DARPA

First, there was the Cold War. Now, perhaps, there's the Cold Space War.

Retired Major General Leonid Shershnev, the former head of Russia's military space intelligence, thinks the recent collision between an Iridium satellite from the US and an out-of-service Russian Cosmos 2251 may have been a set-up.

I can barely understand traffic, so I will make an extra effort to summarize the Major-General's suspicions.

He seems to believe that the Iridium satellite was part of a project called "Orbital Express." This project, which was officially completed in 2007, was to see if on-board refueling … Read more

In today's show, we find out that the demise of humanity is imminent (or that all of our robot mythology is fundamentally rooted in self-hatred), the RIM BlackBerry Storm takes the world by drizzle, and Microsoft hopes that actually giving you songs will convince you to buy a Zune. Oh, and we don't care about Yahoo Glue. In case you were wondering.

RIM BlackBerry Storm arrives http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/rim-blackberry-storm-verizon/4505-6452_7-33311850.html

Meet the first multitouch consumer laptop: HP’s TouchSmart tx2 http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10102285-1.html… Read more

IBM and five university partners have been awarded a DARPA contract to work on a cognitive computing project that will, essentially, attempt to simulate the brain's power and efficiency.

According to Dharmendra Modha, the manager of IBM's cognitive computing initiative, the idea is for him and his team to try to re-create the brain's perception, cognitive, sensation, interaction, and action abilities, while also simulating its efficient size and low-power consumption.

"The mind has an uncanny ability to integrate information from a variety of sensors, such as sight, hearing, touch, smell and can create categories of time, … Read more

As much as you may miss it, you'll have to face the fact that donating blood may become obsolete someday soon.

The U.S. military is seeking an automated culture and packaging system that could produce a steady supply of universal donor red blood cells right on the battlefield, without resorting to needles and the human filling-stations (PDF).

DARPA has awarded a $1.95 million contract to Arteriocyte, a Cleveland company that's experimenting with a technology developed at Johns Hopkins that enables the rapid expansion of umbilical cord blood. The company wants to adapt it to a manufacturing … Read more

Internal bleeding can cause irreversible haemorrhagic shock within 30 seconds or progressive shock within eight hours, either way, it's not good and the military wants a portable, noninvasive way to detect and stop it right on the battlefield.

To that end, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has contracted with Siemens Healthcare, the University of Washington's Centre for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound and Texas A&M to develop something called the Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation cuff (DBAC). The cuff is a semi-automated, ultrasound device designed to cut blood loss and shock resulting from combat limb injuries, … Read more

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Strategic Technology Office is looking for a submersible aircraft design and invites you to come up with a concept.

Performance requirements call for an aircraft that can cover 1,850km by air or 185km by sea, or 22km underwater in eight hours or less. And this is not some miniature pool hopper; DARPA wants it to be able to carry a crew of eight and a 2,000lb payload.

Speculation on design suggests an old-school snorkel to provide air supply for the power plant while your flying fish is in submerged mode, … Read more

A prototype high-tech cuff that detects and treats bleeding from combat injuries got a step closer to the battlefield Monday when Siemens Healthcare announced an exclusive contract with the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency to develop the device.

The Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation cuff, or DBAC, is designed to limit blood loss from penetrating wounds to limbs--as in the case of a gunshot injury--thus reducing the risk of limb loss or death.

Once the cuff is applied, ultrasound technology within the device automatically would identify the location and severity of the bleeding. This in turn would trigger therapeutic ultrasound elements … Read more

A Malibu, CA company is developing a new system to protect military communication gear from high-power microwave weapons, nuclear blast generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and the mythic, directed-energy "e-bomb".

One nuclear airburst can unleash the EMP equivalent to 100,000 volts per square centimeter, frying computer, radar and communication equipment within hundreds of miles. It's possible to protect electronic circuitry from EMP with something called a Faraday cage, or covering it up with 1 inch mesh, grounded, copper chicken wire as they've done with FEMA headquarters; problem is-nothing gets out either, which defeats the purpose when … Read more

A new type of binoculars developed by DARPA not only penetrates heat haze, it uses the shimmering distortion to magnify distant objects behind it, significantly extending target recognition and identification.

The Super-Resolution Vision System (SRVS) exploits an "atmospheric turbulence-generated micro-lensing phenomena", which acts as a lens, sporadically generating a better view of what is going on behind the haze.

The one disadvantage is that since the technique relies on a combination of images, you can't see what's going on in real time. Best case viewing from the approximately 4 lbs., 14 inch prototype will be one … Read more