[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