Interference-free radio

Cambridge Consultants has developed InCognito, a novel ‘spectral sensing’ cognitive radio technology that will allow any radio product to transmit without interference over the so-called ‘whitespace’ frequencies recently vacated by the US digital TV switchover.

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Hot Spot Hot Rod: The Internet Invades the Automobile

A group of companies led by Alcatel-Lucent demonstrate the power of next-generation wireless broadband technologies by rolling out a Prius with 4G connectivity.

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Carbon Nanotube Sponge Could Suck Up Oil Spills

A new carbon sponge can soak up 180 times its own weight in organic matter .

Chinese scientists have created carbon nanotube sponges that don't absorb water, leaving them plenty of room for absorbing oil or other icky organic goo.

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Invisibility cloak is created--virtually

Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Karlsruhe, Germany) have created a new visualization tool that can render a room containing such an object, showing the visual effects of such a cloaking mechanism and its imperfections.

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Microsoft, IBM Prime for RFID`s Next Wave

The hype around RFID solutions peaked around 2004 but has not come close to meeting lofty expectations -- much to the dismay of some invested solution providers. But IBM and Microsoft see a revival in the works, and are banking that a newly positioned RFID will finally make headway.

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Bose-Einstein Condensates of Strontium Atoms Created for the First Time

Two independent teams have, for the first time, created Bose-Einstein condensates of strontium atoms. The ability to cool strontium to very low temperatures and control its motion could lead to increasingly precise clocks and may advance our progress toward quantum computers and novel experiments in ultracold chemistry.

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Boeing completes 787 wing fix install

Boeing today confirmed that installation of reinforcements within the side-of-body section on the 787 is complete.

The modification entails installing new fittings at 34 stringer locations within the join where the wing attaches to the fuselage.

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Nanotech in Space: Rensselaer Experiment To Weather the Trials of Orbit

Space Shuttle Atlantis will next week carry a new Rensselaer nanomaterials experiment to the International Space Station. Samples of novel nanocomposite materials, seen in the photo, will be mounted to the hull of the space station, and tested to see how they weather the perils of space.

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Samsung Launches Open Mobile Platform: Samsung Bada

Samsung Electronics today announced it will launch its own open mobile platform, Samsung Bada [bada] in December. This new addition to Samsung’s mobile ecosystem enables developers to create applications for thousands of new Samsung mobile phones, and consumers to enjoy a fun and diverse mobile experience.

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Setting Sail Into Space, Propelled by Sunshine

About a year from now, if all goes well, a box about the size of a loaf of bread will pop out of a rocket some 500 miles above the Earth. There in the vacuum it will unfurl four triangular sails as shiny as moonlight and only barely more substantial. Then it will slowly rise on a sunbeam and move across the stars.

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Smart Grid Companies Give WiMAX Smart Meters a Boost

General Electric (GE) and Grid Net will deploy the world's first smart meter that runs over a 4G broadband network (WiMAX) for SP AusNet, one of Australia's largest publicly-held electricity and gas providers. GE and Grid Net will deploy 700,000 of the meters for the utility, which is its first customer for the Smart Grid technology.

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Google's SPDY protocol could ramp up Web speeds

For almost forever, HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) has been the standard that allows Web servers and computer browsers to understand each other, transforming the bits and bytes served up from a Web publisher into a Web page in your browser. But Google announced Thursday that it's working on project called SPDY (pronounced, of course, "speedy") that it feels could make everything faster than HTTP currently allows.

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Seeing Stars, Proba-2 Platform Passes its 1st Health Check

Into its second week in orbit, Proba-2's spacecraft platform has proven to be in excellent health. This leaves the way clear for commissioning the many new technology payloads aboard the mini-satellite, among the smallest ever flown by ESA.

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Boeing Receives Study Contract for Submarine-Tracking UAS

The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] on Sept. 28 received a $275,000 contract from the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) for a study of the magnetic noise associated with the heavy-fuel propulsion system on Boeing's MagEagle Compressed Carriage (MECC) Unmanned Aerial System (UAS).

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LM's JASSM-ER Missile Maintains Perfect Success Rate with Latest Flight Test

The Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) successfully completed its sixth flight demonstration in a recent test at White Sands Missile Range, NM. The JASSM-ER program is now six for six flight test successes.

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Underwater Glider Hunts, Records Cryptic Whales

The mysterious beaked whale is the target of a new undersea glider trying to track the deep-diving mammals by their high-frequency clicks and squeals.
A Seaglider unmanned underwater vehicle with an underwater microphone began patrolling the coast of Hawaii on October 27 and will finish up its initial mission on November 17. By then, it will have collected half a terabyte of data.

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Real-time 3D modelling

A group of researchers at the Department of Engineering at Cambridge University have created a program that is able to build 3D models of textured objects in real time, using only a standard computer and webcam.

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Luxtera optical transceiver mounts on a computer motherboard

Luxtera (Carlsbad, CA) has launched a single-chip optical transceiver that can be mounted directly on a computer motherboard; the aim is for the 10 Gbit/s per channel device to dip below the one dollar per Gbit/s barrier.

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Robotic Tightrope Walkers for High-Voltage Lines

High-voltage power-line inspection has always been a dangerous job for humans, so a handful of companies are sending in the robots. One such company, the Tokyo-based HiBot, is working with western Japan's Kansai Electric Power Co. to field a new robot next year that can inspect several power cables at once, a first for such daredevil bots.

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Huge $10 billion collider resumes hunt for 'God particle'

Excitement and mysticism are building again around the $10 billion machine as the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) gears up to circulate a high-energy proton beam around the collider's 17-mile tunnel.

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Russian military to get 30 new ICBMs, 3 nuclear subs in 2010

Russia's Armed Forces are to receive 30 new ground and sea-launched ballistic missiles, three nuclear submarines, and an assortment of other weapons, the Russian president said on Thursday.

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OEwaves Contributes To Advanced Missile System Technology RDECOM

OEwaves opto-electronic oscillator (OEO) capability was highlighted in a recent significant event by Army RDECOM: "The Research and Development Engineering Command (RDECOM) Aviation and Missile Research and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) in Huntsville, AL working in collaboration with Lockheed Martin is developing advanced technologies for future missile systems.


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Turn a Cellphone Into a Microscope

An engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.

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A fresh way to take the salt out of seawater

A pair of Canadian engineers have come up with an ingenious way of using the heat of the sun to drive the process. Such heat, in many places that have a shortage of fresh water, is one thing that is in abundant supply.

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Building A Better Lightbulb

The U.S. Department of Energy is offering $10 million to the first individual or company to develop an energy-efficient LED replacement for the standard 60-watt incandescent bulb.

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Race to develop long-range UAV enters second lap

The race to develop an unmanned aircraft that can stay aloft for five years at a stretch has entered its second phase, where the prize is a $155 millionDARPA contract to build a small-scale demonstrator model.

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Army shows more than one way to look under a car

Researchers and scientists at the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (aka TARDEC) have focused on semi-autonomous robotic systems capable of remotely inspecting a vehicle's undercarriage for explosives or roam the line looking for suspicious activity.

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Powering cell phone towers with wind

Helix Wind announced Wednesday that it's beginning a trial run in Southern California to see if its wind turbines might be useful for powering cell phone towers.

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Soccer-Ball-Sized Submersible Robots Will Track Ocean Currents and Disasters at Sea

Hundreds of soccer-ball-sized robot drones could soon ply the friendly waves to help scientists track ocean currents and harmful algae blooms, or even swarm to disaster sites such as oil spills and airplane crashes.

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Pranalytica wins contract to improve quantum cascade laser

The U.S. Army has awarded a Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) contract to Pranalytica, Inc (Santa Monica, CA) aimed at radically improving that company's quantum cascade laser (QCL) performance.

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