NASA Tech Briefs Index, 1977, volume 2, numbers 1-4

Announcements of new technology derived from the research and development activities of NASA are presented. Abstracts, and indexes for subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief number are presented for 1977

Radio Frequency Direction Finding System

In certain terrain types It is difficult to locate people, objects, animals, etc. In particular, using one’s eyes and ears to locate something has certain disadvantages. Visible light propagates at high frequencies and is easily stopped by terrain. Also, sound waves do not propagate as effectively as electromagnetic waves in open air because they are mechanical waves. Therefore, our goal is to create a system that can locate emitters that output electromagnetic waves in the radio frequency (RF) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS). RF operates at a lower frequency than visible light and will diffract around mountains and pass through jungle foliage more easily than light. The goal of this project is to design a system that will be compact, lightweight, and provide a signal strength/clock direction output pair to the operator indicating where the target emitter is located. Thus far we have been able to design and build a prototype system that accomplishes most of our goals. Tests with our prototype system have shown that our design concept is realizable given our system is lightweight and provides the operator with a bearing and signal strength of a target emitter. However, due to issues with our motor and motor controller, our system is unable to achieve our desired accuracy. Overall, the predominant issues we have encountered are our motor controller and motor being too weak to rotate our antenna. This issue may be remedied by increasing our budget slightly and incorporating a more powerful motor and better quality motor controller. Given the incorporation of an improved motor controller and motor, our system should be able to meet all of our original design objectives and be finalized into a compact usable product

Southwest Research Institute assistance to NASA in biomedical areas of the technology

Significant applications of aerospace technology were achieved. These applications include: a miniaturized, noninvasive system to telemeter electrocardiographic signals of heart transplant patients during their recuperative period as graded situations are introduced; and economical vital signs monitor for use in nursing homes and rehabilitation hospitals to indicate the onset of respiratory arrest; an implantable telemetry system to indicate the onset of the rejection phenomenon in animals undergoing cardiac transplants; an exceptionally accurate current proportional temperature controller for pollution studies; an automatic, atraumatic blood pressure measurement device; materials for protecting burned areas in contact with joint bender splints; a detector to signal the passage of animals by a given point during ecology studies; and special cushioning for use with below-knee amputees to protect the integrity of the skin at the stump/prosthesis interface

Index to NASA Tech Briefs, 1972

Abstracts of 1972 NASA Tech Briefs are presented. Four indexes are included: subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief number

Index to nasa tech briefs, issue number 2

Annotated bibliography on technological innovations in NASA space program

Cumulative index to NASA Tech Briefs, 1963-1965

Annotated bibliography of NASA technical briefs on electrical, energy sources, materials, life sciences, and mechanical informatio

New Aspects of Progress in the Modernization of the Maritime Radio Direction Finders (RDF)

This paper as an author contribution introduces the implementation of the new aspects in the modernization of the ships Radio Direction Finders (RDF) and their modern principles and applications for shipborne and coastal navigation surveillance systems. The origin RDF receivers with the antenna installed onboard ships or aircraft were designed to identify radio sources that provide bearing the Direction Finding (DF) signals. The radio DF system or sometimes simply known as the DF technique is de facto a basic principle of measuring the direction of signals for determination of the ship\u27s position. The position of a particular ship in coastal navigation can be obtained by two or more measurements of certain radio sources received from different unspecified locations of transmitters on the coast. In the past, the RDF devices were widely used as a radio navigation system for aircraft, vehicles, and ships in particular. However, the newly developed RDF devices can be used today as an alternative to the Radio – Automatic Identification System (R-AIS), Satellite – Automatic Identification System (S-AIS), Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT), radars, GNSS receivers, and another current tracking and positioning systems of ships. The development of a modern shipborne RDF for new positioning and surveillance applications, such as Search and Rescue (SAR), Man over board (MOB), ships navigation and collision avoidance, offshore applications, detection of research buoys and for costal vessels traffic control and management is described in this paper

New Aspects of Progress in the Modernization of the Maritime Radio Direction Finders (RDF)

This paper as an author contribution introduces the implementation of the new aspects in the modernization of the ships Radio Direction Finders (RDF) and their modern principles and applications for shipborne and coastal navigation surveillance systems. The origin RDF receivers with the antenna installed onboard ships or aircraft were designed to identify radio sources that provide bearing the Direction Finding (DF) signals. The radio DF system or sometimes simply known as the DF technique is de facto a basic principle of measuring the direction of signals for determination of the ship\u27s position. The position of a particular ship in coastal navigation can be obtained by two or more measurements of certain radio sources received from different unspecified locations of transmitters on the coast. In the past, the RDF devices were widely used as a radio navigation system for aircraft, vehicles, and ships in particular. However, the newly developed RDF devices can be used today as an alternative to the Radio – Automatic Identification System (R-AIS), Satellite – Automatic Identification System (S-AIS), Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT), radars, GNSS receivers, and another current tracking and positioning systems of ships. The development of a modern shipborne RDF for new positioning and surveillance applications, such as Search and Rescue (SAR), Man over board (MOB), ships navigation and collision avoidance, offshore applications, detection of research buoys and for costal vessels traffic control and management is described in this paper

Design and Testing of Mobile-Phone-Detectors

Students use mobile-phones to store lecture-materials, e-books, tutorials, videos, communicate with their classmates and browse the internet for exceedingly-different-intentions. These projected-advantages, however, would have potential-undesirable-effects if mobile-phones are utilized in restricted-premises, such as exam-venues. Noncompliant- students (to general University exam-regulations) do use mobile-phones to cheat in exams. The rapid-explosion of cell-phones at the beginning of the 21st Century eventually raised problems, such as their potential-use to invade privacy or contribute to widespread academic-cheating. In this paper, two  systems, that will be used, independently, to detect mobile-phones in the exam-venues, were proposed: a mobile-detector with a range of 1.0m, using resistor-capacitor-circuit, which can detect both the incoming and outgoing-calls, as well as video-transmission and text messages, even if a mobile-phone is kept at the silent mode; and a Reed-switch-circuit-scanner, which, responds to an applied-magnetic-field and, can be used to detect mobile-phones that are switched-off or put on flight-mode, and thus, it can be used to scan students (without physical-inspection) on their entering examination-rooms. Overall, the results of this-concise-study are rather-positive, providing a good-starting-point for advanced investigations and improvements of the same. Several future-research-areas were also proposed by the study. Keywords: mobile, phone, students, detector, cheating

Emc aerospace systems analysis Interim scientific report

Analysis and data requirements for solving potential aerospace electromagnetic compatibility problem