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

Video

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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