(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- It’s been said that the one of the most prestigious qualifications a professional can have is to say that he or she was part of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Board of Examiners. To say you served as a Baldrige examiner and were part of building American competitiveness gives you a sense of pride—and probably even patriotism.

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program is seeking applicants for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Board of Examiners for the 2013 Award cycle.

In yet another step toward the realization of a practical quantum computer, scientists working at Princeton and the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) have shown how a major hurdle in transferring information from one quantum bit, or qubit, to another might be overcome. Their so-called “quantum bus” provides the link that would enable quantum processors to perform complex computations.

Here’s a question for makers of minuscule moving machines—the kind being eyed for nanomanufacturing and assembly as well as other uses: Do you know where your micro- and nanorobots really are? Care to bet?

A team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would likely prevail in such a hypothetical wager. On the basis of its surprising findings in an exacting study of the motions of an experimental microelectromechanical system (MEMS), the team might even offer better-than-even odds.

During a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) unveiled a new laboratory designed to demonstrate that a typical suburban home for a family of four can generate as much energy as it uses in a year.