As unlikely an idea as it sounds, mechanized insects seem to be the next wave of military technology. According to the current research conducted by DARPA, the Hybrid Insect MEMS project aims to transform "insects into unmanned air-vehicles" for various purposes. In other words, they're developing something that you could call pseudo-cyborg insects. Find out the rest of the details of this interesting study by reading our full article.

 

While it may seem like something out of an old Japanese cartoon about giant robots saving the world, the technology actually does exist, and may be replacing today's conventional prosthetics sooner than you think. Yes, the people hard at work at using robotics to help our differently-abled brothers and sisters to lead more productive lives have discovered an alternative power source for functioning artificial limbs. What's that alternative power source, you ask? Rockets.

Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the rocket-powered bionic arm uses a miniature rocket the size of a pencil to generate pure steam from hydrogen peroxide - and it's this steam that forces pistons to move up and down, thereby powering the advanced machinery in the arm to function and provide motion. And provide it does - the arm quantified as ten times more powerful than other robotic arms, and can do the same amount of movement three or four times faster.

With the arm using rocket technology and all, shouldn't the thing be as noisy as...well, a rocket? Researcher and roboticist Michael Goldfarb reassures that it isn't. "You can be in a room where people are talking at very low levels and never hear it. You have to be very quiet to hear this thing operate."

What about the steam, though? Apparently, the bionic arm is made so that the steam used to power its motors gets vented out through a porous skin-like cover, evaporating like so much sweat. And even then, it's not going to be that noticeable, as Goldfarb reports that the amount of water involved in the entire process is pretty much the same as what a person would normally sweat from their arms.

So when are we going to see the rocket-powered Bionic Arm on the market? Probably not for a while. The arm itself is still in its prototype stages, and the minds behind it are busy thinking up on how to make the model lighter, sleeker and more affordable. It might not be too long a wait, however, provided that DARPA doesn't pull its fundings on the project - as the agency plans on releasing a commercially-available version in two years' time.

Certainly good news that even with today's advancements in entertainment technology, we're also using what we know to help better the lives of everyone around us.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA has set out to develop a mechanical arm with functionality on par with a flesh-and-blood limb by 2009. So far, the researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) has already developed a prosthetic arm which allows its user to actually feel an object it grasps.

The forefather of this project, Proto 1, was attached to nerves in the user's chest and shoulder. This paved the way for direct sensory feedback, triggering the sensation of grip in the nerve receptors that map to the missing hand. In addition to this, Proto 1 also allows for more natural walking, since it can swing freely.

Now, APL expects to complete the newest model, Proto 2, by the end of the summer. The arm is said to be stronger, faster and more flexible. In addition to this, it will provide even more sensory feedback, including limb position and temperature.

Of course this comes at a price, users will need to become even more bionic with this new product. The installation of the mechanical arm requires replacing surface electrodes with tiny sensors that will be implanted or injected into the body to allow for better feedback to the user.

This technology looks to provide a very good replacement arm for those who have lost their original limbs. However, it also poses two questions that society will have to tackle eventually. When it [the bionic arm] is further refined, will we be finding people who would willingly swap out their biological limbs for the improved bionic arms? Secondly, is it ethical to do so?

When man uses his imagination, everything is possible. Thanks to innovative inventions over the years, we've learned how to fly, talk to people from across the world,  use microwave - sky's the limits. More breakthroughs are being discovered daily, and this one scientist believes he's got a chance to actually send a message back in time.

John Cramer, a physicist who previously revealed time travel theories, garnered more than US$ 35,000 to support his idea of using lasers, prisms, splitters, fiber-optic cables and other gadgets to detect non-local signals from photons. Success of this experiment could very well mean the possibility of time travel.

Skeptics are to be expected when it comes to such ambitious projects. Cramer, however, is not fazed. "I'm not crazy. I don't know if this experiment will work, but I can't see why it won't. People are skeptical about this, but I think we can learn something, even if it fails," he said.

People supporting him comes from all places: a gas-and-oil businessman, a music industry executive, a biotechnology scientist, a retired physicist and rocket scientist, and a photographer.

In general, all of them believes that the project may fail, but is feasible. A small investment is nothing if time travel gets proven because of it. As the businessman said, you can always go back in time and get your money back.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) refused to fund the experiment for being "too weird." They would rather spend money on developing Metal Gear liquid robots and cyborg beetles than taking a shot at time travel.

For more info, click on the Read link below.

A recent test run of an experimental jet engine saw it traveling up to 10 times the speed of sound. To give readers an idea of how powerful that is, it reached an altitude of 530km in a 12-minute run. Scientists have high hopes for the said engine and its possible application for air travel.

DSTO scientist Dr Warren Harch spoke specifically on the engine's practical application saying that "this technology has the potential to put numerous defence and civilian aerospace applications within our reach during the next couple of decades" This is very good news for international commuters everywhere, but how big a difference will it make?

If this new technology could be refined and adopted, it is predicted that a flight between Sydney and London would only last for two hours. The said scramjet engine, which is essentially an air-breathing supersonic combustion ramjet, was tested by both Australia's Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and the United States' Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in a collaborative effort.

DARPA spokesman Steven Walker spoke on the test, saying that it "has obtained the first-ever flight data on the inward-turning scramjet engine design. We are pleased ... and believe that a hypersonic airplane could be a reality in the not too distant future." Apparently, this technology could be adopted by the military before it sees commercial use.

That said, the future looks very bright for travelers everywhere. Theoretically speaking, it could possibly reach a point where people residing in Sidney could actually work at London and still be home that night for a home-cooked meal. Keep checking back here for the latest scientific breakthroughs.

A month back, we ran an article that argues how unlikely it is for humans to ever travel back in time unless they want to find a black hole and plunge headlong into certain doom in a foolhardy effort to go through a wormhole that hopefully leads to some desolate corner of the universe in a time almost indeterminable.

Sounds real tough, doesn't it? Not really, says physicist John Cramer of the University of Washington. For starters, he says it's theoretically possible to conduct an experiment that may spawn a different approach using an old Einstein paradox. By splitting light particles called photons, he could test what forces bind the sub atomic pieces such that they remain "entangled" even when light years apart.

To put it into context, Cramer says the ideas of the most famous physicist of this generation, Stephen Hawking, regarding time are wrong. Hawking has long fathered the idea that time travels in a straight and linear path through the time-space continuum. The theory essentially suggests that time moves only forward and going against it to travel to the past is impossible. The theory also says that travel to the future is a possibility as long as a body travels in the speed of light or faster.

Cramer agrees about the part concerning future travel, but he says time can ping back both ways in the laws of quantum mechanics, a study that deals with the actions and motions of the smallest particles known to man. He says that by using the Einstein paradox as a model, we can see that split particles influence each other no matter how far apart. This, Cramer says, is only possible if a signal or energy pattern binding the particles transcends time by traveling forward and backwards.

Experiments could have been underway, but neither NASA's Institute of Advanced Concepts (NIAC) nor the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA) would cough up the US$ 20,000 that Cramer is asking for. The NIAC is on its way to closing down and the DARPA says the Cramer study is just too strange. Incidentally, DARPA is involved in developing liquid robots and cyborg beetles.

"We're about to hit the wall if we don't get funding," he said. "It would be a shame because even if this doesn't work, I'm sure we'd learn something from trying," says a dejected Cramer.  To find out more about the UW study, follow the read URL.

Darth Vader uttered once, "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've created." But when it comes to artificial technology (A.I.), we sometimes can't help but be mesmerized.

Like this one for starters: Stanford University Associate Professor Sebastian Thrun said that we will have robot-driven cars by the year 2030. The professor uttered the rather brave prediction during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science which was held this year in San Francisco.

Thrun's expertise includes Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and he, together with his colleagues, will be joining a competition on November 3 to prove his point. The said competition, which will be hosted by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will serve as a testing ground for first wave of intelligent robot cars.

Today we can drive about 100 miles before human assistance is necessary. By 2030 you'll be able to see them on the highway, with a driving reliability that will exceed humans by orders of magnitude. We believe this technology will affect all of us. It is going to have enormous significance for people who can't drive because of disabilities or because they are ill or impaired.

The associate professor's pet project is named "Junior" which is a converted 2006 Volkswagen Passat. All steering, throttle, and brakes were modified to be fully computer-controllable. An on-board computer has been placed to determine its location and position using radar and GPS.

The mystery of the Space X Falcon 1 failure has been solved and the culprit was a busted nut, not human error. The ship fell back to Earth 40 seconds after its maiden launch last March 24 due to a fuel leak. Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), which manufactured the rocket, initially suspected the fuel leak was caused by a tiny pipe fitting accidentally left untightened by technicians the day before launch.

But a review released by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on July 18 concluded the small aluminum nut designed to hold the fuel pipe fitting in place failed due to subsurface corrosion. The resulting kerosene leak caused the main engine to catch fire shortly after the rocket's launch bringing the flight to a premature end. The corrosion was invisible to the naked eye which is why technicians failed to see it.

“The board determined that the only plausible cause of the fire was the failure of an aluminum B-nut on the fuel pump inlet pressure transducer due to inter-granular corrosion  cracking,” according to DARPA which sponsored the doomed inaugural flight.  “This caused [Refined Petroleum-1] fuel to leak onto the engine and down the outside of the thrust chamber.  Once the engine ignited, the leaking fuel caught fire.  The fire, over time, resulted in a loss of pneumatic pressure, causing the RP-1 and liquid oxygen pre-valves to close, terminating engine thrust 34 seconds after ignition.”

However, the cause of the nut failure remains a mystery. Investigators from the government and SpaceX think it was due to the heat and humidity on Omelek Island. Another possible factor named was an adverse reaction, known as galvanic corrosion, between the aluminum nut and the pipe fitting which was made of stainless steel. SpaceX will replace the $5-a-piece aluminum nuts with less-expensive stainless steel nuts to avoid that problem in the future.

The next Falcon 1 launch is slated for November from Kwajalein. SpaceX said said the second DARPA-funded launch will primarily be a test flight meant to demonstrate the design and procedural changes SpaceX is making.

At 6:15 p.m. EDT, Delta II took flight off Launch Launch Complex 17A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. It carried into orbit an experimental payload for the joint U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), U.S. Air Force and U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) team.

Micro-Satellite Technology Experiment (MiTEx) is a joint project of DARPA, the Air Force and the Navy. It is basically an experimental payload that will aid to identify, integrate, test and evaluate small satellite technologies.

"Today's mission was a great team effort, involving talented people from DARPA, the Air Force, the launch range, The Aerospace Corporation and our suppliers, as well as the professionals on the Delta program," said Dan Collins, vice president of Boeing Launch Systems. "The team faced many challenges, but maintained its focus on quality and teamwork throughout the mission."

Have a blow-by-blow account of this historic launch by heading over to the read link just below this article. The launch also marked the 250th Aerojet-supported Delta launch.

Excerpt from Space.com:

1845 GMT (2:45 p.m. EDT)

The launch team members have been polled to ensure all console stations are manned and ready to resume the countdown as planned at the end of this hold. No issues were reported. Clocks will start ticking again at 2:54 p.m. EDT as the Terminal Countdown begins.

1834 GMT (2:34 p.m. EDT)

Now 40 minutes through this scheduled hour-long hold in the countdown. Readiness polling of the launch team is coming up shortly.

1754 GMT (1:54 p.m. EDT)

T-minus 150 minutes and holding. Clocks are entering a planned 60-minute built-in hold in the countdown. Holds are scheduled into the count to give workers a chance to catch up on any activities that may be running behind.

Over the next hour, all launch team members and management officials will be seated at their consoles. A series of polls will be conducted to verify everyone is ready to enter Terminal Count at end of the built-in hold.

Liftoff of the Delta 2 rocket remains scheduled for 5:34 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral, Florida.