BROAD STRATEGIC APPRAISALS

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Rotating E-Scan Radar May Push Eurofighter Exports

The new "repositionable" electronically scanned radar being proposed for the Eurofighter could make the difference for the fighter in export markets, its designers claim.

The Eurofighter currently flies with the mechanically scanned Captor radar, but the consortium that built the Captor is now pitching an e-scan radar, known as Caesar, to the U.K., Italy, Spain and Germany for its third tranche Eurofighters.

Monday, October 19, 2009

New rocket engine could make trips to Mars realistic

A new NASA rocket engine, designed partly in Canada, raises the revolutionary possibility that a manned trip to Mars could take less than three months instead of two years.

Ion propulsion, discussed since the original Star Trek TV series, is now close to the point where it could be tested on a flight to the moon, says Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.

Next Stop: Ultracapacitor Buses

The best ultracapacitors can only store about 5 percent of the energy that lithium-ion batteries hold, limiting them to a couple of miles per charge. This makes them ineffective as an energy storage medium for passenger vehicles. But what ultracapacitors lack in range they make up in their ability to rapidly charge and discharge. So in vehicles that have to stop frequently and predictably as part of normal operation, energy storage based exclusively on ultracapacitors begins to make sense.

GS1 Releases Guidelines for RFID-based Electronic Article Surveillance

EPCglobal, a subsidiary of global nonprofit standards organization GS1, has released its Strategic Overview Guide and Technical Implementation Guide for GS1 EPCglobal RFID-based Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS). The two documents provide the first guidance specifically for the production of RFID solutions that include EAS functionality based on EPCglobal's standards.

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Research reveals key to world's toughest organism

A new study by Cornell researchers uncovers the details of how the world's toughest bacterium survives lethal radiation exposure.

Cooking Up Water From the Moon? NASA Studies Water Extraction With Microwaves

Intrigued by NASA lunar missions in the 1990s which suggested the existence of ice within craters at the moon's poles, NASA scientist Dr. Edwin Ethridge and his team started cooking up a way to extract water from lunar soil.

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Self-Steered Tractors and UAVs: Future Farming Is (Finally) Now

The new precision farmers are hacking together a way of making food in which the virtual and physical worlds are so tightly bound that having his tractor steered by GPS-guidance with inch-level accuracy is ho-hum. Autosteering of farm machinery has exploded over the past several years, according to an annual survey by Purdue University’s Center for Food and Agricultural Business. In 2004, just 5 percent of agricultural retail outlets offered autosteering. In 2008, more than half did.

Scaffolding for skin

A scaffolding technology that could help scientists grow tissue such as skin in labs is being developed by researchers at Bristol University.

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General Motors Looks to Human Physiology for Powertrain Control

Electronic engine control takes cues from how the body regulates blood pressure.

Mother Nature is a technological genius. The latest group of researchers to seek out her wisdom is a team from General Motors’ Propulsion Systems Research Laboratory, in Warren, Mich., and

the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Rolls-Royce engine takes next step towards take-off

The United States Air Force (USAF) has approved Rolls-Royce to move to the next phase in developing a jet engine capable of high performance but with low operating costs.
The Pentagon’s decision to proceed with phase two of development of the Adaptive Versatile Engine Technology (Advent) is seen as a huge boost for Rolls-Royce in the lucrative American military market.

U-2 exceeds 25,000th hour of flight

U-2 aircraft No. 068-0337 was accepted by Air Force officials in 1968, and exceeded the 25,000th hour of flight Oct. 18, 2009, in a mission out of Southwest Asia.

Europeans Find 32 New Planets Outside Solar System

European astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop. Scientists using the European Southern Observatory telescope didn't find any planets quite the size of Earth or any that seemed habitable or even unusual. But their announcement increased the number of planets discovered outside the solar system to more than 400.

US Military Orders 352 More Strykers

The 8×8 wheeled Stryker armored vehicle is the backbone of the US Army’s 7 medium armored brigades, with an 8th on the way. The base vehicle is also known as the LAV-III (Canada) and Piranha-III (GD MOWAG Switzerland), but American Stryker family APCs are outfitted with a set of communications and electronics equipment that makes them a unique variant.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Holographic HUD for Rear-View Mirrors

Researchers have now created a holographic HUD, which can be projected on rear mirrors.

Because they have a smaller surface to cover, the HUD systems are a lot less cheaper, while at the same time maintaining their functionality. The compact projection device fits inside an average rear-view mirror.

Army fuses airborne sensor lab with ground networks

At the Army’s C4ISR On-the-Move Event 2009 in September, Lockheed Martin Corp. demonstrated its new Airborne Multi-Intelligence Laboratory. The AML aircraft, a repurposed Gulfstream III corporate jet, was converted to a test platform for evaluating the integration of multiple intelligence-gathering sensors onboard a single aircraft. The flight team includes analysts who correlate the intelligence data and make it available to ground units over a network connection.

The Future of Supercomputers is Optical

This week at the Frontiers in Optics conference in San Jose, Jeffrey Kash of IBM Research laid out his vision of the future of supercomputers.

The fastest supercomputer in the world, the Los Alamos National Laboratory's IBM Roadrunner, can perform 1,000 trillion operations per second, which computer scientists call the petaflop scale. Getting up to the next level, the exaflop scale, which is three orders of magnitude faster, will require integrating more optical components to save on power consumption.

DARPA, Microsoft, Lockheed team up to reinvent TCP/IP

Arms globocorp Lockheed Martin announced today that it has won a $31m contract from the famous Pentagon crazy-ideas bureau, DARPA, to reinvent the internet and make it more suitable for military use. Microsoft will also be involved in the effort.

The main thrust of the effort will be to develop a new Military Network Protocol, which will differ from old hat such as TCP/IP in that it will offer "improved security, dynamic bandwidth allocation, and policy-based prioritization levels at the individual and unit level".

Image:http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/431/4

Going plasmonic in search of faster computing, communications

A team of European researchers has demonstrated some of the first commercially viable plasmonic devices, paving the way for a new era of high-speed communications and computing in which electronic and optical signals can be handled simultaneously.

Fish vision discovery makes waves in natural selection

Emory University researchers have identified the first fish known to have switched from ultraviolet vision to violet vision, or the ability to see blue light. The discovery is also the first example of an animal deleting a molecule to change its visual spectrum.

Best cyber offense is a good defense, RAND report says

A new RAND Corporation report suggests the U.S. may be better off playing defense and pursuing diplomatic, economic, and prosecutorial efforts against cyberattackers, instead of making strategic cyberwarfare an investment priority.

NASA surprised with strange ribbon circling solar system

THE NASA spacecraft IBEX is making a map of the edge of the heliosphere, the magnetic boundary formed by the solar wind and interstellar matter at the edge of the solar system. Unexpectedly, IBEX imaged a "bright, winding ribbon of unknown origin" that goes about 80% away around the solar system.

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Barnacles bind to ships using clotlike glue

Hitchhiking on the surface of a boat hull can be a rough ride, but barnacles seem to do it with ease. How are they able to hang on so tightly? Researchers have been studying the composition of super-strong barnacle glue for years, and a new analysis of the cement reveals that it has many of the same properties as a human blood coagulant, factor XIII, which helps to form scabs.

IBEX Spacecraft Produces First Full Map of Where We Are in the Galaxy

A new sky map shows the region where our solar system bumps up against interstellar boundaries .

The boundaries are defined by our sun's heliosphere -- a protective bubble created by the solar wind that travels outward and collides with incoming interstellar radiation.

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RFID Waves Visualized and Demystified Using a LED Wand

Two Oslo-based design researchers have created a visual model of RFID fields in an effort to show curious designers how RFID looks and works, and help shed light on its functionality.

Yoctosecond light pulses, and how to create them

The creation of attosecond-scale light pulses (an attosecond is 10-18 s, or a quintillionth of a second, in duration) is an astounding feat, and opens up whole new areas in advanced spectroscopy. But what if we could jump from atto, right past zepto, all the way to yocto?

Yoctosecond (10-24 s, or a septillionth of a second) scale pulses would enable the light-based investigation of structures the size of atomic nuclei. But, spatially, a light pulse a few yoctoseconds in duration is only as long as an atomic nucleus is wide, so how could such a pulse be produced?

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Obama loosens missile technology controls to China

President Obama recently shifted authority for approving sales to China of missile and space technology from the White House to the Commerce Department -- a move critics say will loosen export controls and potentially benefit Chinese missile development.

TV Stations Start Broadcasting to Mobile Gadgets

A group called the Open Mobile Video Coalition announced Thursday the completion of a standard that will let TV stations use a sliver of the new frequencies that Congress gave them for high-definition broadcasts for broadcasts to wireless devices.

Glitch delays Ares I-X rocket rollout

A faulty part in the steering system for NASA's newAres I-X rocket has delayed the booster's trek to its Florida launch pad by at least a day as engineers work to fix the glitch.

Sidekick Disaster Shows Data's Not Safe in the 'Cloud'

Silicon Insider: There's a Dangerous Gap Between Consumers' Expectations and What Supplier Believes They Have to Deliver.

Image:http://infreemation.net/cloud-computing-linear-utility-or-complex-ecosystem/

'Russian NATO' Holds 1st Exercise

The presidents of five ex-Soviet states viewed military drills by thousands of troops in Kazakhstan as the Russian-led security grouping unveiled its new rapid reaction force Oct. 16.

Moscow hopes the new forces will lend teeth to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a loose seven-nation grouping it has touted as a counterweight to the NATO alliance.

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