Tevatron tightens up the race for the Higgs

WITH the Large Hadron Collider still in the repair shop, the race to find the Higgs boson has become a lot tighter, thanks to the older and less powerful - but working - Tevatron collider near Chicago.

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Platinum nanocatalyst could aid drugmakers

Nanoparticles combining platinum and gold act as superefficient catalysts, but chemists have struggled to create them in an industrially useful form. Rice University chemists have answered the call this week with a polymer-coated version of gold-platinum nanorods, the first catalysts of their kind that can be used in the organic solvents favored by chemical and drug manufacturers.

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Work on DOD semiconductor to continue

Raytheon Co. won a $7 million follow-on contract from the Office of Naval Research to continue work on a project to develop a new semiconductor for the Defense Department. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding the project. This is the second phase of the Compound Semiconductor Materials on Silicon program.

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Gravity, Quantum Objects, and Violations of the Equivalence Principle

Electrons in a conductor seem to behave differently under gravitational and inertial accelerations, threatening to tear down one of the cornerstones of modern physics.

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Army’s new plastic helmet tops Kevlar ACH

The Army intends to start issuing a new combat helmet made of a special plastic capable, for the first time, of stopping penetration by enemy rifle rounds.

Officials from Product Manager Soldier Protective Equipment plan to buy 200,000 Enhanced Combat Helmets that depend on “ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene” instead of ballistic fibers such as Kevlar and Twaron used in the current Army Combat Helmet.

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High-end server chips breaking records

How would you like a single-chip microprocessor with more than four times the performance (on some applications) of Intel's bestCore i7?

Then consider that up to 32 of these chips can be directly connected to form a single server, achieving four times the built-in scalability of Intel's next-generation Nehalem-EX processor.

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Sikorsky Begins Whirl Testing Active Rotor System

Sikorsky Aircraft yesterday said it has begun whirl testing a demonstration rotor system with active flaps as part of the company’s “commitment to design, develop, test and ultimately field next-generation technologies that will advance the current state of rotorcraft. Development partners on the project are United Technologies Research Center for the blades and Hamilton Sundstrand Claverham for the flap actuators.

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Raytheon Standard Missile-6 Completes Key Developmental Test

Raytheon Company's (NYSE: RTN) Standard Missile-6 has completed tests which validate the extended-range anti-air warfare missile's airframe and autopilot performance.By performing a series of preprogrammed maneuvers, the SM-6 missile was pushed to the limits of its performance, allowing the U.S. Navy to gather vital simulation validation data.

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World Leaders Thales and Plasan Partner for Next Generation Vehicles Bid

Israeli company Plasan Sasa - the world leader in armour and survivability systems for military vehicles - is partnering with Thales - a global technology leader for the defence market - to develop a new Light Protected Vehicle for the Australian Army and the international market.

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Raytheon's Gallium Nitride Establishes Radar Technology Standard

Raytheon Company's (NYSE: RTN) innovative gallium nitride (GaN) chips have achieved 1,000 hours of reliable operation, positioning this technology as the standard for next generation radar capability.

GaN technology provides increased reliability and efficiency, resulting in lower prime power consumption and relaxed cooling requirements. Thus, GaN T/R modules provide significantly higher long-pulse radio frequency (RF) power than that of standard gallium arsenide (GaAs) T/R modules.

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DARPA Wants Morphing Helicopter Blades

Military lab DARPA has put out a call for rotor blades that could boost payloads by 30 percent and range by 40 percent, as well as reduce sound by 50 percent and vibration by 90 percent compared to the usual fixed rotor blades.

The agency envisions helicopter blades that can morph into different modes for "fuel efficiency" or "high maneuver," as examples. Adaptive technologies could change the diameter, sweep, chord, and tip shape of the blades, as well as other features.

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Aerospace Giant Building a Gravity Tractor to Deflect Killer Asteroids

NASA astronauts Edward Lu and Stanley Love first proposed using a robotic spacecraft to nudge space rocks away from Earth using the gentle force of gravity a few years ago. Now a European aerospace giant has begun seriously investigating the concept.

The 11-ton "gravity tractor" would have to launch 15 years before a predicted collision between an asteroid and Earth, according to the BBC. But the company, EADS Astrium, noted that no spacecraft prototype has emerged just yet.

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Plasmons create smallest laser - again

Earlier this month researchers from Purdue, Cornell and Norfolk State universities reported demonstration of the smallest laser ever --, consisting of a nanoparticle just 44 nm across. Strictly speaking it was a spaser --, or surface plasmon laser. Now it's the turn of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley. This week in an article in Nature the Berkeley researchers claim to have created the smallest semiconductor laser ever. Their new device can generate light in a space just 5 nm in size.

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Hyperspectral imaging gets funding boost

Multispectral imaging technology got a big boost recently when the U.S. House of Representatives approved a funding bill that includes $2.5 million for development of hyperspectral imaging by Headwall Photonics (Fitchburg, MA). The funding is included in the FY10 Department of Defense Appropriations Act, which the House passed on July 30, 2009. The Senate must still approve its appropriations bill and then both chambers will have to approve a reconciled bill before it goes to the president's desk to be signed into law.

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Graphene Makes Transistors Tunable

The existence of an energy gap between the conduction and valence electron bands of a semiconductor is what makes it possible for the material to act as a semiconductor. In both single-layer and double-layer graphene [left and middle], the valence and conduction bands are in effect conical and meet at a point, with no band gap. The introduction of an electric field perpendicular to the layers [right] creates an asymmetry, which generates a band gap. Though small, the gap is tunable, creating possibilities for new devices.

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Computerized Face-Recognition Technology Is Still Easily Foiled by Cosmetic Surgery

Systematic studies have tested face-recognition algorithms in a variety of challenging situations—bad lighting, for example—”but none of those conditions had nearly the effect of plastic surgery,” says Afzel Noore, a computer science and electrical engineering professor at West Virginia University, in Morgantown.

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Computerized Face-Recognition Technology Is Still Easily Foiled by Cosmetic Surgery

Systematic studies have tested face-recognition algorithms in a variety of challenging situations—bad lighting, for example—”but none of those conditions had nearly the effect of plastic surgery,” says Afzel Noore, a computer science and electrical engineering professor at West Virginia University, in Morgantown.

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NASA, FAA Work Focus On NextGen R&D

While users push for more near-term benefits from the U.S. NextGen airspace modernization effort, a research transition team established by the FAA and NASA is trying to ensure longer-term technologies stay on track to deliver the increases in capacity and efficiency required by 2025.

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U.S. Army Defining Modernization Plan

By early October, the U.S. Army will have a new program executive office (PEO) in charge of its Brigade Combat Team Modernization (BCTM), a sweeping effort to restructure its controversial Future Combat Systems (FCS) program.

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Crypto AG Presents the World’s First Gigabit IP VPN Encryption

IP VPN security solutions from Crypto AG have triple-play capabilities(data, voice and video) and are compatible amongst each other. There are models for every user scenario and bandwidth requirement, for example, different rack versions with data throughput capacity of up to 1 Gigabit per second for direct integration into the ICT infrastructure. For smaller offices, there is a desktop version and for more mobile uses there are portable models, such as the Crypto Mobile Client and the MultiCom Radio Encryption platform.

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Flight Test Instrumentation Hardware

Intellibus Flies! L-3 Communications Telemetry East have been contracted by Boeing Integrated Defense Systems to provide hardware for P-8A Poseidon flight test program.

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After the Transistor, a Leap Into the Microcosm

Dr. Ross, an I.B.M. researcher, is growing a crop of mushroom-shaped silicon nanowires that may one day become a basic building block for a new kind of electronics. Nanowires are just one example, although one of the most promising, of a transformation now taking place in the material sciences as researchers push to create the next generation of switching devices smaller, faster and more powerful than today’s transistors.

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Alternative to Europe Shield Sites Developed

The U.S. government has developed possible alternative plans for a missile defense shield that could drop proposed missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, The New York Times reported August 29.

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Piezo Power for Large Cities

Wireless Mesh Networks and the Smart Grid

Bokode

The Space Elevator

Solar Power Tower

The Ray Gun In Action

3D Printing Demo

TCAS

Botnets

The lateral-line system

Fish and some amphibians possess a unique sensory capability in the so-called lateral-line system. It allows them, in effect, to "touch" objects in their surroundings without direct physical contact or to "see" in the dark. Professor Leo van Hermmen and his team in the physics department of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen are exploring the fundamental basis for this sensory system. What they discover might one day, through biomimetic engineering, better equip robots to orient themselves in their environments.

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Rovio – Net-controlled Robot Security Guard

Rovio is compatible Wi-Fi three wheeler robot, moves easily in any direction and distance.

Rovio includes telepresence over Wi-Fi, self charging capabilities, and you can even control it with any internet connection, such as your PC, Mac, iPhone, PDA, or smartphone.

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New alkaline membrane for cheaper fuel cells

A NEW type of fuel cell membrane made from quaternary phosphonium–based polymers could allow for the production of cheaper fuel cells which do not require the use of expensive precious metal catalysts.

Yushan Yan, chemical and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Riverside, and his team developed the alkaline membrane, which contains the polymeric ionomer TPQPOH with a tris(2,4,6-trimethoxyphenyl)phosphonium unit

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5 Metamaterials That Make Matter Invisible, Silent or Blindingly Fast

Step aside, nanotechnology, the buzzword for today’s material scientist is “metamaterials.” These substances are tiny engineered structures from existing composite that are used to manipulate light, sound and radiowaves. Researchers are just starting to find applications for this research and may soon come out with products that can cloak military vehicles, make stronger microscopes and faster computer chips. Here are 5 examples of metamaterials in action.

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Coming Soon: An Unblinking "Gorgon Stare" For Air Force Drones

The next-generation surveillance package for the Air Force's MQ-9 Reaper drones, named for Medusa's stony glare, will provide an unprecedentedly broad view of the battlefield spanning time and space.

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Sharp to Launch Ultramobile Device With Arm Chip

Sharp Electronics this week introduced a netbook-like mobile device with a 5-inch touch screen that is designed to run Internet-based applications.

The PC-Z1 device is as easy to handle as a mobile phone and provides performance similar to PCs, the company said in astatement. It is designed for an audience that relies mostly on the Web for computing.

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Ongoing Botnet Attacks Identified as Team Projects

Three significant waves of SQL injection attacks appear to be under the control of the same source, according to one security researcher.

Roughly 80,000 Web sites in China, 67,000 in the U.S. and 40,000 in India remain compromised and under botnet control as a result of separate and ongoing SQL injection attacks. The highest infection point during the last three months reached into the millions at one point in China.

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Airborne Intelligence Test Bed Completes Maiden Flight

Warfighters will receive critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities sooner, now that the airborne test bed developed by Lockheed Martin has received its Experimental Airworthiness Certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration.

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Active broadband external cloaking

Raytheon JLENS Aerostat

Face Recognition Software

Algae Biofuels

DARPA Falcon hypersonic X-plane - part 2

DARPA Falcon hypersonic X-plane - part 1

RFID - Technology

High-Temperature Superconductivity

Wireless Electricity

Air Force certifies RFID devices for aircraft use

The Air Force has certified Savi Technology's radio frequency identification (RFID) asset tracking and security devices for use aboard all sizes and classifications of fixed- and rotary-winged aircraft that transport supplies for the Defense Department.

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Wireless Electricity Demo

Eric Giler, CEO of MIT-inspired WiTricity, wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. In the following video, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT’s breakthrough version, WiTricity — a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker. With this promising new technology, you may soon never have to plug in ever again!

Video

Scientists detect 'fingerprint' of high-temp superconductivity above transition temperature

A team of U.S. and Japanese scientists has shown for the first time that the spectroscopic "fingerprint" of high-temperature superconductivity remains intact well above the super chilly temperatures at which these materials carry current with no resistance. This confirms that certain conditions necessary for superconductivity exist at the warmer temperatures that would make these materials practical for energy-saving applications — if scientists can figure out how to get the current flowing.

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IBM zooms into molecule for power-efficient chip research

IBM has for the first time taken an image of a molecule's surface, which could lead to the construction of cheaper, more power-efficient chips, the company said Thursday.

The image maps the anatomy of a molecule at an atomic scale, which could help researchers understand and manipulate molecules and atoms in chips.

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How to build a 100,000-port Ethernet switch

University of California at San Diego researchers Tuesday are presenting a paper describing software that they say could make data center networks massively scalable.

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Follow the moon, and save millions

Big companies with data centers around the world could reap millions of dollars in savings if they just “follow the moon” for their electricity needs.

That’s according to a study released this month by researchers at MIT, Akamai and Carnegie Mellon. They looked at the differences in energy costs at different times of the day, and found that companies could save money by exploiting those differences.

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New IBM Software Uses Sensor Data to Trigger Automated Business Processes

IBM (NYSE:IBM) is introducing software that extracts actionable business information from the millions of interconnected sensors that link items in the physical world. Using WebSphere Sensor Events software, massive volumes of sensor data can be gathered and analyzed to provide clients with the business visibility needed to quickly respond to changing market conditions.

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Can Oil Be Recycled?

Changing the oil in a car every 5,000 kilometers or so seems to be the industry standard (and may well be overkill). But that means a whole lot of pouring and draining motor oil into and out of the U.S. auto fleet: 1.3 billion gallons or so, to be precise.

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New "Disappearing" Nanoparticle Ink Keeps Messages Cryptic

The scientists used gold and silver nanoparticles -- just 5 nanometers wide -- embedded in a thin organic gel film to create the disappearing medium. Each nanoparticle is covered in molecules that change shape and attract each other in the presence of ultraviolet light. Using an ultraviolet "pen" or a patterned mask to apply light to the surface causes the molecules struck by UV to cluster and change color, allowing a message or image to be penned on the medium.

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Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

The Department of Energy just gave $100,000 to upstart company Solar Roadways, to develop 12-by-12-foot solar panels, dubbed "Solar Roads," that can be embedded into roads, pumping power into the grid. The panels may also feature LED road warnings and built-in heating elements that could prevent roads from freezing.

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U.S. to Scrap E. Europe Missile Shield Bases

Washington will scrap plans to put anti-missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic and is looking at alternatives including Israel and Turkey, a Polish newspaper reported Aug. 27, citing U.S. officials.

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New LED has high color-rendering index and high efficiency

Seoul Semiconductor (Seoul, Korea) has introduced a white-light LED that not only has a luminous efficiency of 75 lm/W (which the company calls the "world's best"), but has an output that appears close to a natural white light, unlike other high-efficiency white LEDs, which have a bluish-white output unsuitable for many forms of illumination.

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New Study Shows RFID Significantly Improves Item-Level Inventory Accuracy

A new study on the use of radio-frequency identification tags on individual retail items shows that inventory accuracy decreases or diminishes over time with conventional systems that rely on barcodes and/or human counting to track inventory. The research, conducted by the RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas, also demonstrated that the use of an RFID-enabled system could improve inventory accuracy by more than 27 percent over a 13-week period.

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Intel details Becton, 8 cores and all

INTEL HAS TALKED about Becton, now called Nehalem EX, without going into many technical details. At Hot Chips 21, it is starting to talk about the guts of the chip, and it is very different from the EX-free Nehalems.

On the surface, Becton looks like a simple mashing together of two 4-core Nehalems. The specs are 8 cores, 16 threads, 4 DDR3 memory channels, 4 QPI links and 24MB of L3 cache all stuffed into a mere 2.3 billion transistors. If you take a Lynnfield i3/i5/i7, add a little more cache, and weld a second one on, it looks a lot like Becton, but that is where the similarity ends.

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Boeing Resets Clock On 787

Boeing revealed today that it believes it will not be ready for first flight of the long-delayed 787 program until year's end, setting first deliveries back to fourth quarter 2010, which is at least two-and-one-half years beyond the original schedule.

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Ad Hoc Network Seen for CBRN Sensors

Using sensors to create ad hoc battlefield networks is an established, if evolving, way of extending situational awareness. One company applying the concept to the detection of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) materials for soldiers and emergency responders is Smiths Detection of Watford, Hertfordshire, England. Smiths is developing wearable sensors for CBRN that transmit data to soldiers or emergency personnel, distributed ground sensors and vehicles, and a command center.

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Counter-RAM Systems Target Rockets

With the threat from short-range, high-trajectory weapons such as rockets, artillery and mortars (RAM) becoming more lethal in cross-border attacks, the development of counter-RAM technologies has ­accelerated.

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DARPA Plans IED Jamming Demonstration

A surgical jamming system that can stop the enemy from communicating and navigating while minimizing disruption to friendly forces will be demonstrated under a new program launched by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

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No plans for replacing Bulava with Sineva – General Staff

Russia has no plans to replace the Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile with the Sineva missile, said Nikolai Makarov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.

“This is an absolutely different complex. Submarines are made for Bulava launches. In fact, we have to rebuild a submarine to equip it with the Sineva missile. This is a very expensive project,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

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NASA rocket test aborted in Utah

A mechanical failure forced a NASA contractor on Thursday to call off the first test firing of the main part of the space agency’s powerful new moon rocket.

The test wasn’t immediately rescheduled as officials scrambled to learn the root cause of the failure.

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Mutant bacteria + polyester = more biofuel

Brewing a certain type of biofuel with a mutant bacteria and polyester could double the fuel's production, researchers have found.

The biofuel, butanol, is a type of alcohol that is mainly used as a solvent, or in industrial processes that make other chemicals. But researchers think it has potential as a biofuel that could one day replace gasoline.

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Middle East arms buys top $100 billion

Middle Eastern countries are expected to spend more than $100 billion over the next five years, largely because of growing fears about Iran's nuclear program and its perceived ambition to undermine Sunni-led Arab regimes, according to an assessment by a U.S.-based consultancy.

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Azimuth to Research Ways to Protect Sensors from Directed Energy Threats

Azimuth Corp in Dayton, OH received a $50 million contract to conduct hardening and survivability research designed to protect sensors from directed energy threats. The contract is being awarded under the US Air Force’s Hardened Materials Research and Survivability Studies program, which is intended to study materials technologies, interactions, and/or applications to improve the survivability of military systems.

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Long-range Taser reignites safety debate

THE manufacturer of the Taser stun gun is sparking new controversy with the commercial launch of a long-range version that can be fired from a 12-bore shotgun.

Government-funded tests on initial versions of the new Extended Range Electronic Projectile (XREP) have revealed possible health risks to people on the receiving end, New Scientist has learned. The manufacturer, Taser International of Scottsdale, Arizona, says the issue has been addressed in redesigned devices, but these have yet to be independently tested.

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Discovery of natural odors could help develop mosquito repellents

Entomologists at the University of California, Riverside working on fruit flies have discovered a novel class of compounds that could pave the way for developing inexpensive and safe mosquito repellents for combating West Nile virus and other tropical diseases. Carbon dioxide emitted in human breath is the main attractant for the Culex mosquito to find people. The researchers identified odorants present in ripening fruit that prevent carbon dioxide-sensitive neurons in fruit fly antennae from functioning.

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Missile tracking satellites said ready for launch next month

After more than a decade of program difficulties, two demonstration satellites of the Space and Tracking Surveillance System (STSS) will be launched in mid-September, reports Colin Clark in DOD Buzz.

It will be a moment of both excitement and anxiety for employees of Northrop Grumman Corp. If the satellites perform as intended, it could mean billions of new business if similar projects are funded.

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IBM uncloaks eight core Power7 processor

Big Blue has officially uncloaked its nascent Power7 processor. According to William Starke of IBM, the 8-core chip is expected to feature 1.2B transistors and will be capable of achieving 20,000 coherent operations in flight.

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Solar-Hydrogen a single technology that Can Supply World’s Energy Needs

As you are aware the world’s oil supply continues to dry out every day. At the present rate of consumption, coal will run out in 130 years, natural gas in 60 years and oil in 42 years.

As a solution to this problem Derek Abbott, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University in Australia states that a solar-hydrogen economy is more sustainable and provides a higher total power output potential. He argues about the major non-renewable and renewable energy sources.

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Aircraft Worth More Dead Than Alive

AMARC (Aerospace Maintenance and Recovery Center). This facility, out in the Arizona desert, stores nearly 5,000 military aircraft no longer needed for active service. Every year, some are recalled, refurbished and sent back to work. But most get "harvested" for spare parts, until what's left is sold for scrap.

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Researchers grow nanowire crystals for 3-D microchips

The scientists added tiny germanium crystals in the shape of nanowires to a sheet of silicon, and then topped it with a layer of germanium. With heat, the nanowires and the germanium topping took on the crystal structure of the silicon. This process is a potential solution to the difficult task of layering germanium onto silicon, a step toward fabricating three-dimensional integrated circuits, or microchips.

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Using fiber optics to detect sound

QinetiQ has perfected a technique that transforms a fiber optic cable into a highly sensitive microphone capable of detecting a single footstep from up to 40 km away.

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2 In 3 IT Managers Have Cloud Funding

IT managers disagree on a definition of cloud computing, but they agree that it's either already in their budgets or soon will be. And they expect to share responsibility for cloud computing with application developers and business stakeholders.

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Man with 25 IDs nabbed by face-recognition tech

Helms allegedly had all the correct paperwork and then posed for his photograph. However, in the evening after his application was approved, the photograph passed through the new facial recognition system, which spotted an allegedly remarkable similarity with 10 other licenses, according to the report.

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Who Owns Unix?

In an unexpected ruling, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the 2007 summary judgment decision by Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah that found that Novell owned the Unix and Unixware copyrights, according to a news report in ComputerWorld.

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Method for using bluetooth module to process non-bluetooth signals

An electronic device having a communications module with a first set of data rates can be enabled to use the communications module to process signals received from a source that uses a second set of data rates. The device may generate packets, frames, etc. at the first set of data rates using the communications module from the signals received from the remote source by sampling signals at one or more of the first set of data rates.

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“Never-Out-of-Touch” On-the-Move Communications

HUGHES and Ultra Electronics Partner to Demonstrate an Integrated “Never-Out-of-Touch” Tactical Communications Solution for Coalition Forces.

SATCOM Capabilities with High Capacity Line-of-Sight Tactical Communications Provide Seamless Connectivity and Range Extension While On-The-Move

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Ultra Hi-Res Surveillance Technology for US Army

Ultra hi-resolution US military images covering large expanses of battlefield may soon be available, in light of the US Army's newly-announced search for new military imaging technology to be carried aloft by manned aircraft or pilotless UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). The US Army's desire is to have cameras capable of capturing 2.3 gigapixel images - which would be supremely detailed - and weight is an issue too, since the requirement is for them to be lightweight and small-scale.

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Fixed Communication Systems

Fixed Communication Systems are connected to a remote station, in which acts as a server to cater the call, it is also wired or connected to a terminal in which performs the communication itself, so when a certain number or address is dialed in, it goes and basically connects to the station and on to the terminal, to make it happen. It is a basic structure that simply initiates the conversation and from there information is transferred.

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Air Force Organizes Cyberspace Units Under One Command

Air Force Space Command activated a new unit yesterday to better organize space and cyberspace capabilities and to keep pace with the rapid changes in information technology, the Space Command’s top military officer said.

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Cruise missile defense capabilities within reach

The U.S. Army's Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Sensor (JLENS) System, which uses aerostats to elevate sensors for long-range target detection and tracking for superior land-attack cruise missile defense, demonstrated its first flight today during a ceremony in Elizabeth City, N.C.

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Boeing SLAM ER Modified To Engage Moving Targets On Land

Boeing has modified the Standoff Land Attack Missile Expanded Response (SLAM ER) to engage land-based moving targets (LMT). The U.S. Navy declared the missile system, with its enhanced targeting software, operationally effective against LMTs on July 2 following a successful Operational Evaluation.

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Safety is not enough for bullet-proof wear

It's been called the Armani of armor, and the client list includes presidents, politicians, industry leaders and extraordinary folk with fat files in law enforcement agencies.

Miguel Caballero, the bulletproof wear specialist, is on the trail of whoever needs protection against death by gunshot but nonetheless is conscious of the latest fashion in street and party wear.

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$48.5M to Alion for Torpedo Detection System R&D and Testing

Alion Science and Technology in McLean, VA received a task order (N00178-04-D-4066) from the US Navy valued at $48.5 million to research, design, develop, prototype, integrate and test a new torpedo detection system in conjunction with the Navy’s anti-torpedo countermeasure technology effort.

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Magic ink offers full-colour printing in an instant

Engineers have long experimented with replicating these so-called structural colors in synthetic materials, and now Sunghoon Kwon's team at Seoul National University in South Korea has managed it.

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Lasers keep submarines in touch through the big blue

THE water that hides enemy submarines also makes it hard to contact the friendly ones from the air - unless they surface. Reaching submerged subs has required giant transmitters sending very low-frequency radio waves, which limits data transmission speeds. Now the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is turning to new blue lasers to get the message through.

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Microchip technology performs 1,000 chemical reactions at once

Flasks, beakers and hot plates may soon be a thing of the past in chemistry labs. Instead of handling a few experiments on a bench top, scientists may simply pop a microchip into a computer and instantly run thousands of chemical reactions, with results — literally shrinking the lab down to the size of a thumbnail.

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Autonomous underwater robot reduces ship fuel consumption

The best way to stop barnacles from colonizing is don't let them settle and colonize on the hull in the first place- advises McElvany. With that in mind, ONR recently conducted tests with a developmental ship hull grooming robot, called the Robotic Hull Bio-inspired Underwater Grooming tool or Hull BUG. The tests showed that this little groomer — similar in concept to a autonomous robotic home vacuum cleaner or lawn mower — has a lot of promise.

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UK firm wins funding for commercial nanotube process

Surrey NanoSystems, a University of Surrey spin-out working on a low-temperature growth process for carbon nanotubes, has secured second round funding of £2.5m

Surrey NanoSystems was established in 2006 as a spin-out from the University of Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) to develop intellectual property which supports the fabrication of carbon nanotubes at low temperature.

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Relativistic Navigation Needed for Solar Sails

A decent-size solar sail could accelerate out of the solar system in no time, and this raises new challenges for navigators.

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New Measure of Human Brain Processing Speed

A new way to analyze human reaction times shows that the brain processes data no faster than 60 bits per second.

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Bacteria Desalinate Water, Generate Power

Bacteria can be used to turn dirty salt water into electricity and drinkable water, according to new research from scientists at Penn State University and Tsinghua University.

The research presents a new spin on microbial fuel cells, which have been used in the past to produce electricity or store it as hydrogen or methane gas.

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Spray-on solar cells

Solar cells could soon be produced more cheaply using nanoparticle ‘inks’ that allow them to be printed like newspaper or painted onto the sides of buildings or rooftops to absorb electricity-producing sunlight.

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Behind the Scenes With the World's Most Ambitious Rocket Makers

An improbable partnership between an Internet mogul and an engineer could revolutionize the way NASA conducts missions—and, if these iconoclasts are successful, send paying customers into space.

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Smallest Laser Ever May Herald the Future Of Electronic Devices

For decades, electronic devices have been shrinking, in accordance with Moore's Law. Now, as circuits reach the size of single atoms, progress begins to bump up against the physical limitations of matter. Enter the spaser. This new kind of laser produces a beam so small that it could someday form the foundation of circuits made of light, not electrical impulses.

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Active Cloaking Could Counter Radar, Earthquakes, and Tsunamis

Today's stealth fighters, such as theF-22 Raptor, may do pretty well in concealing their radar signature, but mathematicians say that a new active cloaking technique could someday generate electromagnetic fields to hide submarines from sonar, or even protect buildings from earthquakes.

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A Portable Device for Frying Electronics

An enemy missile has no strategic value if its computer is down. A high-power-microwave emitter can disable a missile's electronics on the launchpad, leaving bystanders unharmed -- and now Texas Tech University engineers have a plan to scale down the truck-size tech.

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Powerful, Simple Rocket Fuel Made from Water and Aluminum

A new rocket propellant consisting of aluminum powder and water ice could point toward the future of space exploration.

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Controlling light becomes crystal clear

A simple way to fabricate 3D photonic crystals could find applications in next-generation laser diodes, LEDs and solar cells.

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Quantum Computers - When?

There are theoretical problems in creating practical quantum computing. Having shown readers the one-dimensional ion trap quantum computing experiment I'll be writing later in this series about the next level theoretical challenge, maintaining webs of computable quantum entities in two dimensions. But even as the theoretical problems are mowed down one at a time, the engineering challenges to building practical devices remain awesome and much less tractable than the theoretical problems.

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Cisco wireless LANs at risk of attack, 'skyjacking'

Cisco Systems wireless local area network equipment used by many corporations around the world is at risk of being used in denial-of-service attacks and data theft, according to a company that offers protection for WLANs.

Researchers at AirMagnet, which makes intrusion-detection systems for WLANs, discovered the vulnerability, which affects all lightweight Cisco wireless access points, as well as the exploit that could be used against networks that have the Over-the-Air-Provisioning (OTAP) feature turned on.

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Biometrics Data Is Vulnerable, Warn Experts

Privacy advocates are growing concerned about biometric "function creep": A company that scans your iris for an ID badge, they say, might also allow government or commercial entities to run this biometric data against their own databases—whether for legitimate or questionable purposes—without your consent. This is why encryption of biometric data is needed, argue Canadian and European biometric experts.

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Lockheed completes mid-air refuelling test on F-35B

Lockheed Martin completed on 14 August the first mid-air refuelling between an F-35B short-takeoff and vertical landing variant and a US Marine Corps KC-130R tanker. The flight test was a critical step as Lockheed continues preparing the first two STOVL prototypes for the first vertical landing test in the fourth quarter.

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Boeing Unveils Mobile GBI

Boeing officials are unveiling a mobile Ground-Based Interceptor design as an option while the White House mulls the future of deploying an additional set of defenses designed to protect the United States and Europe from the threat of an Iranian long-range ballistic missile.

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Land-Based SM-3 Seen as Frontrunner

The likelihood of the U.S. establishing a fixed Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) missile interceptor site in Poland appears to be waning as the Pentagon is more sharply focused on the quick fielding of a land-based SM-3 system to protect Europe from an Iranian ballistic missile threat.

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Osprey's Record Stirs Controversy

Approaching two years in Iraq and about to deploy to Afghanistan, the V-22's short-lived engines, poor capability rates and high expense have stirred a new waved of criticism.

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Task Force Puts U.S. Airship Program on Fast Track

The U.S. Defense Department's ISR Task Force will huddle early next month with industry officials about forming a consortium to speed development of high-flying, long-duration unmanned airships to gather battlefield intelligence.

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Russia’s Changing Aircraft Industry: Models and Futures

Russia’s aircraft industry remains one of the country’s defense export standbys, and Russian companies are beginning to partner with foreign firms in ways that could increase their reach. In December 2005, Moscow Defense Brief took a look at key trends, especially the consolidation trends as private maneuverings and state ‘encouragement’ to join a “Unified Aircraft-Building Corporation” (UABC) began to consolidate the various players.

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Tasting the Light: Device Lets the Blind "See" with Their Tongues

Neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita hypothesized in the 1960s that "we see with our brains not our eyes." Now, a new device trades on that thinking and aims to partially restore the experience of vision for the blind and visually impaired by relying on the nerves on the tongue's surface to send light signals to the brain.

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Legacy B-52 to launch futuristic WaveRider

The X-51A WaveRider is one step closer to its inaugural test flight later this year, now that airmen at Edwards Air Force Base have successfully "mated" the scramjet-propelled vehicle to a B-52 Stratofortress.

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DARPA 3D reasoning engine to identify urban threats

DARPA is spending millions of dollars to identify trash cans, which may have raised a few eyebrows, except these and other common urban objects could in the course of today's combat missions prove to be tactically significant.

BAE Systems received a $7.1 million contract to work on Phase II of the Urban Reasoning and Geospatial Exploitation Technology (URGENT) program, which is designed to improve the quality and timeliness of geospatial intelligence U.S. troops receive when facing enemy threats in urban environments.

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Gigantic Lightning Jets Shoot from Clouds to Space

Strokes of lightning flashing down towards the ground are a familiar sight during summer thunderstorms, but scientists have capture an image of a rare lightning bolt shooting out upwards from a cloud, almost to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere.

These bolts of upwards lightning, one type among a variety of electrical discharges now known to occur above thunderstaorms, are called gigantic jets, and were only first discovered in 2001.

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Flexible, Stretchable LEDs Promise Better Displays

Bend it, twist it, roll it or stretch it, a new light emitting diode, or LED, created by scientists will still light up.

The new flexible and stretchable LEDs could be used in everything from bumper mounted brake lights to computer and television screens that roll up into a pen.

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Flexible, Stretchable LEDs Promise Better Displays

Bend it, twist it, roll it or stretch it, a new light emitting diode, or LED, created by scientists will still light up.

The new flexible and stretchable LEDs could be used in everything from bumper mounted brake lights to computer and television screens that roll up into a pen.

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$2.5 Billion Order Launches Su-35 Production

The Russian government has finally committed to production of the Sukhoi Su-35 combat aircraft, which features thrust-vectoring and e-scan radar. At the MAKS 2009 airshow at Zhukovsky airbase near Moscow this month, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a contract worth $2.5 billion for 48 Su-35S models.

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EASA Certifies New 'Autopilot/Flight Director' TCAS Mode for A380

Following recent successful development testing, a new Auto-Pilot/Flight-Director (AP/FD) TCAS mode for the Airbus A380 has been approved and certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).The main benefit of the system is that it could further enhance safety during a traffic avoidance situation because the pilot can now fly the aircraft without switching out of one mode and into another. Thus, by simplifying the actions required by the pilot during a TCAS manoeuvre, this enhanced TCAS mode minimises potential overreactions or inverse reactions while preserving his or her concentration at a critical time.

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Needle-free injection

A needle-free injection system that takes its inspiration from the technology used to activate car airbags has been created by pervormanc.The Pyrofast system uses a fine, high-pressure jet stream to penetrate the skin and deliver liquid or solid drugs to the tissue beneath. According to the German company, the entire process takes 40m/s and creates a puncture that is four times smaller than that caused by conventional needle injections.

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National Ignition Facility Prepares for Fusion Test

Federal researchers are slowly testing 192 lasers that they hope will set off the world's first controlled nuclear fusion reaction.

The lasers are housed at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a $4 billion complex the size of three football fields that is part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.

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NASA's Greatest Mission? Stardust Finds Amino Acids, Keeps on Giving to Science

Some scientific missions are fonts of information that keep on giving and giving, and Stardust has been one of the most fruitful. Launched in 1999, the unmanned craft made a pass through the tail of comet Wild-2 in 2004, and returned to Earth in 2006 with the first cometary material ever retrieved in space and brought back. What scientists found in that sample has changed their understanding of how these "dirty snowballs" formed and provided clues to what the early history of the solar system was like. Now, a new study confirms the finding that the amino acid glycine, a building block of life, was among the samples brought home. And, Stardust shows, comets have a lot more to tell us.

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NASA Successfully Tests Vacuum-Packed Inflatable Heat Shield

Packed into a 15-inch shroud payload, the shield launched this morning aboard a small sounding rocket from the space agency's Wallops Flight Facility off the coast of Virginia. After reaching an altitude of 124 miles, the shield unpacks and inflates itself into a 10-foot diameter mushroom shape of silicone-coated fabric.

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NASA Successfully Tests Nuclear Reactor to Power Future Moon Bases

The fission reactor uses a sodium-potassium liquid metal mixture to transfer heat to a Stirling engine, which then uses gas pressure for electricity conversion. Testing has been successful so far, as researchers have been able to generate a constant 2.3 kilowatts of power from the engine, using a non-nuclear heat source. With the full nuclear reactor running, their goal is to produce 40 kilowatts of power.

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Satellite-Killer in Infrared

Air Defense System S-400

New generation of anti-aircraft weapon system complex

Russian RSM-56 3M30 Bulava-30 SLBM launch

AN/APG-80 - F-16 AESA Radar

Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA

THAAD, MEADS/Patriot PAC-3, Aegis BMD/SM-3 Missile Defense

High power military robotic exoskeleton

Exoskeletons Are on the March

An army of exoskeletons is coming. And according to their inventor, Professor Yoshiyuki Sankai of the University of Tsukuba, in Japan, they’re making a difference in the lives of disabled people.

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MDA Eyes Longer-Range Thaad Options

The U.S. is exploring options to increase the range of its newly fielded Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) anti-ballistic missile system.

The addition of a larger, 21-in.-dia. booster appears to be the option of most interest. The Thaad interceptor is now 14.5 in. in diameter. "The concept behind the 21 inches is that it significantly increases the interceptor range, and by increasing range that significantly--three to four times--increases the defended area we have on the ground with the system," says U.S. Army Col. William Lamb, the Missile Defense Agency's Thaad project manager.

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Hi-Tech B-52 With Military Communications Technology

US aerospace and defence firm Boeing has delivered a retrofitted B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber back to the United States Air Force, having incorporated the very latest in modern communications technology into it. The B-52's upgrade took place over a 21-month-long period, and the aircraft will now spend time being evaluated at Edwards Air Force Base. If proved to be successful, the same technology will be blended into the USAF's full fleet of B-52s, which numbers 76 airframes.

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Tupolev aircraft maker to develop Russia's new strategic bomber

The Russian Defense Ministry and the Tupolev aircraft maker have signed a contract on the development of a new-generation strategic bomber, the company's general director said on Wednesday.

"We signed a contract this year on research and development of a future strategic bomber for the Russian strategic aviation. It will be a conceptually new plane based on the most advanced technologies," Igor Shevchuk said at the MAKS-2009 air show near Moscow.

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Boeing Airborne Laser Team Fires High-Energy Laser in Flight

The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA], industry teammates and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency on Aug. 18 successfully fired the high-energy laser aboard the Airborne Laser (ABL) aircraft in flight for the first time, moving closer toward ABL's upcoming missile shoot-down demonstration.

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Duracell Reveal Wireless Charger

Battery manufacturer Duracell has revealed its very own wireless charging device, dubbed 'myGrid'.

Duracell claims that myGrid is as fast as standard 'old fashioned' wired charging and can power a variety of gadgets wirelessly, including handsets from Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry and Apple; it can also charge a range of MP3 players.

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Intel to Focus on Next Generation of Chips

Intel will focus on its next generation of smaller and faster chips at a conference next month as it prepares to ship new chips for systems in 2010.

Intel plans to shed more light on the Westmere architecture at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), which will be held Sept. 22-24 in San Francisco. The company is expected to talk about the architecture behind its future chips for servers, laptops and desktops.

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Lack of gravity waves limits cosmology theories

In results announced today, a huge physics experiment built to detect gravitational waves has yet to find any.

Rather than be disappointed by the null findings, physicists say the results were expected, and in fact help them narrow down possibilities for what the universe was like just after it was born.

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NASA opens up to commercial space ventures

Despite bleak budget forecasts and the uncertainty surrounding NASA's human exploration program, opportunities for commercial space firms are better than they have been in decades, according to government and industry officials.

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Tekhomirov NIIP AESA radar unveiled for PAK-FA

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LockMart F-35 Successful In First Probe-And-Drogue Aerial Refueling

A short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) variant of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter has become the first F-35 to complete an aerial refueling test using the Navy- and Marine Corps-style probe-and-drogue refueling system.

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US Navy Awards LockMart Contract To Support Submarine Imaging System

The U.S. Navy awarded Lockheed Martin a contract valued at almost $93 million for engineering services and support of the AN/BVY-1 Integrated Submarine Imaging System (ISIS) and for production of related hardware.

ISIS revolutionizes Navy submarine surveillance capabilities by integrating digital video and still images from devices on a submarine's exterior and presenting real-time imagery and analysis on crews' existing control room tactical displays.

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Russian Submarine Designer Certain Of Bulava Missile Success

Russia's troubled Bulava ballistic missile will be developed and put into service with the Navy, the general designer of the Rubin design bureau for marine engineering has said.

The missile, which is being developed by the Moscow-based Institute of Thermal Technology (MITT), has suffered six failures in 11 tests. The general director of the institute has resigned over the failures, seen as a setback in the development of Russia's nuclear deterrent.

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Boeing And MillenWorks Demonstrate Tactical Military Vehicle

Boeing and partner MillenWorks will participate this week in a 1,000-mile off-road race through the Nevada desert, using a derivative of a tactical military vehicle designed for U.S. special operations forces.

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Russia may nix S-300 sale to Iran

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's reported promise to Israeli President Shimon Peres that Moscow will reconsider the sale of powerful S-300 air-defense missiles to Iran could determine whether Israel - and the United States for that matter - launches pre-emptive strikes against Tehran's nuclear facilities.

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Vehicles Avoid Objects, Autonomously, in U.S. Test

Two robotic test-bed vehicles showed off their ability to move at unprecedented speed while avoiding moving obstacles during an Aug. 10 demonstration at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., U.S. Army and General Dynamics Robotic Systems (GDRS) officials said.

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Super Hornet cleared to fly at higher altitudes, reducing fuel costs

The Navy has certified the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet to fly higher, between flight levels 29,000 and 41,000 feet.These altitudes were usually reserved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for commercial airliners in airspace called Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum (RVSM) airspace. This certification culminates a three-year process involving numerous agencies; military, federal and private industry.

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Rosetta By Any Other Name: IBM Gets GALE-Related Work

The IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY won a $9.7 million cost-reimbursement contract modification to support the intelligence analyst research effort called Rosetta: An Analyst Co-Pilot.

Rosetta will tightly couple speech transcription, language transition, and adaptive, multi-source information distillation in ways that permit English-speaking intelligence analysts to focus on and understand the most important information in their area of expertise.

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Do Clouds Come From Outer Space?

High-speed cosmic ray particles--protons and neutrons of still-mysterious origins that travel at nearly the speed of light--collide with water molecules in the atmosphere, stripping away electrons from those molecules and converting them into electrically charged ions. The ions then begin attracting other water molecules, which eventually form clouds.

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Killer Asteroids May Escape NASA's Notice

NASA estimates that there are about 20,000 asteroids and comets in our solar system that are potential threats to Earth. They are larger than 460 feet in diameter -- slightly smaller than the Superdome in New Orleans. So far, scientists know where about 6,000 of these objects are.

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The Incredible Shrinking Camera

Biomedical engineers have pulled off something like the shrinking submarine, except it’s real. This time, it’s a miniature camera in a capsule.

Doctors use this camera capsule to examine the inside of the small intestine, one part of the body that’s hard to reach with more conventional diagnostic tools.

It carries a camera on a computer chip, light source, radio transmitter and a battery.

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Lockheed Martin Demonstrates Tactical Smartphone Applications

Warfighters operating in theatre may soon have greater situational awareness with the added ability to download high-value tactical data anywhere in the field on smartphones loaded with new applications from Lockheed Martin.

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China warns against missile defence systems

China's foreign minister warned on Wednesday that there was a "looming danger" of an arms race in outer space, as he urged countries not to deploy missile defence systems that could undermine global security."The practice of seeking absolute strategic advantage should be abandoned," Yang Jiechi told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

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Organelle Simulated on Microchip for First Time

More and more synthetic versions of key parts of the human cell, including chromosomes, have been developed by scientists in the past decade or so. Now researchers are aiming even higher, developing the first working artificial prototype of an "organ" of a human cell—the Golgi apparatus, which helps modify biomolecules and package them for delivery around the cell.

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New Device Sequences Complete Human Genome Faster, Cheaper Than Ever

A new gene sequencing device designed by Stanford engineer Stephen Quake may finally usher in the long predicted practice of personalized genetic medicine. By using a new refrigerator-sized machine to decode the DNA, Quake has cut both the cost and time of the process by at least a fifth.

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NASA to Spend $50 Million to Spur Commercial Spacecraft

NASA plans to spend up to $50 million in federal stimulus money to help foster development of commercial spacecraft for launching astronauts and cargo into space.

Under the plan, NASA will competitively award Space Act agreements to promising private companies to boost their commercial spacecraft work. NASA said last week that it intended to issue a formal Commercial Crew and Cargo Program solicitation. Proposals will be due 45 days later with multiple awards expected in November.

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'Printed chips' could be boon for consumers

'Printed chips' could be boon for consumersAugust 12th, 2009 By Steve Johnson -->
Until now, creating the microchips that power all of our electronic gadgets has been a laborious, complex and time-consuming process costing billions of dollars. But if a Milpitas, Calif.-based startup succeeds, making them could be as easy as printing a piece of paper.

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More Issues with Air Speed Indicators on Airbus Aircraft Surface

Over the weekend, the AP reported that faulty airspeed indicators (pitot tubes) had been found on Northwest Airlines Airbus 330s that caused pilots not to know their airspeed on at least a dozen flights. Airspeed indicators are thought to be a contributing factor to the loss of Air France 447, although French accident investigators continue to insist they have no evidence that says the crash was caused by or related to problems with the pitot tubes.

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Russian Military Defence Technology to Counter US

The US Military will have the airborne strike capability to hit any part of Russia within two decades, according to the head of the Russian Air Force. On this basis, he said, the Russian military intends to construct and implement advanced 21st century air defence technology as a counter-mechanism.

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New Low Cost Fighter Aircraft for USAF

The United States Air Force is in the market for a new, lightweight combat aircraft, as opposed to a highly technologically advanced multi-role combat aircraft in the class of the soon-to-enter-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Its aim is to induct a new "fixed-wing platform" capable of carrying out "strike, armed reconnaissance and advanced aircraft training in support of irregular warfare." That is to say, a dedicated light fighter of the kind not used en-masse for some decades.

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Nanoelectronic transistor combined with biological machine could lead to better electronics

If manmade devices could be combined with biological machines, laptops and other electronic devices could get a boost in operating efficiency.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have devised a versatile hybrid platform that uses lipid-coated nanowires to build prototype bionanoelectronic devices.

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NSF awards UCLA Engineering $10M to create customized computing technology

The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has been awarded a $10 million grant by the National Science Foundation's Expeditions in Computing program to develop high-performance, customizable computing that could revolutionize the way computers are used in health care and other important applications.

In particular, UCLA Engineering researchers will demonstrate how the new technology, known as domain-specific computing, could transform the role of medical imaging and hemodynamic simulation, providing more energy-efficient, cost-effective and convenient solutions for preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and dramatically improving health care quality, efficiency and patient outcomes.

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Ytterbium gains ground in quest for next-generation atomic clocks

An experimental atomic clock based on ytterbium atoms is about four times more accurate than it was several years ago, giving it a precision comparable to that of the NIST-F1 cesium fountain clock, the nation's civilian time standard, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report in Physical Review Letters.*

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Intel and Micron Team Up To Squeeze More Data into Flash Drives

What's better than 2-bits per cell? 3 bits of course. IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron, has announced that they have developed a 3-bit-per-cell NAND device that Micron will begin producing for commercial consumption this fall. The technology, dubbed 3bpc (tricky acronym for 3-bits-per-cell), stores more bits per cell than current technology and allows the development of higher density flash memory so it can store more data in less space.

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Russia building new 'star wars' missiles

Russia is developing new missiles to counter space-based missile systems that could soon be deployed by the United States, Russia's air force commander was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

"We are building new missiles that will be capable of defending not only against air-defence systems but space-based systems," General Alexander Zelin said, quoted by Russian news agencies.

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Raytheon Develops World's Largest Infrared Light-Wave Detector

Raytheon Company has developed the world's largest infrared light-wave detector, expanding current capabilities in missile warning, environmental monitoring and astronomical research.

Optimized for space applications, the new "4K-by-4K" focal plane array comprises some 16 million pixels, arranged in 4,096 rows and columns. It is four times larger than infrared detectors currently in production, giving it the ability to collect data from a much wider field of view with improved sensitivity.

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3-D Printers Make Manufacturing Accessible

3-D printers can take blobs of plastic and shape them into almost any object you desire. Now, thanks to open source hardware designs and enthusiastic do-it-yourselfers, these printers are increasingly popular and accessible. People are using them to fabricate iPod docks, plastic bracelets, hair clips and miniature teapots at home.

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Clock IC harnesses GPS signals for synchronization

Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI), a global leader in high-performance signal processing, introduced today the industry's first clock IC that enables system designers to use the standard, readily available and free 1-pps (pulse-per-second) signal of GPS (global positioning system) satellite transmitters to generate and synchronize clock signals for communications infrastructure equipment.

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Wire power

Zenergy Power has produced a complete set of superconducting coils for a 1.7MW hydro power generator that will be installed into E.ON Wasserkraft's hydro power station in Bavaria, south east Germany, in the early part of 2010.

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Can Cars Use Water for Fuel?

There are a number of online marketing offers of kits that will convert your car to “run on water,” but these should be viewed skeptically. These kits, which attach to the car’s engine, use electrolysis to split the water (H2O) into its component molecules—hydrogen and oxygen—and then inject the resulting hydrogen into the engine’s combustion process to power the car along with the gasoline. Doing this, they say, makes the gasoline burn cleaner and more completely, thus making the engine more efficient.

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The Truth About Airplane Turbulence

The Federal Aviation Administration says 58 airliner passengers are injured every year by turbulence. In fact, turbulence is the number one cause of injuries to passengers and flight attendants in nonfatal accidents. Two-thirds of those injuries happen above 30,000 feet—just when you're told you can get up and move about the cabin.

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New Reactor To Make Breathable Air Out of Moon Rocks

Adapting a chemical process they originally created to extract metal, the Cambridge team has designed a reactor that strips the oxygen from the metal oxides found in moon rocks. Essentially a giant electrode sitting in a vat of melted salt, the reactor creates an electric current that chemically breaks the oxygen off of the metal, and frees it into the atmosphere.

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Google Steals Spotlight With Caffeine Boost

Google announced this week a project it has been working on to develop a faster, more accurate, and more comprehensive search engine. The announcement of the project, code-named ‘Caffeine' (a clever play on words implying that the project will boost speed), seems a little out of character for Google which usually makes these sort of search engine tweaks under the radar. One thing that the announcement of Caffeine accomplished though is to divert attention away from Microsoft's Bing search engine and the Microsoft/Yahoo partnership news and put Google search back in the headlines.

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"Unforgeable" UK National ID Security Technology Apparently Cracked

The London Daily Mail published a long, interesting and disturbing story yesterday about the ease with which security experts were able to hack the supposedly "unforgeable" new UK ID card for foreign nationals and change the data within the embedded microchip within minutes.

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Classified Tests Show Growler Ready for Ops

The EA-18G Growler is now on the road to a full-rate production decision and it could benefit from an expected Quadrennial Defense Review determination that U.S. expeditionary forces need another 26-30 airborne electronic attack (AEA) aircraft.

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New Thales Missiles: Capability and Economy

Thales UK is qualifying two missiles that not only represent significant technology enhancements in target acquisition and destruction, but trends in tactical weapon design and deployment in an era of asymmetric warfare and budget-cutting.

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Stealth Bomber Upgrades Detailed

Grumman B-2 as part of efforts to keep the stealth bomber in the front line to 2050 and beyond.

The drive to sustain the 20-strong fleet enjoys “good support across the board” says Brig. Gen. Robert Wheeler, commander of the 509th Bomb Wing at the B-2’s home at Whiteman AFB, Mo. The case for injecting new life into the B-2 was unquestionably bolstered by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s April decision to ax the next-generation bomber project, ambitiously aimed at fielding a new aircraft in 2018. But Wheeler adds the stealth bomber was always part of the equation.

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Open Architecture for UAV Ground Control

“Unmanned aircraft are unmanned only in name” is becoming the mantra of operators as they wrestle with the increasing demands on today’s unmanned systems. That could change with new U.S. acquisition rules designed to encourage competition and innovation in the manpower-intensive ground segment.

The ground segment is a key element of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), particularly for the U.S. Air Force as it operates deployed air vehicles remotely from the U.S. via satellite links. But the combat use of unmanned aircraft has underlined the limitations of current ground control stations (GCS).

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MIT researchers make carbon nanotubes without metal catalyst

Carbon nanotubes — tiny, rolled-up tubes of graphite — promise to add speed to electronic circuits and strength to materials like carbon composites, used in airplanes and racecars. A major problem, however, is that the metals used to grow nanotubes react unfavorably with materials found in circuits and composites. But now, researchers at MIT have for the first time shown that nanotubes can grow without a metal catalyst. The researchers demonstrate that zirconium oxide, the same compound found in cubic zirconia "fake diamonds," can also grow nanotubes, but without the unwanted side effects of metal.

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Supercomputer Visuals Without Graphics Chips

Before specialized graphics-processing chips existed, pioneers in the field of visualization used multicore supercomputers to realize data in three dimensions. Today, however, the speed at which supercomputers can process data is rapidly outstripping the speed at which they can input and output that data. Graphics-processing clusters are becoming obsolete.

Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and elsewhere are working on a solution. Rather than moving massive datasets to a specialized graphics-processing cluster for rendering, which is how things are done now, they are writing software that allows the thousands of processors in a supercomputer to do the visualization themselves.

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Plasmodium Computing

The single-celled organism Physarum polycephalum is a power-house of raw animal intelligence. Researchers are learning how to program it to carry out simple computations.

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Traffic jam in brain causes schizophrenia symptoms

There are fewer pathways (green strands) for information to flow between neurons in the brain of a mouse bred to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia compared to a normal mouse. Fewer pathways make it hard for information to flow between neurons and results in the symptoms of schizophrenia Credit: Peter Penzes, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

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Is Linux Irrelevant?

As the story goes, in the late eighties Bill Gates was asked about the competition Unix posed to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). He smiled and asked, "Which Unix?"

The same could be said of Linux today. Which Linux? Linux is now defined mostly by the fact that it isn't any one single thing -- no one distribution, software house, or entity has the last word on what Linux is going to be. To that end, the only "Linux" worth calling out by that name alone is the Linux kernel itself -- a kernel which is continually repackaged and distributed in a slew of different ways.

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Naval Research Laboratory’s XFC UAS Achieves Flight Endurance Milestone

The Naval Research Laboratory has completed a successful flight test of the fuel cell powered XFC (eXperimental Fuel Cell) unmanned aerial system (UAS). During the June 2 flight test, the XFC UAS was airborne for more than six hours. NRL’s Chemistry and Tactical Electronic Warfare Divisions are developing the XFC UAS as an expendable, long endurance platform for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR).

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New Artificial Bone Made of Wood

A new procedure to turn blocks of wood into artificial bones has been developed by Italian scientists, who plan to implant them into large animals, and eventually humans.

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Nanotechnology Offers Big Rewards

Nanotechnology promises to make our lives better. Andrew Maynard, Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, talks to Jorge Ribas about three ways it could.

Video

Nvidia graphics tech set for future Intel chips

Nvidia said Monday that Intel and a bevy of circuit board makers have licensed Nvidia graphics technology for future Intel chips.

The leading graphics chip supplier for game PCs has licensed its Scalable Link Interface (SLI) technology to Intel and makers of PC motherboards, including Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI for future Intel chips. SLI is a technology for linking two or more graphics boards and used typically in high-end gaming boxes.

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New day or night camera puts the eyes on Vancouver's runways

Vancouver International Airport (YVR) is the first commercial airport in the world to install a day and night camera to its existing Tarsier Foreign Object Debris (FOD) radar detection system. The new camera will upgrade YVR's 24-hour automated runway debris detection system in all weather conditions by providing visual confirmation of any potentially dangerous objects on the runway.

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Boeing to Demonstrate Unmanned Cargo Aircraft for USMC

The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] received a $500,000 contract from the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory on Aug. 5 to demonstrate the company's A160T (YMQ-18A) Hummingbird for the Marines' Immediate Cargo Unmanned Aerial System Demonstration Program.

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New Generation of Body Armor Takes the Load Off Soldiers

To alleviate discomfort and reduce the fatigue that reduces the soldier's tactical effectiveness, a new generation of body armor systems is being developed. A body mapping pressure system by Sensor Products Inc. called Tactilus is enabling a highly-skilled team of designers and engineers to develop new vests and carriage systems that optimally distribute the load that soldiers carry. The project is being directed by KDH Defense Systems of Johnstown, PA through a contract with the US Air Force.

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10-ton cannon airdropped over Afghanistan

How do you get a 10-ton cannon to a remote Army outpost in Afghanistan?
Call the Air Force.

An Air Force C-130 Hercules airdropped a 155 mm M198 Howitzer to soldiers in the Paktika Province in Afghanistan on Saturday.

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Virtual Reality Could Keep You From Being a Surgical Guinea Pig

New pilots train on flight simulators before flying their first 757. Scientists experiment on animals before giving their new drug to patients. And fledgling surgeons perform their first few operations on… real people.

Now, a small but growing group of doctors are trying to make surgical training safer by bringing virtual reality into the operating room — and taking the trial-by-error out.

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Laser locator

BAE Systems and Vectronix are to produce, maintain, and provide logistical support for up to 200 laser target locator modules (LTLM) per month under a five-year contract worth up to $347m (£208m).

The handheld laser target finders will enable US Army soldiers to identify targets while on foot at any time of the day, regardless of whether visibility is obscured by fog or smoke.

Dan Murray, LTLM programme director for BAE Systems in Nashua, New Hampshire, said: ‘These modules will enable soldiers to determine target co-ordinates quickly, safely, and accurately.

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Goodbye, Ritalin. Hello, Brain Magnets

An Israeli company wants to keep adults focused using a magnetic field to stimulate the brain. The technique, called transcranial magnetic stimulation, involves hooking someone up to a device that creates a magnetic field. The field then induces an electrical current in specific brain regions, which activates that part of the brain. It's worked for depression, and now may help the estimated 8 million adults with ADHD.

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Today’s G.I.s train with video games

The ICT is aresearch lab for gaming technology that specializes in creating products for the United States military, including a city management trainer called UrbanSim and a negotiation trainer called BiLAT. Virtual Iraq was designed as a PC-based form of exposure therapy for Army veterans who served in Iraq and came back with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

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Up to $147.1M to HPTi for DoD High Performance Computing Work

The High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) was set up to modernize the US Department of Defense (DoD) labs’ high performance computing capabilities. The HPCMP provides supercomputer services, high-speed network communications, and computational science expertise that enables the DoD labs and test centers to conduct a range of research, development, and test activities to put advanced technology in the hands of US forces.

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Raytheon KillerBee UAV