A camera that sees through clothes

No, these aren't the X-ray specs offered in comic books. Researchers at Northrop-Grumman are developing a technology that purportedly will enable small cameras to look through clothing and other materials, according to a report in EE Times.

It is being designed for security officials so they can detect weapons or other items at airports. This technology, known as passive millimeter-wave (PMMW) technology, can also peer through clouds.

Northrup will discuss the technology at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco in February. The ISSCC is one of the premier events in the semiconductor world.

Past conference highlights include the first papers on digital signal processors, or DSPs (Bell Labs, 1980), RISC chips (UC Berkeley; Stanford, 1984), 100MHz processors (Intel, 1991) and 1GHz processors (Digital; Intel, 2000). More recently, Gordon Moore took the stage at ISSCC and indicated that his famous law might slow down a little bit in the next two decades.