G.E.’s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc

General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.

The storage advance, which G.E. is announcing on Monday, is just a laboratory success at this stage. The new technology must be made to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices.

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U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defenses

When American forces in Iraq wanted to lure members of Al Qaeda into a trap, they hacked into one of the group’s computers and altered information that drove them into American gun sights.

When President George W. Bush ordered new ways to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb last year, he approved a plan for an experimental covert program — its results still unclear — to bore into their computers and undermine the project.

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Canadians demonstrate brownout vision aid

AE and Neptec Design Group have successfully demonstrated a synthetic vision system that fuses real-time landscape captured by a Neptec-built light detection and ranging (Lidar) sensor with a CAE-built terrain database.

According to the companies, pilots flying a UH-1 test helicopter equipped with a prototype system were able to “see through” brownout conditions to “easily differentiate between rocks, bushes, sloping terrain, utility poles, ground vehicles and wires at distances greater than 200m.

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Boeing ponders “variably” manned aircraft

Boeing has filed for a US patent on an aircraft control system that could be configured for two, one or zero pilots. The no-pilot mode would receive input from a remotely located operator by way of wireless signals, patent application 20090105891 states.
The development echoes similar work that Sikorsky has said it is performing. Sikorsky president Jeff Pino has said the company will increasingly turn to fly-by-wire designs in part to allow the military to use helicopters for missions too dangerous for pilots or for situations where pilots are injured. "We envision a switch in the cockpit of all of our helicopters with indicators for 'No pilot', 'One pilot' and 'Two pilots'," Pino stated at the February 2008 Helicopter Association International Expo.

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Photron debuts world's-fastest camera

April 21, 2009--High-speed imaging systems manufacturer Photron (San Diego, CA) will demonstrate the newest member of its high-speed technology, the Fastcam SA5, at the 2009 NAB show (www.nabshow.com) in Las Vegas, April 18-23. This camera achieves an unprecedented 7500 frames per second with its megapixel resolution (1024 x 1000) CMOS sensor, with reduced resolution available at a speed of over 1 million frames per second. See the Laser Focus World VIDEO player or click this link for the latest video from Photron: Popcorn popping at 10,000 frames per second .

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Army ‘Multimode’ Raygun Tech Zaps, Crackles, Pops

The Army’s new ray gun research project combines the zap of a laser with the crackle of an electric shock and the pop of a high-power microwave pulse. Known as the Multimode Directed Energy Armament System, it offers a wide range of different effects against different targets. Defensively, it could knock out everything from improvised explosive devices to incoming rockets. As a weapon, its effects might range from Taser-like effects to a lethal lightning bolt — and it should be able to stop vehicles in their tracks.

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