Lincoln Laboratory Journal

About the Journal

The Lincoln Laboratory Journal showcases some of the Laboratory's most innovative and high-impact work, in fields ranging from air traffic control to bio-agent sensing to parallel computing. The Journal consists of in-depth feature articles written by Laboratory staff members as well as shorter "Lab Notes" written by the Journal's editors.

Lincoln Laboratory Journal Archives ›

Lab Notes ›

Volume 17, Number 1 - 2007 ›

Chemical and Biological Defense

Meeting the Chem–Bio Defense Challenge (pdf) ›
Work on countermeasures to biological and chemical weapons began in the mid-1990s, driven by the belief that technology could minimize or even totally negate the effects of these weapons.
By Darryl Greenwood

Advanced Trigger Development (pdf)  ›
The deadliest form of a biological attack is aerosolized agents inhaled by a human. Real-time, single-particle, optically based detectors serve as first responders to such attacks.
By Thomas H. Jeys, William D. Herzog, John D. Hybl, Richard N. Czerwinski, and Antonio Sanchez

Rapid Sensors for Biological-Agent Identification (pdf)  ›
The CANARY system, based on genetically engineered white-blood cells and inexpensive sensor hardware, provides the best known combination of speed and sensitivity for identifying pathogens and toxins.
By Martha S. Petrovick, James D. Harper, Frances E. Nargi, Eric D. Schwoebel, Mark C. Hennessy, Todd H. Rider, and Mark A. Hollis

Early Warning Chemical Sensing (pdf)  ›
Standoff chemical sensors provide advance warning of an attack. Lincoln Laboratory has developed sensor concepts optimized for wide-area chemical surveillance as well as for inexpensive fixed-site protection.
By Juliette A. Seeley and Jonathan M. Richardson

Health Surveillance and Diagnosis for Mitigating a Bioterror Attack (pdf)  ›
Two approaches offer great potential for alerting public health officials to a bio-attack quickly so that they can begin to make treatment available: syndromic surveillance and location-based monitoring through cell phones.
By Adam Szpiro, Bernadette Johnson, and David Buckeridge

Modeling Responses to Anthrax and Smallpox Attacks (pdf)  ›
If safeguards against a biological attack fail, the paramount task will be to treat those who have been infected with biological agents. Models of anthrax and smallpox outbreaks show that speed of response would be crucial.
By Diane C. Jamrog, Michael P. Shatz, and Cassandra Smith

Protecting Buildings against Airborne Contamination (pdf)  ›
Determining the most appropriate system to safeguard facilities from a chemical or biological attack is a daunting systems engineering problem. Fortunately, buildings offer many options for contaminant mitigation and exposure reduction.
By Daniel Cousins and Steven D. Campbell

Information Fusion and Response Guidance (pdf)  ›
Assessment of chemical and biological threats requires a reliance on uncertain and disparate information sources. Sound decision making requires fusion of information sources.
By Timothy J. Dasey and Jerome J. Braun

Recovery of Organisms and Nucleic Acids from Complex Samples (pdf)  ›
Fast, easy techniques for sample preparation are essential for identifying the presence of a biological agent in the field. A suite of innovative devices requires little or no power, is lightweight and fieldable, and the sample preparation can be carried out by personnel with little or no technical background.
By Lalitha Parameswaran, Laura Bortolin, Catherine Cabrera, and Christina Rudzinski

Addressing the Multicore Trend with Automatic Parallelization (pdf)  ›
Parallel programming offers huge computational potential. But for the technique to become mainstream will require algorithms that automatically break down tasks into pieces that can be done in parallel rather than sequentially.
By Nadya Bliss

Lab Notes

  • Pump on a Chip › A microfluidic lab-on-a-chip moves tiny volumes of fluids around on a silicon chip without the use of external pumps and valves.
  • Small Packages › A new way to squeeze compound semiconductors onto silicon chips promises smaller, more efficient microelectronics.
  • Power to Go › Integrating a thermovoltaic device with a butane-fueled combustor yields an efficient source of portable power to challenge batteries.
  • A Little Light Work › Getting silicon to respond to light could usher in a new era of integrated optical devices.
  • No More Babel? › An algorithm that accounts for parts of speech lowers a key barrier to real-time language translation.
  • Detector Avoids Speed Traps › Photodiodes sensitive around 1.9 micrometers could sense biological and chemical agents.
  • Shadowy Work › Arrays of telescopes figure out what satellites are doing by looking at their silhouettes.

Looking Back

  • Saving a Satellite › Forty years ago, a Lincoln Laboratory team spent agonizing hours waiting for a pioneering UHF communications satellite to wake up.

 

 

 

 

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