The Bullet with your name on it will not miss.

BBC News Website 

Self-steering bullet researched by US weapons experts

An LED attached to a prototype bullet shows its
flightpath during a night-time field test

A self-guiding bullet that can steer itself towards its target is being developed for use by the US military.
The bullet uses tiny fins to correct the course of its flight allowing it to hit laser-illuminated targets.
It is designed to be capable of hitting objects at distances of about 2km (1.24 miles). Work on a prototype suggests that accuracy is best at longer ranges.
A think tank says the tech is well-suited to snipers, but worries about it being marketed to the public.

Perfectly Secure Cloud Computing? Really?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2012) —  By combining the power of quantum computing with the security of quantum cryptography,  researchers have shown that perfectly secure cloud computing is possible. They have performed an experimental demonstration of quantum computation in which the input, the data processing, and the output remain unknown to the quantum computer.

The image shows clusters of entangled qubits,
which allow remote quantum computing to be
performed on a server, while keeping the contents
and results hidden from the remote server.
(Credit: Equinox Graphics)

Cloaking of real world 3D objects now possible

(Nanowerk News. Jan 26. 2012) Researchers in the US have, for the first time, cloaked a three-dimensional object standing in free space, bringing the much-talked-about invisibility cloak one step closer to reality. This study shows how ordinary objects can be cloaked in their natural environment in all directions and from all of an observer's positions.
Published Jan. 26 in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics ("Experimental verification of three-dimensional plasmonic cloaking in free-space"), the researchers used a method known as "plasmonic cloaking" to hide an 18-centimetre cylindrical tube from microwaves.

Published Jan. 26 in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics ("Experimental verification of three-dimensional plasmonic cloaking in free-space"), the researchers used a method known as "plasmonic cloaking" to hide an 18-centimetre cylindrical tube from microwaves.

Predictive text - Your Cold Hard Future in your (and the FBI's) hands.

The Markov 2 Field Analyser in my book 'Cloud' is nearing realization
BBC News report the FBI is seeking to develop an early-warning system based on material "scraped" from social networks. The intention is for the application to provide information about possible domestic and global threats superimposed onto maps "using mash-up technology".



The FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) posted its "Social Media Application" market research request onto the web on 19 January, and it was subsequently flagged up by New Scientist magazine.


The document says: "Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations."

It says the application should collect "open source" information and have the ability to:
Provide an automated search and scrape capability of social networks including Facebook and Twitter.

• Allow users to create new keyword searches.
• Display different levels of threats as alerts on maps, possibly using colour coding to distinguish priority. Google Maps 3D and Yahoo Maps are listed among the "preferred" mapping options.
• Plot a wide range of domestic and global terror data.
• Immediately translate foreign language tweets into English.
• 
  

Is that nanotech wi-fi you're wearing?

Weaving electronics into the fabric of our physical world
(Nanowerk News. Jan 24th) The potential applications for nanophotonics and nanoelectronics are truly startling, suggesting the brink of a revolution in human–machine interfaces that could turn science fiction into a reality. From interactive paper to clothing that generates energy and light-weight material with X-ray capabilities, weaving electronics into the building blocks of everyday materials will undoubtedly impact how we live in the future.

In the next few years we'll see a real increase in the number of 'nano-enhanced' clothes we buy. Cornell University for the past year have been working on fabrics that block toxic gasses to protect emergency responders, T-shirts that change color and kill bacteria and dresses that can recharge your iDevice.

Nano-enhanced Vehicle and Body Armour

Halloysite nanotubes imaged at Cornell University

NaturalNano Signs Development and Supply Agreement for Improved Vehicle and Body Armour Products
(Nanowerk News) NaturalNano and Sparta Armor announced that the companies have entered into an exclusive Joint Development and Supply Agreement to utilize their combined technologies. NaturalNano and Sparta Armor will develop a range of products and applications that combine their respective patented technologies to create a new class of high performance additives. These will significantly improve the mechanical properties of Sparta's Vehicle and Body Armour materials. Under the agreement, NaturalNano and Sparta will produce new products using NaturalNano's Halloysite Natural Tubes (HNT) which Sparta will sell exclusively.

Developments in Nanotechnology is a rapidly expanding field and the next step in the cycle is already happening with convergences between DNA manipulation, nanotechnology, computing, human biological sciences including neurology.
My soon to be published book is built upon three years of closely following developments in these fields and extrapolating forwards to the impact of viable convergences on everyday life. Watch this space.

Halloysite nanotubes imaged at Alfred University with a transmission electron microscope

Why SOPA is a really, really bad idea

World's official 'We're Doomed' Friday 13th News Item

"Jan. 10, 2012 (Reuters) — The symbolic Doomsday Clock calculated by a group of scientists was moved a minute closer to midnight on Tuesday, with the group citing inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and climate change.

The clock was moved to five minutes to midnight, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said, the first adjustment since the beginning of 2010, when it was moved back one minute to six minutes from midnight -- or "doomsday"."

It's official, we are not alone!

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2012) — An international team, including three astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO), has used the technique of gravitational microlensing to measure how common planets are in the Milky Way.

After a six-year search that surveyed millions of stars, the team concludes that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception.

Since there are more Galaxies out there than all the grains of sand on all the beaches in the world - and each galaxy has billions of stars, chances are there's a planet out there with faster broadband and cleaner air that we have round here. Hi guys!

Is your car Nano-punk'd? Probably more than you realize!!

'Ello, John, Got a new motor?

Nanocomposites are an emerging class of polymeric materials with excellent mechanical properties, enhanced modulus and dimensional stability, flame retardancy, improved scratch and mar resistance, superior thermal and processing properties, reduced warpage of components and enhanced impact resistance.

These attributes make them ideal as replacements to the usual metals in automotive and other applications.

Use of polymer nanocomposite-enabled parts in the automotive industry mean a  reduction in your car's  weight, improved engine efficiency (fuel saving), reduction in CO2 emissions and superior performance (greater safety, increased comfort and better driveability). 

Fig. 1 illustrates the usage of polymer nanocomposites parts.

Full story at: NanoWerk News

See into anything with smallest device yet

(Nanowerk News) A terahertz transmitter developed at the TU Darmstadt has generated the highest frequency ever attained by a microelectronic device. The minuscule device operates at room temperature and paves the the way for new applications.

Terahertz (THz) electromagnetic radiation has wavelengths between the ranges of  0.1 mm and 1 mm. At this frequency they can penetrate materials, such as plastics, paper, fabrics, or ceramics. No need to explore or examine the interior contents or workings of a while host of objects and mechanisms.
Possible uses include analyzing processes occurring in engine combustion chambers while engines are running, inspecting packages and letters for hazardous biological substances without need for opening them.

Another piece of the Soft-Machine outfit closer to reality

(Nanowerk News) A discovery by a research team at North Dakota State University, Fargo, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), shows that the flexibility and durability of carbon nanotube films and coatings are intimately linked to their electronic properties. The research could one day impact flexible electronic devices such as solar cells and wearable sensors.

Visible Quantum light.

(Nanowerk News) A Cambridge team have built a semiconductor chip that converts electrons into a quantum state that emits light but is large enough to see by eye. Because their quantum superfluid is simply set up by shining laser beams on the device, it can lead to practical ultrasensitive detectors. Their research is published in Nature Physics.

Nanoscale biological coating is a new way to stop bleeding

Nanotechnology News website 'Nanowerk' reports:

(Nanowerk News) MIT engineers have developed a nanoscale biological coating that can halt bleeding nearly instantaneously, an advance that could dramatically improve survival rates for soldiers injured in battle.

The researchers, led by Paula Hammond and funded by MIT's Institute of Soldier Nanotechnologies and a Denmark-based company, Ferrosan Medical Devices A/S, created a spray coating that includes thrombin, a clotting agent found in blood. Sponges coated with this material can be stored stably and easily carried by soldiers or medical personnel. The sponges could also prove valuable in civilian hospitals, says Hammond, the David H. Koch Professor in Engineering.

Full Story on the >Jump Here<
And while you are there, don't forget to vote for them. :)

He's dead, Jim!

BBC Web news are reporting the following:

"A $10m (£6.5m) prize is on offer to whoever can create a Star Trek-like medical "tricorder".
The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize has challenged researchers to build a tool capable of capturing "key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 diseases".
It needs to be light enough for would-be Dr McCoys to carry - a maximum weight of 5lb (2.2kg).
The prize was launched at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas."

Full story on the >Jump Here<

Mathematicians give Moriarty's schemes gravity.

Alain Goriely and Derek Moulton at Oxford’s Mathematical Institute worked behind the scenes of the latest Sherlock Holmes film helping to formulate a believable mathematical villain in Moriarty.

Initially, the filmmakers approached the mathematicians to ask them to fill Moriarty’s blackboard with equations. Not only did they have to be real, they had to be historically accurate, based on a 19th-century understanding of the field.

“When we did the equations on the blackboard, [the film-makers] got excited,” says Goriely. “Although they were quite secretive about the story, they told us that Moriarty was a mathematics professor and that they wanted us to help them add more meat to the script, which was a little dumb and mostly incorrect.”

Goriely and Moulton ended up going beyond script-tweaking to develop a secret code from scratch that Moriarty uses in the film to send messages around a Europe on the brink of the war he is conniving.
Read the full text here

Nanopaint Converts Sunlight to Electricity

Semi-conducting nanoparticles:
Electricity is created when the paint is brushed onto a conducting material and exposed to light.
The paint is a water alcohol base containing particles of titanium dioxide coated with cadmium based substances .
More on the jump >Here<

Fishy nano-tales. Salmon DNA nano-engineered for data storage and illumination.

>(Nanowerk News)< A group of researchers from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany have created a "write-once-read-many-times" (WORM), DNA-based memory device that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to encode information.

The device consists of a thin film of salmon DNA embedded with silver nanoparticles and sandwiched between two electrodes. Shining UV light on the system triggers a synthesis process that causes the silver atoms to cluster into nano-sized particles, and readies the system for data encoding.

At first, when no voltage or low voltage is applied through the electrodes to the UV-irradiated DNA, only a low current is able to pass through the composite; this corresponds to the "off" state of the device.
However, the UV irradiation makes the composite unable to hold charge under a high electric field, so when the applied voltage exceeds a certain threshold, an increased amount of charge is able to pass through. This higher state of conductivity corresponds to the "on" state of the device.

Once information is written, the device appears to retain that information indefinitely. The material's conductivity did not change significantly during nearly 30 hours of tracking.

The authors hope the technique will be useful in the design of optical storage devices and suggest that it may also have plasmonic applications.

DNA may be less expensive to process into memory devices than using traditional, inorganic materials like silicon, the researchers say.

Elsewhere

Salmon DNA Makes Better Lighting
Andrew Steckl, director of the Nanoelectronics Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati, is using salmon sperm DNA to create a new type of light-emitting diode (LED), the energy-efficient bulb used in everything from watches to Christmas-tree lights. By using DNA strands to isolate more luminophores—the molecules that generate light within LEDs—Steckl can produce LED bulbs that are 10 times brighter and last three to five times longer than current versions.
>Bloomberg Business Week<

Now this is the start of real Augmented Reality

The Big Freeze

Want to be a real Sim? here's your chance.

Will Wright, the designer of 'The Sims, wants to transform your life into a game. 

An article in the Reuters website has the full story. here are a couple of snippets.

"HiveMind," a group of cross-platform, cross-media online applications, is designed to turn a gamer's everyday life into part of the interactive experience by building upon Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and tapping into streams of personal information on phones, tablets, social networks and computers.

"I realized that we could build a system -- if we had a situational awareness about you, about who you are, where you are, what time of day it is, how much money is in your pocket, what's the weather like, what your interests are, etc. -- that could make your life much more interesting."

Sure, why not just dump everything about you into someone's server. 

Just think how much money Mr Wright will make from selling Anonymised data on what people get up to in real time. By this I mean data that cannot identify any person individually but is invaluable to marketing and advertising firms.

Most men/women aged x/y would prefer to  buy / do 'this' in these given situations / range of choices, etc etc.

There's no need for him to sell any personal data at all.

Basically players will become Sims with A.I in a game played by Mr Wright and his clients.

Mind reading Computer?

ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2011) — At UCLA's Laboratory of Integrative Neuroimaging Technology, researchers use functional MRI brain scans to observe brain signal changes that take place during mental activity. They then employ computerized machine learning (ML) methods to study these patterns and identify the cognitive state -- or sometimes the thought process -- of human subjects. The technique is called "brain reading" or "brain decoding."
More on the jump >Here<

There's lots of free space up there

Hackers prepare space satellites

This is the first best news of 2012. Personally, if I could, I'd pay to support a service like this.