Managing officer morale in 2012.

The stresses inherent in a hospital environment which impact on security may result in officers who do not see or feel positive results from the hard work they provide and, in experiencing low morale, can affect the performance of their peers, according to the author. In this article he describes what the healthcare security director can do to maintain high morale and, in doing so, retain the key members of his or her team.

Reflective Optical Chopper Used in NIST High-Power Laser Measurements.

For the past ten years, NIST has used high-reflectivity, optical choppers as beamsplitters and attenuators when calibrating the absolute responsivity and response linearity of detectors used with high-power CW lasers. The chopper-based technique has several advantages over the use of wedge-shaped transparent materials (usually crystals) often used as beam splitters in this type of measurement system. We describe the design, operation and calibration of these choppers. A comparison between choppers and transparent wedge beampslitters is also discussed.

Comparison Between NIST and AF Laser Energy Standards Using High Power Lasers.

We report the results of a high-energy laser calorimeter comparison conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, Colorado and the U.S. Air Force Primary Standards laboratory (AFPSL), Heath, Ohio. A laser power meter, used as a transfer standard, was calibrated at each laboratory, sequentially, and the measurement results were compared. These measurements were performed at a nominal power of 800 W and a wavelength of 10.6 µm using CO2 lasers. Excellent measurement agreement (1.02 %) was demonstrated, which was well within each of the expanded uncertainties from the two laboratories involved in this comparison.

Nonlinearity Measurements of High-Power Laser Detectors at NIST.

We briefly explain the fundamentals of detector nonlinearity applicable to both electrical and optical nonlinearity measurements. We specifically discuss the attenuation method for optical nonlinearity measurement that the NIST system is based upon, and we review the possible sources of nonlinearity inherent to thermal detectors used with high-power lasers. We also describe, in detail, the NIST nonlinearity measurement system, in which detector responsivity can be measured at wavelengths of 1.06 µm and 10.6 µm, over a power range from 1 W to 1000 W. We present the data processing method used and show measurement results depicting both positive and negative nonlinear behavior. The expanded uncertainty of a typical NIST high-power laser detector calibration including nonlinearity characterization is about 1.3 %.