Industries
Turning technology into ploughshares
Through its technology transfer business, Ploughshare Innovations, the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) is making a significant contribution to the development of cutting edge aerospace technologies. Invariably these have multiple military and civil applications. Of particular significance are:
World’s largest aerospace company uses advanced security technologies
Rambus have announced that its Cryptography Research Division and The Boeing Company have signed a license agreement for the inclusion of advanced Differential Power Analysis (DPA) countermeasures in Boeing products.
Nanosystems could be an alternative to delivering drugs
A number of drugs—from insulin to cancer chemotherapy—can be delivered only via injections, which are far more difficult for patients than taking a simple tablet or pill. It can also be more expensive, as this type of drug has to be prepared very carefully and sometimes can only be administered in a clinical setting. Ravikumar Majeti, PhD, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the Texas A&M Irma Lerma Rangel College of Pharmac...
Field trial with over 100 military vehicles tests RFID technology
NXP Semiconductors and Tönnjes and Kirpestein B.V. have, after 12 months of testing in various weather conditions, with over 100 assorted military vehicles and at different speeds, presented the results of the first field trial with IDePLATEs (license plates). The field trial confirmed the secure, robust, effective, and reliable use of RFID technology for vehicle identification.
How to control multiple robotic drones using the human brain
A researcher at Arizona State University has discovered how to control multiple robotic drones using the human brain. A controller wears a skull cap outfitted with 128 electrodes wired to a computer. The device records electrical brain activity. If the controller moves a hand or thinks of something, certain areas light up.
Jupiter probe arrives intact & starts sending data
The JunoCam camera aboard NASA's Juno mission is operational and sending down data after the spacecraft's July 4 arrival at Jupiter. Juno's visible-light camera was turned on six days after Juno fired its main engine and placed itself into orbit around the largest planetary inhabitant of our solar system. The first high-resolution images of the gas giant Jupiter are still a few weeks away.
Future UAVs could be 'grown' in large-scale labs
Ahead of this years' Farnborough International Airshow, engineers and scientists at BAE Systems and the University of Glasgow outlined their thinking about military aircraft and how they might be designed and manufactured in the future.
Robot helps nurses schedule tasks
Today's robots are awkward co-workers because they are often unable to predict what humans need. In hospitals, robots are employed to perform simple tasks such as delivering supplies and medications, but they have to be explicitly told what to do. A team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) thinks that this will soon change, and that robots might be most effective by helping humans perform one of the most com...
Smaller satellites could improve reflected energy estimates
A team of small, shoebox-sized satellites, flying in formation around the Earth, could estimate the planet’s reflected energy with twice the accuracy of traditional monolith satellites, according to an MIT-led study published online in Acta Astronautica. If done right, such satellite swarms could also be cheaper to build, launch and maintain.
High-resolution imaging reveals bacterial toxins
Many bacteria use specialised toxins to attack and infect other cells. Scientists at EPFL and the University of Bern have now modeled a major such toxin with unprecedented resolution, uncovering the way it works step-by-step. In order to infect other cells, many bacteria secrete a type of toxin that punctures the membrane of the target cell and form a pore; as a result, the cell dies.