The High-Tech Valor Glass Vials Used To Deliver The Coronavirus Vaccine

December 28, 2020 by Kristina Panos 70 Comments

As the world waits for COVID-19 vaccines, some pharmaceutical companies stand armed and ready with an exciting improvement: better vials to hold the doses. Vials haven’t changed much in the last 100 years, but in 2011, Corning decided to do something about that. They started developing an alternative glass that is able to resist damage and prevent cracks. It’s called Valor glass, and it’s amazingly strong stuff. Think Gorilla glass for the medical industry.

Traditionally, pharmaceutical vials have been made from borosilicate glass, which is the same laboratory-safe material as Corning’s Pyrex. Borosilicate glass gets its strength from the addition of boron. Although borosilicate glass is pretty tough, it comes with some issues. Any type of glass is only as strong as its flaws, and borosilicate glasses are prone to some particularly strength-limiting flaws. Pharmaceutical glass must stand up to extreme temperatures, from the high heat of the vial-making process to the bitterly cold freeze-drying process and storing temperature required by the fragile viral RNA of some COVID-19 vaccines. Let’s take a look at how Valor glass vials tackle these challenges.

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How The Gates (Almost) Stole Christmas

December 24, 2020 by Al Williams 150 Comments

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house

Blue screens were everywhere; no response from the mouse

Windows, it seems, had decided to die

Because it had updated; we didn’t know why

But Santa had a plan while we were all in bed

He reformatted our server and installed Linux instead

In the morning we rushed in and what did we see?

Programs were running, and most of them free!

There was Chrome and Open Office and emacs for me

Not a penny was going to Mr. Gates’ fee

Now we have no more blue screens, ever, of course

Because Santa turned us on to that sweet open source

The Mouth-Watering World Of NIST Standard Foods

December 23, 2020 by Zoe Skyforest 48 Comments

The National Institute Of Standards and Technology was founded on March 3, 1901 as the National Bureau of Standards, taking on its current moniker in 1988. The organisation is charged by the government with ensuring the uniformity of weights and measures across the United States, and generally helping out industry, academia and other users wherever some kind of overarching standard is required.

One of the primary jobs of NIST is the production and sale of Standard Reference Materials, or SRMs. These cover a huge variety of applications, from steel samples to concrete and geological materials like clay. However, there are also edible SRMS, too. Yes, you can purchase yourself a jar of NIST Standard Peanut Butter, though you might find the price uncompetitive with the varieties at your local supermarket. Let’s dive into why these “standard” foods exist, and see what’s available from the shelves of our favourite national standards institute. Continue reading “The Mouth-Watering World Of NIST Standard Foods” →

World Solar Challenge: How Far In A Solar Car?

December 21, 2020 by Zoe Skyforest 90 Comments

Solar power is a great source of renewable energy, but has always had its limitations. At best, there’s only 1,000 Watts/m² available at the Earth’s surface on a sunny day, and the limited efficiency of solar panels cuts this down further. It’s such a low amount that solar panels on passenger cars have been limited to menial tasks such as battery tending and running low-power ventilation fans.

However, where some might see an impossibility, others see opportunity. The World Solar Challenge is a competition that has aimed to show the true potential of solar powered transport. Now 30 years since its inception, what used to be impossible is in fact achieved by multiple teams in under one tenth of the original time. To keep competitors on their toes, the rules have been evolving over time, always pushing the boundaries of what’s possible simply with sunlight. This isn’t mainstream transportation; this is an engineering challenge. How far can you go in a solar car?

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The First Real Palmtop

December 21, 2020 by Chris Lott 128 Comments

Back before COVID-19, I was walking through the airport towards the gate when suddenly I remembered a document I wanted to read on the flight but had forgotten to bring along. No worry, I paused for a bit on the concourse, reached into my pocket and proceeded to download the document from the Internet. Once comfortably seated on the plane, I relaxed and began reading. Afterwards, I did a little programming in C on a shareware program I was developing.

Today this would be an ordinary if not boring recollection, except for one thing: this happened in the 1990s, and what I pulled out of my pocket was a fully functional MS-DOS computer:

Introducing the HP-200LX, the first real palmtop computer. I used one of these daily up until the mid-2000s, and still have an operational one in my desk drawer. Let’s step back in time and see how this powerful pocket computer began its life. Continue reading “The First Real Palmtop” →

Tech Hidden In Plain Sight: The Ballpoint Pen

December 17, 2020 by Kristina Panos 125 Comments

Would you pay $180 for a new type of writing instrument? Image via The New York Times

On a crisp fall morning in late October 1945, approximately 5,000 shoppers rushed the 32^nd street Gimbel’s department store in New York City like it was Black Friday at Walmart. Things got so out of hand that fifty additional NYPD officers were dispatched to the scene. Everyone was clamoring for the hottest new technology – the ballpoint pen.

This new pen cost $12.50, which is about $180 today. For many people, the improved experience that the ballpoint promised over the fountain pen was well worth the price. You might laugh, but if you’ve ever used a fountain pen, you can understand the need for something more rugged and portable.

Ballpoint pens are everywhere these days, especially cheap ones. They’re so ubiquitous that we don’t have to carry one around or really think about them at all. Unless you’re into pens, you’ve probably never marveled at the sheer abundance of long-lasting, affordable, permanent writing instruments that are around today. Before the ballpoint, pens were a messy nuisance.

A Revolutionary Pen

A ballpoint, up close and personal. Image via Wikipedia

Fountain pens use gravity and capillary action to evenly feed ink from a cartridge or reservoir down into the metal nib. The nib is split in two tines and allows ink to flow forth when pressed against paper. It’s not that fountain pens are that delicate. It’s just that they’re only about one step above dipping a nib or a feather directly into ink.

There’s no denying that fountain pens are classy, but you’re playing with fire if you put one in your pocket. They can be a bit messy on a good day, and the cheap ones are prone to leaking ink. No matter how nice of a fountain pen you have, it has to be refilled fairly frequently, either by drawing ink up from a bottle into the pen’s bladder or inserting a new cartridge. And you’re better off using it as often as possible, since a dormant fountain pen will get clogged with dried ink.

Early ballpoint pens were modeled after fountain pens, aesthetically speaking. They had metal bodies and refillable reservoirs that only needed a top-up every couple of years, compared to once a week or so for fountain pens. Instead of a nib, ballpoints have a tiny ball bearing made of steel, brass, or tungsten carbide. These pens rely on gravity to bathe the ball in ink, which allows it to glide around in the socket like a tiny roll-on deodorant.

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Tracking Satellites: The Nitty Gritty Details

December 16, 2020 by Chris Lott 18 Comments

If you want to listen to satellites, you have to be able to track them as they pass over the sky. When I first started tracking amateur satellites, computing the satellite’s location in the sky was a part of the challenge. Nowadays, that’s trivial. What’s left over are all the extremely important real-world details. Let’s take a look at a typical ham satellite tracking setup and see how it all ties together.

Rotators for Steering

The popularity of robotics, 3D printing, and CNC machines has resulted in a deluge of affordable electric motors and drivers. It’s hard to imagine that an electric motor for rotating an antenna would be anything special, but in fact, antenna rotators are non-trivial engineering designs. Most of the challenges are mechanical, not electrical — the antennas that they drive can be huge, have significant wind loading and rotational inertial, and just downright weigh a lot. A rotator design has to consider bearings, weather exposure, all kinds of loads, not just rotational. And usually a brake is required to keep the antenna pointed in windy conditions.

There’s been a 70-some year history of these mechanisms from back in the 1950s when Cornell Dubilier Electronics, the company you know as a capcacitor manufacturer, began making these rotators for television antennas in the 1950s. I was a little surprised to see that the rotator systems you can buy today are not very different from the ones we used in the 1980s, other than improved electronic controls. Continue reading “Tracking Satellites: The Nitty Gritty Details” →