[Federal Register Volume 78, Number 90 (Thursday, May 9, 2013)]
[Notices]
[Pages 27186-27187]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2013-11065]
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
International Trade Administration
Application(s) for Duty-Free Entry of Scientific Instruments
Pursuant to Section 6(c) of the Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Materials Importation Act of 1966 (Pub. L. 89-651, as amended
by Pub. L. 106-36; 80 Stat. 897; 15 CFR part 301), we invite comments
on the question of whether instruments of equivalent scientific value,
for the purposes for which the instruments shown below are intended to
be used, are being manufactured in the United States.
Comments must comply with 15 CFR 301.5(a)(3) and (4) of the
regulations and be postmarked on or before May 29, 2013. Address
written comments to Statutory Import Programs Staff, Room 3720, U.S.
Department of Commerce, Washington, DC 20230. Applications may be
examined between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. at the U.S. Department of
Commerce in Room 3720.
Docket Number: 13-008. Applicant: University of Hawaii at Manoa,
2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 198, Honolulu, HI 96822. Instrument:
Telescope. Manufacturer: Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems,
Belgium. Intended Use: The instrument will be used in conjunction with
the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), to
discover and characterize Earth-approaching objects, both asteroids and
comets that might pose a danger to the Earth, as well as a wide range
of other research areas of astronomy. Critical performance
characteristics include the ability to detect objects much fainter than
has hitherto been possible with sufficient resolution to measure both
the position and brightness level to the required precision, that the
instrument be sufficiently robust and reliable that it can carry out
continuous observations without direct human supervision under both
benign and harsh meteorological observing conditions, and servicing and
maintenance that can be performed as quickly as possible to minimize
system down time. The heat released by the electrical/electronic
components cannot have an impact on the system point spread function
that exceeds a combined total of 0.1 arcseconds. Other key features
that were not proposed by domestic vendors include the use of 36
actuators to control the shape of the telescope's primary mirror,
active cooling of the mechanical structure containing the primary
mirror, design and performance analysis of the structures holding the
telescope secondary mirror in position, the mechanical design and
performance analysis of the telescope ``truss'', active cooling of the
motors that move the telescope, additional performance margin of the
telescope motors to provide additional power and torque in the presence
of high motor loads, and the serviceability of several key telescope
components that traditionally are both prone to failure and hard to get
at, as well as allowing the removal of extremely difficult components.
Justification for Duty-Free Entry: There are no instruments of the same
general category manufactured in the United States. Application
accepted by Commissioner of Customs: March 4, 2013.
Docket Number: 13-009. Applicant: Max Planck Florida Institute for
Neuroscience, 1 Max Planck Way, Jupiter, FL 33458. Instrument: Serial
Block face microtome. Manufacturer: Gatan, United Kingdom. Intended
Use: The instrument will be used to analyze neural circuits employing
principally bioimaging, electrophysiology and genetic approaches to
understand visual perception and the organization of the visual cortex,
synapse physiology and mechanisms of synaptic signaling and
computation, the molecular mechanisms of synaptic function, the
cellular organization of cortical circuit function, and the digital
anatomy of the brain. To precisely identify synaptic contacts between
neurons and distinguish between overlapping processes or actual
synaptic contacts requires high resolution imaging with an Electron
Microscope (EM) including 3D reconstruction of each process and its
surroundings. Furthermore, relatively large volumes of brain should be
imaged to cover the entire region and profile even for a single neuron.
The instrument allows automatic imaging of multiple regions of interest
on the sample and stage montaging for large fields of view, and a
cutting thickness down to 15 nm. Justification for Duty-Free Entry:
There are no instruments of the same general category manufactured in
the United States. Application accepted by Commissioner of Customs:
March 11, 2013.
Docket Number: 13-012. Applicant: New Mexico Institute of Mining
and Technology, 801 Leroy Place, Socorro, NM 87801. Instrument: Delay-
Line (DL) Trolley. Manufacturer: University of Cambridge/Cavendish
Laboratory, United Kingdom. Intended Use: The instrument will be used
to make extremely high-resolution images of a diverse range of
astronomical objects. The images made using the instrument will allow a
variety of astrophysical processes in the target objects to be
investigated, such as protostellar accretion, disk clearing as evidence
for planet formation, jest, outlfows and magnetically channeled
accretion, and the detection of sub-stellar companions. In order to
obtain interference fringes, the path lengths traveled by the light
from celestial objects via the telescopes to the point where
interference takes place must be equalized to a few microns. The extra
path (delay) that must be inserted varies continuously as the Earth
rotates, and depends on the location of the target in the sky. The
instrument is used within the
[[Page 27187]]
Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer to equalize these path
lengths--one trolley for each telescope--by acting as a continuously
movable retro-reflector. For most of the sky to be accessible, a delay
range approximately equal to the longest inter-telescope separation
must be available, requiring an unprecedented monolithic delay line
length of almost 200 m. The need to accommodate 350 m baselines places
a unique combination of requirements on the delay lines and hence the
Delay Line Trolleys that run within them. Justification for Duty-Free
Entry: There are no instruments of the same general category
manufactured in the United States. Application accepted by Commissioner
of Customs: April 3, 2013.
Docket Number: 13-014. Applicant: Max Planck Florida Institute for
Neuroscience, 1 Max Planck Way, Jupiter, FL 33458. Instrument: Two-
Photon Laser Scanning Microscope. Manufacturer: Femtonics Ltd.,
Hungary. Intended Use: The instrument will be used to examine the
connectivity and functional computations performed by individual
neurons in the primary visual cortex of tree shrews, as well as to
study the population mechanisms responsible for rapid development of
direction selectivity in the ferret primary visual cortex. Experiments
will include in vivo two-photon microscopy experiments that examine the
response properties of neurons, two-photon imaging in the dendritic
tree of single neurons to monitor dendiritc inputs and integration as
evoked by visual stimuli, and two-photon imaging in the visual cortex
to monitor how large populations of cells develop into a coherent
circuit that capably detects directional movement in a visual space.
The instrument is unique in that it allows for fast, random-access two-
photon imaging in three dimensions. The experiments depend on this fast
3D scanning to capture sufficient data from the dendrites of a single
neuron or large numbers of cells in a neuronal population. The
instrument's capabilities are achieved through the use of acousto-
optical deflectors in x-, y-, and z- axes and are unmatched by
galvanometric scanning systems that are bounded by inertial
constraints. Justification for Duty-Free Entry: There are no
instruments of the same general category manufactured in the United
States. Application accepted by Commissioner of Customs: March 22,
2013.
Docket Number: 13-015. Applicant: IUP Research Institute, 1179
Grant St., Ste. 1, Indiana, PA 15701. Instrument: IMIC Digital
Microscope. Manufacturer: TILL Photonics Gmbh, Germany. Intended Use:
The instrument will be used to resolve whether changes in intracellular
ion activity are circadian in nature, identify the underlying
mechanisms for stem cell regeneration in damaged tissue, and examine
the regulatory mechanisms for metabolic activity in yeast. The
microscopic imaging will be used to investigate cellular properties of
mice, zebrafish, planaria, yeast, and paramecium, as well as to analyze
the absorption and fluorescence of ceramic optical material.
Intracellular ion movement requires fluorescent confocal and FRET
imaging. The fate-mapping of the stem cells requires fast fluorescent
scanning provided by the instrument. Justification for Duty-Free Entry:
There are no instruments of the same general category manufactured in
the United States. Application accepted by Commissioner of Customs:
March 26, 2013.
Dated: May 3, 2013.
Gregory W. Campbell,
Director of Subsidies Enforcement, Import Administration.
[FR Doc. 2013-11065 Filed 5-8-13; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-DS-P