PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

NIST goes the distance for the Olympics

2012-06-29
(Press-News.org) In yet another Olympian feat of measurement, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently calibrated a tape that will be used to measure out the distance of this summer's Olympic marathon—a distance of 26 miles 385 yards—to 1 part in 1,000.

Measurement is a vital aspect of the Olympic Games. Officials measure the height of jumps, the speed of races, and the mass of weights to determine who wins a medal and who goes home. The marathon is no different. Because of the difficulties in measuring out the distance, the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) only recognized best times and didn't begin awarding world records for marathons until 2004 when a method using a device called a Jones Counter was officially recognized as sufficiently accurate.

Developed by a father-son duo in the early 1970s,* the Jones Counter is a simple geared device that counts the revolutions of a bicycle wheel. To calibrate the device, course measurers lay out a calibrated measuring tape at least 30 meters in length. Once they have determined the number of revolutions that equal that distance—and a couple of successively longer distances—they follow painstaking procedures for laying out the rest of the course. The measurements, which can take hours to complete, will ensure that the shortest distance a runner will run will be at least the required distance and no more than about 40 meters over, corresponding to an error of about 1 part in 1,000.

Chris Blackburn, a physical science technician with NIST's Semiconductor and Dimensional Metrology Division, says this calibration wasn't terribly difficult, but it was a little unusual because the tape that the course measurer wanted calibrated was 100 meters long, 40 meters longer than the NIST "tape tunnel," so they had to do the calibration in sections.

"The uncertainties associated with our laser interferometer system are very small," says Blackburn. "And by applying the proper tension on the tape to pull it straight and keeping the temperature at 20 °C, plus or minus 15 hundreths of a degree, we achieve uncertainties of 0.00018 meters, which meets or exceeds our customers' requirements in most cases."

Blackburn's group performs about 40 calibrations annually, mostly for the petroleum and measuring tape manufacturing industry. While the effort that goes into each calibration varies depending on several factors, including tape construction and tape length, most can be completed in a few hours.

The IAAF chose David Katz of Finish Line Road Race Technicians, Inc., and his friend and collaborator Hugh Jones to help perform the measurements, and Katz in turn contacted NIST to perform the calibration of the tape that they used to calibrate their Jones Counters. After making the temperature corrections and compensations for the error that NIST found in the tape (13 mm over 100 meters), Katz and Jones found that their measurements of the marathon course disagreed by 1.3 to 2 meters over the entire distance.

"I was thrilled with the result," says Katz. "This level of agreement, with a difference of about 2 centimeters per mile, is pretty remarkable. This measurement was my gold medal."

This is not the first time that NIST has been asked to help out with Olympic-sized measurement problems. For instance, in 2002, NIST worked with Winter Olympics officials to calibrate and test the photoelectric timers used in bobsled and luge races, showing that they were accurate to within less than half a millisecond.**



INFORMATION:

Get Olympics fast facts and other measurements related to sports on the NIST website at www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/olympic-facts.cfm.

* www.jonescounter.com/2.html
** See NIST Tech Beat for Jan. 2, 2002, at www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2002_0102.htm#Time



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Not-so-precious: Stripping gold from AFM probes allows better measurement of picoscale forces

2012-06-29
Gold is not necessarily precious—at least not as a coating on atomic force microscope (AFM) probes. JILA researchers found that removing an AFM probe's gold coating—until now considered helpful—greatly improved force measurements performed in a liquid, the medium favored for biophysical studies such as stretching DNA or unfolding proteins. As described in Nano Letters,* stripping the gold from the diving-board-shaped probe, or cantilever, with a brief chemical bath improved the precision and stability of force measurements about 10-fold. The advance is expected to quickly ...

Report shows overspending on cultural institutions in boom years

2012-06-29
Civic leaders, arts organizations, donors and government officials can better plan new or expanded arts facilities by first focusing on the arts organizations' missions and assessing demand for the projects, according to a new study from the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago. The study, "Set in Stone," looks at a major building boom of museums, performing arts centers and theaters in the United States from 1994 to 2008. It is the first scientifically prepared study of its kind and was requested both by cultural leaders and major foundations that had, ...

'Recruitment by genotype' for genetic research poses ethical challenges, study finds

2012-06-29
(Garrison, NY) A potentially powerful strategy for studying the significance of human genetic variants is to recruit people identified by previous genetic research as having particular variants. But that strategy poses ethical challenges to informed consent, as well as potential risks to the people recruited, and it is unlikely that there is a "one-size-fits-all" solution, concludes an article in IRB: Ethics & Human Research. The advantage of "recruitment by genotype" is that it eliminates the time-consuming, expensive process of screening new populations to find subjects ...

Earth's oldest known impact crater found in Greenland

2012-06-29
A 100 kilometre-wide crater has been found in Greenland, the result of a massive asteroid or comet impact a billion years before any other known collision on Earth. The spectacular craters on the Moon formed from impacts with asteroids and comets between 3 and 4 billion years ago. The early Earth, with its far greater gravitational mass, must have experienced even more collisions at this time – but the evidence has been eroded away or covered by younger rocks. The previously oldest known crater on Earth formed 2 billion years ago and the chances of finding an even older ...

Human model of Huntington's disease created from skin's stem cells

2012-06-29
Irvine, Calif., June 28, 2012 — An international consortium of Huntington's disease experts, including several from the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at UC Irvine, has generated a human model of the deadly inherited disorder directly from the skin cells of affected patients. The re-created neurons, which live in a petri dish, will help researchers better understand what disables and kills brain cells in people with HD and let them gauge the effects of potential drug therapies on cells that are otherwise locked deep in the brain. UCI scientists were part ...

Study provides first evidence of coevolution between invasive, native species

2012-06-29
Athens, Ga. – Invasive species such as kudzu, privet and garlic mustard can devastate ecosystems, and, until now, scientists had little reason to believe that native plants could mount a successful defense. A new University of Georgia study shows that some native clearweed plants have evolved resistance to invasive garlic mustard plants—and that the invasive plants appear to be waging a counterattack. The study, published in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is thought to provide the first evidence of coevolution between ...

Milky Way struck 100 million years ago, still rings like a bell

2012-06-29
An international team of astronomers have discovered evidence that our Milky Way had an encounter with a small galaxy or massive dark matter structure perhaps as recently as 100 million years ago, and as a result of that encounter it is still ringing like a bell. The discovery is based on observations of 300,000 nearby Milky Way stars by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Stars in the disk of the Milky Way move up and down at a speed of about 20-30 kilometers per second while orbiting the center of the galaxy at a brisk 220 kilometers per second. The positions and motions ...

Researchers discover potential explanation for why a diet high in DHA improves memory

2012-06-29
We've all heard that eating fish is good for our brains and memory. But what is it about DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish, that makes our memory sharper? Medical researchers at the University of Alberta discovered a possible explanation and just published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. Principal investigator Yves Sauve and his team discovered lab models fed a high-DHA diet had 30 per cent higher levels of DHA in the memory section of the brain, known as the hippocampus, when compared to animal models ...

Forty's a crowd

2012-06-29
KANSAS CITY, MO—Molecular geneticists call big boss proteins that switch on broad developmental or metabolic programs "master regulators," as in master regulators of muscle development or fat metabolism. One such factor, the Activating Transcription Factor 6α (ATF6α) protein, takes charge following a cellular crisis known as endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, which is triggered by the accumulation of misfolded and aggregated proteins. Molecularly, the ER stress pathway is always poised for action. Inactive ATF6α is normally embedded in cellular membranes, ...

Study offers new insights into the effects of stress on pregnancy

2012-06-29
Expectant mothers who dealt with the strain of a hurricane or major tropical storm passing nearby during their pregnancy had children who were at elevated risk for abnormal health conditions at birth, according to a study led by a Princeton University researcher that offers new insights into the effects of stress on pregnancy. The study used birth records from Texas and meteorological information to identify children born in the state between 1996 and 2008 whose mothers were in the path of a major tropical storm or hurricane during pregnancy. The children's health at ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

A map for single-atom catalysts

What about tritiated water release from Fukushima? Ocean model simulations provide an objective scientific knowledge on the long-term tritium distribution

Growing crisis of communicable disease in Canada in tandem with US cuts

Women get better at managing their anger as they age

Illegal shark product trade evident in Australia and New Zealand

New search tool brings 21% better accuracy for robotics developers

New model extracts sentence-level proof to verify events, boosting fact-checking accuracy for journalists, legal teams, and policymakers

Efficient carbon integration of CO₂ in propane aromatization over acidic zeolites

FPGA-accelerated AI for demultiplexing multimode fiber towards next-generation communications

Vitamin D3 nanoemulsion significantly improves core symptoms in children with autism: A clinical trial

Microfluidic point-of-care device accurately measures bilirubin in blood serum: A pilot study

Amygdalin shows strong binding and stabilizing effects on HER2 receptor: A computational study for breast cancer therapy

Bond behavior of FRP bars in concrete under reversed cyclic loading: an experimental study

Milky Way-like galaxy M83 consumes high-speed clouds

Study: What we learned from record-breaking 2021 heat wave and what we can expect in the future

Transforming treatment outcomes for people with OCD

Damage from smoke and respiratory viruses mitigated in mice via a common signaling pathway

New software tool could help better understand childhood cancer

Healthy lifestyle linked to lower diverticulitis risk, irrespective of genetic susceptibility

Women 65+ still at heightened risk of cervical cancer caused by HPV

‘Inflammatory’ diet during pregnancy may raise child’s diabetes type 1 risk

Effective therapies needed to halt rise in eco-anxiety, says psychology professor

Nature-friendly farming boosts biodiversity and yields but may require new subsidies

Against the odds: Endometriosis linked to four times higher pregnancy rates than other causes of infertility, new study reveals

Microplastics discovered in human reproductive fluids, new study reveals

Family ties and firm performance: How cousin marriage traditions shape informal businesses in Africa

Novel flu vaccine adjuvant improves protection against influenza viruses, study finds

Manipulation of light at the nanoscale helps advance biosensing

New mechanism discovered in ovarian cancer peritoneal metastasis: YWHAB restriction drives stemness and chemoresistance

New study links blood metabolites and immune cells to increased risk of urolithiasis

[Press-News.org] NIST goes the distance for the Olympics