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One thing that really bugs defence chiefs is having their troops diverted from other duties to control robots. So having a pack of them controlled by one person makes logistical sense. But I’m concerned about where this technology will end up.

Given that iRobot last year struck a deal with Taser International to mount stun weapons on its military robots, how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed? I asked two experts on automated weapons what they thought – click the continue reading link to read what they said.

Both were concerned that packs of robots would be entrusted with tasks – and weapons – they were not up to handling without making wrong decisions.

Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University is an expert on police and military technologies, and last year correctly predicted this pack-hunting mode of operation would happen. “The giveaway here is the phrase ‘a non-cooperative human subject’,” he told me:

“What we have here are the beginnings of something designed to enable robots to hunt down humans like a pack of dogs. Once the software is perfected we can reasonably anticipate that they will become autonomous and become armed.

We can also expect such systems to be equipped with human detection and tracking devices including sensors which detect human breath and the radio waves associated with a human heart beat. These are technologies already developed.”

Another commentator often in the news for his views on military robot autonomy is Noel Sharkey, an AI and robotics engineer at the University of Sheffield. He says he can understand why the military want such technology, but also worries it will be used irresponsibly.

“This is a clear step towards one of the main goals of the US Army’s Future Combat Systems project, which aims to make a single soldier the nexus for a large scale robot attack. Independently, ground and aerial robots have been tested together and once the bits are joined, there will be a robot force under command of a single soldier with potentially dire consequences for innocents around the corner.”

Among the passengers of a large Boeing 757 airplane with “United States of America” printed on its fuselage were top members of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and their counterparts from France, Germany and another country, possibly Great Britain, according to Barry DeFuria, a town of Harrietstown councilman and Airport Committee member who was there when the plane landed. A top military delegation from Italy flew in on a separate Falcon airplane, DeFuria said.

Town Supervisor Larry Miller, also on the Airport Committee, was also there and confirmed which nations’ officials were on which planes, but he said he did not know what kind of officials they were or where they were going from the airport. He said he and DeFuria had to get security clearances to be present and that soldiers were guarding the 757 around the clock at the airport.

General Motors Corp. declined 13 percent and Ford Motor Co. lost 14 percent after Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s second- largest automaker, reported its first sales decline in seven years. Apple Inc. fell 7.9 percent as Samsung Electronics Co., Asia’s biggest maker of chips and mobile phones, had its steepest profit drop in more than three years. Exxon Mobil Corp. lost 6.4 percent as oil and gasoline prices retreated.

“Investors are surprised by the full stop in the underlying global economy,” said Espen Furnes, an Oslo-based money manager at Storebrand Asset Management, which oversees the equivalent of $48 billion. “It’s everywhere now. I don’t think any major economies will escape this.”

S&P 500 futures expiring in December fell 60 points, or 6.6 percent, to 855.20 as of 8:15 a.m. in New York. The SPDR Trust Series 1, an exchange-traded fund tracking the S&P 500, slumped 6.8 percent to $85.40. Dow futures dropped 550, or 6.3 percent, to 8,224, while Nasdaq-100 Index futures retreated 85, or 6.8 percent, to 1,168.50.

The S&P 500 futures will not trade below 855.20 until U.S. exchanges open for regular trading at 9:30 a.m. New York time, said Jeremy Hughes, a London-based spokesman for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Dow Average futures won’t trade below 8,224, while Nasdaq-100 futures won’t fall below 1,168.50, he said. The “limit down” suspension allows both contracts to trade above those levels, he said.

“We’ve reached a situation of sheer panic,” Roubini, who predicted the financial crisis in 2006, told a conference of hedge-fund managers in London today. “There will be massive dumping of assets” and “hundreds of hedge funds are going to go bust,” he said.

Group of Seven policy makers have stopped short of market suspensions to stem the crisis after the U.S. pledged on Oct. 14 to invest about $125 billion in nine banks and the Federal Reserve led a global coordinated move to cut interest rates on Oct. 8. Emmanuel Roman, co-chief executive officer at GLG Partners Inc., said today that as many as 30 percent of hedge funds will close.

Using a complex genetic approach, U.S. and Chinese researchers believe they have done just that in mice, but the feat is far from being tested on humans.

Study co-author Joe Z. Tsien, co-director of the Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, says the “work reveals a molecular mechanism of how [memory deletion] can be done quickly and without doing damage to brain cells.”

The finding is published in the Oct. 23 issue of Neuron.

Humans plagued by painful memories have long wished for a way to eject them from the brain. The concept was the premise of the popular 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which two former lovers pay a “memory-erasure” service to expunge the unhappy affair from their minds.

To explore the possibility of safely carving away bits of memory, the study authors first focused on the activity of a common protein found only in the brain, called CaMKII.

In both mice and people, this enzyme is often referred to as the “memory molecule” because of its key role in facilitating brain cell communication — especially people’s ability to learn and retain information.

To hone in on the specific workings of CaMKII, Tsien and his team first developed a “chemical-genetic method” that enabled them to instantly turn the protein “on” or “off” among mice intentionally bred to overproduce the molecule.

After exposing the mice to emotionally powerful stimulations, such as a mild shock to their paws, the scientists then observed how well or poorly the animals subsequently recalled the particular trauma as their brain’s expression of CaMKII was manipulated up and down.

When the brain was made to overproduce CaMKII at the exact moment the mouse was prodded to retrieve the traumatic memory, the memory wasn’t just blocked, it appeared to be fully erased.

This occurred without impacting the animal’s ability to recall any other memories, the scientists say.

The Orwellian screens would have been set up in public places and would show “people’s television”, depicting how the Aryan race should live, with the Nazis focusing on news, sport and education.

Ideas included building rooms beside laundries so women could gather round the TV to watch the broadcasts.

Prototype programmes included Family Chronicles: An Evening with Hans and Gelli, which was an early reality TV show depicting a wholesome Aryan life of a young German couple.

Engineer Walter Burch was asked to make the idea a reality, and tabled a document to Hitler called “Plan to supply people’s transmitter to German homes” which would result in the laying of a broadband cable between Berlin and Nuremberg.

Other plans included showing footage of executions of Nazi traitors.

Curt Schulmeitser, a former SS officer, told the programme how a relative of Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun was filmed being shot after trying to flee Berlin.

It was implied by Hitler’s deputy Heinrich Himmler the filming was for Hitler’s benefit.

He said: “Himmler wanted somebody else in a different place to see what was going on.”

According to the programme Joseph Goebbels, leader of the Nazi Party’s propaganda unit, realised the potential of the visual image: “The advantage of a visual image over the audible broadcast is the audible becomes a visual image with the help of an individual’s imagination, which can’t be kept under control. Regardless, each will always see his own.”

The next day, the Treasury Department put out an announcement about a major bailout-related contract with Bank of New York Mellon Corp. that fell short in the transparency department.

Gold for December delivery dropped $36.70 to $698.50 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, trading below $700 for the first time since September, 2007.

“Speculative selling continues to hammer commodity prices,” said James Moore, an analyst at TheBullionDesk.com. Meanwhile, gold was also “under pressure as the dollar rallied.”

Gold’s losses followed broad declines in commodity markets. Crude oil was trading lower after the previous session’s big drop. Major stock indexes also moved lower.

Gold is often seen as an investment safe haven whose prices tend to rise when the economy falls into troubles, but its recent slumps have defied conventional wisdom. Gold has fallen for 10 out of 11 sessions since Oct. 8 and has lost more than $200 an ounce.

“The fact that gold did not head higher during the current leg of the crisis seems to reflect a combination of the rise in the dollar, deleveraging of commodity positions, sales to meet margin calls, and the unwinding of the long gold, short dollar trade,” wrote Natalie Dempster, an analyst at the World Gold Council.