Study discovers clues into how eyes search

Like the robots in the "Terminator" movies, our eyes move methodically through a scene when seeking out an object. If we don't immediately find what we're searching for, our attention leaves the already-scanned area behind and moves on to new, unexplored regions of a scene, still seeking the target.

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Boeing Completes Communications and ATM Upgrade for USAF AWACS Fleet

The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] announced today that it has completed satellite communications and air traffic management upgrades on the U.S. Air Force's 32 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) surveillance aircraft as part of the Integrated DAMA/GATM (IDG) program.

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Generating Usable Energy, Just by Driving

A British supermarket chain is harvesting renewable energy from a most unexpected place: the parking lot.

Sainsbury’s, the self-proclaimed eco-conscious superstore that dots the UK, installed “kinetic road plates” in the car park of its latest store in Gloucester. They work a lot like speed bumps, and the store says vehicles passing over them can generate enough power to run the cash registers.

These aren’t run-of-the-mill speed bumps. The plates depress slightly under the weight of the cars, creating a rocking motion that turns a generator without the driver feeling the difference.

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RFID System provides document inventory management

DAILY RFID has launched a RFID document management system for documents inventory management. This RFID document management system includes the needed passive RFID devices to realize documents automatically tracked throughout the file control process.

This RFID document management system, basing on HF, integrates RFID smart labels and handheld RFID reader to allow automated identification of circulating files, thus not only saving the time, enhancing security as well.

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Acoustic laser - SASER

Scientists at Nottingham University, in collaboration with colleagues at the Lashkarev Institute of Semiconductor Physics in the Ukraine, have produced the saser, a sonic equivalent to the laser.

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Hudson Plane: Out-of-Town Geese Did It

Back on January 15th, US Airways Flight 1549 made that amazing water landing in the Hudson after both engines were taken out by Canada geese, which can weigh eight pounds each. Now scientists have used forensic techniques to clear local geese—the perpetrators were out-of-towners. The study appears June 8th in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

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"Smart" Bridges Harness Technology to Stay Safe

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Michigan Department of Transportation are funding a $19 million project to build next-generation monitoring systems for bridges. "There are quite a few bridges that get a D grade" for maintenance and safety, says Marc Stanley, director of the Advanced Technology Program at NIST, which is promoting sensor-laden "smart bridges."

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Don't Sink My Battleship: 5 Ways to Defend a Supercarrier

Will America’s enemies be able to sink the Navy’s next-generation aircraft carriers? The answer is debatable, but it’s inarguable that potentially hostile nations are developing—and exporting—weapons for the task. And tactics are evolving: Think-tank researchers and military intelligence professionals follow Chinese military journals for the latest theories on stopping U.S. aircraft carriers. The Navy then incorporates new defenses to thwart these emerging threats.

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Magnetochromatic Material Changes Color on Command

In the future, signs will be instantly rewritable and walls will change color at the flip of a switch. A research team at the University of California at Riverside has created a new magnetically activated, instantly and reversibly color-changing material with potentially groundbreaking applications.

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Network of Wi-Fi Enabled Insects Hunts Down WMDs

In its attempts to quash weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon has been trying novel ways to track down dangerous materiel. For years, DARPA has been trying to train insects and bugs to sniff out toxic substances, providing more sensitive detection, as well as access that conventional sensors might not have.

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AF ready for F-22 export version

The Air Force is prepared to create a version of the F-22 Raptor that the U.S. could sell to foreign countries if it gets the go-ahead from Congress and the State Department, according to one of the service’s top acquisition officers.

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ORNL finding could help electronics industry enter new phase

Electronic devices of the future could be smaller, faster, more powerful and consume less energy because of a discovery by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The key to the finding, published in Science, involves a method to measure intrinsic conducting properties of ferroelectric materials, which for decades have held tremendous promise but have eluded experimental proof. Now, however, ORNL Wigner Fellow Peter Maksymovych and co-authors Stephen Jesse, Art Baddorf and Sergei Kalinin at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences believe they may be on a path that will see barriers tumble.

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Colossus, Cray and Blue Gene: The History of Supercomputers

They are the most powerful computers in the world and this is their story from start to finish. Enter the world of computing's heavyweights.

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Move Over, Silicon; Here Come Quantum Bismuth Chips

Newly discovered properties of bismuth telluride hold promise for spintronic quantum computing

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Sukhoi secretive on PAK-FA programmes

Sukhoi is still working on a prototype of its fifth-generation "PAK-FA" advanced tactical frontline fighter, but the schedule for its flight-test programme remains unconfirmed, despite earlier indications that the aircraft would fly in 2009.

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