The US Army is building a second version of Earth on computer to help it prepare for conflicts around the world.
The project aims to help the US Army plan future conflicts. The software Earth is being created for the US Army by gaming company There. It is planning to model the entire planet at a scale that would make it possible to walk across the United States if… read more
The US military plans to test an internet router in space, in a project that could also benefit civilian broadband satellite communications.
Potential non-military benefits of DoD’s Internet Routing In Space (IRIS) program include the ability to route IP traffic between satellites in space in much the same way packets are moved on the ground, reducing delays, saving on capacity and offering greater networking flexibility.
In 2018, the U.S. Navy hopes to take a major step toward fielding a cyber-attack system on a fighter-size aircraft by developing a combination electronic jamming system and data weapon.
The U.S. should create a new agency dedicated to manned exploration of the moon, Mars and other destinations in deep space, says former Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmitt, Space.com reports.
Schmitt suggests the new agency be called the National Space Exploration Administration.
The new deep-space agency should “stay young, and develop a management structure that is not so hierarchical — that is actually a… read more
The FBI’s top cyber cop offered a grim appraisal of the nation’s efforts to keep computer hackers from plundering corporate data networks: “We’re not winning,” and the current public and private approach to fending off hackers is “unsustainable.”
His comments weren’t directed at specific legislation but came as Congress considers two competing measures designed to buttress the networks for critical U.S. infrastructure, such as electrical-power plants and nuclear reactors. Though… read more
Cleveland Clinic surgeons are to interview a shortlist of patients hoping to be the first to receive a face transplant for a patient whose face is disfigured.
The procedure would involve taking skin and underlying tissues from a dead donor and placing them on the living recipient.
Computer modelling suggests the face should take on more of the characteristics of the skeleton of the recipient than the soft… read more
Is it possible to develop a biosecurity system capable of detecting bioweapons in the making by screening the genetic sequences routinely ordered from commercial suppliers of synthetic DNA? No, says a National Research Council (NRC) committee commissioned by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in a report: Sequence-Based Classification of Select Agents: A Brighter Line (downloadable free).
The publication by Craig Venter and colleagues of the manufacture… read more
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed an early prototype for a nanoassembler.
The NIST system consists of four Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) devices positioned around a centrally located port on a chip into which the starting materials can be placed. Each nanomanipulator is composed of a positioning mechanism with an attached nanoprobe.
By simultaneously controlling the position of each of these nanoprobes, the… read more
Claims of cold fusion are intriguing but not convincing, according to the findings an 18-member scientific panel tasked with reviewing research in the area.
The findings, released on 1 December by the US Department of Energy, rekindle a 15-year-old debate over whether nuclear fusion can occur at room temperature. The panel was “split approximately evenly” on the question of whether cold experiments were actually producing power in the form… read more
US communications company Sanswire plans to deliver line-of-sight wireless broadband and mobile phone signals to an area the size of Texas from a “Stratellite.”
These geostationary, robotic airships, hovering at 65,000 feet above the Earth, will provide the low latency required for realtime birectional communications that is not available with satellites because of their distance.
The Guardian reported Saturday that Craig Venter said he is set to annouunce the creation of a synthetic chromosome — the first ever artificial life form — within weeks, possibly as early as Monday.
But Venter spokeswoman Heather Kowalski declined to confirm any breakthrough: “We have not achieved what some have speculated we have in synthetic life. When we do so there will be a scientific publication and we… read more
US intellgence agencies have begun a project to develop ways to spot terrorists who are using virtual worlds.
Codenamed Reynard, the project is “a seedling effort to study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the intelligence community,” according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
AeroVironment has received n additional $5.4 million from DARPA to further develop a tiny aircraft that can fly into tight spaces undetected, perch, and send live surveillance information to its handlers.
The U.S. State Department has demanded designs by Defense Distributed for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline because publishing them online may breach arms-control regulations, Forbes reports.
The order to remove the blueprints for the plastic gun comes after they were downloaded more than 100,000 times.
However, the files were actually being served by Mega, the New Zealand-based storage service created by ex-hacker entrepreneur Kim… read more