MIT Technology Review May 7, 2019 According to the FCC it will be imperative to devise better ways to allocate the spectrum. DARPA is organizing a competition to devise new ways of negotiating over spectrum using AI. Just as the wireless data available to smartphones has spurred technological progress, 5G should underpin innovation across the tech industry. AI and blockchains could be crucial to helping the US stay competitive with China in wireless technology…read more.
Air Force Research Laboratory completes successful shoot down of air-launched missiles
Robins Air Force Base May 3, 2019 During a series of tests at the High Energy Laser System Test Facility at White Sands Missile Range, the Demonstrator Laser Weapon System (DLWS), acting as a ground-based test surrogate for the SHiELD system, was able to engage and shoot down several air launched missiles in flight validating laser effectiveness against the target missiles. The final SHiELD system, however, will be much smaller and lighter, as well as ruggedized for an airborne environment. The SHiELD program is developing a directed energy laser system on an aircraft pod that will serve to demonstrate self-defense […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of May 3, 2019
01. Researchers transmit data via a semiconductor laser, opening the door to ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi 02. Ice-proof coating for big structures relies on a ‘beautiful demonstration of mechanics’ 03. Battery research: New breakthroughs in research on super-batteries 04. Can AI and autonomous systems detect hostile intent? 05. New technique uses power anomalies to ID malware in embedded systems 06. Squishy robots can drop from a helicopter and land safely 07. New holographic technique opens the way for quantum computation 08. Using DNA templates to harness the sun’s energy 09. The Fundamentals Behind Hacking: MIT Technology Review’s Martin Giles 10. Self-powered wearable […]
Self-powered wearable tech
Science Daily May 2, 2019 An international team of researchers (USA – State University of Michigan, Duke University, Naval Research Laboratory, MIT, China) has created highly stretchable supercapacitors which has demonstrated solid performance and stability, even when it is stretched to 800% of its original size for thousands of stretching/relaxing cycles. Instead of having a flat thin film strictly constrained during fabrication, their design enables the three-dimensionally interconnected CNT forest to maintain good electrical conductivity, making it much more efficient, reliable and robust. The research may spur the development of new stretchable energy electronic systems, implantable biomedical devices, as well […]
Using DNA templates to harness the sun’s energy
Science Daily April 25, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (Arizona State University, University of New Mexico) reports significant progress in optimizing systems that mimic the first stage of photosynthesis. In previous the team demonstrated the utility of DNA to serve as a programmable template for aggregating dyes. To build upon these findings, they will use the photonic principles that underlie natural light harvesting complexes to construct programmable structures based on DNA self-assembly, which provides the flexible platform necessary for the design and development of complex molecular photonic systems. Using DNA architectures as a template, the researchers were able […]
Squishy robots can drop from a helicopter and land safely
Berkeley News April 24, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (UC Berkeley, industry, NASA) started designing these “tensegrity” robots — which combine the forces of tension and compression to create stable structures in hopes of creating a robot that could safely fall from space to explore Saturn’s moon, Titan. The new soccer-ball-shaped robots, created by engineers at UC Berkeley and Squishy Robotics, have the remarkable ability to fall from a height of more than 600 feet and be no worse for wear. Built of a network of rods linked by contracting cables, they can also shapeshift in order […]
Russia is So Weak That Missile Boats for Ukraine Would Stop Them
Next Big Future April 26, 2019 Ukraine is expanding its economic and technology connections with China and China’s interests and involvement could also prevent military escalation. China is making Ukraine part of the Belt and Road plan. They have trade of about $8 billion now. According to RAND’s analysis of actions that the US could take to stress Russia, the trends are for declining Russian Power. Poland, Ukraine and Baltic States seem like they will do better economically and all are increasing their military capability. Russia has an aging and shrinking population with less rural population and a net level […]
Researchers transmit data via a semiconductor laser, opening the door to ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi
Phys.org April 25, 2019 Previously the team of researchers in the US (Harvard University, Texas A&M, MIT Lincoln Laboratory) discovered that an infrared frequency comb in a quantum cascade laser could be used to generate terahertz frequencies, quantum cascade laser frequency combs could also act as integrated transmitters or receivers to efficiently encode information. Now they created a dipole antenna on the electrode of the device, modulated the frequency comb to encode information on the microwave radiation created by the beating light of the comb. Using the antenna, the microwaves containing the encoded information are radiated out from the device. […]
NIST publishes final green paper on ‘Unleashing American Innovation’
Fedscoop April 24, 2019 The document, “Unleashing American Innovation” details options for enhancing how federally funded inventions move from the laboratory to the marketplace. The options include streamlining federal regulations, encouraging public-private partnerships, engaging with private-sector investors, building a more entrepreneurial workforce and more. The paper does not prescribe policy, but it does offer suggestions for how future policy might be crafted. According to the paper the government invests about $150 billion annually across 300 federal laboratories as well as U.S. universities and private sector R&D institutions. The Lab-to-Market CAP goal aims to get more of the innovations created out […]
New technique uses power anomalies to ID malware in embedded systems
Eurekalert April 25, 2019 Micro-Architectural attacks have recently come to prominence since they break all existing software-isolation based security by hammering memory rows to gain root privileges or by abusing speculative execution and shared hardware to leak secret data. Researchers at North Carolina State University use anomalies in an embedded system’s power trace to detect evasive micro-architectural attacks. To this end, they introduced power-mimicking micro-architectural attacks to study their evasiveness. They showed that rowhammer attacks cannot evade detection while covert channel and speculation-driven attacks can evade detection. The detector can be embedded into programmable batteries. They have shown that power-anomalies […]