Science & TechnologyS


War Whore

Boeing CHAMP Electronics Killer Missile Test Flight Successful

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© UnknownMicrowave Missiles: US Air Force’s High-Energy Weapon.
CHAMP fries electronics with microwaves

Boeing has announced that its new CHAMP missile has had a successful first test flight. The CHAMP, or Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project, had its first test flight earlier this year at the Utah Test and Training Range at Hill Air Force Base. The CHAMP missile is a non-lethal alternative to kinetic weapons that is able to neutralize electronic targets.

The goal is to create a weapon that can eliminate the threat posed by weapons and structures that rely on electronics to operate without having to worry about collateral damage. The test flight pointed the CHAMP missile at a set of simulated targets and confirmed that the missile could be controlled in flight and that timing of the High-powered Microwave (HPM) system could be controlled.

"It was as close to the real thing as we could get for this test," said Keith Coleman, CHAMP program manager for Boeing Phantom Works. "This demonstration, which brings together the Air Force Research Laboratory's directed energy technology and Boeing's missile design, sets the stage for a new breed of nonlethal but highly effective weapon systems."

Vader

Researchers One Step Closer to Mind-Reading with Brain Imaging Research

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© newscenter.berkeley.eduBerkeley scientists reconstructed clips from brain scans of those who just watched it.
Using fMRI and computational models, researchers were able to decipher and reconstruct movies from our minds

Researchers from the University of California-Berkeley have used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models to watch clips of movies inside the minds of people who just viewed them.

Jack Gallant, study leader and a UC Berkeley neuroscientist, and Shinji Nishimoto, a post-doctoral researcher in Gallant's lab, were able to "read the mind" by deciphering and rebuilding the human visual experience.

In previous studies, Gallant was able to record activity in the visual cortex (which processes visual information in the brain) while participants viewed black-and-white photos, and then use a computational model to predict what the participant was looking at.

Now, Gallant and his team have decoded brain signals created by viewing moving pictures. They were able to do this by placing Nishimoto and two other research members in a MRI scanner while they viewed two sets of Hollywood movie trailers. While watching the first set of trailers, the fMRI measured blood flow through the visual cortex and this information was directed to a computer, which portrayed the brain as tiny three-dimensional cubes called "voxels," or volumetric pixels. For each voxel, there was a model that detailed how motion and shapes in the movie are translated into brain activity. The computer program learned to relate visual patterns in the trailers with corresponding brain activity.

The second set of clips tested the computer's algorithm by giving it 18 million seconds of YouTube clips allowing it to eventually predict the brain activity that each clip would induce.

Then, a reconstruction of the original trailer was produced by merging brain scans that were most similar to the YouTube clips. The end result came out a bit blurry, but represents a large step toward reconstructing images humans see and process.

The team hopes that this research can lead to technology that can decipher what is happening in the minds of those who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims or coma patients. Eventually, this could lead to the creation of an interface that allows people (with paralysis, for instance) to use their minds to control machines.

Info

Space Storms to Pose Greater Risk to Flyers and Astronauts

Space Storms
© FotosearchFliers beware? A new study argues that frequent fliers and astronauts will be exposed to more radiation in the coming years.

If you thought the outlook for Earth's climate looked bleak, don't look up. A new study suggests that space weather - the hail of energetic particles above our atmosphere - is set to worsen in coming decades. The grim forecast suggests that astronauts and frequent flyers will face greater radiation hazards and could rule out a crewed mission to Mars before 2050.

Space weather is a general term for the environmental conditions above Earth's atmosphere. When space weather is bad, dangerous particles abound. These include protons and ions, known as galactic cosmic rays (GRCs), raining down at near-light speed from space, and similar particles coming in bursts from the sun, called solar energetic particles (SEPs).

The sun has the biggest impact on space weather. The radiation it emits fluctuates both over the short term and across centuries. When the sun is emitting more radiation, it generates a strong external magnetic field, which swaddles the solar system in the "heliosphere" - a shield against GRCs. On the downside, a more active sun is thought to emit SEPs more consistently. Currently, the sun's activity seems to be fading from a "grand maximum" that has been with us since the 1920s, suggesting a new minimum is upon us.

Question

Should NASA Fake an Interplanetary Holy War?

Invasion
© heiwa4126/Creative CommonsPlanet of interest.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is probably the last person to suggest NASA falsify the threat of alien invasion to play on humanity's fears. I also doubt he'd suggest that the space agency exploit America's religious conservative movement with "proof" that said aliens are governed by demons.

But just for the sake of argument, let's you and I go there.

Along with my Stuff to Blow Your Mind co-host Julie Douglas, I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Tyson last week on the motivators for space exploration and his upcoming book Space Chronicles.

He stressed that while the whole "exploration is in our DNA" argument is fine and dandy for multibillion-dollar space projects, it simply doesn't work past the $10 billion funding ceiling. Here's what he had to say:
The only drivers that really stimulate people to spend money are war and economics -- and the third one, which is less common today, is the praise of royalty or deity. There was a day when you could invoke one or both of those and get anything done. You get the pyramids and all the church building in Europe, the cathedrals of England. You could do that if there is a power above you that you fear or you want to praise. But that doesn't happen much anymore. That leaves war and economics.

Gear

How Advertisements Seduce Your Brain

Ads
© Sacha LeclairAds that circumvent consumers' conscious awareness by depicting a fun, vague or sexy scene that seems to have nothing to do with the product are less likely to activate the part of your brain that inhibits impulse buying, a new study shows.

Advertisements are all around us, and they vary greatly in their attempts to attract consumers. Some ads highlight the product's features, while other ads' content seems to be completely unrelated to the product they're trying to sell. It's the latter type of ads that shoppers need to be most wary of, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and George Washington University focused on two different types of advertisements. The first type of ad, called "logical persuasion," or LP, presents facts about the product, such as, "This car gets 42 miles to the gallon." The second type of ad is referred to as "nonrational influence" (NI) because it circumvents consumers' conscious awareness by depicting a fun, vague or sexy scene that seems to have nothing to do with the product.

In the study, researchers showed advertising images to 11 women and 13 men while recording the electrical activity in their brains using electroencephalography (EEG). Each participant viewed 24 ads that had appeared in magazines and newspapers.

Magnify

Mozart Motivates Sewage Treatment Microbes

sewage treatment plant
Operators of a sewage treatment plant in eastern Germany have saved around €10,000 over the last year - apparently by playing Mozart to their microbes. They are now calling for scientists to come and investigate.

Roland Meinusch, manager of the plant in Treuenbrietzen, Brandenburg, said the plant some 70 kilometres southeast of Berlin produced 1,000 cubic metres less sewage sludge than normal last year - and the only thing he had changed was the music.

"We play them Mozart's Magic Flute, on a half-hour loop," he told The Local.

The better the microbes work, the more they digest the sewage, producing more clean water and less sludge.

Info

Missing Planet Explains Solar System's Structure

Solar System
© Ars Technica
The solar system once had five giant gaseous planets rather than the four it has today. That's the conclusion from a computer simulation of the solar system's evolution, which suggests the fifth giant was hurled into interstellar space some 4 billion years ago, after a violent encounter with Jupiter.

Astronomers have struggled for decades to explain the solar system's current structure. In particular, Uranus and Neptune couldn't have formed where they are today - the disc of gas that congealed into the planets would have been too thin at the edge of the solar system to account for the ice giants' bulk.

A more likely scenario is that the planets were packed close together when they formed, and only spread out when the disc of gas and dust from which they formed was used up. The tighter orbits of extrasolar planet systems support this idea.

But the great gravitational bullies of the solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, would not have gone quietly to their new homes. Previous simulations show that at least one planet, usually Uranus or Neptune, should have been ejected from the solar system in the shuffle.

"People didn't know how to resolve that," says David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Now Nesvorny proposes a solution: a sacrificial ice giant between Saturn and Uranus that takes the fall for its planetary siblings.

Info

Strange Particles May Travel Faster than Light, Breaking Laws of Physics

Faster Than Light
© CERNThe OPERA experiment at the CERN physics laboratory in Geneva sends tiny particles called neutrinos vast distances to study their properties. New findings suggest the particles may even travel faster than light.

Nothing goes faster than the speed of light. At least, we didn't think so.

New results from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland seem to break this cardinal rule of physics, calling into question one of the most trusted laws discovered by Albert Einstein.

Physicists have found that tiny particles called neutrinos are making a 454-mile (730-kilometer) underground trip faster than they should - more quickly, in fact, than light could do. If the results are confirmed, they could throw much of modern physics into upheaval.

The results come from the OPERA experiment, which sends sprays of neutrinos from CERN in Geneva to the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy. After analyzing the results from 15,000 particles, it seems the neutrinos are crossing the distance at a velocity 20 parts per million faster than the speed of light. By making use of advanced GPS systems and atomic clocks, the researchers were able to determine this speed to an accuracy of less than 10 nanoseconds (.00000001 seconds).

Info

First Aboriginal Genome Sequenced

Aboriginal Dancer
© Mark Kolbe / Getty ImagesDescendent of the first humans to leave Africa.
A 90-year-old tuft of hair has yielded the first complete genome of an Aboriginal Australian, a young man who lived in southwest Australia.

He, and perhaps all Aboriginal Australians, the genome indicates, descend from the first humans to venture far beyond Africa more than 60,000 years ago, and thousands of years before the ancestors of most modern Asians trekked east in a second migration out of Africa.

"Aboriginal Australians are descendents of the first human explorers. These are the guys who expanded to unknown territory into an unknown world, eventually reaching Australia," says Eske Willerslev, a palaeogeneticist at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, who led the study. It appears online today in Science.1

Footprints

New Technique Uses Genomes To Determine Ancient Human Migrations

Migration Studies
© redOrbit

Researchers at Cornell University have developed new statistical methods based on the complete genome sequences of living humans to shed light on events at the dawn of human history.

The scientists applied their methods to the genomes of individuals of East Asian, European, and western and southern African descent.

Although they analyzed just six genomes, the researchers made use of the fact that these genomes contain traces of genetic material from thousands of human ancestors, which have been assembled into new combinations over the millennia by genetic recombination.

The primary finding of the study is that the San, an indigenous group of hunter gatherers from southern Africa, diverged from other human populations about 130,000 years ago - earlier than previously thought. By comparison, the ancestors of modern Eurasian populations migrated from Africa only about 50,000 years ago.

Previous studies of human demography have primarily relied on mitochondrial DNA from the maternal line or Y-chromosome data passed from fathers to their sons. However, those studies were limited by small numbers of genomic positions.

The current study uses the full genome of each individual, providing a more comprehensive view of human evolution, the researchers said.

"The use of genomewide data gives you much more confidence that you are getting the right answer," said Adam Siepel, associate professor of biological statistics and computational biology, and senior author of the paper.