Israeli Aircraft Bomb Target in Syria
May 4th, 2013Via: New York Times:
Israel aircraft bombed a target in Syria overnight Thursday, an Obama administration official said Friday night, as United States officials said they were considering military options, including carrying out their own airstrikes.
American officials did not provide details on the target of the Israeli strike. But in late January, Israel carried out airstrikes against SA-17 antiaircraft weapons, which the Israelis feared were about to be moved to the Hezbollah Shiite militia in Lebanon.
RoboBee
May 3rd, 2013It requires a tether for power and control, but who knows how long that constraint will last…
Via: Christian Science Monitor:
The successful controlled flight of the tiny RoboBee – designed by a team at Harvard – represents a key step in the development of insect-size drones with a range of potential uses.
A robotic fly with a body not much taller than a penny standing on edge has taken to the air, passing its tests with flying colors. The RoboBee, as it’s called, is the smallest artificial insect yet flown, according to the team that built it.
‘Counterinsurgency Methods Used to Fight Gang Crime’
May 3rd, 2013Via: CBS:
Massachusetts State Trooper Mike Cutone realized that the methods of the insurgents he combated as a Green Beret in Iraq were similar to those used by the Springfield gangs. “Insurgents and gang members both want to operate in a failed area,” he tells Stahl, referring to the breakdown in cooperation between the citizens and authorities. “They know they can live off the passive support of the community, where the community is not going to call or engage the local police,” says Cutone.
So he helped form an anti-gang unit of troopers who work with the Springfield Police Department employing tactics right out of his old military manual. Key to the strategy in the old New England town — just like in Baghdad or Basra — was re-engaging the citizens and making them allies instead of impediments. “We’re using the other 99 percent of the population that live there. Winning them over,” says Cutone. “They become our eyes and ears …floodgates have opened for criminal information that we can go after now.”
Scientists Have Created Hybrid Viruses That Could ‘Cause a Global Pandemic Killing Millions of People’
May 3rd, 2013Via: Independent:
Senior scientists have criticised the “appalling irresponsibility” of researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.
They warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.
Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past president of the Royal Society, denounced the study published today in the journal Science as doing nothing to further the understanding and prevention of flu pandemics.
“They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever,” Lord May told The Independent.
“The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It’s appallingly irresponsible,” he said.
The controversial study into viral mixing was carried out by a team led by Professor Hualan Chen, director of China’s National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute.
Professor Chen and her colleagues deliberately mixed the H5N1 bird-flu virus, which is highly lethal but not easily transmitted between people, with a 2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans.
Digital Camera System Based on Insect Eyes
May 3rd, 2013Via: The Verge:
Samsung may claim its smartphones are inspired by nature, but researchers at the University of Illinois are taking that concept much farther — they’ve designed a new digital camera system that draws from the eyes of insects. The system, which relies on a large range of miniscule focusing lenses and detectors arranged in a hemisphere, resembles the huge, bulbous ocular system of insects like the dragonfly or the praying mantis. The benefits of this new system include an exceptionally wide field-of-view with low aberrations and a depth-of-field described as “nearly infinite.” The design, known as an “arthropodsuse compound design,” uses an a swath of smaller eyes to work together and provide a better overall image.
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There’s no word yet on how this technology might be deployed — but the study was co-funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), so it wouldn’t surprise us to see this used in the military someday.
Printable ‘Bionic’ Ear Melds Electronics and Biology
May 3rd, 2013Creepy pic at link.
Via: Physorg:
Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can “hear” radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability.
The researchers’ primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue. The scientists used 3D printing of cells and nanoparticles followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a bionic ear.
Montana: 559 Pounds of High Explosives Stolen from U.S. Forrest Service Bunker
May 2nd, 2013Via: KPAX:
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office are asking for help from the public in gathering information about the theft of approximately 559 pounds of high explosives from a USFS explosives bunker located near Red Lodge.
A press release from the ATF says that in April 2013, someone used forced entry to get into an explosives storage facility owned and operated by the U. S. Forest Service, which is located about two miles south of Red Lodge.
Officials say that various emulsion-type explosives, explosive cast boosters and detonating cord were taken from the facility.
Florida: Teen Faces Felony Charges for High School Science Experiment
May 2nd, 2013Via: Riptide:
Kiera Wilmot got good grades and had a perfect behavior record. She wasn’t the kind of kid you’d expect to find hauled away in handcuffs and expelled from school, but that’s exactly what happened after an attempt at a science project went horribly wrong.
On 7 a.m. on Monday, the 16 year-old mixed some common household chemicals in a small 8 oz water bottle on the grounds of Bartow High School in Bartow, Florida. The reaction caused a small explosion that caused the top to pop up and produced some smoke. No one was hurt and no damage was caused.
According to WTSP, Wilmot told police that she was merely conducting a science experiment. Though her teachers knew nothing of the specific project, her principal seems to agree.
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After the explosion Wilmot was taken into custody by a school resources officer and charged with possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds and discharging a destructive device. She will be tried as an adult.
She was then taken to a juvenile assessment center. She was also expelled from school and will be forced to complete her diploma through an expulsion program.
FinFisher Now Used in 36 Countries
May 2nd, 2013Via: Quartz:
A new report from Citizen Lab, a Canadian research center, shows surveillance software sold by FinFisher, a “governmental IT intrusion” company owned by the UK-registered Gamma International, is now active in 36 countries. That’s up from the 25 countries reported two months ago.
Gamma’s product, which it sells exclusively to governments, infects computers and mobile phones through devious means. These include posing as Mozilla Firefox and the (frankly quite elegant) ruse of using a “right-to-left override,” which is typically used to render writing in Arabic but can work in any language. This helps it foil users trained to look out for suspicious file extensions by hiding, say, an “.exe,” and making the file appear to be an image with a .jpg extension instead.
More: Mozilla Has Sent a Cease-and-Desist Letter to Gamma International
U.S. Banks to Send Checks for $3.6 Billion in Foreclosure Settlement
May 2nd, 2013Via: AP:
The nation’s largest banks will begin sending payments this week to millions of Americans who may have been wrongfully foreclosed on during the housing crisis.
A total of $3.6 billion in cash will be distributed to 4.2 million borrowers who lost their homes or were at risk of foreclosure, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency said Tuesday. Payments will range from $300 to $125,000. About 90 percent of borrowers whose mortgages were serviced by 11 of the banks will receive payments by the end of April, the agencies said.
The last group of payments is expected in mid-July.
A large share of those receiving payments, about 3 million borrowers, will each get only $300 or $400, according to data issued by the two agencies. Around 80 percent of them will receive $1,000 or less.
At the other end of the scale, $125,000 payments will go to 1,082 military personnel, who were foreclosed upon in violation of a law prohibiting foreclosures on active-duty service members, and to 53 borrowers who weren’t in default on their mortgages but still lost their homes.
