News Releases

Starshine-2, the third in a programmed series of mirror-covered satellites built with help by students from around the world, will be launched from the Space Shuttle Endeavor on November 29th. Two other similar satellites have already been launched and placed in orbit (Starshine-1 was launched in...

Dreaming of the potential of thermocouple devices? Well, perhaps not… but maybe you should. The October 11th issue of the respected British science journal Nature says there has been a major breakthrough recently in the world of thermoelectric materials.

How to make a robotic arm that is able to flex in an infinite number of ways and order it to do so without disorder and confusion? Get yourself an octopus and study it. That is exactly what researchers funded by the Office of Naval Research are doing. Octopuses are boneless, brainy, and ancient...

When landline communications links are on the fritz and the job is too massive for local cellular communications, the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., stands ready to answer the call. NRL has outfitted Humvees with the capability of immediately providing two-way satellite...

A researcher working under an Office of Naval Research grant is just a couple of months away from completing a prototype detector designed to sound the alarm when airborne microbes such as anthrax are in the air. Dr. Jeanne Small, a biophysicist and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Eastern...

Arlington, VA -- Some 40,000 children from 26 countries around the world are participants in Project Starshine, a series of satellites that will measure the effects of solar storms on the earth's upper atmosphere. Starshine 3, is scheduled to be launched from Kodiak, Alaska on September 21st at 9:00...

In about half a second, the human brain (specifically the superior colliculus) will analyze its current environment, and then decide whether or not one thing or another is worth taking any notice of. Exactly how the brain does this is still somewhat a mystery, but we do know that the more sensory...

Arlington, VA -- Dr. Vernon Simmons, former Senior Scientist, Naval Surface Warfare enter, Carderock Division (NSWCCD) in West Bethesda, Md. and Dr. Yuan-Ning Liu, Chief Research Scientist, NSWCCD, were awarded the Dr. Arthur E. Bisson Prize for Naval Technology Achievement for their leading-edge...

What do pilots, divers and pharmaceutical trial participants have in common with people being screened for Alzheimer's disease or other ailments affecting the brain such as strokes? The answer is NeuroGraph™, a portable device that provides an almost instantaneous reading of brain activity and can...

For hundreds of millions of years, plankton - those tiny drifting sea creatures found throughout the ocean - have been raining unceasingly on the sea floor as individuals die. There they've been deposited as organic (reduced carbon) matter in the sediment. This organic matter is a rich and...