robot drone kills 20; Pakistan cool with it

A robot plane has killed more than 20 people during an attack on a militant compound in Pakistan in what the US airforce claims is the deadliest drone strike ever.

Officially it is the largest remote control killing conducted by a robot force yet. The raid by US Reaper unmanned aerial planes carrying more than 3,750 pounds of explosives including an assortment of satellite-guided, quarter-ton bombs, and Hellfire missiles carried out the attack.

The US has been increasingly reliant on robotic planes as the preferred method of attacking bases in Pakistan. Politically the Pakistan government does not seem to be so upset when robot planes kill its citizens, but it has been getting cross about US commandos coming and doing it all personally.

The New York Times notes there have been at least 19 UAV attack in Pakistan's tribal areas "since the beginning of August. Some of the attacks are 25 miles into Pakistani territory." And they are growing increasingly deadly. In a single week in September, US drones killed more than 50 people in four attacks.

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500 terabyte iPod

via Electricpig

How big is your iPod? Bet it’s not 500 terabytes, but it soon could be, thanks to researchers at the University of Glasgow.

The clever Scots have created new nanotechnology that’ll cram 500,000 GB (or just under 500 terabytes) onto a single chip just one inch square.
That’s enough space to store a mind boggling 127 million songs on a device as small as an iPod shuffle.

Explaining the science behind it all, Professor Lee Cronin said: “What we have done is find a way to potentially increase the data storage capabilities in a radical way. We have been able to assemble a functional nanocluster that incorporates two electron donating groups, and position them precisely 0.32 nm apart so that they can form a totally new type of molecular switching device.

“Molecule sized switches would lead to increasing data storage to say 4 Petabits per square inch… The fact these switches work on carbon means that they could be embedded in plastic chips so silicon is not needed and the system becomes much more flexible both physically and technologically.”

There’s no word on when (or even if) the new technology will go into production, but you can bet Apple’s already eyeing it, along with armies of other tech firms. Watch this space.

TBC | £TBC

University of Glasgow

500 terabyte iPod

via Electricpig

How big is your iPod? Bet it’s not 500 terabytes, but it soon could be, thanks to researchers at the University of Glasgow.

The clever Scots have created new nanotechnology that’ll cram 500,000 GB (or just under 500 terabytes) onto a single chip just one inch square.
That’s enough space to store a mind boggling 127 million songs on a device as small as an iPod shuffle.

Explaining the science behind it all, Professor Lee Cronin said: “What we have done is find a way to potentially increase the data storage capabilities in a radical way. We have been able to assemble a functional nanocluster that incorporates two electron donating groups, and position them precisely 0.32 nm apart so that they can form a totally new type of molecular switching device.

“Molecule sized switches would lead to increasing data storage to say 4 Petabits per square inch… The fact these switches work on carbon means that they could be embedded in plastic chips so silicon is not needed and the system becomes much more flexible both physically and technologically.”

There’s no word on when (or even if) the new technology will go into production, but you can bet Apple’s already eyeing it, along with armies of other tech firms. Watch this space.

TBC | £TBC

University of Glasgow

(via Nature Nanotechnology)

Futuristic Contact Lens

Via Popular Mechanics


Most advances in retinal implants concentrate on restoring, not enhancing, sight. But there’s hope yet for superhuman vision, and without surgery: A team at the University of Washington has created a contact lens assembled with functional circuitry and LEDs.

Potential uses include virtual displays for pilots, video-game projections and telescopic vision for soldiers. A working prototype of a lens-embedded antenna that draws power for the device from radio frequencies has also been created. The next steps are to build a version that can display several pixels—and then to test it on a person.

The UW team uses a technique called self-assembly to manufacture the eyewear. Researchers dust a specially designed contact lens with microscale components that automatically bond to predetermined receptor sites. The shape of each component dictates where it attaches.

“There’s a lot of room to expand,” Babak Parviz, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at UW, says of the technology. “You can let your imagination run wild.”

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