Apr 5 2000
From The Space Library
NASA awarded its Commercial and Government Inventions of the Year awards. Inventors Anne K. St. Clair, Terry L. St. Clair, and William P. Winfree, working as a research team at NASA's Langley Research Center, won the award for inventing a material that they had named Colorless and Low Dielectric Polyimide Thin Film. Commercial manufacturers could apply the thermoplastic material to many types of surfaces to protect against ultraviolet radiation and high temperatures. The researchers also suggested adding the material to liquids, such as paints and cosmetics, to provide ultraviolet protection. Douglas B. Leviton received the Government Inventor of the Year award for his Ultra-High Sensitivity, Incremental, and Absolute Optical Position Encoder. The encoder allowed scientists to calibrate space-bound instruments more accurately than they had done previously. Both awards recognized inventions completed during 1999. NASA honored the recipients at a ceremony, presenting them with plaques and cash awards.
NASA released a comprehensive new study, which found that the levels of ozone in the Arctic stratosphere were declining rapidly. In some parts of the stratosphere, the atmosphere had lost 60 percent of its ozone over the course of one year. The report, compiled by hundreds of European and American scientists, also demonstrated that changes in the global climate (primarily global warming) threatened to delay the recovery of the ozone layer. The scientists were optimistic that the ozone layer would recover eventually, but perhaps not until the mid-21St century. The study had cost NASA more than US$20 million, and the European scientists contributed US$ 10 million. The researchers had gathered data using satellites, airplanes, and hundreds of weather balloons.
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