Chinese nuclear sub shows up on Google Earth

Increasingly, tools readily available on the Internet enable independent specialists or even members of the general public to do intelligence work that used to be the monopoly of agencies like the CIA, KGB, or MI6. Playing the role of an armchair James Bond, Hans K. Kristensen, a nuclear weapons specialist at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in Washington, D.C., recently drew attention to images on Google Earth of Chinese sites. Kristensen believes that the pictures shed light on China’s deployment of its second-generation of nuclear weapons systems: one appears to be a new ballistic missile submarine [see above image]; others may capture the replacement of liquid-fueled rockets with solid-fuel rockets at sites in north-central China, within range of ICBM fields in southern Russia.

Source: IEEE Spectrum. An excellent example of how open source intelligence outsmart military intelligence.

See also: Nuclear terrorism: the new day after from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. From the article:

Finally, there is the question of whether the U.S. government would behave with rational restraint. This, of course, assumes that there is a government. A terrorist nuclear attack on Washington could easily kill the president, vice president, much of Congress and the Supreme Court. But in a July 12 Washington Post op-ed, Norman Ornstein revealed that the federal government has refused to make contingency plans for its own nuclear decapitation, which means that U.S. nuclear weapons could be in the hands of small, enraged launch control teams with no clear line of authority above them. Assuming that the federal government was still there, however, we can only imagine (using the reaction to the loss of a mere two buildings on 9/11 as a metric of comparison) the public rage at the loss of a city and the intense, perhaps irresistible, pressure on the president to make someone, somewhere pay for this atrocity.

Originally posted on the Lifeboat blog.

Robots That Walk on Water

As if signing books and performing surgery on patients were not enough, robots can now walk on water, too, thanks to engineers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). What started as a class project three years ago ended up as insectlike mechanical robots with four to sixteen legs. The “bugs,” two to six inches long and weighing a few grams, can scoot over water, reports IEEE Transactions on Robotics. Called STRIDE, for surface tension based robotic insect dynamic explorer, the robots use water’s surface tension to amble on their spindly legs exactly like water striders, the insects that motivated the challenge.

Source: Scientific American.

Would you give up your immortality to ensure the success of a posthuman world?

July 25-26, Chicago—On Wednesday at Transvision 2007, Marvin Minsky, the artificial intelligence guru who heads up MIT’s Media Lab, puckishly suggested we could solve any population problem by uploading the minds of 10 billion people and running them on a computer that occupies a few cubic meters and costs only a few hundred dollars to run. Minsky was one of the scientific stars speaking at the World Transhumanist Association’s annual meeting. Other celebrities included Star Trek’s Captain Kirk (perhaps now better known as Denny Crane on ABC TV’s bizarre Boston Legal), William Shatner. I am never starstruck by Hollywood personalities, but I have to admit that Shatner gave a hell of talk at the conference. More on that later. Another Hollywood luminary St. Elsewhere’s Ed Begley, Jr. (now the protagonist in HGTV’s reality series Living with Ed) also dropped by. Techno-celebrities included the X Prize’s Peter Diamandis, the author of The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil, and Second Life’s Philip Rosedale.

Source: Reason Magazine.

Sweden is Ranked Most Responsible Nation

The world’s most “responsibly competitive” nation is Sweden, according to a new Responsible Competitiveness Index. Developed by the social and ethical research institute AccountAbility, the index ranks nations on such issues as human rights and anti-corruption measures.Countries that behave responsibly are likely to be more competitive in the global economy, since they indicate more sustainable long-term performance, transparency, and accountability, according to the institute.

“Governments have a massive role to play in reshaping global markets,” says AccountAbility CEO Simon Zadek. “If we don’t act, markets will continue to damage people and the environment. The good news is that countries can compete responsibly and be successful, so long as governments and policy makers put in place the right frameworks. There needn’t be a conflict between compassion and competitiveness. Sweden is a shining example of this.”

Other nations making the top 10 list of responsible competitiveness:
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Norway, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, and Canada.

SOURCE: AccountAbility via Futurist Update.

Antique engines inspire nano chip

The blueprint for a tiny, ultra-robust mechanical computer has been outlined by US researchers.

Source: BBC.

The End of Cheap Oil?

Crude oil prices rose above $74 per barrel this week and Goldman Sachs warned that the world could be facing $95 per barrel oil by this fall. Later this week the National Petroleum Council (NPC), which advises the Secretary of the Department of Energy, will release a new report which will find that conventional oil and gas supplies are not likely to keep up with growing global demand over the next 25 years. Of course, supply and demand must balance, so what the Journal is telling us is that the NPC thinks high oil prices are here to stay.

Via Reason Magazine.

ABC: The Last Days on Earth

Via Betterhumans.com

Where do End-of-Life Nanomaterials Go?

All materials and products eventually come to the end of their useful life, and those made with nanotechnology are no different. This means that engineered nanomaterials will ultimately enter the waste stream and find their way into landfills or incinerators-and eventually into the air, soil and water. As a result, it is important to consider how various forms of nanomaterials will be disposed of and treated at the end of their use, and how the regulatory system will treat such materials at the various stages of their lifecycle.

A new report from the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, Where Does the Nano Go? End-of-Life Regulation of Nanotechnologies, addresses these issues. Authored by Linda K. Breggin and John Pendergrass, legal experts from the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), the report presents the most comprehensive analysis to-date of two key Environmental Protection Agency laws that regulate the end-of-life management of nanotechnology. These are the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as the Superfund statute.

The report is timely. Today, there are over 500 company-identified nanotechnology consumer products on the market, all of which will sooner or later be disposed of. These products can be seen in an online inventory maintained by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (see: www.nanotechproject.org/consumerproducts ). This inventory does not include nanotech products being sold but not identified as such, or the hundreds of nano raw materials, intermediate components, and industrial equipment items used by manufacturers today.

Please join us on July 26, 2007, for the release of this report featuring the authors, along with Leslie Carothers, President of the Environmental Law Institute, and David Rejeski, Director, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. The discussion will focus on the end-of-life regulation of nanotechnologies. The report will be available on the day of the event at www.nanotechproject.org.

Via AzoNano.

Current nuclear threat worse than during Cold War

WASHINGTON, July 19 (RIA Novosti) – The risks of an accidental nuclear war have increased since the Cold War as Russia’s early warning capability has deteriorated, a former U.S. defense official said.William J. Perry, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-Director of the Preventive Defense Project at Stanford University, said in a congressional testimony Wednesday that “the danger of nuclear war occurring by accident” still existed.”Both American and Russian missiles remain in a launch-on-warning mode,” Perry, who served as U.S. defense secretary in 1994-97, said. “And the inherent danger of this status is aggravated by the fact that the Russian warning system has deteriorated since the ending of the Cold War.”Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has heavily depended on its radars located abroad, particularly the Daryal facility in Azerbaijan and two Dnepr stations in Ukraine, near Sebastopol and Mukachevo.

Some reports said the outdated radar facilities that Moscow is renting on the territories of former Soviet republics were in poor condition, and that “holes” had appeared in Russia’s early-warning missile threat coverage.

In the same testimony, Perry blasted the Bush administration for concentrating its efforts on building defenses to protect the U.S. from a potential ballistic missile threat, while downplaying the danger of nuclear terrorism.

“The centerpiece of our government’s strategy for dealing with a nuclear attack is the National Missile Defense system now being installed in Alaska,” he said.

“But the greatest danger today is that a terror group will detonate a nuclear bomb in one of our cities,” the expert said.

“Terrorists would not use a ballistic missile to deliver their bomb, they would use a truck or a freighter,” Perry said, adding that a missile shield alone would not reduce the nuclear threat to the country.

Colonel General Valter Kraskovsky, a former commander of the Soviet Union ballistic missile defense, dismissed Perry’s statement as an element of the information war the U.S. is waging against Russia.

“We should have expected such statements. The U.S. will continue pressing this issue because its main goal is to present Russia as a country owning powerful retaliatory weapons which it is incapable of controlling. They will be striving to disarm us on any possible pretext – for instance that we cannot oversee everything, that we can make a mess of things, or accidentally deliver strikes, and so on,” Kraskovsky said.

He said the Russian warning system properly monitored near-space, but that the situation could change if intergovernmental agreements on Russia using the two radar stations in Ukraine were revoked.

“If the stations stop operating in the interests of our country, the Russian air defense system will have problems,” Kraskovsky said.

Via RIA Novosti. Also ”Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran” via the Guardian. 

iRobot Receives $14 Million Order for PacBots

iRobot Corp. (NASDAQ:IRBT) received a US Navy order worth $14 million, part of an Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract to supply of PackBot man transportable robotic systems to the US forces. The recent order brings the total value of orders received from the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to $66 million. The total worth of the IDIQ contract could reach up to $264 million. Delivery has started in March 2007 and will continue through the end of 2007. The U.S. military’s MTRS program has requirements for up to 1,200 robots through 2012. To date, iRobot has delivered more than 800 PackBot robots to a broad range of military and civilian customers worldwide.

PackBot uses a unique propulsion system developing a road speed of up to 14 km/h. The system is characterized by distinctive “flippers” which offer continuous 360 degrees rotation and negotiation of rough terrain and obstacles such as stairs, rocks, logs, rubble and debris. The platform can climb grades up to 60% and survive submersion in water up to two meter deep. It is built to survive drop from two meter height, on a concrete surface, or being thrown through a window or tumbling downstairs.

Via Defense Update.