Photoacoustic technique for the characterization of plasmonic properties of 2D periodic arrays of gold nanoholes

We apply photo-acoustic (PA) technique to examine plasmonic properties of 2D periodic arrays of nanoholes etched in gold/chromium layer upon a glass substrate

Protocols for calibrating multibeam sonar

Development of protocols for calibrating multibeam sonar by means of the standard-target method is documented. Particular systems used in the development work included three that provide the water-column signals, namely the SIMRAD SM2000/90- and 200-kHz sonars and RESON SeaBat 8101 sonar, with operating frequency of 240 kHz. Two facilities were instrumented specifically for the work: a sea well at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a large, indoor freshwater tank at the University of New Hampshire. Methods for measuring the transfer characteristics of each sonar, with transducers attached, are described and illustrated with measurement results. The principal results, however, are the protocols themselves. These are elaborated for positioning the target, choosing the receiver gain function, quantifying the system stability, mapping the directionality in the plane of the receiving array and in the plane normal to the central axis, measuring the directionality of individual beams, and measuring the nearfield response. General preparations for calibrating multibeam sonars and a method for measuring the receiver response electronically are outlined. Advantages of multibeam sonar calibration and outstanding problems, such as that of validation of the performance of multibeam sonars as configured for use, are mentioned

STATE OF THE ART INVESTIGATION IN MEDICAL ULTRASOUND DIAGNOSTICS USING PATENT PUBLICATIONS DATABASE

Patents are now an integral part of global economy. The creation of the world trade system has also redefined the value of intellectual property protection and generated an unprecedented demand for patent protection that is no longer limited to the traditionally patent-oriented economies of Europe, Japan and the USA. Countries like China, India and Korea, and Singapore and Israel too, are just some of the new players heavily involved in patent-driven innovative competition. Patents protect technical inventions. An invention can, for example, be a product, process or apparatus. Inventions are only patentable if they are novel, industrially applicable and involve an inventive step, but even then patent protection is not granted automatically. The application must be accompanied by a full technical description of the invention, which the Office then examines for compliance with the European Patent Convention. Patents give their owners the right to prevent others from using their invention, and are thus of major economic importance. They also help to recoup research costs, allowing the inventor to reinvest in research and development. The publication requirement allows competitors to build on patented inventions and come up with even better technical solutions. In doing so, patents boost the innovation which Europe badly needs to keep up with other economies, and contribute to the further development of a knowledge society. The 56 million or so patent documents contained in the public EPO database constitute a vast trove of technical information. The field of medical device, according to European Patent Office Annual Report of 2005, is one of the technical fields with the most filings. This state of the art investigation, performed using the patent publications database, is focused on the field of diagnostic ultrasound, a field that thanks to its non ionizing nature and low cost is a very high growing area and a lot of scientific research is made. Scope of this work is to provide an useful tool that allows to check the level of the ultrasound technology and to indicate the future direction of this technique. Scope of this work is also to provide information to all the researchers and inventors who want to set out a patent procedure of an invention. As known, the patent procedure, from the filing day until the decision of granting the patent is quite expensive, this work could be used as a primary consultation tool before to present a patent application. All chapters of this work contains an introduction that explain the technical problematic of a field and in the subsequent sections the solutions are described. In the first chapter of this work the European Patent Office and the world of patents is introduced. A special attention is revolted to several articles of the EPC (European Patent Convention) and to the classification system adopted by the EPO. Some statistics about European patent application filed in 2005 are illustrated and the difference between the first to invent system adopted by EPO (and by the majority of countries) and the first to invent system (adopted by U.S.A.) will be treated at the end of this chapter. In the second chapter the basics of ultrasound are illustrated with particular attention to the physics principles that are at the base of ultrasound devices described in this state of the art investigation. The state of the art is divided in 5 chapters, from 3 to 7, each chapter is about a specific technique. In the third chapter the ultrasound contrast agents are introduced and their main diagnostic application are disclosed. The fourth chapter is about three dimensional imaging, this field is divided in 4 section: mechanical, free-hand, 2D arrays and catheters. In the fifth chapter the technique of elastography and its application is described focusing on the stimulation protocols and methods. The sixth chapter is directed to all the devices that allow to study the blood flow inside vessels and arteries and the seventh chapter treats about the ultrasound catheters and their characteristics. At the end of each chapter statistics about the trends in European patent application in the last 25 years will be illustrated. In the conclusion of this work the future developments field of ultrasound technique will be illustrated

NASA patent abstracts bibliography: A continuing bibliography. Section 1: Abstracts (supplement 43)

Abstracts are provided for 128 patents and patent applications entered into the NASA scientific and technical information system during the period Jan. 1993 through Jun. 1993. Each entry consists of a citation, an abstract, and in most cases, a key illustration selected from the patent or patent application

Locating air leaks in manned spacecraft using structure-borne noise

All manned spacecraft are vulnerable to leaks generated by micrometeorite or debris impacts. Methods for locating such leaks using leak-generated, structure-borne ultrasonic noise are discussed and demonstrated. Cross-correlations of ultrasonic noise waveforms from a leak into vacuum are used to find the location of the leak. Four methods for sensing and processing leak noise have been developed and tested and each of these can be used to reveal the leak location. The methods, based on phased-array, distributed sensor, and dual sensor approaches, utilize the propagation patterns of guided ultrasonic Lamb waves in the spacecraft skin structure to find the source or direction of the leak noise. It is shown that each method can be used to successfully locate the leak to within a few millimeters on a 0.6-m2 aluminum plate. The relative merits of the four methods are discussed

A Methodology for Acoustic Measurement and Separation of Background Noise

An attempt is made at developing experimental methods for the acoustic measurement and separation of background noise in a wind tunnel. To this end, an array beamforming technique known as delay-and- sum beamforming is identified and tested. The theory underlying delay-and-sum beamforming is discussed. Two linear arrays, the seven microphone linear array and the four microphone minimum redundancy array, are designed. A driver is designed based on Helmholtz resonator theory to provide a source of monochromatic sound. Also, the concept of partial coherence as applicable to the separation of background noise from signal noise is investigated. Array beamforming results show that tests conducted with the two linear arrays in the open field provide good resolution of the sound source Direction Of Arrival (DOA) peaks from the background noise, and provide a semianechoic reference with which to compare wind tunnel results. Beamforming results obtained for the driver placed inside the wind tunnel with the tunnel running at 0, 45, and 81 ft/sec successfully resolved the DOA peaks of the driver from the background noise of the tunnel. At a tunnel velocity of 151 ft/sec, the driver signal is completely buried in the background noise of the tunnel, and beamforming was not successful in resolving the peak corresponding to the driver signal

Summary of Supersonic Jet and Rocket Noise

This paper summarizes a two-part special session, “Supersonic Jet and Rocket Noise,” which was held during the 174th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, Louisiana. The sessions were cosponsored by the Noise and Physical Acoustics Technical Committees and consisted of talks by government, academic, and industry researchers from institutions in the United States, Japan, France, and India. The sessions described analytical, computational, and experimental approaches to both fundamental and applied problems on model and full-scale jets and rocket exhaust plumes