Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Google Earth, Foreign Wars, And The Future Of Satellite Imagery: DigitalGlobe Firm Providing Much of the Imagery for Google Earth is Now Launching a Next-Generation Satellite in 2014 - WorldView-3



However, the super-sharp images of the WorldView-3 aren't for Google and Bing Maps: They're going straight to the military and intelligence agencies. 

""DigitalGlobe, the Colorado-based imaging firm responsible for much of Google Earth's, Bing Maps', and Google Maps' content, has a new satellite on the way. The WorldView-3 is a super-high-resolution remote-sensing satellite slated for a 2014 launch. Ball Aerospace & Technologies is building the satellite and ITT will be responsible for the WorldView-3's optical imager. However, the primary audience for Worldview-3 pictures won't be Google. Images from the new satellite are mainly intended to be sold and licensed to the U.S. government.""


""Firms such as DigitalGlobe and their main competitor, Virginia's GeoEye, earn most of their money from their satellite constellations (or, for the rest of us, their satellites in space) custom-snapping pictures for customers or from resale of the regular imagery the satellites make. These clients range from Google to mining companies to, most importantly, the U.S. government.

Unfortunately, the best imagery that comes out of high-end satellites such as the WorldView-3 won't make it onto Google Earth anytime soon. U.S. regulations prohibit commercial customers from purchasing imagery with anything better than a .5 meter ground resolution. This means that, unless you work for the federal government or for a close foreign ally, you won't be able to see satellite footage of yourself lounging in a hammock just yet.""


""The best images to make it out of the WorldView-3 will have a considerably better resolution than .5 meters. Once complete, the satellite will have an image resolution that ranges between .3 and .46 meters. Government regulations require images from the WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 to be resampled to a lower resolution before being offered to private customers.

Intelligence services and the Defense Department will be able to use WorldView-3 for satellite imagery that is crisper and clearer than anything currently on the market. Instead of Google Earth's blurry (though admittedly cool) close-up imagery, government customers will have access to images that look like they jumped out of a science fiction movie.""


""According to DigitalGlobe CTO Walter Scott, the company's three current satellites photograph the earth's surface approximately six times a year, collecting between 2 and 3 pentabytes of imagery annually. Not all of this data is provided to Google, which receives DigitalGlobe imagery through a special service agreement. Microsoft has a similar agreement that provides content for Bing Maps.""

"In an interview with Fast Company, Scott noted that":
http://www.fastcompany.com/1797768/the-future-of-satellite-imagery-google-earth-and-foreign-wars

Monday, November 21, 2011

Neutrinos Still Faster than Speed Of Light: New Evidence From Gran Sasso laboratory, Challenging a Dogma of Science that Has Held Since Albert Einstein Laid Out His Theory of Relativity in 1905



""The new experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory, using a neutrino beam from CERN in Switzerland, 720 km (450 miles) away, was held to check findings in September by a team of scientists which were greeted with some skepticism.

Scientists at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) said in a statement on Friday that their new tests aimed to exclude one potential systematic effect that may have affected the original measurement. 

“A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication on physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny,” said Fernando Ferroni, president of the INFN.




“The positive outcome of the test makes us more confident in the result, although a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world.”

An international team of scientists shocked the scientific world with the original findings in September.

That first finding was recorded when 15,000 neutrino beams were pumped over three years from CERN to Gran Sasso, an underground Italian laboratory near Rome.

Physicists on the experiment, called OPERA after the initials of its formal scientific title, said they had checked and rechecked over many months anything that could have produced a misreading before announcing what they had found.""


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/18/new-test-finds-that-neutrinos-still-faster-than-light/

Lobbying Firm's Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street: A Proposal That the ABA Pay CLGC $850,000 to Conduct “Opposition Research” on Occupy Wall Street in Order to Construct Negative Narratives About the Protests and Allied Politicians



""A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”

The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.

CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.""



""According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”

The memo also suggests that Democratic victories in 2012 should not be the ABA’s biggest concern. “… (T)he bigger concern,” the memo says, “should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”

Two of the memo’s authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Geduldig joined CLGC before Boehner became speaker;  Cranford joined CLGC this year after serving as the speaker’s assistant for policy. A third partner, Steve Clark, is reportedly “tight” with Boehner, according to a story by Roll Call that CLGC features on its website.
""

Additional Details & Theories On ABA / GLGC Ties
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/19/8884405-lobbying-firms-memo-spells-out-plan-to-undermine-occupy-wall-street

How To Land People on Mars: The Problem With Landing Humans on Mars and How to Fix It, a 2032 Voyage Worth the Trip?

""“People come along with a fair amount of baggage: water, food, air, power supplies,” said NASA engineer Robert Manning.

NASA currently estimates it will require bringing anywhere from 40 to 80 tons of stuff to the surface of Mars to keep humans alive for even a day. Yet the agency only has the ability to land one ton at a time, and even then precariously.

“We’re not going to sent 80 spacecraft to Mars,” said engineer Bobby Braun. Instead, the agency needs to start making low-level investments in the technologies needed to land large payloads, he said.

While the timeline for sending humans to Mars is uncertain, some NASA plans state that the agency is looking for a manned landing to the Red Planet in 2032. Furthermore, other large-scale missions such as a Mars Sample Return may need to land vehicles larger than Mars Science Laboratory by the next decade.

Developing the technologies required to achieve these landings will require significant amounts of time, so the agency must start research now if it wants to accomplish its goals. Determining the best technology for the job is the agency’s most pressing task.

“For each of these technologies, we need to prove either that it will work or that it won’t,” said NASA engineer Michael Wright. "If we prove that it works then we set it aside, but if it doesn’t work, then we need a new plan.”""

*Old Technology
*Problem With Parachutes
*Inflatables in Space
*Hitting the Atmosphere
*Supersonic Retropropulsion

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Court Order Allows Occupy Wall Street Protesters Back to Original OWS Encampment in Zuccotti Park: Support for Causes, Concerns and Goals of Movement Continue On With Wide Spread Winning Additudes From Around the World


 ""NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of police officers in riot gear raided Zuccotti Park early Tuesday, evicting dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters from what has become the epicenter of the worldwide movement protesting corporate greed and economic inequality.

Hours later, the National Lawyers Guild obtained a court order allowing Occupy Wall Street protesters to return with tents to the park. The guild said the injunction prevents the city from enforcing park rules on Occupy Wall Street protesters.



At a morning news conference at City Hall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city knew about the court order but had not seen it and would go to court to fight it. He said the city wants to protect people's rights, but if a choice must be made, it will protect public safety.

About 70 people were arrested overnight, including some who chained themselves together, while officers cleared the park so that sanitation crews could clean it."" 



http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/11/court_order_allows_occupy_wall.html

Why Is China Building 3 Gigantic Structures Visible From the Orbit of Space In the Middle of the Kumtag Desert?


""New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. Is this a military experiment?

They seem to be wide lines drawn with some white material. Or maybe the dust have been dug by machinery.

It’s located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert. It covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide.

The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit.

Perhaps it’s some kind of targeting or calibrating grid for Chinese spy satellites? Maybe it’s a QR code for aliens? Nobody really knows.

You can check it out yourself in Google Maps here.""


More Pictures Plus NFO's Here
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/china-gigantic/all/1

Assange Takes Extradition Fight To UK's Highest Court: A Dec. 5 Hearing To Rule on Weather or Not His Case Raises a Question of General Public Importance and Should Be Considered by Supreme Court UK Judiciary Judges


""LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange filed a bid Tuesday to challenge his extradition to Sweden in Britain's highest court, says the Judicial Office.

On Nov. 2, two judges rejected the 40-year-old hacker's challenge to an order that he be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over allegations of rape and molestation.
""

 http://www.businessinsider.com/assange-high-court-atradition-2011-11



""Assange is out on bail under virtual house arrest, staying at a supporter’s country estate in southern England.

His lawyers now must try to persuade High Court judges at a Dec. 5 hearing to rule that his case raises a question of general public importance and should be considered by the Supreme Court.

Lawyers for Assange could not be immediately reached to explain what the point of “public importance” was.

If Assange’s request for a Supreme Court appeal is turned down, experts say extradition will be virtually inevitable.""




http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/uk-judiciary-julian-assange-files-application-to-take-extradition-case-to-supreme-court/2011/11/15/gIQAUdYtON_story.html

Monday, November 14, 2011

Lab-Grown Blood Is Pumped Into a Human's Veins For the First Time: For Vampires, A Real Alternative Cure To Human Body Consumption - Real Science Catches Up With The Movies


""Artificial blood may become a common reality, thanks to the first successful transfusion of lab-grown blood into a human. Luc Douay, of Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, extracted hematopoietic stem cells from a volunteer's bone marrow, and encouraged these cells to grow into red blood cells with a cocktail of growth factors. Douay's team labeled these cultured cells for tracing, and injected 10 billion of them (equalling 2 milliliters of blood) back into the marrow donor's body.
After five days, 94 to 100 percent of the blood cells remained circulating in the body. After 26 days, 41 to 63 percent remained, which is a normal survival rate for naturally produced blood cells. The cells functioned just like normal blood cells, effectively carrying oxygen around the body. "He showed that these cells do not have two tails or three horns and survive normally in the body," said Anna Rita Migliaccio of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.


This is great news for international health care. "The results show promise that an unlimited blood reserve is within reach," says Douay. The world is in dire need of a blood reserve, even with the rising donor numbers in the developed world. This need is even higher in parts of the world with high HIV infection rates, which have even lower reserves of donor-worthy blood.""



http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-11/first-transfusion-lab-grown-blood-success

Google X: A Secret Lab for Future Products Revealed: Tackling a List of 100 Shoot-For-The-Stars Ideas



""When Google's self-driving cars were revealed last year, the advanced hardware technology from the search giant came as a shock to many. The revelation kicked off speculation that Google had a facility where such developments are common, and today the New York Times reports that such a secret lab does in fact exist, and it's called Google X.

The last time we heard the name Google X was back in 2005, when a Google engineer posted an experimental Web site designed to show a Mac OS X-like interface for the company's services. Interestingly, the site was quickly removed just a day later, with no explanation.

Now a report in the Times reveals that Google X is actually a hush-hush research and development lab where Google uses its billions to experiment and invent what may be world changing technologies of the future.

According to the report, Google X has engineers working on everything from helper robots and Internet-enabled refrigerators to dinner plates and even space elevators (a concept popularized by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke).""








""MOUNTAIN VIEW: In a top-secret lab in an undisclosed Bay Area location where robots run free, the future is being imagined.

It's a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you're eating. Your robot could go to the office while you stay home in your pajamas. And you could, perhaps, take an elevator to outer space.

These are just a few of the dreams being chased at Google X, the clandestine lab where Google is tackling a list of 100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas. In interviews, a dozen people discussed the list; some work at the lab or elsewhere at Google, and some have been briefed on the project. But none would speak for attribution because Google is so secretive about the effort that many employees do not even know the lab exists.""

 


Alternatively I also Found This Today:


Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Royal Society (Scientific) Journal Archive Made Permanently Free to Access by the Public: The Move to Open Up Our Publishing Archive Coincides with "Open Access Week"



""The Royal Society continues to support scientific discovery by allowing free access to more than 250 years of leading research.

From October 2011, our world-famous journal archive - comprising more than 69,000 articles - will be opened up and all articles more than 70 years old will be made permanently free to access.""

kite




""The Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific publisher and, as such, our archive is the most comprehensive in science. Treasures in the archive include Isaac Newton's first published scientific paper, geological work by a young Charles Darwin, and Benjamin Franklin's celebrated account of his electrical kite experiment. Readers willing to delve a little deeper may find some undiscovered gems from the dawn of the scientific revolution - including Robert Boyle's account of monstrous calves, grisly tales of students being struck by lightning, and early experiments on to how to cool drinks 'without the Help of Snow, Ice, Haile, Wind or Niter, and That at Any Time of the Year.'""








http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/authors/free-archive.xhtml

Remote 'Telexistence' Robot that Transmits Sight, Sound, and Touch to the Operator: Using Head-Mounted 3-D Visual Display, Advaced Audio System & Tactile Sensory Gloves

 

""Keio University researchers are taking telepresence to the next logical level with a new “telexistence” robot called TELESAR V, a robotic platform that doesn’t just transport the user's eyes to another location, but also his or her ears and hands as well. The idea is to break through the limitations of time and space to allow a user to actually feel like he or she is present elsewhere via a remotely operated robot that returns three sensory stimuli back to the user.""

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-11/video-telexistence-robot-conveys-sight-sound-and-touch-user

NASA Engineers Have Created a Super-Black Material that Absorbs on Average More than 99 Percent of Ultraviolet, Visible, Infrared, and Far-Infrared Light!


Opening New Frontiers In Space Technologies 


"""The reflectance tests showed that our team had extended by 50 times the range of the material's absorption capabilities. Though other researchers are reporting near-perfect absorption levels mainly in the ultraviolet and visible, our material is darn near perfect across multiple wavelength bands, from the ultraviolet to the far infrared," Hagopian said. "No one else has achieved this milestone yet."

The nanotech-based coating is a thin layer of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, tiny hollow tubes made of pure carbon about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. They are positioned vertically on various substrate materials much like a shag rug. The team has grown the nanotubes on silicon, silicon nitride, titanium, and stainless steel, materials commonly used in space-based scientific instruments. (To grow carbon nanotubes, Goddard technologist Stephanie Getty applies a catalyst layer of iron to an underlayer on silicon, titanium, and other materials. She then heats the material in an oven to about 1,382 degrees Fahrenheit. While heating, the material is bathed in carbon-containing feedstock gas.)

The tests indicate that the nanotube material is especially useful for a variety of spaceflight applications where observing in multiple wavelength bands is important to scientific discovery. One such application is stray-light suppression. The tiny gaps between the tubes collect and trap background light to prevent it from reflecting off surfaces and interfering with the light that scientists actually want to measure. Because only a small fraction of light reflects off the coating, the human eye and sensitive detectors see the material as black.

In particular, the team found that the material absorbs 99.5 percent of the light in the ultraviolet and visible, dipping to 98 percent in the longer or far-infrared bands. "The advantage over other materials is that our material is from 10 to 100 times more absorbent, depending on the specific wavelength band," Hagopian said.

"We were a little surprised by the results," said Goddard engineer Manuel Quijada, who co-authored the SPIE paper and carried out the reflectance tests. "We knew it was absorbent. We just didn't think it would be this absorbent from the ultraviolet to the far infrared."

If used in detectors and other instrument components, the technology would allow scientists to gather hard-to-obtain measurements of objects so distant in the universe that astronomers no longer can see them in visible light or those in high-contrast areas, including planets in orbit around other stars, Hagopian said. Earth scientists studying the oceans and atmosphere also would benefit. More than 90 percent of the light Earth-monitoring instruments gather comes from the atmosphere, overwhelming the faint signal they are trying to retrieve.""


Meet The Real 'Yes Men' - Infiltrating Criminal Business Lord Corps in Order to Publicly Humiliate Their Ego-matic Greeds

""THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world's most outrageous pranks.

From New Orleans to India to New York City, armed with little more than cheap thrift-store suits, the Yes Men squeeze raucous comedy out of all the ways that corporate greed is destroying the planet.

Brüno meets Michael Moore in this gut-busting wake-up call that proves a little imagination can go a long way towards vanquishing the Cult of Greed.

Who knew fixing the world could be so much fun?""




Monday, November 7, 2011

Hacked MIT Server Used to Stage Attacks, Scan for Vulnerabilities, Prob the Web For Unprotected Domains and Injecting Malicious Code at a Very Substatial Rate With Far Reaching Implications / Collateral Damages / Security Issues




""A compromised server at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been identified as being used as a vulnerability scanner and attack tool, probing the Web for unprotected domains and injecting code. According to researchers at Bitdefender who discovered the attack, the ongoing attacks appear to be related to the Blackhole Exploit Pack, a popular crime kit used by criminals online.

The attacks started in June, and so far Bitdefender estimates that some 100,000 domains have been compromised, leading to injected pages that look similar to the ones below. In each of the images, the compromised domain has new content injected on top of the existing content, complete with random images, text, and targeted keywords. Interestingly, some of the keywords related to the strings needed to identify a successful attack.

If that wasn’t bad enough, sites that are not vulnerable are still impacted by the scanner, as the flood of GET requests searching for open directories “might grind it to a halt,” Bitdefender explains.
“Judging by initial data, one MIT server (CSH-2.MIT.EDU) hosts a malicious script actively used by cyber-crooks to scan the web for vulnerable websites. It is currently unknown how the crawler bot was planted on the MIT server, but it is certain that it probes the web for hosting accounts that come with a vulnerable version of PHPMyAdmin... Our information shows that the vulnerable versions of PHPMyAdmin range from 2.5.6 to 2.8.2.”

The attacks being staged from MIT’s resources is just one incident from one location. Other compromised hosts have been scanning the Web for vulnerable sites since 2010. These types of attacks are how BlackHat SEO scams are propagated, which target search results in order to spread rogue anti-virus or other malware. In addition, compromised hosts are also leveraged for other schemes, such as spam or botnet control.
Detecting a compromise is as simple as reading logs.
Early compromise attempts were initiated with w00tw00t, or “knock knock” string:""




http://www.securityweek.com/hacked-mit-server-used-stage-attacks-scan-vulnerabilities
http://www.malwarecity.com/blog/hacked-edu-website-serves-all-you-can-eat-dos-1199.html

Biologically Inspired Adhesive Tape Can Be Reused Thousands of Times: Gecko and Insect Secret to Wall Climbing Ability Revealed & Scientifically Applied



""As is so often the case these days for those searching for a better way to stick stuff together, researchers from the Zoological Institute at the University of Kiel in Germany have turned to the biology of gravity-defying ceiling walkers, such as geckos and insects. These creatures served as inspiration for a new dry adhesive tape that not only boasts impressive bonding strength, but can also be attached and detached thousands of times without losing its adhesive properties.

The secret to the wall climbing ability of many insects and geckos lies in the thousands of tiny hairs called setae that cover their feet and legs. The sheer abundance of these hairs, coupled with flattened tips that can splay out to maximize contact on even rough surface areas, make it sufficient for the Van der Waals forces, which operate at a molecular level and are relatively weak compared to normal chemical bonds, to provide the requisite adhesive strength that allows them to scurry along walls and ceilings.""
 

http://www.gizmag.com/bioinspired-adhesive-tape-kiel/20406/

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Gecko-Inspired Robot Rolls Up Walls: A Tank-Like Robot Rolls Up Smooth, Vertical Surfaces Using The Same "Clinging" Techniques as a Lizard


""For years, researchers have been trying to build a robot that mimics the gecko lizard's ability to scale walls and ceilings of any texture, even glass. But duplicating the specialized biology of the lizard's feet -- which actually cling to surfaces thanks to molecular forces and not because of suction cups or toenails -- has proven difficult.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now a Canadian research team has designed a tank-like robot that's able to roll up walls using the same molecular "clinging" technique as the gecko. The robot's tread is able to maneuver a variety of smooth and uneven surfaces, can support the whole weight of the machine and can be cleaned with a simple rinse.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"We can't do what geckos do quite yet, but we're getting closer," said Jeff Krahn, a research assistant at the Mechanisms ‘N Robotics for Viable Applications (MENRVA) Lab at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. He and his colleagues published their work in today's issue of Smart Materials and Structures.""



http://news.discovery.com/tech/gecko-inspired-robot-111101.html

Six-Man Team of Volunteer Astronauts 520 Days Later: Fake Mars Mission Ready to Return After Being Locked Inside a Fake Spaceship in a Moscow Car Park


About to Emerge Back on Planet Earth

""The year and a half of isolation, dubbed Mars500 and run by the European Space Agency (ESA), was designed to see how real space crews would cope with confinement, daily activities and psychological stress on a lengthy trip to the red planet and back.

The all-male crew could only shower once a week, ate canned food and received emails on a delay, depending on how “far away” they are from Earth. Their living quarters are the size of a bus and, outside of a quick stint on mock Mars, they’ve spent two eight-month periods in total confinement.

But Patrik Sundblad, the human life sciences specialist at the ESA, says the simulation has proved a complete success. “Yes, the crew can survive the inevitable isolation that is for a mission to Mars and back,” Sundblad stated. “Psychologically, we can do it.”

“They have had their ups and downs, but these were to be expected. In fact, we anticipated many more problems, but the crew has been doing surprisingly well,” Sundblad said. “August was the mental low point: it was the most monotonous phase of the mission, and their friends and families were on vacation and didn’t send so many messages.”""


http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/mars-500-mission-end/

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

$1,000 To Harvest One Genome in Two Hours by 2012, Says CEO of Ion Torrent: The first Human Genome Cost About $3 billion to Complete; Now We Can Sequence the Entire Population of Chicago for the Same Price



""The mythical "$1,000 genome" is almost upon us, said Jonathan Rothberg, CEO of sequencing technology company Ion Torrent, at MIT's Emerging Technology conference. If his prediction comes true, it will represent an astonishing triumph in rapid technological development. The rate at which genome sequencing has become more affordable is faster than Moore's law.

"By this time next year sequencing human genomes as fast and cheap as bacterial genome," said Rothberg. (Earlier, he'd commented that his company can now do an entire bacterial genome in about two hours.)

I was in the room on October 19 when he said it, and I would have thought it pure hubris were it not for Rothberg's incredible track record in this area, from founding successful previous-generation sequencing company 454 Life Sciences to recent breakthroughs made with the same technology he proposes will get us to the $1,000 genome.

This technology, called the Personal Genome Machine, is already being used to determine which mutations are present in the genomes of patients' cancers.""

Key to this Breakthrough:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27310/?p1=blogs

Holst Centre, Eindhoven Researchers Create New Form of Lighting Made With Thin Flexible Sheets of Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) Using Newspaper-Style "Roll-to-Roll" Printing Process


""These bendable materials could oust the conventional light bulb and revolutionize the way we illuminate our surroundings, being used for everything from lighting tiles and strips in homes and offices to windows that can simulate sunrise and sunset.

Rather than the traditional solid, "inorganic" LEDs that we are used to seeing in display signs, traffic lights and car indicators, OLEDs can be easily dissolved in a solvent and so sprayed onto a roll of thin, flexible, plastic foil in the same way that newspapers are printed.

"Many companies recognize the potential of OLEDs and are investing heavily in research and development in the hope that when this technology finally takes off, they will be in pole position to take advantage," Blom and Van Mol write.

The bottom layer of an OLED, which acts as a support, is a flexible material such as a polymer foil that has the electrodes and the light-emitting layer sandwiched on top to make up the complete device. Each layer is between 5 and 200 nanometres thick.

Traditional LEDs have so far failed to become a viable alternative to light bulbs because, despite being highly efficient, they have to be fabricated in clean rooms and so are expensive to make.""


NASA Studying Ways to Make Star Trek 'Tractor Beams' a Reality: Ability to Trap & Move Objects Using Laser Light




""The NASA Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT) has awarded Principal Investigator Paul Stysley and team members Demetrios Poulios and Barry Coyle at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., $100,000 to study three experimental methods for corralling particles and transporting them via laser light to an instrument -- akin to a vacuum using suction to collect and transport dirt to a canister or bag. Once delivered, an instrument would then characterize their composition.

 "Though a mainstay in science fiction, and Star Trek in particular, laser-based trapping isn't fanciful or beyond current technological know-how," Stysley said. The team has identified three different approaches for transporting particles, as well as single molecules, viruses, ribonucleic acid, and fully functioning cells, using the power of light.

"The original thought was that we could use tractor beams for cleaning up orbital debris," Stysley said. "But to pull something that huge would be almost impossible -- at least now. That's when it bubbled up that perhaps we could use the same approach for sample collection."

With the Phase-1 funding from OCT's recently reestablished NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program designed to spur the development of "revolutionary" space technologies, the team will study the state of the technology to determine which of the three techniques would apply best to sample collection. OCT received hundreds of proposals, ultimately selecting only 30 for initial funding.""

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/tractor-beam.html



 High-beam profile

""The team has identified three possible options to capture and gather up sample material either in future orbiting spacecraft or on planetary rovers.
Mars rover image with "tractor beams" The approach could be put to use in space and on planetary surfaces

One is an adaptation of a well-known effect called "optical tweezers" in which objects can be trapped in the focus of one or two laser beams. However, this version of the approach would require an atmosphere in which to operate.

The other two methods rely on specially shaped laser beams - instead of a beam whose intensity peaks at its centre and tails off gradually, the team is investigating two alternatives: solenoid beams and Bessel beams.

The intensity peaks within a solenoid beam are found in a spiral around the line of the beam itself, while a Bessel beam's intensity rises and falls in peaks and troughs at higher distances from the beam's line.

Solenoid beams have already proven their "tractor beam" abilities in laboratory tests published in the journal Optics Express, but the pulling power of Bessel beams, presented on the preprint server Arxiv in February, remains to be proved experimentally.

In all three cases, explained Dr Stysley, the effect is a small one - but it could in some instances outperform existing methods of sample gathering.

"[Current] techniques have proven to be largely successful, but they are limited by high costs and limited range and sample rate," he said.""

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15535115

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