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Taking Measure Blog Posts

Information technology

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Displaying 51 - 75 of 111
female face against a black background littered with bits of computer code. The woman is wearing a hat and sunglasses. There is a string of code coming from her mouth that looks like a cigarette.

Cybercrime: It’s Worse Than We Thought

June 24, 2020
Douglas S. Thomas
The cyber world is relatively new, and unlike other types of assets, cyber assets are potentially accessible to criminals in far-off locations. This distance provides the criminal with significant protections from getting caught; thus, the risks are low, and with cyber assets and activities being in
Andras Vladar in a white gown, hairnet and mask with a scanning electron microscope.

How Can NIST Help: Collaborating at a Distance to Defeat COVID-19

June 9, 2020
Heather Evans
I’ve been working from home since March 13. But even though I’ve been remote, I am still really connected to my colleagues — and have even created some new relationships. How’d that happen? First off, my office — the Program Coordination Office at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
Tytus Mak sitting at his desk and while colleague Arun Moorthy and he look at a computer screen

Shaping the Future of the NIST Mass Spectral Library

June 9, 2020
Tytus Mak
When one thinks of mass spectral libraries — well, let’s be honest here, the very idea of mass spectral libraries will never cross most people’s minds, even most scientists’. But that’s true for most of the seemingly esoteric things that many of us at the National Institute of Standards and
A cartoon robot holding up a pair of cups representing energy wells. An dot with an "e-" on it representing an electron is in the left cup. In the background is a black and white closeup of a electronic chip. Above the cups there are blue colored electric leads.

Ebb and Flow: Creating Quantum Dots Automatically With AI

May 27, 2020
Justyna Zwolak
Even though research on artificial intelligence (AI) goes back to the 1960s , it wasn't until the past decade that AI really became an integral part of our lives. From automatically recognizing faces in our photo library to predicting traffic congestion and finding the fastest routes to our
Donna Dodson

A Life in Public Service: A Q&A With NIST's Donna Dodson

May 6, 2020
After 33 years in public service, NIST Fellow Donna Dodson retired from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on May 8, 2020. Over her career, she has played a critical leadership role in a number of areas related to cybersecurity, including artificial intelligence, the internet
a cartoon robot in a lab moving beakers full of orange liquid

How Robots Could Teach Us to Trust AI

April 16, 2020
Jason Hattrick-Simpers
The influence of artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere in our lives. It helps us pick movies to stream, recommends old friends to reconnect with, and autocompletes our most pressing questions in search engines. Modern AIs are powerful machines, ingesting reams of data and outputting useful
Hae-Jeong Lee speaks into a microphone as a student stands beside her

Women in STEM: Igniting Young Minds, Illuminating the Future

March 16, 2020
Hae-Jeong Lee
I am a research chemist and lab officer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). From November 2019 to February 2020, I worked as an Embassy Science Fellow in the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. The U.S. Department of State’s Office of Science and Technology Cooperation
man with goggles, blue shirt and blue cap adjusts a pipe on top of a gleaming aluminum ultra-high vacuum (UHV) metal deposition chamber

Seeking the Power of Quantum Computing in Silicon

February 14, 2020
Josh Pomeroy
Despite the vast computing speed and power available to us in our palms, our desktops and massive server farms, classical computing is reaching its limits, leaving a surprising number of conceptually simple problems essentially intractable. In general, these tend to be problems that ask, “What is
YouTube like interface on a laptop screen. The text on the screen reads "my videos" and there are several tiles displaying various cat videos below.

Information Retrieval: How NIST Helps You Find That Video Online

January 29, 2020
George Awad
The need for tools to help everyday users access the information they are looking for on the internet is getting more and more urgent due to the massive amount of data generated every day, hour and minute! This information can be in different formats, such as text (e.g., the latest news or answers
graphic showing a cityscape with various icons representing how AI will affect power generation, health, manufacturing, transportation etc.

Trustworthy AI: A Q&A With NIST's Chuck Romine

January 9, 2020
Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to grow the economy and improve our lives, but with these benefits, it also brings new risks that society is grappling with. How can we be sure this new technology is not just innovative and helpful, but also trustworthy, unbiased, and resilient in the face of
graphic showing the number six with a radar dish, a quantum logic clock, arrows representing magnetic spins, a magnifying glass, a baggie of white powder, and a group of cubes in a hexagonal shape

Top 6 NIST News Stories of 2019

November 25, 2019
Mark Esser
Measurement is a subject that touches upon just about everything, from the food we eat and the medicines we take to our investigations of the fundamental phenomena of the universe, so naturally, the news from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is widely varied. That’s what
a graphic with a large 5 surrounded by objects from the post including mysterious museum objects, a blackboard with equations on it, a cellphone, and three vials. Additional text above the 5 reads "2019 Taking Measure."

Top 5 NIST Blog Posts of 2019

November 25, 2019
Mark Esser
It’s December, and that means it’s time for us to reflect on the past year, and what a year it was! This year tens of thousands of people tuned into the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Taking Measure blog to get their metrological fix, and we couldn’t be more pleased. Thank you
image showing personally identifiable information of a woman entered into a 911 database being scrubbed

Differential Privacy: A Q&A With NIST's Mary Theofanos

August 7, 2019
Mary Theofanos
Emergency response generates a lot of data, including people's names, addresses, phone numbers, ages and sex, which is necessary for assessing and addressing the situation. Some of that data may also be useful for treating future emergencies, but right now there's no secure way to disentangle
firefighter holding a phone with an app pulled up on the screen

When Standardized Data Can Help Save Lives

July 26, 2019
Britta Voss
When you email a friend, you don’t have to worry about whether they use Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo or some other email provider. You just enter their email address, write your message and hit send. The reason this works is that there are layers of standardized protocols that all the email clients have
a stylized rendering of the periodic table

The Periodic Table: It's More than Just Chemistry and Physics

May 23, 2019
Ben P. Stein
This is the International Year of the Periodic Table, and while I’ve been (accurately) accused of being a physics fanboy, I’m here to tell you that this famous chart isn’t just about physics, chemistry and the other sciences. It’s also about mathematics and engineering and even nonscientific areas
smoke billows from the open doorway of a burning test storage room

Rescuing Our History from the Ashes

November 1, 2018
Jason Stoughton
What strikes terror in the hearts of museum curators everywhere? Budget cuts, surely. But worse yet, the prospect of precious, irreplaceable relics being damaged or destroyed in a fire. The Sept. 2, 2018, fire at Brazil's National Museum, estimated to have consumed 90 percent of its 20 million