• Ray gun runs at full power for six hours

    Laser weapons are potentially very powerful, but until now they had one major drawback: All the earlier versions of the weapon were essentially giant rocket engines that burned chemical fuels and reached impressive powers; some even shot down test missiles; all of them, however, only ran for seconds at a time, and needed special fuels that would have created nightmares for battlefield logistics; a new Northrop Grumman ray gun has now run at full power for more than six hours

  • USAF looking to emulate fruit-flies for killer insect swarm drones

    The U.S. Air Force is studying how fruit flies maneuver within a heavily instrumented “simulation tunnel” in order to develop tiny, potentially lethal insect-sized flying robots; tiny military swarm droids could scatter across towns or cities to locate or spy on persons of interest to the U.S. military; they might even be able to land on the back of someone’s neck and blow his head off using some kind of tiny warhead

  • WikiLeaks reveals relentless Chinese drive for scientific hegemony

    Among the documents released by WikiLeaks are cables from the science office in the U.S. embassy in Beijing; the cables — some based on Chinese informers — reveal an aggressive, government-funded R&D effort by the Chinese government; among the items of interest: gait biometric device which will be placed under floors and sidewalk to identify people, covertly, by the way they walk; efforts to hack quantum cryptography; and a plan to build 70 nuclear-fusion reactors in 10 years

  • New strategy for UAVs: emulate the soaring approach of peregrine falcons

    UAVs could fly for longer using less power if they copied the counter-intuitive flying patterns of peregrine falcons, say researchers; falcons, instead of spiraling in one direction to stay with a single thermal, constantly change the direction of their spirals

  • Color-changing "blast badge" detects exposure to explosive shock waves

    Researchers develop a color-changing patch that could be worn on soldiers’ helmets and uniforms to indicate the strength of exposure to blasts from explosives in the field; blast-induced traumatic brain injury is the “signature wound” of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; with no objective information of relative blast exposure, soldiers with brain injury may not receive appropriate medical care and are at risk of being returned to the battlefield too soon

  • Nature's desalination: bacteria turn salty water fresh

    The growing global shortage of water has led to a growing interest in desalination to produce fresh water from seas and estuaries; conventional desalination plants, however, consume large amounts of energy; the solution: a bug-powered desalination cell that takes salt out of seawater

  • Police radar can identify suicide bombers

    The radar guns police use to spot speeding motorists fire microwave pulses at a car and measures the Doppler shift of the reflected signal to calculate its velocity; researchers found that the strength and polarization of the reflected signal — the “radar cross section” — can also measure the reflected signal created by the most common arrangements of looped wiring typically used by suicide bombers

  • Game-changing rifle arrives in Afghanistan

    A new smart rifle can be programmed so that its 25-mm. ammunition does not explode on impact; instead, it can be set to detonate either in front of or behind a target, meaning it literally will go through a wall before it explodes and kills the enemy; the Army says that enemy soldier can run, but they can no longer hide

  • DARPA looking for a game interface to end all interfaces

    A soldier in the field has his or her hands and voice fully taken up managing their weapons, sensors, and communications; DARPA wants to help: the Pentagon’s push-the-envelope research unit asks for idea on how to develop an interface which would allow soldiers to run, leap, or otherwise navigate about virtually without needing to do so physically

  • DARPA: Break-up of hypersonic airplane/missile no big deal

    DARPA first test of its hypersonic airplane/missile — Falcon HTV-2 — failed after the prototype broke up on re-entering the atmosphere; after investigating the causes of the accident, the agency said it is ready for another test; the HTV-2 unmanned test vehicle had no propulsion of its own, being intended rather to try out new airframe and control technologies for use in hypersonic weapons or aircraft of the future

  • Blood camera detects invisible stains at crime scenes

    At present, blood stains in a crime scene are detected using the chemical luminol; luminol is toxic, however, and can dilute blood samples to a level at which DNA is difficult to recover; it can also smear blood spatter patterns that forensic experts use to help determine how the victim died; luminol can also react with substances like bleach, rust, fizzy drink, and coffee, causing it to produce false positives; University of South Carolina rese3archers offer a better solution

  • Stealthy robo-snake to gather info in inaccessible areas

    Israeli researchers develop a robotic snake that could be useful in urban and subterranean warfare, enabling the inspection and surveillance of sewage systems, narrow tunnels, or culverts, inaccessible by other systems; the robo-snake can maneuver through difficult terrain, “sneak” stealthily inside buildings, use its sensors to scan their interiors; the robot will be able to carry disposable sensors that could be separated and left behind to monitor activity inside buildings

  • Carnegie Mellon to develop flying car for DARPA

    DARPA chooses Carnegie Mellon to develop autonomous capability for flying car; the military ground vehicle would transform into flyer for scouting, resupply, and medical evacuation; the flying car would be capable of transporting four people and 1,000 pounds of payload up to 250 nautical miles, either by land or by air

  • Breakthrough: Flapless UAV gets airborne

    The conventional control surfaces of a UAV include many moving parts, require frequent, costly repairs, and account for a significant percentage of an aircraft’s noise output; British researchers developed a UAV with no moveable control surfaces — no flaps, ailerons, elevators, or spoilers; just a wing, an engine, and some holes

  • Securing the nation with fingerprinting materials

    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers may have found a way to improve Raman spectroscopy as a tool for identifying substances in extremely low concentrations; potential applications for Raman spectroscopy include medical diagnosis, drug/chemical development, forensics and highly portable detection systems for national security.