Free Republic

While WorldTimeServer.com can help you look up accurate times around the world, our visitors have expressed much interest in our help to keep your local computer clock accurate, too. Atomic Clock Synchronization is the best way to make this happen. Windows can do it ... Windows has a built-in "service" that allows your computer to reference an atomic clock server, such as the atomic clock servers operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States. Your current computer time is compared with the current atomic time and an adjustment is made to keep your local...

Presidential Executive Order on Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure | whitehouse.gov https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/05/11/presidential-executive-order-strengthening-cybersecurity-federal The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release May 11, 2017 Presidential Executive Order on Strengthening the Presidential Executive Order on Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure | whitehouse.gov EXECUTIVE ORDER - - - - - - - STRENGTHENING THE CYBERSECURITY OF FEDERAL NETWORKS AND CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to protect American innovation and values, it is hereby ordered...

The FDA is stockpiling military weapons — and it’s not alone AMERICA’S GUN CULTURE has been a subject of intense interest and controversy for years, with concerns frequently raised about shadowy militias, paramilitary extremists, and unstable zealots in possession of alarming quantities of explosives and firearms. Amid the current din over assault weapons and body armor, consider one domestic organization’s fearsome arsenal of military-style equipment. In the space of eight years, the group amassed a stockpile of pistols, shotguns, and semiautomatic rifles, along with ample supplies of ammunition, liquid explosives, gun scopes, and suppressors. In its cache as well are...

Talk about a bad week. Poll numbers tanking, polling shows millennial ladies prefer Bernie, her attempts to connect with minority demographics flopping hard, 13 Hours hits theaters, resurrecting the Benghazi story, and now a second Congressional investigation. This latest investigation centers around the security of Hillary's home-brewed email server used during her tenure as Secretary of State. According to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman: Understanding these companies' roles in providing software and services to maintain former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server is critical to improving government cybersecurity standards. A high profile...

Suspected Meth Lab Explodes In U.S. Government Building Yesterday, Congress requested more information about a July 18 explosion in one of the buildings operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology outside Washington, D.C. There’s reason for Congress to raise an eyebrow; based on evidence collected at the scene, investigators suspect that the room was being used to develop illegal methamphetamines. The explosion occurred in NIST Building 236, far from the majority of the labs, so it didn’t damage any research endeavors. It happened in a room that had been emptied of equipment, as one experiment had recently ended...

The number of atoms in this silicon sphere is known given or taken 20 atoms each 10^9. The atom distance was measured by the X-ray interferometer on the left. Credit: Enrico Massa and Carlo Sasso ================================================================================================ An ongoing international effort to redefine the kilogram by 2018 has been helped by recent efforts from a team researchers from Italy, Japan and Germany to correlate two of the most precise measurements of Avogadro's number and obtain one averaged value that can be used for future calculations. Their results are published this week in the Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data. Avogadro's...

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Most years, the calendar hops straight from Feb. 28 to Mar. 1. But in almost all years whose numerical value is divisible by four, such as 2012, an extra "leap day" gets tacked on the end of the second month. Cue, today's date: Feb. 29. The extra day must be added to every fourth calendar year in order to keep our Gregorian calendar synchronized with actual astronomical measures of the passage of time. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the length of Earth's year — as in the time it takes for the planet to complete...

After watching this NIST video, I feel a lot better about the benefits of having all my personal business tied together through a government-administered national internet ID program. We'll all be able to finally get rid of the frustrating inconvenience of forgetting passwords, and replace it with a totalitarian dictatorship that knows our every move. Sounds like a reasonable deal to me. Besides, when the econazi internationalist police state finally starts getting their gulag program off the ground, I sure wouldn't want the authorities to not know where to find me. And I sure wouldn't worry about the security of...

Timekeeping can be as simple as counting "one Mississippi, two Mississippi . . ." prior to blitzing in backyard football, or tracking the back-and-forth swings of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. In both cases, the trick is counting the intervals of something that occurs repeatedly with as little variation as possible. A pendulum swing, say, or a 'Mississippi' just about equates to a second, the unit of timekeeping that as we know comprises minutes and hours. But even the best mechanical pendulums and quartz crystal-based clocks develop discrepancies. Far better for timekeeping is the natural and exact "vibration" in...

If you've seen an Internet ad for capacitor-type power factor correction devices, you might be led to believe that using one can save you money on your residential electricity bill. However, a team including specialists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have recently explained* why the devices actually provide no savings by discussing the underlying physics. The devices—sometimes referred to as Amp Reduction Units or KVARs**—are touted as good investments because they reduce the amount of current drawn from power lines while simultaneously providing the necessary amount of current to appliances inside the house. Though engineers elsewhere...

If you're watching the complex processes in a living cell, it is easy to miss something important—especially if you are watching changes that take a long time to unfold and require high-spatial-resolution imaging. But new research* makes it possible to scrutinize activities that occur over hours or even days inside cells, potentially solving many of the mysteries associated with molecular-scale events occurring in these tiny living things. A joint research team, working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has discovered a method of using nanoparticles to illuminate...

A 90-page document released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released on September 24 proposes 77 standards for smart grid development. The report also detailed 14 areas that the government agency will prioritize in order to facilitate development. Utilities, regulators, and vendors have been waiting for this release from the NIST. The report details specific standards that utilities and developers will be expected to meet in their smart grid deployment. The institute will continue working on cybersecurity standards which should be released by the end of the year. The NIST began working on a set of standards...

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Standards Set For Energy-conserving LED LightingThese solid-state lights are powered by energy-efficient light emitting diodes and are among the first ones of a new generation expected to cut energy needed for lighting by 50 percent by 2027. (Credit: NIST) ScienceDaily (July 1, 2008) — Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in cooperation with national standards organizations, have taken the lead in developing the first two standards for solid-state lighting in the United States. This new generation lighting technology uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of incandescent filaments or fluorescent tubes to produce illumination that cuts energy consumption...

physicist says multiple factors affect picture quality. If you own a high-definition TV, don't read Edward Kelley's new tipsheet for folks in the market for plasma, LCD and other high-end displays. He doesn't want to ruin your day. Kelley is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Flat Screen Display Laboratory in Boulder. He wrote most of what one in the industry called "a bible" for the industrial testing and certification of flat-panel screens. Kelley's tipsheet opens sternly, with an all-caps warning. "SOME PEOPLE HAVE FOUND THAT THE FOLLOWING MATERIAL HAS REDUCED THEIR ABILITY TO ENJOY THEIR...

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (NIST NCSTAR throughout this document refers to one of the 43 volumes that comprise NIST’s final report on the WTC Towers issued in October 2005. All sections of the report listed in this document are available at http://wtc.nist.gov.) 1. If the World Trade Center (WTC) towers were designed to withstand multiple impacts by Boeing 707 aircraft, why did the impact of individual 767s cause so much damage? As stated in Section 5.3.2 of NIST NCSTAR 1,...

Scientists at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have coaxed six atoms into spinning together in two opposite directions at the same time, a so-called Schrödinger “cat” state that obeys the unusual laws of quantum physics. The ambitious choreography could be useful in applications such as quantum computing and cryptography, as well as ultra-sensitive measurement techniques, all of which rely on exquisite control of nature’s smallest particles. The experiment, which was unusually challenging even for scientists accustomed to crossing the boundary between the macroscopic and quantum worlds, is described in the Dec. 1 issue of Nature.*...

Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster NIST and the World Trade Center The collapse of New York City’s World Trade Center structures following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was the worst building disaster in recorded history, killing some 2,800 people. More than 350 fire and emergency responders were among those killed, the largest loss of life for this group in a single incident.In response to the WTC tragedy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology is conducting a three-part plan: a 24-month building and fire safety investigation to study the factors contributing...

Report: Trade Center Towers May Have Been Structurally Weaker Based on Faulty Wind Tests Michael Weissenstein/Associated Press Jun 18, 2004 NEW YORK (AP) - The World Trade Center's designers may have severely underestimated the forces that wind exerted on the twin towers, leading them to design skyscrapers less able to handle the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal report says. Wind tunnel tests conducted as part of litigation over the buildings' collapse found wind loads 20 to 60 percent higher than those found in tests performed during the towers' design in the 1960s, according to the report released Friday by a...