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Projects/Programs

Displaying 1 - 25 of 32

Assessing the Environmental, Health and Safety Impact of Nanoparticles

Completed
Impact Nanomaterials have already been incorporated into a large range of commercial products including pharmaceuticals, sunscreens, automobile additives, personal care products, detergents and plastics. Although nanotechnology is changing the way we live, the accidental release of nanomaterials

Bioimaging

Completed
Imaging and image analysis are used ubiquitously in biological and biomedical research. One of the great advantages of imaging is its intuitive information content; much can be learned from just a glance at the data. On the other hand, these data generally contain a very large amount of untapped

Biosurveillance and Pathogen Detection

Ongoing
NIST has established partnerships with other federal agencies to develop standards and measurement solutions to support biosurveillance. These efforts are supported in part through interagency agreements with partner agencies listed below to address their standards needs. PROGRAMS Standards for

Cell-based Assay for Mechanistically-based Prediction of Cytoxicity

Completed
Ricin is a type 2 ribosome inactivating protein (RIP) belonging to the A-B family of toxins and is of particular interest because of its potential use as a biological weapon and the dearth of rapid and sensitive assays that could assist detection and decontamination. The ricin toxin inhibits protein

Climate Science

Ongoing
This program encompasses multifaceted efforts to advance the metrology of climate science. Projects include: development of ultra-high accuracy optical standards and technologies to determine greenhouse gases (GHGs) concentrations, atmospheric lifetimes, and aerosol radiative forcing development of

Development of SRM 2669 for Accurate Assessment of Arsenic Exposure

Ongoing
Arsenic exposure in the U.S. population is an important part of the NHANES program conducted by CDC because dietary exposure to arsenic can cause serious health effects. A major challenge in the arsenic exposure assessment is that arsenic exists as various species in nature, and the toxicity of

Development of SRM 955c Toxic Elements in Caprine Blood

Completed
Intended Impact Over the last three decades, NIST, with support from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and in conjunction with the New York State Department of Health’s (NYSDOH) Wadsworth Center, has produced a number of frozen whole blood certified reference materials containing endogenous

Environmental Leaching of Nanoparticles from Consumer Products

Ongoing
New nanotechnology-based consumer products are currently entering the market at a rate of 3 or 4 per week, and it is estimated that $2.6 trillion in manufactured goods will contain nanotechnology by 2014. Unfortunately, the overall safety of short- and long-term exposure to nanoparticles and the

Environmental Metabolomics

Ongoing
The application of metabolomics techniques to environmental systems biology offers a promising opportunity to achieve insights into non-model organism biology. Each biological system manifests distinctive challenges that offer insights into criteria important for rigorous study design and method

Fundamental Interaction Mechanisms of Engineered Nanomaterials with DNA

Completed
Intended impact Nanotechnology research has resulted in the rapid creation of engineered nanomaterials with many foreseeable applications in medical imaging/diagnosis and in drug delivery. However, there is a notable scarcity of both acute and chronic human toxicity data for these new materials

Isotopes as Environmental Tracers in Biological Specimens

Ongoing
Multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS) provides sensitive and precise measurements of stable isotope ratios and can be coupled to a variety sample introduction systems such as laser ablation and gas or liquid chromatography. The versatility and performance of MC-ICP

Measurement Techniques for Membranes and Membrane Proteins

Ongoing
Use of synthetic cell membrane mimics allow simplification and complete control of a complicated system, and incorporation of selected elements under physiological conditions. We are furthering a technology originally developed at NIST using model lipid membranes supported on surfaces for

Microcryocooler for Terahertz Detectors

Ongoing
DARPA has been interested in the development of cooled detector systems (infrared and terahertz) that require less than 1 W of input power (battery operated) and have a total volume less than about 4 cm 3. Such systems could be used for detection of enemy missile launches (infrared), chemical

Nanoparticle Metrology in Complex Cellular Environments

Completed
Nanoparticle interactions with individual cells. Existing techniques to evaluate nanoparticle incorporation include ICP-AES or ICP-MS, which atomize entire samples (thousands of cells) and detect nanoparticles by quantifying the elemental composition. Bulk techniques provide general trends averaged

Nanotube Metrology

Completed
Single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are a tubular form of carbon consisting of a single shell of sp2 bonded carbon with a nanometer scale diameter that have many predicted properties superior to other available materials. However, every production technique for SWCNTs produces many different

NCNR DAC and CCUS efforts

Ongoing
Objectives To advance US competitiveness in Direct Air Capture (DAC) and Carbon Capture, Usage, and Sequestration (CCUS) Use advanced neutron scattering techniques to understand the adsorption process for the most promising materials for adsorption-based carbon capture and provide avenues to

Organic Contaminants in Human Serum, Milk, and Urine

Ongoing
SRMs have been developed to support quality assurance measurements for contaminants in human fluids. Biomonitoring laboratories will use these SRMs to validate methods and as control materials for specific analyses. We have developed and characterized several human-matrix SRMs for organic

Pacific Marine Mammal Health Assessments (PMMHA)

Ongoing
Pacific Marine Mammal Health Assessments (PMMHA), which began in Fall 2010, are an expansion of NIST marine mammal health assessment collaborations that began in 2002 with bottlenose dolphin wild populations. NIST has a history of involvement in marine mammal health assessment related work

Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)

Ongoing
Perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) constitute a family of compounds that are distinguished by partial or complete fluorination of alkyl hydrocarbons. Dubbed “forever chemicals”, the unique chemistry of PFAS imparts a high level of stability, making the compounds resistant to