Lasing spaser in two-dimensional plasmonic crystals

Raman spectroscopy is an analytical technique with vast applications in the homeland security and defense arenas. The Raman effect is defined by the inelastic interaction of the incident laser with the analyte molecule’s vibrational modes, which can be exploited to detect and identify chemicals in various environments and for the detection of hazards in the field, at checkpoints, or in a forensic laboratory with no contact with the substance. A major source of error that overwhelms the Raman signal is fluorescence caused by the background and the sample matrix. Novel methods are being developed to enhance the Raman signal’s sensitivity and to reduce the effects of fluorescence by altering how the hazard material interacts with its environment and the incident laser. Basic Raman techniques applicable to homeland security applications include conventional (off-resonance) Raman spectroscopy, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), resonance Raman spectroscopy, and spatially or temporally offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS and TORS). Additional emerging Raman techniques, including remote Raman detection, Raman imaging, and Heterodyne imaging, are being developed to further enhance the Raman signal, mitigate fluorescence effects, and monitor hazards at a distance for use in homeland security and defense applications.

As the extent of the shortage becomes clear, an interagency task force is giving scientific users priority, but some say the material is not available at any price.

Contributors

This paper describes a new patent-pending digital-ultrasonic sensor network technology, which provides a “security protection sphere” around the authorized user(s) and the infrastructure system or system(s) to achieve C3I in Homeland Security and Law Enforcement Applications. If the system device, such as a firearm, a secure computer, PDA, or vehicle is misplaced, stolen or removed from the security protective sphere, an alarm is activated. A digital-ultrasonic sensor/tag utilizes the system’s physical structure to form a 2 to 20 Meter programmable protection sphere around the device and the authorized user. In addition, the system allows only authorized users to utilize the system, thereby creating personalized weapons, secure vehicle access or secure computer hardware. If an unauthorized individual accesses the system device, the system becomes inoperative and an alarm is activated. As the command and control, the authorized individual is provided a secure wristwatch/PDA. Access control is provided by touch and is controlled through the wristwatch/PDA/smartcard with a unique digital-ultrasonic coding and matching protocol that provides a very high level of security for each wireless sensor.

Applications of micro total analysis systems (μTAS) span basic-science research, clinical medicine, and field work. Assay devices designed for these applications offer improvements to existing methods or provide fundamentally new strategies. Both mature methods and novel techniques have benefited from the increased throughput, integration and miniaturization afforded by μTAS. Traditional assays such Western blots and binding assays are recapitulated in a μTAS format but with reduced reagent usage, decreased performance times and added capabilities. An increasingly vibrant area is the performance of drug screening and toxicology assays on-chip, enabling the efficient screening of very large numbers of molecules. Similarly, recent μTAS reactors demonstrate greater chemical synthetic yields and novel product synthesis compared to macro-systems, often as a result of accurate control over reaction conditions including precision reagent dispensing. These exciting systems are now enabling on-site production of short-lived radioactive compounds for medical applications. The greatest impact of μTAS may very well be the ability to perform massively parallel laboratory experiments, for example, the use millions of reaction vessels or the analysis of hundreds of thousands of single cells. Another strength of μTAS lies in the creation of multicellular communities, for example, the combination of many cell types into an interacting system to explore intercellular communication. Devices with multiple layers of co-cultured tissues benefit from precise placement of molecules, such as extracellular matrices or growth factors, in both space and time. Similarly, the complexity and variety of organ-on-chip and organism-on-chip technologies continues to escalate rapidly. Impressively, the types of organisms cultured on-chip now range from the simplest bacteria to complex animals such as fish. Automation, reliability, and integration must all increase as a device moves from the specialist environment of a lab to usage by non-expert personnel in the outside world, for example, at a clinical point-of-care or in environmental monitoring. Key innovations in recent months result in devices that operate with minimal external equipment, error-free operation, and unambiguous readouts, all critical for operation by untrained personnel. Lightweight, portable devices are increasingly used to identify chemical and biological toxins in water, air and soil with applications in public health, defense, and homeland security. Perhaps most exciting is the development of μTAS with sufficient robustness for operation in challenging environments, such as the ocean and outer space. A central component of these systems is the ability to withstand the unexpected. These systems push the boundaries of current integration principles and spur rapid growth of new design philosophies. This review focuses on advances in the area of μTAS or “lab-on-a-chip” systems over the time span of May 2011 through September 2012 with a focus on applications in basic research, clinical medicine and field usage. A range of journals with 2011 impact factors from 2.0 to 36.3 were screened to cover publications with highly specialized content as well as those directed at multidisciplinary audiences. These publications included discipline-specific journals such as Analytical Chemistry and Lab on a Chip as well as general scientific publications, e.g. Science and Nature. To identify material beyond the individually examined journals, extensive key word searches in databases such as PubMed, SciFinder, and Web of Science were performed. Recent reviews in the area of μTAS were also examined for appropriate references. Care was taken to identify impactful and exciting work from across the globe. Well over a thousand papers in the three target areas were identified and discussed. Due to space limitations, we were unable to include all papers but instead incorporated those most fitting into the review scheme and those reporting innovations in basic microdevice technology as well as in applications to biological, physical and engineering sciences. We apologize in advance for omitted papers and welcome feedback regarding any oversights on our part.

Multimode high-power laser diodes suffer from inefficient beam focusing, leading to a focal spot 10–100 times greater than the diffraction limit. This inevitably restricts their wider use in ‘direct-diode’ applications in materials processing and biomedical photonics. We report here a ‘super-focusing’ characteristic for laser diodes, where the exploitation of self-interference of modes enables a significant reduction of the focal spot size. This is achieved by employing a conical microlens fabricated on the tip of a multimode optical fibre using 3D laser nano-printing (also known as multi-photon lithography). When refracted by the conical surface, the modes of the fibre-coupled laser beam self-interfere and form an elongated narrow focus, usually referred to as a ‘needle’ beam. The multiphoton lithography technique allows the realisation of almost any optical element on a fibre tip, thus providing the most suitable interface for free-space applications of multimode fibre-delivered laser beams. In addition, we demonstrate the optical trapping of microscopic objects with a super-focused multimode laser diode beam thus rising new opportunities within the applications sector where lab-on-chip configurations can be exploited. Most importantly, the demonstrated super-focusing approach opens up new avenues for the ‘direct-diode’ applications in material processing and 3D printing, where both high power and tight focusing is required.

The incorporation of hyperspectral sensors aboard airborne/satellite platforms is currently producing a nearly continual stream of multidimensional image data, and this high data volume has soon introduced new processing challenges. The price paid for the wealth spatial and spectral information available from hyperspectral sensors is the enormous amounts of data that they generate. Several applications exist, however, where having the desired information calculated quickly enough for practical use is highly desirable. High computing performance of algorithm analysis is particularly important in homeland defense and security applications, in which swift decisions often involve detection of (sub-pixel) military targets (including hostile weaponry, camouflage, concealment, and decoys) or chemical/biological agents. In order to speed-up computational performance of hyperspectral imaging algorithms, this paper develops several fast parallel data processing techniques. Techniques include four classes of algorithms: (1) unsupervised classification, (2) spectral unmixing, and (3) automatic target recognition, and (4) onboard data compression. A massively parallel Beowulf cluster (Thunderhead) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is used to measure parallel performance of the proposed algorithms. In order to explore the viability of developing onboard, real-time hyperspectral data compression algorithms, a Xilinx Virtex-II field programmable gate array (FPGA) is also used in experiments. Our quantitative and comparative assessment of parallel techniques and strategies may help image analysts in selection of parallel hyperspectral algorithms for specific applications.

Rapid standoff spectroscopic characterization of plastic waste using quartz tuning fork

Encryption is the primary solution to provide security to the data, which is travelling on a communication link between any pair of nodes, but Partial encryption is a technique to save computational power, overhead, speed, time and to provide quick security by only encrypting a selected portion of a bit stream. Securing the visual and multimedia data like images requires specific design consideration for use in different applications. The focus of this paper is on selecting the important part of the image that can efficiently achieve by conceptually selecting the part of the image which is further used in its normal mode of operation for encryption. Once encryption is done, the encrypted data is sent along with remaining original part of the message, ensuring its secured transmission and distribution over public networks. This paper proposes a partial image encryption using Single Bit Manipulation technique, convert each byte/character of the message to be encrypted, to its binary equivalent. Now, length of password is considered for bit left shift. i.e., Number of bits to be shifted to left will be decided by the length of password. The issue in traditional cryptosystem in many different areas such as wireless networking, mobile phone services and applications in homeland security is energy consumption for encryption of the large volume visual data. So we are dealing with a partial encryption algorithm of images.

In recent years, Through the Wall Imaging (TWI) has become a topic of research interest due to its promising applications in home-land security situations.In this paper, the basic concept of Stepped-Frequency Continuous Wave (SFCW) for ranging the targets behind the wall is described.Imaging of targets is implemented using the back-projection algorithm.This paper also brings out the received signal model for detection of stationary human being behind the wall using SFCW approach.The detection is based on estimation of heart beat and respiratory motion.Simulation results of human detection through Doppler processing and the 2-D imaging of targets are brought out for illustration.MATLAB software has been used for the development of signal processing modules.

Detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at trace level (parts per billion volume (ppbv) to parts per trillion (pptv)) has become an important research area because of demanding applications in homeland security, environmental monitoring, and noninvasive diagnosis of diseases. The analysis of trace VOCs challenges existing analytical instruments because their concentrations are beyond current instrument limits of detection. In this dissertation, we have investigated an innovative microreactor that is suitable for quantitative analysis of volatile carbonyl compounds in ambient air as well as in human exhaled breath. The approach is based on microreactor chips fabricated from four inch silicon wafers. The chips have thousands of micropillars in the microfluidic channels for uniformly distributing gaseous samples flowing through the microreactors. The surfaces of the micropillars are functionalized with a quaternary ammonium aminooxy salt 2-(aminooxy)-N,N,N-trimethylethanammonium (ATM) iodide for trapping trace ketones and aldehydes by means of oximation reactions. ATM adducts and unreacted ATM are eluted from the microreactor with less than 40µL of methanol and directly analyzed by nanoelectrospray Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) mass spectrometry (MS). Capture efficiencies of above 98% have been achieved for ketones and aldehydes. Carbonyl compounds at levels of 1 ppbv have been detected using the microreactor for capture. Ambient air samples from indoor and outdoor areas were collected using Tedlar bags, and analyzed using the microreactor and FTICR-MS. The analysis of air samples provides the reference for analysis of exhaled breath samples. Finally, exhaled breath samples from patients with untreated lung cancer (LC) patients, patients with benign pulmonary nodules and healthy volunteers (smokers and non-smokers) were collected and analyzed using the same method. The FTICR-MS spectra showed that the exhaled breath samples from LC patients have a unique pattern of VOCs, in comparison with healthy controls and patients with benign pulmonary nodules. 2-Butanone, hydroxy-acetaldehyde, 3-hydroxy-2-butanone, and 4-hydroxy-hexenal (4-HHE) were found to have significant higher concentrations for LC patients. A simple diagnosis method based on four elevated VOCs could easily discriminate lung cancer patients from healthy controls and patients with pulmonary nodules with 90.6% diagnosis sensitivity and 81.3% specificity.

Integrating wavelets with clustering and indexing for effective content-based image retrieval

The boron-coated straw (BCS) neutron detection technology has been proposed as an attractive 3He replacement solution in a series of applications in homeland security, neutron science, and safeguards. In order to improve the neutron detection efficiency of the BCS, while maintaining manufacturability, Proportional Technologies, Inc. is introducing a modified BCS with significant performance benefits. The proposed pie-like shape consists of any desired number of arc segments, and an equal number of septa walls, which are radially oriented, and extending a desired distance towards the center of the geometry. Each septum is essentially a segment of the wall that has been collapsed onto itself, resulting in a rigid surface, coated on both sides. The area coated on the septa is added to the area coated on the arc segments, thus offering a significant benefit in sensitivity. Compared to a round straw of the same diameter, the coated wall area of the proposed shape with 12 septa is 3 times larger, assuming the septa are equal in length to each of the arc segments. We present laboratory measurements with two prototype detectors that demonstrate stable operation, a neutron sensitivity that is nearly 3 times higher than that measured in a simple BCS with no septa walls, and adequate energy resolution to effectively discriminate against gamma rays.

Currently, cylindrical beams with radial or azimuthal polarization are being used successfully for the optical manipulation of micro- and nano-particles as well as in microscopy, lithography, nonlinear optics, materials processing, and telecommunication applications. The creation of these laser beams is carried out using segmented polarizing plates, subwavelength gratings, interference, or light modulators. Here, we demonstrate the conversion of cylindrically polarized laser beams from a radial to an azimuthal polarization, or vice versa, by introducing a higher-order vortex phase singularity. To simultaneously generate several vortex phase singularities of different orders, we utilized a multi-order diffractive optical element. Both the theoretical and the experimental results regarding the radiation transmitted through the diffractive optical element show that increasing the order of the phase singularity leads to more efficient conversation of the polarization from radial to azimuthal. This demonstrates a close connection between the polarization and phase states of electromagnetic beams, which has important implications in many optical experiments.

This chapter presents a review and interpretation of the use of small area neighborhood profiles (geodemographics) in community policing and, by extension, in homeland security applications. We discuss the merits of a local focus in policing, and the data and analytical frameworks that are necessary to support this activity. Next we use case study examples to illustrate how priorities for neighborhood policing may be developed, and suggest that available public sector data may be used to drive improved bespoke classifications of neighborhoods. It is argued that better measures of local social capital and community cohesion may be used to tailor interventions to local circumstances, and to maintain and enhance community stability. We conclude with an overview of some ethical impediments to development of such approaches in homeland security applications.