#The latest tech weapons the US might deploy in Syria Military action against Syria may have been put on hold, at least for now.
But as the US military has been gearing up for operations in Syria in response to the Assad regime's alleged use of chemical weapons,
there has been growing speculation over the weaponry it will use. Some are obvious. The USS Nimitz and other ships have already been ordered into the region,
suggesting that if a strike were to happen the use of F-18 strike fighter jets
and Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles may be involved. But as previous military campaigns have shown, US military commanders often see new conflicts as an opportunity to use recently developed weapons.
In some cases, these offer unique capabilities, such as destroying stockpiles of chemical weapons. Employing exotic new weaponry can also offer the opportunity to demonstrate that the investment of significant sums was spent money well.
Here are some of the latest weapons or types of systems that may end up being used:
Agent Defeat Weaponsthe US military has for many years been working on weapons designed specifically to target sites believed to house weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical or biological weapons.
Using conventional weapons on such facilities runs the risk of spreading highly toxic substances, so the Pentagon has funded a number of
what are called"agent defeat weapons#.#The Air force has confirmed it has two such systems in its inventory.
The CBU-107 Passive attack weapon (PAW) is essentially a weapon casing packed with thousands of penetrator rods with no explosives.
Designed for targets where heat might be dangerous, the idea is that a 450-kg (990-pound) bomb scatters thousands of rods from mid air over an area of 60 metres,
which can penetrate containers filled with chemical weapons, and allow them to drain into the ground to minimise dispersal.
The BLU-119/B Crashpad is a more explosive, rapid option. The Crashpad ruptures chemical weapons stores with blast or shrapnel and contains white phosphorous to incinerate chemical agents.
F-22the US's most sophisticated fighter the F-22 Raptor, has yet to see combat.
While Air force officials have argued the highly manoeuvrable aircraft with stealth technology would be useful in dealing with Syria's sophisticated air defence systems and surface-to-air missiles,
critics point out it is designed primarily as an air-to-air fighter. Another issue is that flight restrictions on the F-22 were lifted just earlier this year after concerns over pilot oxygen deprivation,
and upgrades to the fleet designed to address that issue won't be completed until next year. Despite this,
if the Air force pushes for it, the F-22 may still get its first outing during the forthcoming conflict.
Spy Satellitessatellites have long been used to track weapons of mass destruction, and the US has been investing heavily in new eyes in the sky.
Last week, the National Reconnaissance Office announced the launch of its latest spy satellite, though no details were provided (as is typical for such launches).
Experts suspect it is nothing extraordinary: just another in the existing KH-11 satellite constellation,
which uses electro-optical imaging. But officials have hinted also at new surveillance capabilities, and documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former National security agency contractor,
and published by the Washington post, reveal a host of top-secret satellites, such as the intriguingly named Quasar and Intruder.
The documents, which the Washington post redacted, provide no specific details on these satellites'capabilities, however.
High Power Microwave Weaponsimagine a weapon that can knock out all the computers in a Syrian military command centre without killing a single person.
That's the idea behind high power microwave weapons which are designed to destroy electronics without causing any physical damage.
Last year, Boeing released a video of its High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (Champ)- a missile that essentially fries circuits by causing a surge in power.
In the short film, Champ was seen taking out a bank of computers. While the system is likely to be still several years away from being fielded,
the Air force has conducted classified work in high power microwaves for years, and some suspect it already has such weapons available.#
#Cyber Weaponsin 2010 the Pentagon set up the US Cyber Command to coordinate and conduct both defensive and offensive military operations in cyberspace.
The Stuxnet virus, designed to destroy Iran's uranium-enriching gas centrifuges, and first identified that same year, is believed to have been a demonstration of the US's abilities to wage war by attacking enemy computer systems.
There have already been calls for the White house to launch cyber operations against Syria. Targets could be military, such as air defences,
or critical infrastructure, such as the electricity grid or financial systems. Some cyber attacks use malware (malicious software) to gain access to enemy systems
in order to either steal sensitive information or gain control of them. Information can be harvested using key logging software that tracks keystrokes, for example.
Spoofing involves forging packets of data so that they look as if they come from legitimate sources.
There are also data-driven attacks. A common form is the denial of service (DDOS) attack
which aims to cripple systems by bombarding them with data, usually using botnets#large numbers of compromised computers.
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#Why Bluetooth use is on the rise Bluetooth has been with us for around 15 years.
Named after Denmark's King Harald Bluetooth Blatand, who reigned in the 10th century AD, it is a technology that everyone is aware of on their computers and phones,
yet not many people choose to use. As a means of allowing devices to talk to each other cheaply and wirelessly over short distances,
it has tended to stay largely in the shadows, leaving the limelight to the technologies it connects.
Now however, with the rapid growth in the use of mobile and sensing technologies along with the release of an updated version of the system,
means the list of its applications is growing steadily. From health and agriculture, to business and electioneering, it is quietly playing an ever more central role in many of our lives."
"It's a very flexible, low power, and predictable technology,#says Professor Roch Guerin, Chair of Computer science and Engineering at Washington University, St louis."Bluetooth targets lower transmission ranges and data rates than wi-fi,
and as a result has lower cost and lower power consumption.##These costs have dropped further, in some cases significantly, thanks to recent advances.
Bluetooth Smart, launched in 2011, includes a smarter power management system that allows it to turn on,
transmit data and shut down more quickly#in just a few milliseconds in some cases. Depending on the devices being connected
and the data being transmitted, this updated system consumes anywhere between half and 1/100th of the power of the previous version.
As a result, machines using Bluetooth that previously ran for a few months on a coin cell battery,
can now run for years.""Bluetooth classic is for sending steady streams of voice and audio,#says Suke Jawanda, Chief Marketing Officer of the Bluetooth Special interest Group (SIG),
which owns and licenses Bluetooth technology.""Bluetooth Smart is about sending packets of bits and data to applications.#
#Life changinghealthcare is cited frequently as one area that hasn't witnessed the radical transformations underway elsewhere as a result of the ongoing digital mobile revolution.
The growth of novel personal medical sensing technologies, many of which use Bluetooth, could soon change this.
Earlier this year, a Silicon valley-based start-up called Scanadu sought to raise $100, 000 on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo.
In fact donors pledged over $1. 6 million, making it the most funded project in the site's history.
The product description may have helped: the Scanadu Scout is described perhaps best as something approaching a real version of the medical tricorder wielded by Star trek doctor Leonard"Bones#Mccoy.
Placing the cookie-sized device to your forehead for 10 seconds provides stats on your heart rate,
blood pressure, core body and skin temperature, respiratory rate, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure and emotional stress levels.
This data is transmitted via Bluetooth to users'phones or tablets. With recent advances in technology such as Bluetooth, we are now able to build medical devices that weren't possible just a decade ago#.
#at an affordable price using existing infrastructure of smart phone telecoms#says Scanadu's CEO Walter de Brouwer."
"For people who live far from hospitals, in places like Africa, this could be life changing.#
#On the other side of the Atlantic, a group of researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, is working on Bluecell, a half inch-long device that,
once embedded under the skin monitors substances in the blood such as glucose and cholesterol so that chronic diseases like diabetes or the effects of treatments such as chemotherapy can be monitored.
The raw medical data, which is sent wirelessly via Bluetooth to an Android app, can be forwarded automatically to doctors.
Bluecell is still a few years from commercialisation.""We chose Bluetooth because of its wide distribution in consumer devices,
#says Jacopo Olivo, one of the researchers.""It's an interesting way that Bluetooth can interact with the biotech industry.#
#Other personal health sensors that use Bluetooth include the Cardiopad, an electrocardiography (ECG) machine developed to monitor heart activity in patients in remote areas of Cameroon,
and Monobaby, a device being developed to prevent Sudden infant death syndrome, also known as cot death, using an accelerometer attached to baby clothing.
Growing signalbluetooth can improve health prospects beyond humans too. Flower power, a device due to be launched towards the end of this year by Paris-based wireless tech company Parrot, measures sunlight, soil moisture, temperature and nutrient levels in plants,
and sends that information directly to an ipad app via Bluetooth. By cross-checking this data against a database
the app provides information about the health of plants, when and how much to water them,
and whether they should be moved to change sunlight levels. Flower power and related technologies could be vital in developing countries with dry climates.
Sensors could be linked via Bluetooth to sprinkler systems to automatically optimise moisture levels. The ability to use just the right amounts of water and fertiliser to produce a good harvest without wasting resources can improve crop yields and rural incomes.
Bluetooth is also being used to help those in agriculture in other ways. Kenyan mobile tech company Virtual city has developed Agrimanagr
an app designed to speed up and automate the flow of information and reduce costs for farming businesses.
Small, rural tea farmers in Kenya, for example, complain that unscrupulous buyers routinely under-weigh their produce by 10-20%.
%Using Agrimanagr, electronic scales are used to transmit the weight of produce via Bluetooth to a mobile phone which records this in farmers'accounts on a cloud-based server.
Hard copy receipts are printed also out.""When payments used to be based a paper system, farmers would get conned on the weight,
#says Virtual city chief executive John Waibochi.""Buyers would tamper with the weight scale.##Going digital and printing receipts"cuts out fraud#and increases the value to farmers 9-13%,#he adds.#
#This system could of course be done without Bluetooth, but being wireless makes it easier.""Out in the rural areas,
cables would not survive,#claims Waibochi.""And I need my devices to go to sleep immediately after they are used.
With Bluetooth, our devices do that, and can work for 12 hours without electricity.##Bluetooth can also provide new ways of communicating in rural settings where internet access is unavailable or out of reach for the poor.
Gary Marsden, a computer scientist at the University of Cape town, developed Big board, an electronic notice board that disseminates information wirelessly and for free.
The system displays a series of icons representing information on various topics on a screen.
Users take a picture of an icon they are interested in with their phone and send it via Bluetooth to a nearby device which sends them the information they want.
Files can be pictures text, video or audio. Potential applications include distributing information on health, job offers or entertainment.
In a pilot project Big board was used to inform voters about the manifestos of politicians standing in the 2007 Kenyan presidential election.
People could take a photo of a candidate and receive an MP3 of that person speaking.
Marsden is currently working with NGOS and government agencies to develop new applications. He also developed Com-Me, a collection of hardware and software components to help people with limited access to electricity
and the internet create and share content. This includes a solar-powered phone charging station and a Bluetooth-based local version of Dropbox
designed to allow off-grid communities to share and store information in a variety of formats.
Bluetooth Smart, like its older sibling, may be a relatively straightforward radio wave-based transmission technology. But as we devise more and more ways to benefit from ever greater connectivity between the people, other living organisms, objects and our environments,
it seems to be getting smarter by the day. If you would like to comment on this article
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#Electric cars: A universal plug for all models? Electric vehicles promise us a future of guilt-free travel.
Replacing today's gas-guzzling engines with electric motors means cars will no longer produce harmful emissions.
They can be plugged in overnight at home, or in an office or supermarket parking space during the day,
and be topped up with electricity that is generated more efficiently in a centralised power station, or even by renewable sources.
We are only at the start of the electric vehicle revolution, of course, with only a few models being offered by a few manufacturers.
They are proving popular though. In some US cities (San francisco Seattle, Portland) the Leaf was Nissan's top selling vehicle.
Tesla appears to have a big hit on its hands with the Model S. Chevrolet has the Volt (known as the Opel/Vauxhall Ampera in Europe),
and BMW has introduced just the i3. The number of new models being launched in the US
and Europe next year is expected to be in the region of double figures. The question is
whether we have the infrastructure in place to cope with the swelling demand electric cars will place on our roads and cities.
More vehicles demand more places to plug them in. And as they become one of the largest consumers of electricity people own
the network needs to be able to keep up to reduce the risk of power cuts
when demand exceeds supply. Launched last July, The Electric vehicle#Smart grid Interoperability Center aims to ease the potential strain on our resources by developing common standards
and systems worldwide that ensure vehicles and charging stations work in unison with the electric grid. It's a collaboration between the US Department of energy and the European commission's Joint Research Centre,
with the first of its twin centres based at the Argonne National Laboratory, outside of Chicago in the US.
The second site will open in Petten The netherlands and Ispra, Italy, in 2014. Walking through the Chicago facility (see video above),
you are greeted by several types of electric vehicles, from cars to delivery trucks, and dozens of types of chargers."
"We work with multinational manufacturers#General motors, BMW, Ford, Audi,#says Keith Hardy. the centre's director."
"They want to sell their cars around the world, without having to worry about different standards, different communication requirements, different billing systems.
It's a big trade issue. We want to minimise any potential regulatory issues.##The first order of business is perhaps the most basic:
the physical plug to connect to the car. Often to our frustration, so many of our devices like laptops and phones have different chargers for different models,
and cars are no different. There are three competing quick-charging standards for vehicles: CHADEMO, in the Nissan leaf and Mitsubishi miev;
the SAE Combo Coupler, used by US and European manufacturers; and Tesla's charger. The centre has selected a universal design that might look familiar to petrol-powered car drivers,
because it's modelled on a fuel nozzle, with the same size inlet.""We thought through that a lot,
mainly thinking of the automotive industry, #says Hardy.""They do need not to change their vehicle from the outside just to make it electric.
From the consumer perspective, they're familiar with this shape#of course it has to be hooked in a bit longer.#
#That standard is just the first of many if the promise of the Interoperability Centers pays off.
Global standards will mean electric car drivers can cross international borders for example, without worrying if their car will charge.
The end goal is for the whole process to be almost invisible, according to Hardy.##What also needs to be seamless is energy management."
"If you live in a community where everyone, or even half the people on the block have electric vehicles,
and they all come home from work and charge at the same time, that might need to be managed, #says Hardy.
Fortunately there is technology available that can help#the smart grid. Electricity is fed currently over cables to homes and offices in one direction,
but increasingly there is the ability to send back information the other way, on how much is being used, by what,
and for how long. Smart electricity meters are already being installed in many parts of the world
which can give a real time data feed of how much power is being consumed. Soon that could be expanded so that our devices,
and vehicles, talk to each other and intelligently balance power draw.""In the case of a vehicle, you're interested in
what condition it's in, #says Hardy.""If you just drove a few miles, and your vehicle is charged almost,
you don't need a lot of energy.##The centre is working on standardised devices that will be able to function with each other,
and keep the driver informed of energy resources and demands without impacting the grid negatively.""It's going to take a lot of electric vehicles, probably millions,
to influence the national grid, #says Hardy.""But it only takes a handful to impact your local, neighbourhood transformer.#
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#Exoplanets: New missions hunting for alien worlds As mountains go, Cerro Armazones may not be much to look at.
Standing 3, 000 metres (9, 800 feet) tall, it is a shapeless reddish dust heap in Chile's hot and arid Atacama desert.
The only sign of life is a dirt road zigzagging all the way to the top. But for astronomers like Joe Liske, this is arguably the world's most interesting mountain right now,
and not just because in the next few months more than 100 tonnes of dynamite will blow off its top to create a flat platform.
By the early 2020s that platform will become home to the biggest-ever eye on the sky, the E-ELT,
or European Extremely Large telescope. With a mirror that is 39 metres (128ft) in diameter, the E-ELT will dwarf all existing optical telescopes
#and those planned to appear in the next decade or two. And it won't just bring plenty of life to this corner of the Atacama.
The hope is that it will also help spot life out in the vastness of space.
In the past decade alone, astronomers have been discovering planets outside our solar system or exoplanets, with astonishing speed.
We now have identified nearly a thousand. Most are much bigger than Earth and almost certainly Jupiter-like gas giants, making making them quite unlikely for hosting life.
None has so far been confirmed to bear life#even single-cell organisms #but some of these planets seem to be distinctly rocky and Earthlike:
Kepler-62e, Gliese-581g and Kepler 22b, to name but a few.""The quest for Earthlike exoplanets, and ultimately life on such planets, is one of the great frontiers of science, perhaps the last big piece in the puzzle of how we, humans,
fit into the big picture,#says Liske, who works at the European Southern Observatory, an organisation that already operates a number of telescopes in the Chilean desert.
but in November 2012, it suffered a computer malfunction, which made it impossible to send any data back to Earth.
In June 2013, The french Space agency announced it would switch the satellite off and let it burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere#the usual fate of our mechanical helpers in space.
"It's like trying to see the light from a feeble little LED 10cm away from a stadium floodlight,
whose four huge towers resemble some kind of factory rather than a scientific facility. It is the VLT
The fact that there have been few good candidates for planets that host life found so far should not discourage the searchers The data already collected suggests that there are about 100 billion planetary systems in our galaxy alone,
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#Nanotubes: Can we make speakers as thin as paper? It's time for one of those imagined futures
which always miss the mark by a mile#you know..."Imagine setting off for work with your jet-pack
##But here we go anyway: imagine that photographs, newspapers and books speak, that you can play music out of your curtains,
In 1917 Harold Arnold and IB Crandall of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and Western electric Company showed that they could create sound by simultaneously passing alternating and direct currents through a very thin platinum foil.
heavy electromagnets used to excite vibrations in conventional speakers, or indeed without moving parts at all.
a thin, transparent film made from microscopic tubes called carbon nanotubes (CNTS), aligned parallel to the plane of the film.
whose walls are one atom thick and made from pure carbon, are need highly robust very little heat input to warm them up,
gasgetting CNT films to emit sound is not the same as producing good-quality sound over the whole frequency range of human hearing,
So while the CNT speakers might have valuable applications such as sonar#they work perfectly well underwater#it isn't yet clear
if they can produce hifi-quality sound in your living room. That's what Barnard and colleagues have sought to assess.
One of the ways in which#to improve sound output is to surround the CNT film with a gas that has a lower heat capacity than air,
as this means a lower input of energy can create a big change in temperature,
The Pennsylvania group has shown that this works: a four-layer speaker, for example, is significantly louder with the same power input.
All things considered, Barnard and colleagues conclude that a high power CNT loudspeaker is feasible, but it won't be simple.
The CNT films will need probably to be enclosed and immersed in xenon, for example, which would pose serious challenges for making robust"wearable#speakers.
which is basically the same stuff as the walls of carbon nanotubes but flattened into sheets.
So one way or another, these forms of nanocarbon look destined to make our isles full of noises.
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#Smart cards that top-up health Zack Oloo and Sam Agutu have been friends since they met at school 43 years ago.
They followed similar career paths, working their way up Kenya's health insurance industry until each ran successful brokerage businesses in the sector.
Then, a few years ago, they both quit. With less than 10%of Kenyans covered by health insurance,
whether by private companies or the mandatory national hospital care scheme for those in formal employment,
most of the population potentially faces devastating out-of-pocket expenses if they fall seriously ill.
Oloo and Agutu decided there must be a better way. So in 2008 they launched Changamka Microhealth
and finance healthcare through use of mobile phones, mobile money and smart cards. While all employers are required by law to enroll their employees into the National Hospital Insurance Fund,
membership is voluntary for the 77%of the working population who are self-employed or work in the informal sector.
The scheme covers limited hospital care solely, and as of last year, only 800,000 people from the informal sector were enrolled.
Other private insurance schemes cost upwards of 50-80,000 KES ($600-900) to cover a family.
#"For self-employed Kenyans and those in the informal economy#formal insurance mechanisms do not exist,
Even malaria treatment, which costs as little as half a US dollar can cause financial difficulties for someone making just $2-$3 a day.
Dr. G. Mbugua, who has run a small clinic called Uhuru Prestige in a low-income area of the capital Nairobi for the past seven years,
says that most of his patients are uninsured.#"#"In Kenya, we have a problem with saving for health care,
#he says.""Most of my patients pay out of pocket. They prefer to tackle health care when someone is sick.
They'd rather buy food than save for health.##Christina Synowiec, of the Center for Health Market Innovations in WASHINGTON DC, agrees."
"There is lack of sensitisation to insurance, and, as part of that, prepayment is a hard concept,
#says Synowiec.""The notion of paying in advance for access to health services is foreign, but can help in preventing financial catastrophes.##
###Synowiec adds that it can be difficult to identify uninsured individuals and their families, encourage enrollment and collect premiums.
Yet while a culture of saving among the poor is lacking because of low wages, fluid employment,
and extended family emergencies,"saving is understood better than insurance, #Oloo says. So in 2009 Changamka launched a"smart card#that enabled Kenyans to save small amounts over time to cover the costs of outpatient services,
drug prescriptions and consultations. Customers could buy Medi-Save cards in shops, and then add money
whenever they liked using M-Pesa, the mobile money service that allows the nearly 75%of adult Kenyans who subscribe to it to use their phones to store money
and make payments. Medi-Save users could then transfer extra money into an account linked to their card number simply by sending a text message.
When they attended clinics, hospitals and other healthcare providers, their cards were swiped and their accounts charged at point-of-sale terminals.
Changamka pre-contracts prices with medical providers, and takes a 10%cut for services charged.
Providers are happy to pay, since the system eliminates time consuming and expensive paperwork. Life saverlast month, the company introduced new E-cards,
which work the same way as the previous system except now providers bill patients via a secure website,
meaning they don't need separate point-of-sale devices. Before the introduction of these cards says Oloo, many women had no way to securely save for maternity care."
"They would put their money under their pillow, but something would go wrong after a few months.
For example a boyfriend would come and say there's an emergency and give me that money.#
#To help women in this situation, the company launched a separate maternity card, to enable women to save for antenatal, maternity and postnatal services at set prices.
They also have a card for family health care.##Hellen Osteno, of Komarock, a low-income area on the edge of Nairobi, bought a family card in April."
"I chose to get the card because many times I could not save, #she said.#"
I don't have to go to the bank to deposit money or check my balance. I can check it through my handset, even in the night,
as diagnosis and treatment notes are recorded also. In future doctors and other medical professionals could gain access to patients'digital medical histories thanks to M-Kadi
and other systems like it, although just as similar schemes have provoked debate in some western countries,
"so we designed an insurance product that would service the lower end of the market.##
##Changamka, in collaboration with one of Kenya's largest insurance companies British American Insurance and telecom provider Safaricom, launched a microinsurance scheme called Lindi Jamii in November last year.
A community health worker then visits to obtain a photo and take down other details such as a national ID number and family information.##
###Similar to their other services, customers save money via M-Pesa transfers. Once their account hits 12,000 KES,($140), they are enrolled immediately in a family insurance scheme, covering two parents and unlimited children for 180 days.#
#Besides covering typical medical expenses, the insurance also covers add on services such as income replacement during hospitalisation, funeral assistance,
and dental coverage. Changamka is doing its best to find new ways to extend coverage
and facilitate payments for Kenya's uninsured, however it is still a long way from profiting from these schemes.
Their Linda Jamii microinsurance only has around 8, 000 subscribers so far, and is currently still reliant on funding from NGOS and donor agencies.
The company has shown it can use novel technologies to help insure the poor, but to be truly successful,
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