When birds migrate over long distances -- sometimes thousands of miles -- they usually end up in exactly the same place year after year. Such accurate feats of navigation, accomplished by millions of birds every year, have long made scientists wonder how they do it. Now a group of scientists in Germany has experimental evidence that reveals an important part of the secret of birds' navigational success.
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A second skin
Despite advances in treatment regimens and the best efforts of nurses and doctors, about 70% of all people with severe burns die from related infections. But a revolutionary new wound dressing developed at Tel Aviv University could cut that number dramatically.
NASA's Wise Gets Ready to Survey the Whole Sky
The mission will unveil hundreds of thousands of asteroids, and hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies.
Army tests new special ops hybrid vehicle
The U.S. Army is testing a new diesel hybrid vehicle called the Clandestine Extended Range Vehicle (CERV) designed for quick-paced special operations-type missions such as reconnaissance, surveillance, and targeting--all the while conserving fuel.
Army Eyes Missiles Filled With Flying Spy Bots
The Army wants to instantly get eyes in the sky to watch over a potential enemy. But spy drones or satellites or even fighter jets can be too slow to handle the job. The answer: missiles that carry surveillance drones inside.
RDA begins wave energy project
The project, which will install a large grid-connected socket on the seabed for wave energy devices, is hoped to make the south west of England a leading player in the global marine energy industry.
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Nanodevices Bend under the Force of Light
A team of researchers has fabricated a micron-scale device that deforms significantly under the force of light, a technology that could form the basis for tiny light-actuated switches or filters in future optical devices.
Liquid Cooling Bags For Data Centers Could Trim Cost and Carbon By 90 Percent
Server farms are undeniably awesome in that they store huge pools of data, enable such modern phenomena as cloud computing and Web-hosted email, and most importantly, make the Internet as it stands today possible. The downside: data centers get very, very hot. Cooling huge banks of servers doesn't just cost a lot, it eats up a lot of energy, and that generally means fossil fuels. UK-based Iceotope hopes to cut those costs by about 93 percent by wrapping servers in liquid coolant.
DARPA Wants Cryogenic Technology on the Battlefield to Freeze Traumatic Brain Injury in its Tracks
Blasts from improvised explosives and RPGs can cause traumatic brain injuries among soldiers, which can leave permanent damage. Sounds like a challenge for the Pentagon's mad science lab DARPA, which has issued a call for a brain freeze device that could stop the after-effects of brain trauma in its tracks.
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New Jaguar Supercomputer Outruns IBM's Roadrunner as World's Fastest
A supercomputer known as Jaguar has finally bested IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer in the biannual TOP500 list, but researchers have already begun looking into exascale supercomputers that consist of 100 million cores and run 1,000 times faster than Jaguar.
University of Adelaide researchers put the squeeze on light using nanoscale optical fibers
Scientists at the University of Adelaide in Australia have made a breakthrough that could change the world's thinking on what light is capable of. The researchers in the University's new Institute for Photonics & Advanced Sensing (IPAS) have discovered that light within optical fibers can be squeezed into much tighter spaces than was previously believed possible.
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US Physics Lab Ties in Race for Atomic-Scale Breakthrough
The Rice lab of physicist Tom Killian published a paper online this month demonstrating the long-sought creation of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of strontium atoms.
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Widetronix goes nuclear to build a 25-year battery
A company called Widetronix has developed a 25-year battery. Reminiscent of Heinlein’s micro-fission reactors that could be worn on a belt, beta voltaic battery cells last 25 years or more, using semiconductors to turn high energy electrons known as beta particles thrown off by radioactive decay into a usable current.
AMD, Asian packager license Irish micro-cooler
Researchers at the Stokes Institute in the University of Limerick have announced two licensing agreements that could see 'micro-cooler' technology used in computers.
Stokes Institute has specialized in thermal management, including microfluidics, and the technology has evolved over five years. Researchers there identified a series of previously unreported cooling interactions that can take place within and at material interfaces and that could be manipulated to create more efficient thermal management of electronic devices.
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Stokes Institute has specialized in thermal management, including microfluidics, and the technology has evolved over five years. Researchers there identified a series of previously unreported cooling interactions that can take place within and at material interfaces and that could be manipulated to create more efficient thermal management of electronic devices.
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Countries prepping for cyberwar
Major countries and nation-states are engaged in a "Cyber Cold War," amassing cyberweapons, conducting espionage, and testing networks in preparation for using the Internet to conduct war, according to a new report to be released on Tuesday by McAfee.
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Numonyx Makes Stackable Phase-Change Memory
Stacking thin-film devices could lead to denser, faster memories.
A new type of memory based on phase-change materials that can be stacked in layers could lead to much denser memory chips at lower costs, according to the researchers at Intel and Numonyx who developed it.
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A new type of memory based on phase-change materials that can be stacked in layers could lead to much denser memory chips at lower costs, according to the researchers at Intel and Numonyx who developed it.
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Darpa’s ‘Liquid Laser’ Gunship Program Pushes Ahead
The Pentagon’s mad science arm is moving ahead with a project to build a laser weapon “compact enough to be carried on board a tactical aircraft - say a B-1B bomber or an AC-130 gunship,” Aviation Week reports.
Darpa is getting ready to hand out 24-month research contracts to defense contractors Textron or General Atomics for the next phase of its High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS) program.
Darpa is getting ready to hand out 24-month research contracts to defense contractors Textron or General Atomics for the next phase of its High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS) program.
Anti-Submarine ScanEagle
Boeing is working on modifying the Compresses Carriage ScanEagle UAV into an aerial sensor capable of tracking submarines. Working under a U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) contract, Boeing is converting the Scan Eagle's diesel engine to operate in 'magnetically silent' mode, enabling the drone to employ magnetic anomaly detection systems tracking submarines underwater.
Tiny insect brains can solve big problems
Insects may have tiny brains, but they can perform some seriously impressive feats of mental gymnastics.
According to a growing number of studies, some insects can count, categorize objects, even recognize human faces — all with brains the size of pinheads.
According to a growing number of studies, some insects can count, categorize objects, even recognize human faces — all with brains the size of pinheads.
House pushes ban on peer-to-peer software
Stung by an embarrassing electronic leak last month revealing ethics investigations into dozens of lawmakers, Congress moved Tuesday to prohibit federal employees from using the same type of Internet file-sharing software blamed for the disclosure.
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Keel Laid for Newest U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier
Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding and the U.S. Navy marked the keel-laying of the newest aircraft carrier Nov. 14 in ceremonies at Newport News, Va.
The ship is named after Gerald R. Ford, the 38th U.S. president. Ford's daughter, Susan Ford Bales, is the ship's sponsor and authenticated the keel when her initials were welded onto a metal plate.
The ship is named after Gerald R. Ford, the 38th U.S. president. Ford's daughter, Susan Ford Bales, is the ship's sponsor and authenticated the keel when her initials were welded onto a metal plate.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Goddard team develops new carriers for space station
In a partnership that exemplifies One NASA, engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. teamed up with engineers at NASA's Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers to design, build, and test five new ExPRESS Logistics Carriers, or ELCs, which will be delivered to the International Space Station. "ExPRESS" stands for Expedite the Processing of Experiments to the Space Station.
DOE Backs Lithium-Sulfur Batteries
A battery that could store three times more energy than lithium-ion batteries gets funded.
One of the most exciting battery chemistries for electric vehicles is lithium-sulfur--it has the potential to store three times more energy than the lithium-ion batteries currently used in electric car.
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One of the most exciting battery chemistries for electric vehicles is lithium-sulfur--it has the potential to store three times more energy than the lithium-ion batteries currently used in electric car.
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Start-up claims its DVDs last 1,000 years
Cranberry's DiamonDisc product holds a standard 4.7GB of data, which roughly amounts to 2,000 photos, or 1,200 songs, or three hours of video, but the media is unharmed by heat as high as 176 degrees Fahrenheit, ultraviolet rays or normal material deterioration, according to the company.
What's next for Wi-Fi?
The recent formal approval of the IEEE 802.11n wireless standard marks not the end but the start of a wave of Wi-Fi innovation. In the next three to five years, the Wi-Fi experience will be very different from today.
The huge 11n performance jump -- to 300Mbps data rate and roughly 100M to 150Mbps throughput -- will become the basis for unwiring work and life to a much greater extent than ever before.
The huge 11n performance jump -- to 300Mbps data rate and roughly 100M to 150Mbps throughput -- will become the basis for unwiring work and life to a much greater extent than ever before.
Army Testing XM-25 'Smart' High-Explosive Weapon for Soldiers
A Soldier successfully shoulder-fired a "smart" High Explosive Airburst, or HEAB, round for the first time Aug. 11 from the XM-25 weapon system at Aberdeen Test Center, Md.
Boeing Receives Contract to Develop Miniature Weapon Technology
The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] received a $500,000 U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory contract on Sept. 30 for the first phase of a program to demonstrate miniature weapon technology for use on unmanned airborne vehicles (UAV).
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Nikon's Projector Cam Shines
Many of the camera's features — like the 11.044mm image sensor, 2.7-inch screen and 24mm wide-angle — look good on paper and proved decent.
In the S1000pj small, portable projector, picture is bright and clear while a slider on the top of the body lets you adjust the focus with ease.
3G Cellular Router integrates Wi-Fi, GPS, telemetry
Digi International (NASDAQ: DGII) today introduced the Digi TransPort WR44, an all-in-one enterprise-class cellular router with integrated Wi-Fi access point. The multi-function Digi TransPort WR44 provides high-speed connectivity to remote devices by combining a 3G cellular router, state-of-the-art security, advanced routing, an Ethernet switch, global positioning system (GPS), telemetry and Wi-Fi access point all in one device.
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