• Low-cost killer robots may replace soldiers

    Robotex, a Silicon Valley start-up, combines engineering skill and innovative weaponry to create robot soldiers; system developed with no government funding

  • UAVs to be used for mid-air refueling

    U.S. Air Force, Boeing conducts tests to see whether a UAV can perform mid-air refueling

  • Unmanned aircraft takes off and lands on water on its own

    Wolverine researchers develop a UAV which is the first seaplane that can initiate and perform its own takeoffs and landings on water; funded by DARPA, the vehicle will fit into DOD’s “persistent ocean surveillance” program

  • MI5 warns of growing Chinese cyberspace spy threat

    Director-general of MI5 sends letter to 300 British companies warning them that their computer systems are under sustained attack from Chinese intelligence services; China engages in a systemic campaign to steal Western industrial secrets — and provide information to Chinese companies about Western companies with which these Chinese companies are doing business

  • Flock of small UAVs to track storms

    University of Colorado researchers develop a small UAV — weighing 250 grams and with a wingspan of half a meter; they plan to fly dozens, if not hundreds, of them in swarms for the purpose of early detection of storms; UAVs will eventually be connected to mini submarines

  • Rambus launches Terabyte Bandwidth Initiative

    Technology initiative will facilitate blazing-fast data rates of 16 Gbps and enable a future memory architecture which can deliver terabyte per second (TB/s) of memory bandwidth (1 terabyte = 1,024 gigabytes) to a single System-on-Chip (SoC)

  • Debate ends on using fractal analysis for authenticating art

    There was a time when museums and art historians thought that fractal analysis could be used to authenticate works of art; In a symposium tomorrow, scientists and art experts will admit that this cannot be done; some say it is a good thing, too: “I think it is more appealing that Pollock’s work cannot be reduced to a set of numbers with a certain mean and certain standard deviation,” said one researcher

  • FRES competition heats up

    U.K. Defense Ministry will announce Friday the initial winner of the first phase of the FRES (Future Rapid Effect System) competition; the largest-ever peace-time contract will see the government spend up to £16 billion on 3,000 armored vehicles (the company to manufacture the vehicles will be selected Friday from the three remaining finalists); £60 billion will be spent on maintaining these vehicles during their service life; BAE says it needs to win the vehicle integrator contract

  • Bees' swarm intelligence should be applied to Internet servers

    Honeybees manage efficiently and effectively to collect a lot of nectar with limited resources and no central command; Yellow Jacket researchers study how bees do it, and show that the way bees go about allocating resource for nectar collection is suitable for allocation of server resources to serve Web sites

  • Math error may risk global e-commerce system

    Adi Shamir, one of the developers of RSA public key algorithm, software which is widely used to protect e-commerce transactions from hackers, says that a (as yet hypothetical) math error in a widely used computing chip places the security of the global electronic commerce system at risk

  • Laser fingerprint scanner does away with dusting

    Breakthrough in finger printing: Indian scientists develop a laser-based finger printing device; devices uses optical coherence tomography (OCT), which is often described as an optical version of ultrasound imaging

  • U.K. government looks to private sector, academia for help on security

    U.K. Home Office organize a meeting of 150 scientists, venture capitalists, chief executives, and academics to exchange ideas on new capabilities and future research priorities in the figh against terrorism

  • CodaOctopus delivers first of three Underwater Inspection Systems to U.S. Coast Guard

    CodaOctopus delivers first of three Underwater Inspection Systems (UIS) to U.S. Coast Guard; advanced, versatile system features several advanced technologies which allow for real-time 3D underwater inspection with accurate positioning (up to 10cm) for georeferencing

  • Penn State researchers increase data transmission rate of copper cables

    Nittany Lions electrical engineers show it is possible to increase the data transmission of Category-7 copper cables used to connect computers to each other and the Internet

  • Researchers slow down, stop, and capture light

    Slowing light would allow the use of light rather than electrons to store memory, enabling an increase in operating capacity of 1,000 percent by using light’s broad spectrum rather than single electrons