Star War Fronts

Israel already used US-made Patriot missiles to defend against missile attacks
US plans Israel missile shield 

The US House of Representatives has adopted a measure aimed at weaving closer US and Israeli defences against ballistic missiles of the type that could be fired by Iran.
 
The measure, part of a $504 billion defence spending bill passed on Thursday, would redirect $205m in defence department funds toward projects already underway in Israel.
 
It would provide $25m more for Arrow missile co-production and integration, $45m for a US-Israeli short-range missile defence system dubbed “David’s Sling” and $135m to buy a Theater High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, fire unit.
 
All three projects involve interceptors rockets designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in the terminal phase of their flight paths.
 

Source: MWZ News.

U.S. experts end exploration of Brdy Czech military district

Prague- A team of 38 U.S. experts ended today the exploration of the Brdy military district, southwest of Prague, where the United States wants to station a radar within its anti-missile shield, the Czech Defence Ministry has announced.

The experts mainly studied the hydrological and geological conditions, the quality of infrastructure and transport accessibility.

The team was headed by Julian Savage from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

Czech military chief of staff Vlastimil Picek said on Wednesday that the radar will be located at least five kilometres away from the closest housing facility, and that the training of the Czech artillery brigade in the district will have to be halved, which he said is no problem. Another group of five U.S. experts looked into whether the radar would reduce television and radio broadcasts, for instance.

Recently, Czech and U.S. negotiators held two-day consultations on the legal status of the radar base personnel. On May 22, the two countries’ negotiators will discuss a treaty defining the conditions of the functioning and operation of the possible radar station, its precise location, access to it, possibilities of visits and logistics.

Negotiations between Prague and Washington will last several months and it will depend on their outcome whether the radar will really be built in the Czech Republic. Another element of the anti-missile shield, a base with ten missile interceptors, is to be built in the neighbouring Poland.

A majority of Czechs are against the radar, and politicians are not united on it either.

Author: ČTK

Source: Ceske Noviny 

The Desktop Factory

Roboticist Hod Lipson wants you to stop shopping and use his portable 3-D printer to make your own stuff.

Q: What’s the most extreme use you have in mind for this technology?
A: I want a printer to be all we need to send on long-term space explorations. After landing, it would print a robot that could walk out of the printer, batteries included. If the robot discovers a cave that requires a special tool to explore with, it could head back to the printer to make the right gadget. And if the robot breaks, just print another one.

Read the entire interview at Popular Science.

Naval Robot Wars

A new report drafted by the well-connected Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments makes a strong case for an accelerated development of unmanned combat aircraft for carrier battle groups.

Source: DefenseTech

How BP Spied for MI6 and Blew £45m

BP executives working for Lord Browne spent millions of pounds on champagne-fuelled sex parties to help secure lucrative international oil contracts.
…The company also worked with MI6 to help bring about changes in foreign governments, according to an astonishing account of life inside the oil giant.
…Mr Abrahams, an engineer by training, joined BP in 1991, just as the disintegration of the Soviet Union had triggered a “new gold rush” by oil multi-nationals seeking a share of the 200 billion barrels of oil reserves beneath the Caspian Sea.
…He described a Wild West world in which oil executives with briefcases full of dollars rubbed shoulders with mafia members, prostitutes and fixers and cut their deals in smoke-filled back rooms.
…Subsequently released Turkish secret service documents claimed BP had discussed an ‘arms for oil’ deal with the assistance of MI6, under which the company would use intermediaries to supply weapons to Aliyev’s supporters in return for the contract.

Read the entire article pulled from UK Daily Mail, but available on Cryptome.

Ideologies and nanotechnology

There are many debates about nanotechnology; what it is, what it will make possible, and what its dangers might be. On one level these may seem to be very technical in nature. So a question about whether a Drexler style assembler is technically feasible can rapidly descend into details of surface chemistry, while issues about the possible toxicity of carbon nanotubes turn on the procedures for reliable toxicological screening. But it’s at least arguable that the focus on the technical obscures the real causes of the arguments, which are actually based on clashes of ideology. We supposedly live in a non-ideological age, so what are the ideological divisions that underly debates about nanotechnology? I suggest, for a start, these four ideological positions, each of which implies a very different attitude towards nanotechnology.

Soft Machines.

Micro-Air Vehicles to Get Insects and Bats Senses

Aurora Flight Sciences has been awarded a contract to develop navigation and control technology that will allow micro air vehicles (MAVs) to avoid collisions as they fly through urban and other cluttered environments. Due to their small size, MAVs hold great potential for providing valuable military intelligence while avoiding detection and destruction.

…

Aurora is partnering with Professor Sean Humbert and Professor Timothy Horiuchi, both of the University of Maryland, leveraging their expertise in bio-inspired sensing to create the technology that will allow MAVs to traverse urban areas without collision. This capability will enable unmanned aerial vehicles to conduct military intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions in environments in which enemy forces, assets, and activities are hidden or obscured.

Defense Update.

RU Sirius interviews Anissimov (Lifeboat Foundation) about AI, transhumanism and more

Immortality or Oblivion (MP3) on NeoFiles.

Beam It Down From the Web, Scotty

“In the future, everyone will have a printer like this at home,” said Hod Lipson, a professor at Cornell University, who has led a project that published a design for a 3-D printer that can be made with about $2,000 in parts. “You can imagine printing a toothbrush, a fork, a shoe. Who knows where it will go from here?”

Source: New York Times

Real-time single-molecule imaging of an entire chemical reaction

(Nanowerk Spotlight) It its more than 25 years of existence, Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) has predominantly brought us extremely detailed images of matter at the molecular and atomic level. STM - not to be confused with the scanning electron microscope (SEM) - is a non-optical microscope that scans an electrical probe over a surface to be imaged to detect a weak electric current flowing between the tip and the surface. The STM allows scientists to visualize regions of high electron density and hence infer the position of individual atoms and molecules on the surface of a lattice. Researchers have now taken a further step by using STM to perform real-time single-molecule imaging of an entire chemical reaction. Many chemical reactions are catalyzed by metal complexes, and insight into their mechanisms is essential for the design of future catalysts. These new findings have demonstrated that the STM approach to studying chemical reactions in a dynamic environment can provide valuable information about reaction mechanisms and rates, as well as catalyst activity and stability.

Source: Nanowerk

The Antibacterial, Antiviral, Smog-proof dress

Fibre2Fashion reports on a rare use of nanomaterials by a designer - rare in the sense that most of the stain resistant and antibacterial textiles that end up in Levis and Eddie Bauer don’t really tickle the fancy of Donatella Versace or Kate Moss.

Olivia Ong’s creations are still at an experimental stage,  and loaded with nanoparticles, but is heartening to see nanotechnologies reaching into the creative world. The creative arts, and fashion in particular, are experts in creating high value out of almost thin air - hence the designer label premium that people are willing pay. Similarly, the worlds factories may turn out tons of nanoparticles and sell them for peanuts, but the real value will be added in the applications, and in the creative arts, the sky is the limit.

Source: TNTlog