Hitachi Unleashes Ultra-Fast Half-Terabyte Mobile Hard Disk Drive

Hitachi announced that it’s shipping the fifth generation of its 7200-rpm, 2.5-inch laptop hard disk drive that, at 500GB, designed for notebooks, gaming systems and professional external storage solutions.

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Virginia Tech to develop next generation nano-CT system

Virginia Tech is developing the next-generation nano-CT imaging system, which promises to greatly reduce the required dose of radiation.

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Intel's Braidwood flash memory module could kill SSD market

Intel's upcoming Braidwood NAND flash memory module, which is aimed at giving users faster boot-ups and application launches, could undermine solid-state disk (SSD) demand, according to a recent report on the new technology.

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Lasers Turn Light Into Sound

A new laser technology has made it possible to turn light into sound.

Developed by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory, the technology has the potential to expand and improve both Naval and commercial underwater acoustic applications, including undersea communications, navigation and acoustic imaging.

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Restoration starts on one of oldest computers

Work began this week on restoring what will be the world's oldest working stored-program electronic computer.

Volunteers at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park--about 50 miles northwest of London--will rebuild the Witch machine--a computer first used in 1951 for atomic research.

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Raytheon's Support of Iridium SatCom System Yields Enhanced Operational Flexibility

Working with Iridium Satellite LLC engineering and space system operations personnel, Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) has integrated a flight worthy Main Mission Antenna (MMA) with special test equipment to simulate on-orbit antenna performance. The team has also succeeded in developing updated antenna control software that will provide enhanced operational flexibility and more robust MMA performance.

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ATK Scores Another Direct Hit in Successful AARGM Test

Alliant Techsystems (NYSE: ATK), the U.S. Navy and the Italian Air Force successfully launched and scored a direct hit on a simulated enemy air defense target during the final development test (DT) firing of the AGM-88E Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM) at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake on August 7.

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Will a speed bump power the grid?

Use the weight of a car to throw a lever," explains Gerard Lynch, the engineer behind the MotionPower system developed for New Energy Technologies, a Maryland-based company. "The instantaneous power is 2,000 watts at five miles-per-hour, but it's instantaneous [which means some form of storage will be required.] The real key is how to get a million cars to do that.

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Why not spend $21 billion on solar power from space?

The Japanese government is prepared to spend some 2 trillion yen on a one-gigawatt orbiting solar power station—and this week Mitsubishi and other Japanese companies have signed on to boost the effort. Boasting some four kilometers of solar panels—maybe of the superefficient Spectrolab variety but more likely domestically sourced from Mitsubishi or Sharp—the space solar power station would orbit some 36,000 kilometers above Earth and transmit power via microwave or laser beam.

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Laser Refrigeration is Fastest, Coolest Chilling Tech Yet

Physics nerds and sci-fi geeks just about everywhere agree: lasers are cool. But cool enough to drop the temperature of a gas by 119 degrees in a matter of seconds? German researchers say so, having made advances on ideas reaching back 30 years but never successfully executed. Bombarding high-pressure gas with a laser, the scientists were able to create a significant cooling effect, shaving the aforementioned 119 degrees from the gas almost instantly by pushing electrons into higher orbit.

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Air-Driven Microprocessor Runs on Hand-Pumped Power

Scientists at the University of Michigan have created an air-powered microprocessor that is able to function without an electrical power source. It runs with just pneumatic valves and a handpump that pushes air through the system. The end result is a CPU that could eventually be used in a lab-on-a-chip device aimed at developing countries where electricity is scarce.

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Super-Strong German Steel Velcro

German-created steel fasteners can withstand loads of more than 38 tons per square meter, hook and unhook without tools.

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Leica 3-D laser scan data provides forensic evidence in trial

District Attorney Joe Mulholland of the South Georgia Judicial Circuit added another legal case reference to the growing number of U.S. court cases in which Leica Geosystems (Heerbrugg, Switzerland) 3-D laser scan data has been admitted into evidence when he successfully proffered and tendered to the jury a visually compelling Leica TruView.

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BP Announces Huge Oil Find in Gulf Coast

BP announced yesterday, Sept. 2, a huge deep-sea oil and gas discovery in the Gulf of Mexico. According to the company’spress release, the field is located about 400 kilometers southeast of Houston, where water is at a depth of 1,259 meters. The Tiber test well was drilled to a depth of 10,685 meters (35,055 feet), which makes it deeper than Mount Everest is high and one of the deepest or the very deepest ever

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Engineers Aim to Produce Nimble Robots

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are invaluable assets for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, with more than 12,000 deployed. But mobility is still an issue, especially in urban environments where a small box on tracks can have difficulty negotiating stairs, curbs and fences. This is prompting researchers to find innovative ways of increasing mobility.

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U.S. Rethinks Nuclear Strategy

The Obama administration's Quadrennial Defense Review and a parallel review of U.S. nuclear posture could give the go-ahead to two long-debated programs: a next-generation missile-launching submarine (SSBN) and a new nuclear warhead. If so, it will be a relief to nuclear insiders who worry that the topic of deterrence has been ignored for too long in the U.S., while nations like France, the U.K., Russia and China outpace U.S. modernization plans.

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Sense-And-Avoid System Planned For UAVs

Northrop Grumman is developing a common autonomous airborne sense-and-avoid system for both the U.S. Air Force RQ-4B Global Hawk high-altitude long-endurance unmanned aircraft and its U.S. Navy RQ-4N Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) derivative.

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Alternate JSF Engine Team Pressures Pratt

General Electric and Rolls Royce have opened talks with U.S. defense officials on a fixed-price contract offer for the Joint Strike Fighter alternative F136 engine, which they hope to marshal the government’s new acquisition reforms and force a similar reaction from incumbent F135 engine supplier Pratt & Whitney.

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Nacre’s QUIETPRO Achieves Highest Protection Rating

Nacre is delighted to announce that the QUIETPRO® Intelligent Hearing System has achieved the highest possible hearing protection rating from the renowned French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis (ISL), situated in Southern Alsacia, close to the German and Swiss border. The study was commissioned by a European Soldier Modernisation Programme office, with the purpose of assessing the levels of protection offered by current ear protection systems.

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New USAF B-52 Squadron Activated

A new United States Air Force squadron has just been formed with a bomber type that has been in USAF service since 1955! The creation of the 69th Bomb Squadron at Minot AFB (Air Force Base) highlights the immense sustainability of the vast Boeing B-52 Stratofortress - an aircraft type that has come to symbolise American airpower over the past fifty years and will carry on doing so for several decades yet.

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Space Shuttle Dodges a (Big) Bullet

A piece of a European Ariane 5 rocket, launched three years ago and still circling the earth in a long elliptical orbit, is expected to pass within about two miles of the shuttle, currently docked with the International Space Station, at 11:06 a.m. EDT on Friday. NASA considered having the astronauts fire the shuttle's thrusters today to give them some extra breathing room, but that's a complicated maneuver, and Houston decided to skip it.

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Hunter UAS Completes GPS-Guided Viper Strike Testing

Northrop Grumman's Hunter Unmanned AircraftSystem (UAS), in use with the U.S. Army since 1996, has successfully completed testing of the new GPS-guided Viper Strike (VS) weapons system at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. GPS VS will soon deploy to theater on board Hunter in support of contingency operations.

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Raytheon Delivers Critical Mine Countermeasure Capabilities To US Navy Fleet

Raytheon Company has delivered the next-generation AN/AQS-20A Minehunting Sonar and AN/ASQ-235 Airborne Mine Neutralization System to the U.S. Navy.

Considered critical components of the Navy's organic mine countermeasure arsenal, the advanced technologies of these systems have the potential to vastly improve the safety, effectiveness and efficiency of mine countermeasure missions and truly take the sailor out of the minefield.

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Up to $100M to SCI for Mobile and Tracked Vehicle Communications Equipment

SCI Technology in Huntsville, AL won a $55.9 million indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price contract to provide tactical communication equipment for US military mobile wheeled and tracked vehicles. This contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of the contract to an estimated $100 million.

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