The next great telecom revolution phần 10 pps

9.9.4 Quantum Displays Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT researchers have developed anew display technology that promises to someday replace conventional LCDs.The technology—a qu

materials, LEPs are able to reduce manufacturing cost through effective rial utilization.

mate-“LEPs offer all the advantages of small-molecule technology such as power consumption and low-drive voltages,” says Joe Constance, an analyst atTechnical Insights, a technology research company located in San Antonio,Texas “LEP devices can generate sharp light output, or resolution, and can befabricated cost effectively in high-pixel density configurations,” he adds.Efficient control over structural order in LEPs is required to have an edgeover traditional liquid crystal displays In this regard, polymers that have dif-ferent band gaps may prove to be a key factor in outplaying competing tech-nologies Emission of red, green, or blue light is possible with different bands,making full-color displays with conductive LEPs commercially viable Intenseresearch in this area has enabled poly-phenylene vinylene (PPV) to emit bluelight by interrupting conjugation in the polymer with nonconjugated units.Attachment of alkoxy side groups to the phenylene rings of the PPV enablesred light production

low-A full-color polymer-based display requires pixellating the colors throughthe combination of different conducting polymers with varying band gaps Thecolor emitted from the blend will depend on the amount of voltage applied,which increases with the band gap An alternative route would be to use white-light-emitting diodes to create a microcavity, the length of which determinesthe color of the emitted light

Apart from varying band gaps, polymer-based light-emitting diodes alsoface the challenge of increasing operating lifetimes to at least 20,000 hours topopularize commercial usage When the luminance intensity of the devicedecreases to 70 percent of the original value, it is considered the actual end oflife as opposed to 50 percent referenced for display applications “In the area

of LEPs, significant research has been in progress to improve material times both through the use of materials that are resistant to oxidation andthrough improved encapsulation,” explains Constance

life-Conducting polymers based on doped polyaniline, conjugated polymermaterial, and polypyrrole are already demonstrating the stability required forcommercial applications, proving the potential for growth and wider accept-ance in the future

Researchers at the Xerox Research Center of Canada recently announced

a new polymer in the polythiophene family This polymer has the best cal properties of any reported plastic semiconductor Scientists at Xerox’s PaloAlto Research Center (PARC) succeeded in jet-printing this material andother polymer semiconductors to make transistors The jet-printed transistorsmade this way have matched the performance of the same material deposited

electri-by conventional spin-coating (which gives an unpatterned film), showing thatthe jet-printing process does not adversely affect the performance of thedevice The transistors have exceptional performance for polymers and meetall the requirements for addressing displays Along with a high mobility, theyhave very low leakage and good stability

206 THE CRITICAL LAST INCH—INPUT AND OUTPUT TECHNOLOGIES

There is much more involved in the fabrication of a low-cost transistor arraythan just printing the polymer semiconductor As with any integrated elec-tronic device, metals and insulators must also be deposited and patterned into

a multi-layer structure having the right electronic circuit and an appropriatephysical size The PARC scientists have successfully integrated the jet-printedpolymer into a prototype display circuit, in which printing techniques defineall the patterns The electronic properties and physical dimensions meet theneeds of flat-panel displays, and the complete absence of photolithographypromises low-cost manufacture The PARC array design also solves key issues

of unwanted interactions between pixels of the display, accurate layer-to-layeralignment, and materials compatibility

Although much more development is needed to make the jet-printedorganic semiconductor display process ready for manufacture, this break-through demonstration at PARC represents proof that it can be done successfully

9.9.4 Quantum Displays

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed anew display technology that promises to someday replace conventional LCDs.The technology—a quantum dot-organic light-emitting device (QD-OLED)—allows the creation of flat-panel screens that consume less power and producebetter images than existing counterparts

Based on high-performing inorganic nanocrystals—combined with organicmaterials—QD-OLEDs would be ideal for use in mobile devices Unlike tra-ditional LCDs, which must be lit from behind, quantum dots generate theirown light Depending on their size, the dots can be “tuned” to emit any color

in the rainbow Better yet, the colors they produce are highly saturated, mitting richer, more lifelike images Also known as “artificial atoms,” quantumdots are nanometer-scale “boxes” that selectively hold or release electrons.The latest MIT QD-OLED contains only a single layer of quantum dotssandwiched between two organic thin films Previous QD-OLEDs used any-where from 10 to 20 film layers The researchers have created QD-OLEDsover a 1-cm2area, although the same principle could be used to make largercomponents

per-The MIT team’s method of combining organic and inorganic materialscould also pave the way for new technologies and enhance understanding ofthe physics of these materials Besides allowing the creation of extraordinar-ily thin, bright flat-panel displays, the QD-OLEDs may also be used to cali-brate wavelengths for scientific purposes, generate wavelengths visible only torobot eyes or to “miniaturize scientific equipment in ways we haven’t yet imag-ined,” says Moungi Bawendi, an MIT chemistry professor

The QD-OLEDs created in the study have a 25-fold improvement in nescent power efficiency over previous QD-OLEDs The researchers note that

lumi-in time the devices may be made even more efficient and be able to achieve

PAPER-LIKE VIDEO DISPLAYS 207

even higher color saturation “One of the goals is to demonstrate a displaythat is stable, simple to produce, flat, high-resolution and that uses minimalpower,” says Vladimir Bulovic, an assistant professor of electrical engineeringand computer science at MIT.

The MIT researchers were inspired by advances in completely OLED nology OLEDs, which can be used to create TVs or computer screens only afraction of an inch thick with the same brightness as LCDs, are now makingtheir way into commercial electronic devices The MIT group envisions thatQD-OLEDs will in time become complementary to OLEDs because they can

tech-be built on the same electronic platforms with compatible manufacturingmethods

The QD-OLED research is funded by the National Science Foundation andUniversal Display Corp., an OLED technology developer located in Ewing,New Jersey

9.10 FINDING INFORMATION

Given their imperfect input/output technologies, finding information on tinydevices can be highly problematic Researchers, however, are working on tech-nologies that promise to make finding hard-to-access information a snap.Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC), for instance,have created a new tool for organizing and visualizing collections of electronicmail The system is designed to help legal researchers, historians, and archivists,

as well as ordinary business people, deal with large e-mail archives

Developed by Anton Leuski, a researcher at the USC School of ing’s Information Sciences Institute, the eArchivarius system uses sophisti-cated search software developed for Internet search engines like Google todetect important relationships between messages and people The technologytakes advantage of inherent clues that exist in e-mail collections and thenautomatically creates a vivid and intuitive visual interface that uses spheresgrouped in space to represent relationships

Engineer-In an experimental exercise, USC researchers collected e-mail exchangesconducted between Reagan administration national security officials The visu-alization showed some e-mail recipients closely packed toward the display’scenter and their most frequent correspondents bunched into a tight cluster.Less frequent correspondents were literally out of the loop, with their sphereslocated far out on the display’s periphery

Besides correspondence activity, spheres representing people can also bearranged under other criteria, such as the content of the authored messages.The display configuration would then show communities of people who con-verse on the same topic and the relationships among those communities.With the eArchivarius system, selecting any e-mail recipient opens a newwindow, which provides a list of all the people with whom the selected personexchanged correspondence A time-graphed record also shows when the

208 THE CRITICAL LAST INCH—INPUT AND OUTPUT TECHNOLOGIES

exchanges took place “For a historian trying to understand the process bywhich a decision was made over a course of months, this kind of access will

be extremely valuable,” says Leuski

The same interface can instantly return and display individual pieces of mail

in the form of hypertext pages, with links to the people who sent and receivedthe e-mail and with links to similar e-mail messages “Similar messages” can

be defined in terms of recipients, text keywords, or both In a display producedusing this capability, the spheres are the messages themselves

With message-oriented spheres, different colors indicate different topics,creating a map of how the information is distributed among the messages

“What we have in effect is a four-dimensional display, with color added to thethree spatial dimensions,” says Douglas Oard, an associate professor of com-puter science from University of Maryland’s College of Information Studiesand its Institute for Advanced Computer Studies

Leuski and Oard have demonstrated the ability to find interesting patterns

in collections as small as a few hundred e-mails The techniques they havedeveloped are now being applied to thousands of e-mails sent and received

by a single individual over 18 years Scaling the system upward to process millions of e-mails involving thousands of people will be the researchers’ nextchallenge

The elements of eArchivarius’ flexible and useful interface, says Oard, maysomeday find their way into everyday e-mail client software

9.10.1 Simplified Image Retrieval

Penn State University has developed software that allows computer users tosearch for images more easily and accurately by eliminating the need to enterlengthy descriptive phrases The technology could potentially help mobiledevice users who currently must deal with cramped displays as well as peoplewho must routinely catalogue or access large numbers of images

The Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures (ALIP) system builds a torial dictionary and then uses it to associate images with keywords The tech-nology functions like a human expert who annotates or classifies terms “Whilethe prototype is in its infancy, it has demonstrated great potential for use inbiomedicine by reading x-rays and CT scans, as well as in digital libraries, busi-ness, Web searches and the military,” says Dr James Z Wang, an assistant professor at Penn State’s School of Information Sciences and Technology andthe project’s lead researcher

pic-Unlike other content-based retrieval systems that compare features of visually similar images, ALIP uses verbal cues that range from simple con-cepts such as “flowers” and “mushrooms” to higher-level terms such as “rural”and “European.” ALIP can also classify images into a larger number of cate-gories than other systems, thereby broadening the uses of image databases.ALIP processes images the way people do When someone sees a new kind

of vehicle with two wheels—a seat and a handlebar, for example—it’s

recog-FINDING INFORMATION 209

nized as a bicycle from information about related images stored in the brain.ALIP has a similar bank of statistical models that “learn” from analyzing spe-cific image features.

Other advantages include ALIP’s ability to be trained with a relatively largenumber of concepts simultaneously and with images that are not necessarilyvisually similar In one experiment, researchers trained ALIP with 24,000 pho-tographs found on 600 CD-ROMs, with each CD-ROM collection assignedkeywords to describe its content After “learning” these images, the computerthen automatically created a dictionary of concepts such as “building,” “land-scape,” and “European.” Statistical modeling enabled ALIP to automaticallyindex new or unlearned images with the dictionary’s linguistic terms

Future research will be aimed at improving ALIP’s accuracy and speed.ALIP’s reading of a beach scene with sailboats yielded the keyword annota-tions of “ocean,” “paradise,” “San Diego,” “Thailand,” “beach” and “fish.”Although the computer was intelligent enough to recognize the high-levelconcept of “paradise,” additional research will focus on making the technol-ogy more accurate, so that San Diego and Thailand will not appear in the anno-tation of the same picture, Wang says “This system has the potential to changehow we handle images in our daily life by giving us better and more access,”says Wang

9.11 DISABLED ACCESS

Disabled individuals are typically forgotten in discussions about input/outputtechnologies Mobile phones, for instance, are still a work in progress withregard to meeting the needs of individuals with disabilities, who are missingout on wireless communication opportunities because of usability problems

9.11.1 Mobile Phone Interface

Virginia Tech’s Tonya Smith-Jackson, assistant professor, and Maury Nussbaum, associate professor, both in the Grado Department of Industrialand Systems Engineering, are conducting research to improve the cell phoneinterface for users with disabilities The Telecommunications Act of 1996placed the demand on manufacturers of mobile phones to support accessibil-ity for individuals with physical, visual, or cognitive disabilities “Users withdisabilities have been systematically marginalized in the information agebecause manufacturers and designers have either ignored their needs alto-gether or designed features in a haphazard manner that were intended toenhance accessibility, yet resulted in unusable products,” says Smith-Jackson.While trying to operate a mobile phone, users with disabilities typicallyencounter problems such as small and flat buttons that are difficult to pushwith bent fingers, keypads with no Braille or tactile feedback to assist with ori-

210 THE CRITICAL LAST INCH—INPUT AND OUTPUT TECHNOLOGIES

entation, or lack of voice activation capabilities Sometimes, special featuresare available for disabled customers, but the features do not perform consis-tently, such as voice-activated phones failing to work in a noisy environment.People who have more than one type of disability have even greater difficultyoperating mobile phones.

The first goal of this research is to identify user requirements and challengesrelated to user interface designs of cell phones The second research goal is toconduct usability tests with existing interfaces of selected Toshiba phonesdesigned for the Japanese domestic market that will be marketed in the UnitedStates As part of the study for Toshiba, the researchers and their graduate stu-dents are using product interactive focus groups and usability testing to targetthe needs of users with the following disabilities: legal blindness, cognitive dis-abilities, full blindness, and upper extremity physical disabilities Informationfrom these interviews is being used to extract design guidelines to enhancecell phone accessibility and to develop new features for future cell phone interfaces

9.11.2 GPS Guidance

Telecom technologies, when equipped with special interfaces, can also help abled people cope better with the real world A new GPS-based navigationdeveloped by ONCE, the Organization of Spanish Blind people, is designed

dis-to guide blind people The system, called “Tormes,” is a handheld computerwith a Braille keyboard and satellite navigation technology that gives verbaldirections Tormes can be used in two ways: to guide the user to their desti-nation or to tell them where they are as they walk around

Tormes is currently limited by GPS’s 15 to 20 meter accuracy But ONCEand the European Space Agency are already working on how to improve the system A new tool developed •• by ESA could be the breakthrough: theEuropean Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) It also warnsthe users of any problem with the signal thus giving integrity information.EGNOS is transmitted to the ground via geostationary satellites, so signalsare sometimes blocked by buildings, called the canyon effect To solve thisproblem, ESA engineers had the idea of getting the data through the Inter-net via a GSM connection, a project called SISNeT (Signal In Space throughInternet) This makes EGNOS available anywhere downtown As a result,blind people accessing information via Tormes will be able to distinguish indi-vidual streets as they approach them

Ruben Dominguez, a blind mathematician who has tried out the device,says, “This completes what exists for assisting blind people: the dog or thewhite cane, but furthermore it will really improve the life of the blind com-munity by giving a lot more autonomy when moving around town, especially

in unknown places.” EGNOS is scheduled to become operational by 2005

DISABLED ACCESS 211

9.11.3 Speech-Controlled Arm

Using two motors, speech-recognition software, and an exoskeleton inspired

by science fiction, three Johns Hopkins University undergraduates havedesigned and built a muscle-enhancement device specifically for a disabledperson that will help him lift a cup, a book, and other household items Byuttering commands such as “open” and “raise,” this user will receive mechan-ical help in moving his fingers and bending his elbow The motorized plasticshell will fit over the right arm of the man, who has an extremely rare degen-erative muscle disorder called inclusion body myositis

This device, which could be adapted for other people with disabilities, wasdeveloped by students in the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s SeniorDesign Project course The project originated when the man with the muscledisease sought help from Volunteers for Medical Engineering, a nonprofit Baltimore group that uses technology to assist people with disabilities Theclient explained that his nerves were intact, meaning that he could control theplacement of his fingers around an object But progressive muscle deteriora-tion left him unable to grasp and lift even small objects

To help him, the Volunteers for Medical Engineering sponsored a project

in the Johns Hopkins course The task of designing and building the devicewent to a team consisting of three senior students: Jonathan Hofeller, amechanical engineering student; Christina Peace, a biomedical engineeringstudent; and Nathaniel Young; a biomedical engineering student The studentsresearched prosthetic limbs, and, taking a cue from props featured in the film

“Aliens,” they designed a plastic exoskeleton that could slide over the client’sright hand and arm To help move his fingers and elbow, the students testedand rejected systems using electromagnets and air pressure systems Theyfinally settled on two small but powerful stepper motors These could movethe fingers and elbow in small, slow increments, allowing the client to clasp acup firmly without crushing it In addition, these motors did not require con-tinuous electrical current to stay in position, which preserves battery power.The students linked the motors to a series of cables and springs to enable thedevice to move the man’s arm into position and help his fingers grasp andrelease

The students opted for voice recognition software as an easy way for thedisabled man to control the grasping device After the software is trained tothe client’s voice, the man will first say “arm” or “hand” to take command ofone of the two motors The elbow motor will then respond to “raise,” “down,”

or “stop.” The hand motor will respond to “open,” close,” and “stop.” Thedevice is hard-wired to a control box that contains a miniature computer andtwo programs that turn the voice commands into signals that tell the motorshow to operate the bending and grasping motions The unit is powered by arechargeable 12-volt lead-acid battery commonly used for remote-controlmodel boats and airplanes The control box fits inside a small pack that theman can carry on his waist, making the grasping the device fully portable

212 THE CRITICAL LAST INCH—INPUT AND OUTPUT TECHNOLOGIES

“[The students] came up with a very creative design for the device,” saysJan Hoffberger, executive director of Volunteers for Medical Engineering.

“They purposely set it up to move very slowly, so that at any time in the ing and lifting process, our client can tell it to stop We believe he will find itvery helpful.”

grasp-The students had to work within a budget of $10,000; they ended up ing about $8,000 on the device Designing and building it helped the under-graduates to understand some of the challenges that working engineers face

spend-“In a textbook, there is always one right answer,” says Young spend-“In this project,there were many different ways we could go, but once we were committed wehad to go in that direction.” His teammate, Hofeller, says, “The projectinvolved a lot of trial and error, but it was fun to apply what we’ve been learn-ing.” The third team member, Peace, added, “When you’re working out aproblem in an engineering book, the conditions are ideal In this project, theconditions were not perfect, but we still got the job done.”

DISABLED ACCESS 213

214

Telecosmos: The Next Great Telecom Revolution, edited by John Edwards

ISBN 0-471-65533-3 Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

1G: – See First-generation services.

2G: – See Second-generation services.

3G: – See Third-generation services.

4G: – See Fourth-generation services.

802.11x: – A series of IEEE standards for wireless LANs, including 80211.a,

80211.b, and numerous others

Algorithm: – A step-by-step mathematical procedure for solving a problem Anechoic: – Free from echoes and reverberations.

Asset tracking: – Technology that is used to follow the physical movements of

objects and people

Baby Bell: – One of the original Bell System operating companies.

Bandgap: – The energy difference in a material between its nonconductive

state and its conductive state

Bell System: – Refers to AT&T and its Bell operating companies, which

dom-inated the U.S telephone industry until a court-ordered breakup in 1984

Bit: – The smallest element of computer information.

Bits per second (bps): – A data network speed measurement A 10-Mbps,

network, for example, has a top data transfer speed of 10 million bits persecond

Blackberry: – A line of wireless e-mail devices produced by Research In

Motion

Bluetooth: – An open standard for the short-range transmission of digital

voice and data between mobile devices

BPL: – See Broadband over power lines.

bps: – See Bits per second.

Broadband: – High-speed Internet access, faster than 56K bps dial-up service Broadband over power lines (BPL): – An Internet access technology that use

poker lines

Buckyball: – A spherical carbon molecule, also known as a “Fullerine,”

com-posed of 60 atoms Buckyballs are lighter than plastic and stronger thansteel

Cable modem: – A device that connects a computer to a cable television

system’s broadband Internet service

Carrier: – A telecommunications service provider.

Cathode ray tube (CRT): – A vacuum tube that serves as a computer display.

CDMA: – See Code division multiple access.

CDMA 2000: – See Code division multiple access 2000.

CLEC: – See Competitive local exchange carrier.

Code division multiple access (CDMA): – A second-generation (2G) digital

mobile phone technology that operates in the 800-MHz and 1.9-GHz PCSbands

Code division multiple access 2000 (CDMA 2000): – A CDMA version for

third-generation (3G) networks

Competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC): – A local telephone carrier that

was not one of the original Bell System operating companies

Constellation: – An array of satellites that is designed to provide continuous,

or near-continuous, access from any point on earth

CRT: – See Cathode ray tube.

Cybersecurity: – The protection of computers and networks.

DARPA: – See Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Data hiding: – See Steganography.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA): – The central

research and development organization for the U.S Department of Defense(DoD)

Dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM): – A higher capacity form

of wavelength division multiplexing

Dielectric: – An insulator, such as glass or plastic.

Digital radio: – A radio based on digital technology.

Digital subscriber line (DSL): – High-speed Internet access service using

phone lines

GLOSSARY 215

Downlink: – A communications channel that sends audio and/or video from

a satellite to earth

Downstream: – A communications channel that sends data from a satellite to

earth

DSL: – See Digital subscriber line.

DWDM: – See Dense wavelength division multiplexing.

EDGE: – See Enhanced data rates for global evolution.

Encryption: – The process of transforming plain information into a secure

format, designed to protect its confidentiality

Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE): – An enhancement to

TDMA and GSM that boosts data speeds to 384,000 bits per second

ESA: – See European Space Agency.

European Space Agency (ESA): – The organization that manages the

European space program on behalf of 15 member states

Extensible Markup Language (XML): – An open standard for describing data

that’s used for defining data elements on a Web page and business documents XML has become the standard for defining data interchange formats on the Internet

business-to-4G: – See Fourth-generation services.

Fiber: – See Optical Fiber.

First-generation services (1G): – Analog mobile phone services.

Flat panel: – A thin display that use LCD, plasma, or other type of non-CRT

technology

Fourth-generation services (4G): – Ultra-high-speed multimedia digital

mobile phone services

Fractal: – An object that is self-similar at all scales, in which the final level of

detail is never reached and never can be reached by increasing the scale atwhich observations are made

Fuel cell: – A device that converts a gas or liquid fuel into electricity to power

a notebook computer, mobile phone, or other electronic product

Galileo: – A satellite-based radio navigation system currently under

con-struction by the European Space Administration (ESA)

GHz: – See Gigahertz.

GIF: – See Graphics interchange format.

Gigahertz (GHz): – One billion cycles per second See Hertz.

Global positioning system (GPS): – A satellite-based radio navigation system

that allows users to find their precise location anywhere on earth

Global system for mobile communications (GSM): – A second-generation

(2G) digital mobile phone technology based on TDMA that is the dominant system in Europe and is gaining increasing popularity in NorthAmerica

pre-216 GLOSSARY

GPS: – See Global positioning system.

Graphical user interface (GUI): – A graphics-based user interface that

features windows, icons and pointing device input

Graphics interchange format: – A popular graphics file format.

GSM: – See Global System for Mobile Communications.

GUI: – See Graphical User Interface.

Haptic interface: – Communicating with a computer via touch sensation Hertz (Hz): – The basic unit of electrical cycles.

Hotpsot: – A place, such as a home or store, where a wireless connection is

available

IEEE: – See Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

ILEC: – See Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier.

IP Telephony: – The two-way transmission of audio over a network that uses

Internet protocols

IM: – See Instant messaging.

Incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC): – A local telephone carrier that was

one of the original Bell System operating companies

Information hiding: – See Data Hiding.

Instant messaging (IM): – The process of exchanging real time voice or text

messages over a network

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE): – A membership

organization that sets many telecommunications, networking, and computerstandards

Interference: – Unwanted signals from a manmade or natural source.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO): – An international

standards-setting organization

Internet protocol (IP): – The network layer protocol in Internet-based

networks

IP: – See Internet Protocol.

ISO: – See International Organization for Standardization.

Joint Photographic Experts Group: – The organization that developed JPEG,

a popular image file compression format

JPEG: – A popular image file compression format See Joint Photographic

Experts Group

Key: – In security, a numeric code that’s used to encrypt information.

kHZ: – See Kilohertz.

Kilohertz (kHz): – One thousand cycles per second See Hertz.

LAN: – See Local area network.

Local area network (LAN): – A computer network that serves users in a

confined location, such as an office or building

GLOSSARY 217

Local loop: – The connection between a phone customer and the phone

company’s office

Location-based service: – A service that works by pinpointing its user’s

location

Megahertz (MHz): – One million cycles per second See Hertz.

MEMS: – See Micro-electrical mechanical systems.

Mesh network: – A network that provides at least two pathways between each

node

MHz: – See Megahertz.

Micro-electrical mechanical systems (MEMS): – Nano-sized devices that are

built onto chips

Microscillator: – A miniature device for generating tunable microwave signals Motion Pictures Experts Group: – The organization that developed MPEG, a

popular video compression format

Motion tracking: – Using a video system to automatically follow a moving

person or object

MP3: – A popular audio compression format.

MPEG: – A popular video compression format See Motion Pictures Experts

Group

MSO: – See Multiple System Operator.

Multiple System Operator (MSO): – A cable TV company or other

organiza-tion that has franchises in various locaorganiza-tions

Nanotechnology: – The creation of materials and devices at atomic and

molecular levels

Nanotube: – A carbon molecule, resembling a chicken wire cylinder, that’s

approximately a millimeter long and about one to two nanometers in diameter Featuring a tensile strength 10 times greater than steel at aboutone-quarter the weight, nanotubes are considered the strongest knownmaterial for their weight

NASA: – See National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): – The U.S

govern-ment agency that operates the nation’s space program

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): – A U.S government

agency that develops and promotes measurements, standards, and nologies to enhance productivity, facilitate trade and improve the quality

tech-of life

National Science Foundation (NSF): – An independent US government

agency responsible for promoting science and engineering.

NIST: – See National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Node: – In a network, a computer, printer, hub, router or other connection or

interconnection point

218 GLOSSARY