This week’s this week in DARPA showcases one of the many ways that DARPA is always looking to maximize the combat effectiveness of the war fighter. First, some background, orexins (also called hypocretins) are a kind of neuropeptide hormones that are thought to be important in wakefulness and appetite stimulation. It turns of that the good folks at DARPA following a series of experiments in monkeys found that after delivering doses of orexin A intra-nasally to sleep deprived monkeys they were able to perform as well as their well-rested counterparts. While humans using stimulants to stay awake is nothing new, orexin seems to not suffer from many of the drawbacks and side-effects associated with amphetamines.

Hit the link for the abstract of the monkey experiment

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What words do you think of when you think of the word robot? Metal, hard, steel, glowing red eyes, deadly killing machine, soulless automaton? Well maybe some of those, anyways researchers at Tufts University have been working on engineering soft-bodied robots for use across a broad spectrum of applications. The picture at the top here shows one of their prototypes based on a completely soft-bodied animal, the caterpillar. Using systems that mimic biological methods of locomotion will allow robots to attain a much more natural way of moving around in the environment because rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, they are taking their cue from Nature who has had a long time to perfect efficient methods of locomotion. While the caterpillar is just the first start, what other shapes might robots take now that they are not bound to the forms of rigid metal construction? Nobody knows, but I think I have a pretty good guess….

That’s right, deadly FemBots

Hit the link to ScienceDaily for more info

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Here’s a quote from The Telegraph:

A woman fitted with the world’s first “bionic arm” controlled by thought alone has been given back a sense of feeling.

Claudia Mitchell, 26, a former US marine, regained the ability to carry out simple tasks such as cutting up food when she was fitted with the prosthetic arm last year.

Now doctors have re-routed the ends of arm nerves to a patch of skin on her chest — allowing her to regain the sensation of having her lost hand touched.

A new study of her wrist, hand and elbow function found she could use the artificial limb intuitively and could perform tasks four times quicker than with a conventional prosthesis.

Ms Mitchell, who had her left arm amputated after a motorcycle accident, told doctors: “I just think about moving my hand and elbow, and they move. I think, ‘I want my hand open’ and it happens. My original prosthesis wasn’t worth wearing — this one is.”

In a commentary published in The Lancet medical journal, Dr Leigh Hochberg, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said early results for the new operating system for the limb were “an important step forward in the seamless integration of replacement limbs into the body”.

Dr Hochberg said the next stage would be for touch sensors on the artificial hand transmitting signals back to the re-routed nerves, allowing patients to have accurate sensations of touch, temperature and joint position.

How awesome is this?

The thing you have to keep in mind is that these are the first baby steps toward the wholesale replacement of missing or malfunctioning limbs with integrated, brain controlled, robotic devices. Chris may not have to wait much longer for his full robot body replacement unit.

Hit the link for the Full Story

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Below is the entire quote from SpaceRef, we can’t let those bastards silence SCIENCE!!!!

Editor’s note: The following email titled “A Message From the Office of Inspector General” was sent by from karen.l.freidt@nasa.gov to NASA LaRC employees:

Pursuant to a request from 14 United States senators, the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) is conducting investigative and audit activities regarding alleged “repeated instances of scientists … having publication of their research blocked, solely upon their views and conclusions regarding the reality and impacts of global warming.”

Through this notice the OIG is seeking your help in conducting a thorough review into this issue.

NASA policy on the dissemination of scientific and technical information derives from The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, as amended, and is primarily implemented by NASA Policy Directive 2200.1 and NASA Procedural Requirements 2200.2B. The policy directive states, in pertinent part, the following:

NASA shall provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of the STI [Scientific and Technical Information] resulting from NASA’s research effort, while precluding the inappropriate dissemination of sensitive information. NASA shall disseminate STI in a manner consistent with U.S. laws and regulations, Federal information policy, intellectual property rights, technology transfer protection requirements, and budgetary and technological limitations.

Accordingly, the OIG asks that if you have personal knowledge of NASA research (pertaining to climate change) having been wrongfully, unlawfully, or without good cause changed, suppressed, or censored, that you contact the OIG either:

- By e-mail: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/oig/hq/hotline.html
- By phone: 1-800-424-9183; or
- By mail: NASA OIG, P.O. Box 23089, L’Enfant Plaza Station,
Washington, D.C., 20026

The identity of anyone who provides the OIG with information will be protected, consistent with the Inspector General Act of 1978 and the Privacy Act. Also, the Whistleblower Protection Act protects any civil servant who provides information to the OIG from any form of reprisal, retribution or adverse action by their employer if those actions are taken solely because of the information being shared with the Office of Inspector General.

While the OIG will accept information at any time on this or any other matter, we request a response to this notice, if any, no later than February 16, 2007.

Thank you for your consideration and cooperation.

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We’ve covered the “active denial” systems on the Unsayable Podcast before, but it appears as though Ratheon Inc. actually has a model ready for production and it is currently being field tested at Moody Air Force base in Georgia. So, what are we talking about here? Basically you have a high voltage power unit, beaming equipment, and a rectangular dish antenna for transmitting the energy. A system like this could be mounted on the back of a humvee, and used to quell nasty rioters and civil disturbers. What is the effect you ask? Let’s get some quote action on here. From the sciam article:

The so-called Active Denial System causes an intense burning sensation causing people to run for cover, but no lasting harm, officials said.

“This is a breakthrough technology that’s going to give our forces a capability they don’t now have,” Theodore Barna, an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for advanced systems and concepts, told Reuters. “We expect the services to add it to their tool kit. And that could happen as early as 2010.”

Basically what we have here is a big microwave antenna that you can point at people, and instead of heating up your food, it heats up your enemy. Is this good or bad? To be honest, I don’t know.

However, take a look at this guy.

Does he look like he’s having a good time? If they would do this to a journalist who works for Reuters, would they hesitate to use it on you?

I happen to think these these people are the more likely target

I HATE hippies

hit the jump for the full story - SCIAM

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People, are always asking me, Jason, why in the world should we dump all this money into the space program, or return to the moon, when there are so many other pressing things to do here on earth? I usually respond with something like, “NEVER question me again!” However, on rare occasions I’m willing to look at this question in some detail. It’s actually a very valid question, and for my answer, I would like to reference one of my other favorite things, real-time strategy games.

So, let’s ask ourselves, what happens when you spend your whole time in the beginning of the game, carefully guarding your tiny corner of the map, unwilling to spend resources on expansion until your part of the world is perfect? Well, I’ll tell you, the more adventurous players will colonize the rest of the map, pulling new resources from the areas they settle, and then they’ll wipe the floor with you because their system has become a system of scale.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not insinuating we need to revisit the moon in order to win global RISK, but what I’m saying is that analogy provides us a good example. Chances are, you are not going to find an oil or gold deposit in your backyard. Nor would it be wise to create a giant luxury cruise ship in the middle of a land locked state. The moon is a frontier base that will grow to become it’s own producer of wealth and material. There is always a start-up cost associated with any new program, and you have to be willing to eat those initial costs to reap the benefit later. When you look down the long road, and you see a thriving human civilization spread throughout our local area of the solar system, you know what you should see? $$$$, that’s what.

Hit the link for SpaceRef’s take on the whole thing.

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I love all the things nano, from the ipod nano to nano materials. However, many of these nano-materials have not been fully investigated as to what would be the outcome should an accidental exposure from these substances happen to a person or merely to the environment. Remember asbestos? That really good fire-proof insulating material, remember how it turns out that inhalation of nano-scale particulates of it can give you mesothelioma and incurable lung cancer? Yeah, so perhaps use of nano engineered materials could turn out to have some unforseen and very unwelcome health consequences. The good folks at Sciam have written an article on the study of how carbon nanotubes would behave if released into a natural water system. The results weren’t good. It turns out that even though the nanotubes are hydrophobic, instead of clumping together and sinking to the bottom, the particles interacted with the negatively charged organic material in the water and this organic material turned out to be a better disperser for the material than the chemical surfactants that had been used in the lab for that very purpose. Hit the link for a very interesting read.

Safety study for Carbon Nanotubes

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Here’s the direct quote:

The Z-Man Program will develop climbing aids that will enable an individual soldier to scale vertical walls constructed of typical building materials without the need for ropes or ladders. The inspiration for these climbing aids is the technique by which geckos, spiders, and small animals scale vertical surfaces, that is, by using unique biological material systems that enable controllable adhesion using van der Waals forces or by hooking surface asperities. This program seeks to build synthetic versions of those material systems and then utilize them in a novel climbing aid optimized for use by humans. The overall goal of the program is to enable an individual soldier using dry adhesive climbing aides to scale a vertical surface at 0.5 m/s while carrying a combat load.

‘Nuff Said

Z-MAN PROJECT

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I kid, I kid, they would never let Chris anywhere near sensitive government software projects, or would they….?

Anyways apparently one of the satellites we sent to Mars, the Mars Global Surveyor, has been lost due to a software programming error. Here’s a quote from Nasa’s John McNamee:

“We think that the failure was due to a software load we sent up in June of last year. This software tried to synch up two flight processors. Two addresses were incorrect - two memory addresses were over written. As the geometry evolved, we drove the [solar] arrays against a hard stop and the spacecraft went into safe mode. The radiator for the battery pointed at the sun, the temperature went up, and battery failed. But this should be treated as preliminary.”

Tsk tsk tsk. What’s the moral of this story? What do you do with software before you upload it to a crazy expensive spacecraft orbiting an alien world? Test! Test! Test!

Read the full story at SpaceRef

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In everyday experience, when you stretch something it gets thinner and when you compress it gets thicker. A new class of materials called auxetic materials behave in the opposite way. Here’s a quote from the ScienceDaily:

When a usual material is, for example, hit by a ball, the material “flows” outward from the impact zone making the point of impact weaker. However, in auxetic materials, the matter “flows” inward, thus strengthening this zone. Such materials would be advantageous for bulletproof vests. Auxetic materials also provide interesting possibilities for medical technology. The introduction of implants such as stents to hold open blood vessels would be easier if, under pressure, the device would get thinner instead of thicker in the perpendicular direction.

ScienceDaily: Unusual Rods Get Thicker When Stretched, Thinner When Compressed

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