--N diffusion barrier. No diffusion between the layers and no delami...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Stacked silicide/silicon mid- to long-wavelength infrared detector
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The use of stacked Schottky barriers (16) with epitaxially grown thin silicides (10) combined with selective doping (22) of the barriers provides high quantum efficiency infrared detectors (30) at longer wavelengths that is compatible with existing silicon...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Superconducting magnet and fabrication method
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A method of trapping a field in a block of superconductor material, includes providing (i) a block of material defining a bore, (ii) a high permeability core within the bore that defines a low reluctance path through the bore, (iii) a high permeability ext...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Time-multiplexed, optically-addressed, gigabit optical crossbar switch
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A time-multiplexed, optically-addressed, crossbar switch (38) is provided using a two-dimensional, optically-addressed, reflective spatial light modulator (O-SLM) (20). Since the optical addressing is time-multiplexed, only N addressing lines are required ...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Traveling wave pump employing electroactive actuators
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A traveling wave pump which employs one or more pairs of interfacing plates to transfer fluid (gas or liquid) from one or more inlets to one or more outlets. At least one of the plates in each pair of interfacing plates is driven so as to produce a flexure...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Two solvent vapor drying technique
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A method for removing moisture and contaminants, at the monolayer level, from the surface of planar and non-planar objects such as semiconductor wafers or corrugated epitaxial layers. The apparatus comprises of two process chambers. Each chamber contains a...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Uncooled tunneling infrared sensor
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An uncooled infrared tunneling sensor in which the only moving part is a diaphragm which is deflected into contact with a micromachined silicon tip electrode prepared by a novel lithographic process. Similarly prepared deflection electrodes employ electros...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Uncooled tunneling infrared sensor
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An uncooled infrared tunneling sensor in which the only moving part is a diaphragm which is deflected into contact with a micromachined silicon tip electrode prepared by a novel lithographic process. Similarly prepared deflection electrodes employ electros...
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