John V. Atanasoff, co-inventor of the first digital computer, is not the only Iowa State professor who received recognition this year. Recently many ISU professors received patents for their inventions.

Doug Jacobson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, developed and patented software that increases Internet security.

Jacobson said the software began as a research project three years ago.

“It’s a device you connect to the Internet or to a network,” Jacobson said.

He said it protects computers in a lab or business.

For example, he said two computers, one in New York and the other in Los Angeles, can communicate, and their messages back and forth will be encrypted.

Jacobson’s Internet security software has a device that can be attached to the computers. The hardware is scalable to accommodate more computers to a network. There are no changes to the client’s computer with its usage.

The patent covers the software only, which was written in assembler programming languages.

The hardware is standard. Jacobson said a commercial company that developed the hardware is working on integrating the software and hardware together.

He said the next step is to license out the software to a company.

Other professors who are patenting products are Karl Gschneider, Jr., an Anson Marston professor of materials science and engineering, and associate scientist, Vitalij Pecharsky. Both received a patent for developing an erbium-based magnetic refrigerant that will increase the efficiency of crycoolers.

Through research, which Gschneidner said took less than a year, Gschneidner and Pecharsky developed a refrigerant that works much better than a erbium3nickel compound developed by the Japanese. The erbium3nickel compound used to cool to about 10 degrees Kelvin.

Gschneidner said in present crycoolers, combinations of lead and erbium3nickel alloys are used to cool to 4K.

“The new magnetic refrigerant erbium3nickel2tin fills a gap between 10 and 20 degrees Kelvin,” Gschneidner said. “Our material enhances the cooling power in that range by as much as 30 percent.”

Gschneidner said the magnetic refrigerant will have practical use to commercial vendors of crycoolers and to research groups who want to keep materials at liquid helium temperatures.

Robert Brown, professor of mechanical and chemical engineering, patented a reliable, fast and easy-to-use technology that measures the amount of carbon present in ash by-product of coal-burning power plants.

The Carbon ‘n Ash Monitor, as Brown referred to it, is an apparatus that measures that amount of carbon in an ash sample.

The apparatus stemmed from a project used to teach graduate students how to measure the amount of carbon from an ash sample.

“It went through several modifications,” Brown said.

Brown explained that ash has practical uses in the manufacturing of concrete. But he said too much carbon in ash affects it chemically to where it is not as useful.

“When you burn coal, ash is what’s left over,” Brown said. “There is carbon in it.”

With so much ash produced as a waste product, practical applications were found in producing concrete.

A sample is put in the device and a computer analyzes the data. Brown said an outside commercial company will build an instrument.

Brown said he saw the device being useful to power and concrete production companies.