StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

It is not without reason that I state my longer term involvement in matters related to security, and continue to maintain my own.  In researching a subject for a new paper I am writing, I came across the following report in which a close associate of mine was involved (frankly, this also gives me a safe-keeping place to file the link to this document).  And no, I won’t go into greater detail.  The experts knew what to expect.  Neither Clinton nor Bush listened…and the story has yet to be played out.

WMD terrorism (state and non-state sponsored) against US citizens is a significant and increasing risk.
A. While the number of terrorist incidents is somewhat declining, the severity of individual attacks is dramatically increasing. This trend indicates the terrorist’s use of everincreasing bomb size or more deadly devices and weapons. Therefore, it seems likely that a future group will elect to use a biological weapon rather than an explosive device or a firearm. The most often cited reasons for the selection of a biological weapon are: 1) high lethality; 2) modest weapon size relative to its destructive potential; 3) relatively simple and rapid deployment; and 4) the capability of covert deployment. The special equipment needed is neither expensive nor difficult to obtain. Active live cultures are available naturally in the environment or can be ordered from a biological supply house. Often, the limiting factor is the necessity for technical knowledge in the field of microbiology.

B. The new terrorism is increasingly motivated by body count. There is a shift in the motivation behind terrorism from political issues, to those that are of a more fatalistic orientation–as is often the case in religious and/or ethnically motivated terrorism.3 The resulting shift in the goals and operations of the terrorist is having grave effects. Politically-motivated terrorism tends to limit the violence in order to avoid losing supporters’ sympathy or encouraging public demands for retaliation against the terrorist group. However, with nihilistic terrorism, often the goal is simply massive death and destruction of property. Indeed, we see that the goal of certain terrorists, such as Ramzi Yusef and Aum Shinrikyo, is to wage war on a society, as opposed to merely influencing society in a different direction.

C. Biological terrorism is uniquely worrisome. In spite of the over 100 signatories to the 1975 Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons Convention, proliferation of biological weapons continues unabated. These weapons are particularly difficult to monitor and regulate because it is difficult to differentiate between efforts to develop biological materials for rogue purposes, and those directed toward legitimate purposes, such as the production of vaccines. Furthermore, it is relatively simple to produce pathogens and toxins in small, easily concealed facilities. Finally, the materials and knowledge necessary to create and sustain a biological weapons program are both widely available around the world.

These words must not be minimized. They were written as a result of an escalating concern about WMD.

Biological weapons continue to be known as the “poor man’s atomic bomb” due to relatively low production costs and the potentially devastating effects of deployment. As the world’s only superpower, the US cannot be easily challenged through conventional military means. Therefore, logic dictates that adversaries will exploit US weaknesses, such as the unwillingness to tolerate casualties, through unconventional, or “asymmetric,” means. As expected, more nations are trying to acquire chemical and biological weapons than nuclear weapons.

There are other precursor documents like this one, and of course, the expanded full version of this book.  Remember that this report was published in May 1999.  The future is still before us.

COUNTERING BIOLOGICAL TERRORISM IN THE U.S.: AN UNDERSTANDING OF ISSUES AND STATUS, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, WMD

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Avoiding a future deep impact syndrome…with the shooting down of the U.S. Spy Satellite, the question of dealing with a real life “Deep Impact” (1998), students in the Technion Institute’s Faculty of Aerospace Engineering recently developed a model for deflecting heavenly bodies that could damage Earth.  The model was developed out of fear that an asteroid (Apophis) could collide with Earth in 2036.

In the 1998 movie, “Deep Impact,” Robert Duvall sacrificed his life and his crew in a successful effort to destroy the larger of the two asteroids — The Technion model was been created and was presented at a competition of NASA and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.  The plan?  Here’s a depiction of the spacecraft.

Check out the paper.

Apophis, Deep Impact, roids, Technion Institute

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The development is being hailed as a “stunning landmark achievement” by experts not involved in the Univ. of Minnesota breakthrough in which a beating heart of a rat was created by using healthy stem cells from baby rats.  By creating a “scaffold” (eliminating all of the cells of a dead rat’s heart) and using it to grow new cells, the team used “nature’s building blocks to build a new organ.”

With modifications, scientists should be able to grow a new human heart by taking stem cells from a patient’s bone marrow and placing them in a cadaver heart that’s been prepared as a scaffold, Dr. Taylor said in a telephone interview from her laboratory in Minneapolis. The early success “opens the door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas — you name it and we hope we can make it,” she said.

Even creating the scaffold took trial and error…in cleaing out the dead rat’s heart, Dr. Doris Taylor and her team used surfactants like those in shampoos into the rat’s arteries to wash out the heart cells and then injected neonatal cardiac cells…the first two “washes” failed…the thrid attempt worked, leaving a translucent scaffold that retained the heart’s architecture.

This process is called organ decellularization.

“Multiple things” must be done before a human trial can be attempted, Taylor said. “We are moving to larger organs, making sure we can get enough cells in to repopulate the entire heart, and also, if it is transplantable, to keep it alive for a long time,” she said.

The biotechnology might be able to bypass a major impediment to organ transplants, the need to use tissue that is compatible with a recipient’s immune system, Taylor said. “In theory, we could be able to use stem cells from a recipient’s body to regenerate a heart,” she said. “We could rebuild a heart that is immunologically similar to yours.”

We are on the door step of scientific discoveries that will challenge even today’s imagination.

Dr. Doris A. Taylor, organ decellularization, University of Minnesota

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The future will bring us closer and closer to tomorrow, and tomorrow is more and more today.  Pleo is the brainchild of Caleb Chung, cocreator of the Furby, whose new company, Ugobe, was intended to be the next step in the evolution of robotic toys that exhibit social behaviors and learn from experience.

Ugobe’s vision was “of life-forms that people could bond with,” says the company’s CTO, John Sosoka. Pleo, he says, “exhibits stunning organic movement and dynamic behaviors unlike other robots in the market.”

● It nuzzles its head against its owner’s cheek in an apparent display of affection.
● It crouches and wags its tail like a dog that wants to play
● It cranes its neck to let out long, plaintive cries.
● Pleo’s emotive states include joy, sorrow, and anger.
● It can also be drowsy or even sick

Expressive bot: Pleo exhibits “happy,” one of its several emotive states.
Credit: Ugobe

Pleo’s hardware consists of 38 sensors, 14 motors, and more than 100 custom-designed gears. Light sensors and a camera in Pleo’s nose help it detect objects, color, and edges. Sound sensors allow some degree of “hearing” when “[Pleo] is still, and it is quiet,” Ugobe says. Eight capacitive touch sensors line Pleo’s shoulders, back, legs, head, and chin.

Pre-orders for this robo-toy started in June 2007 and they became available last week for a price of $349 per dino. Of course, you’re buying a robot that looks dinosaur…according to Tom Hershner, event coordinator of Robot Village…”there’s nothing else of that caliber of realism,” partly, he says, because of “the look of it.”

Should also see Your Robotic Personal Assistant

Aside from the Roomba, robots haven’t made much progress infiltrating American homes. But researchers at Stanford University have developed software that overcomes one of the biggest challenges: teaching a robot how to pick up an object it has never encountered before. The robot’s software suggests that the best way to pick up something new is by determining the most grabable part of the object–the stem of a wineglass, the handle of a mug, or the edge of a book, for instance.

Other Storm posts on robots, robotics and bots.

dino bot, dinosaur robot, Pleo

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The future is now and its coming from Robotex, a Silicon Valley company with heritage from Dreamworks and Disney has developed its own killer robot that combines engineering skill and groundbreaking weaponry to create a new generation of soldiers; system designed with no government funding.  Teaming with Military Police Systems of Piney Flats Tennesee, Robotex armed its robotic soldier with an Atchisson Assault-12 (AA-12) shotgun.

AA-12:  Read the evaluator comments  |  View the weapon specs

In fairness to Baber, his use of the AA-12 name tag acknowledges the developmental work done by the gun’s original designer, the late Max Atchisson. Before Baber acquired the rights to his smoke-bringer in 1987, the gun was known as the Atchisson Assault-12. It is now Baber’s property and is available only through his company, Military Police Systems Inc. of Piney Flats, Tenn.

The robot is two feet tall, travels ten miles an hour, and spins on a dime. Remote-controlled over an encrypted frequency that jams nearby radios and cellphones, it’ll blow a ten-inch hole through a steel door with deadly accuracy from 400 meters.

But the question remains whether the Beltway and the military bureacracy is ready to permit Silicon Valley engineers and entrepreneurs to encroach on its turf.  Adam Gettings from Robotex says:

“This is the new defense, Silicon Valley-style…You build only what’s necessary, iterate quickly, and keep the price low.” It is low: Between $30,000 to $50,000. A similar bot, the Talon, which was developed by defense contractor Foster-Miller and is being tested in Iraq, costs six times that amount. “Our system does all the same things as the Talon, weighs half as much, and costs a fraction.”

Technology, the future and the warfighter merging in real time.

Gettings, robotic soldiers, Silicon Valley

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While you’re here, I’d appreciate it if you’d take a glance at some of the other entries on this blog, and also go over and visit my friend Moonage’s pages - just click on the right at the top.  Thanks so much!

This is bound to befuddle, but perhaps bemuse.  What country is better?  On what basis is this determined?  This morning I stumbled (out of bed) but across a unique website that, using statistical analysis, “plots” the countries of the World and provides insight into the gaps between countries on a variety of dimensions.  Keywords: Demographics, State Department, Developing Nations

Gapminder offers pictorial statistical analysis and shows the development of all countries by the indicators you choose.  For example, is Chile a developing country?  The answer, according to the Gapminder analysis, was surprising.

Watch this GapCast » Go to all GapCasts » Gapcast #6 - Chile a developing country? What’s the difference between Chile, Cuba and the USA? Well, it depends on what kind of factors you are looking at. In some factors USA and Chile are today very similar, factors that Cuba and USA were very close in 1962.

Perhaps beyond my understanding…but I will be going back to play with the mappings.  Check ou tthe Gapminder FAQs here.  Maybe y’all don’t care or it doesn’t matter, but did you know that on the basis of life expectancy and per capita income, the tiny country of Luxembourg beats the U.S. hands down?  With a per capita income 75% greater than ours?  Yet their life expectancy is the same?  But that the French and the Germans, along with the Japanese have a life expectancy pretty much longer than “us guys” in the U.S.?  If you actually spend the time and change some of the variables, the trends that emerge are quite revealing. 

 It is when you put the “map” in motion that you see the development of the various nations across a time span.  [Hat-tip to intelfusion.net]  Pretty heady stuff, huh?

Please see Shocking Facts About America at Right Truth.

Demographics, Developing Nations, gapminder, State Department

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A truth about this war (in Iraq) is that medical science has advanced to where soldiers who would have died of their wounds in Vietnam and Persian Gulf I, now recover and live with their debilitating injuries.  A new technique now shows promise of stopping catastrophic bleeding on the battlefield.  There are many ways to serve our Nation.  Some do it through innovation.

Developed by Aurora Flight Sciences have a polymer-filled pouch that expands when exposed to blood and can quickly halt bleeding.  This pouch, called a “swelling hemostat” that looks like a beanbag can be put inside a large, open wound to halt life-threatening bleeding within minutes.  A picture:  Credit: Aurora Flight Sciences 

The pouch would be most useful for treating wounds in areas of the body where a tourniquet could not be applied and for wounds too large and severe for haemostatic bandages. One of the main causes of soldier death in Iraq and Afghanistan is bleeding, and there are many instances on the battlefield in which this device would prove lifesaving, says Javier de Luis, chief scientist at Aurora and the principal investigator for the swelling hemostat. Furthermore, it can be worn for long periods of time without any side effects, and it can be easily removed.

Alternatives do exist (beyond the “simple” tourniquet: “Recently, the U.S. Army developed an ultrasonic tourniquet to stem the flow of blood using focused beams of ultrasound.  (See “An Ultrasonic Tourniquet to Stop Battlefield Bleeding.”) But this method, along with others, has thermal side effects that cause damage to the surrounding tissue.”

George Velmos, professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and chief of the division of trauma, emergency surgery, and surgical critical care at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) says:

“We need smart devices and smart materials that can stop bleeding without cutting circulation off, and without the need of a paramedic or another body being physically present. To that extent, the swelling hemostat is very useful.”

The superabsorbent polymers are mixed with polypropylene fibers to keep the polymers from clumping (technical word - no, really, it is!) to enable the polymers to keep on absorbing; th epuch is covered in spandex material that expands as more blood is absorbed, and the expansion then places pressure on the wound.

I really like this innovation. According to Aurora:

the swelling hemostat can be developed for less than $10 per pouch, and it could be on the battlefield within a year. “These kinds of things are very useful not just for the battlefield, but for biomedical treatment anywhere,” says Khademhosseini. “They use standard polymers that are cheap and commercially available.”

Other related articles: 

Nanosolution Halts Bleeding 10/10/2006

TR10: Nanohealing 03/12/2007

An Ultrasonic Tourniquet to Stop Battlefield Bleeding 07/27/2006

Makes me wish I was an inventor.  Oh shit!  I am!  But not of this great innovation for our soldiers (yeah, you can “look it up” at the USPTO website under Stormwarning).   Serving through innovation

Aurora Flight Sciences, battlefield bleeding, dual use technology, swelling hemostat

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THIS IS ANOTHER PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT 

Proving that the wonders of modern medicine and biotechnology never cease, Plethora Solutions has developed the companion product for Viagra.  The product is targeted to the estimated 30% of men who suffer from “PE” (more prevalent than ED).  Yes, that means that a product to prevent early climax is coming to a clinical climax.

Announced in yesterday’s edition of In-PharmaTechnologist.com (a newsletter I get every day via email)…Premature ejaculation spray coming to clinical climax, this new product will treat premature ejaculation (PE), until now a malady without a product to treat the problem.

The only options available to PE patients today are off-label use of products such as antidepressants (with all the associated side effects) or penile desensitisers, with topically applied options carrying the impracticalities of slow onset of action, messiness or loss of sensation altogether.

Smile and snicker if you must, but if there is a population of 30% of all adult men who suffer from this, you would think that it is atleast as important as Viagra.  Plethora’s product is described as “quick and user-friendly” and results ina four-fold increase in “time to market.”  It is also said to take effect in less than 5 minutes compared to “… other products that can take over half an hour to take effect, or off-label use of anti-depressants that need to be taken for several months before any result can be seen…”  Seems like a contradiction, something that is supposed to slow something down, actually works faster.  Also, its a topical application with no “… systemic absorption to cause safety issues, and the rapid drying time of just a few minutes means the product will not get transferred to partners…”

most importantly, the Plethora formulation has been shown to increase the time from penetration to ejaculation within the vagina by four times - from 0.93 minutes in a placebo group to 3.7 minutes with the spray-on solution.While this might not sound like a vast improvement, for the significant proportion of the male population who have difficulty controlling ejaculation or lasting more than a minute or so, it could be the first product approved specifically for the condition that makes real difference to their sexual performance.

One can only imagine the combined effect of this with Viagra…a “cocktail” if you will. Interestingly enough, the same formulation may have application in the area of pain management for pain victims.

The product started Phase III trials October 30th that are expected to last no more than 12-15 months…the anticipated product “blast off” is projected near the end of 2009 - just in time for Christmas…and expects to be the first product to market “approved for this indication…it has the potential to be front line therapy.”

The President of the company projects that revenues for the  PSD502 formulation could be “huge” given that the erectile dysfunction product category has reached about $3 billion a year and that the premature ejaculation market significantly larger.

 Related News

Inhaler solution to premature ejaculation hasn’t come too soon
Sperm stopped in their tracks by vaginal gel contraceptive
Eli Lilly buys erectile dysfunction drug partner ICOS
New lollipop is a sucker for pain management
Combo contraceptive spray delivers the goods
Spray-on contraceptives to penetrate $6.7bn market

erectile dysfunction, Plethora Solutions, premature ejaculation

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With all of the controversy over stem cell research, it may be time to look toward biotechnology instead.  This is about the artifical retinas now in clinical trials at USC in which “approximate vision” has given blind patients the ability to distinguish walls from doorways and even watch soccer games, albeit as blurs of motion. The future is now.  You just have to see it.

In Decoding the Human Eye - Superdense arrays of silicon electrodes will bring scientists closer to an artificial retina that approximates normal vision we learn about work being developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), this research has the objective of someday giving a blind patient something “approaching  approach normal visual functioning, such as reading, you need to have a very accurate level of control.” 

Test bed: A 512-electrode array (gold circle), modeled after detectors used to capture particles in high-energy physics, is helping to decipher the neural code of the retina. The findings will aid in the design of future retinal prostheses.
Credit: Alan Litke

● chip densely packed with electrodes

● can stimulate and record from individual cells in retinal samples

● will provide insight into how the retina codes information and how to mimic that coding

●  scientists can precisely control individual retinal ganglion cells

The researchers modeled their chip after the silicon microchip detectors that line supercolliders to capture signs of elusive, high-energy, subatomic particles, such as the Higgs boson. Using common integrated-circuit fabrication techniques, the researchers custom-built more than 500 electrodes and amplifiers onto a small glass strip.

These are still early research studies and will require further developments in electronics and packaging and software before becoming implantable. But the future is coming…its just around the corner…See it?

Also see:  “Next-Generation Retinal Implant.”

artificial eye, Decoding the Human Eye, retina, silicon microchips, UC Santa Cruz

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Recently researchers at the Univ. of Maryland and Princeton Univ. have brought the development of metamaterials closer to producibility.  This means that true invisibility or cloaking devices using negative refraction will appear in the near-term future. Metamaterials gain their properties from their structures rather than directly from their composition. Compared to other composite materials, metamaterials have unusual properties.

The world’s first true invisibility cloak — that is, a device capable of hiding an object in the visible spectrum -– has been created by physicists at the University of Maryland. So far it only works in two dimensions and on a tiny scale, but if it can be made to work in three dimensions, it holds significant promise for defense and homeland security applications.   The new cloak, which is just ten micrometers in diameter, guides rays of light around an object inside and releases them on the other side. The light waves appear to have moved in a straight line, so the cloak — and any object inside — appear invisible.

One year ago, U.S. and British scientists announced the development of an invisibility cloak that worked in the microwave (that’s light waves, not cooking utensils) region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The cloak works by steering microwave light around an object, making it appear to an observer as if it were not there at all. Materials that bend light in this way do not exist naturally, so have to be engineered with the necessary optical properties.

Earlier in 2006, John Pendry, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London, UK, and colleagues showed how such an invisibility cloak could, in theory, be made (see Physicists draw up plans for real ‘cloaking device’). Now David Smith and colleagues at Duke University in North Carolina, US, have proved the idea works.

This new approach, using gold rings “was built by a team led by Igor Smolyaninov at the University of Maryland, and borrows some ideas from the first theoretical design for an invisibility cloak, published by Vladimir Shalaev from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, US, earlier this year.” 

The cloak’s concentric gold rings can steer light waves travelling along a surface around an object and straight on again as if it was not there (Image to the right: Smolyaninov/University of Maryland)

A lens made from such a material wouldn’t have to be curved. (It’s the curvature of an ordinary lens that enables it to focus incoming light.)…could also be used to route electromagnetic waves around an object, rendering it invisible…until now, metamaterials have had to be patterned with intricate shapes smaller than the wavelength of light they’re meant to manipulate…materials that work with light of microscopic wavelengths, such as infrared and visible light, have been difficult to make. Because of the way they produce negative refraction, existing metamaterials have also had a strong tendency to absorb light, making them impractical for use in optics.

The materials developed at Princeton retain the property of negative refraction, yet they’re much easier to make. Rather than requiring intricate structures, such as the split rings used in the microwave cloaking device, the materials can be made simply by stacking up extremely thin layers of semiconductor material.

This shown another way here:

Bending light: A new type of material causes light waves (represented by ovals) to move in a way that’s completely different from the way they move in ordinary materials. Credit: Anthony Hoffman, Princeton University

The impact of this development in new materials…“The first application would be using that material to miniaturize optical setups” by replacing curved lenses with flat ones,  Claire Gmachl, the Princeton researcher.

Another early application could be in night-vision devices, which also work with infrared wavelengths. “For people who want to improve night-vision devices, this could be quite interesting,” Smolyaninov says.

So far, the technology works only in the microwave region of the spectrum. The problem with visible light is that it has a much smaller wavelength, meaning an optical metamaterial would have to be built on the nanoscale, which is beyond the limits of current nanotechnology. It, too, would only work at a specific frequency.

“It’s not yet clear that you’re going to get the invisibility that everyone thinks about with Harry Potter’s cloak or the Star Trek cloaking device,” says Smith.

Crossposted at Real Clear Politics - please “vote”

Other reading in I. I. Smolyaninov, Y. J. Hung, and C. C. Davis, “Electromagnetic Cloaking in the Visible Frequency Range,” arXiv.org>Physics>Optics (arXiv:0709.2862v1 [physics.optics]) (18 September 2007); see also Wenshan Cai, Uday K. Chettiar, Alexander V. Kildishev, and Vladimir M. Shalaeva, “Nonmagnetic Cloak with Minimized Scattering, Applied Physics Letters 91, 111105 (11 September 2007); and, by the same authors, “Optical cloaking with metamaterials,” Nature Photonics 1 (2 April 2007) (doi:10.1038/nphoton.2007.2: 224-27 (sub. req.)

cloaking, David Smith, Duke Univ., electromagnetic spectrum, gold rings, Igor Smolyaninov, invisibility, John Pendry, metamaterials, microwave, Univ. of Maryland and Princeton Univ., Vladimir Shalaev

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This one is going to make some heads explode.  But robotic scientists now are predicting human-robot marriage and sex before the end of the century and maybe even by 2050!  Go explain that to your Grandmother.  And it will likely happen, where else, in Massachusetts.

People will be tying the knot with robots by 2050 and having sex with them not long after, a British scientist has predicted.

Netherlands university student David Levy has been awarded a doctorate by Maastricht University for his thesis entitled ‘Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,’ wherein he claims that humans and cyborgs will say ‘I Do’ to each other in the near future, and even consummate the marriage.

<=========Not bad, huh? 

Well lets get back to the science at hand.  Even better…

 People of Massachusetts to be Having Sex With Robots by 2012 - MSNBC is running a report on the impending likelihood of legalized marital relations with robots. They have word from a leading researcher at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, Dr. Levy, who seems to think peeps will be getting freaky with their robots by 2012, with marriage following by 2050. One thing is for sure; Gizmodo shall be supporting the revolution all the way! Dr. Levy said: “Once you have a story like ‘I had sex with a robot, and it was great!’ appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon.”

Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen - In 2006, Henrik Christensen, founder of the European Robotics Research Network, predicted that people will be having sex with robots within five years, and Levy thinks that’s quite likely. There are companies that already sell realistic sex dolls, “and it’s just a matter of adding some electronics to them to add some vibration,” he said, or endowing the robots with a few audio responses. “That’s fairly primitive in terms of robotics, but the technology is already there.”

So let me get something straight here…err — I mean clear.  The future holds the possibility of a mail-order bride business where you can literally order your trophy wife?  And she’ll be a robot?  This isn’t going to be anything like the Jetson’s maid  Rosie, mind you…we’re talking about this: 

Once robots become more like humans, David Levy believes romance between the two, and even sex and marriage, will be possible…  But not unexpectedly, there are moral and ethical issues already being raised.

The possibility of sex with robots could prove a mixed bag for humanity. For instance, robot sex could provide an outlet for criminal sexual urges. “If you have pedophiles and you let them use a robotic child, will that reduce the incidence of them abusing real children, or will it increase it?” Arkin asked. “I don’t think anyone has the answers for that yet — that’s where future research needs to be done.”Keeping a robot for sex could reduce human prostitution and the problems that come with it. However, “in a marriage or other relationship, one partner could be jealous or consider it infidelity if the other used a robot,” Levy said. “But who knows, maybe some other relationships could welcome a robot. Instead of a woman saying, ‘Darling, not tonight, I have a headache,’ you could get ‘Darling, I have a headache, why not use your robot?’”

Science and technology have taken strides beyond any that were imaginable. Maybe now I can rationalize the support of the Texas Emerging Technology Fund for the development of the Zeno robot (is it really cheating if you’re “doing it” with a bucket of bolts?).  Would certainly give new meaning to “a chip off the old block,” huh?  I don’t know, I just think that having a robotic dog is enough…

Human affection has already expanded to include robotic pets…but where is science and technology taking us?  The “scientist,” Mr Levy is now set to receive a doctorate for his paper from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands.

His conclusions were based on about 450 publications about psychology, sexology, sociology, robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, gender studies and computer-human interaction.

He has already published a book which considered the prospect of human-robot relationships and sex, entitled Robots Unlimited: Life in the Virtual Age.

The original article is found here,  Forecast: Sex and Marriage with Robots by 2050, from LiveScience.  I wonder what Ann Coulter would think of this (might be her best chance)…LOL.  Sex with a robot in five years?

Other, previous posts mentioning “robots.”  Crossposted at Real Clear Politics - please “vote”

More humor about “men” found here at Hill Chronicles.

Adding a couple of horny Brits with sheep, but apparently at Right Truth too.

Ann Coulter, David Levy, Emerging Technology Fund, exploding heads, Maastricht University, sex with robots, Zeno

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As time passes, the future comes closer to reality.  A small British company, GFS Projects, has built the world’s first flying saucer…its a UAV flying saucer with applications for close quarter surveillance and intelligence gathering for military and law enforcement, mountain rescue, and farming.  Farming?  I guess if it can hover and fly close to and within buildings…

The aerodynamic principles of the GFS design are fully scalable.  The development programme will work through a series of scaling stages over the coming months to prove this in practice.  Picture courtesy of GPS Products

Applications of this flying saucer are listed here.This 60-cm-diameter flying saucer made its first flight about a month ago at a technology event at Churchill College, Cambridge and is capable of vertical take off, fully controlled flight, hovering, and landing on a specified point.  Now for the science and technology part. 

The flying saucer is based on what is called the Coanda Effect that was discovered in 1930 by the Romanian aerodynamicist Henri-Marie Coanda (1885-1972). He has observed that a steam of air (or a other fluid) emerging from a nozzle tends to follow a nearby curved surface, if the curvature of the surface or angle the surface makes with the stream is not too sharp. 

Also, if you want to watch RealVideo of the Coanda Effect in action (48kb)

And this is even better! [forgive the partial French] showing more photographs and even a video (about 1/3 of the way down the page) - I haven’t figured out yet how to embed a video.  And there’s even a flight simulator!!!

Click here to download this video above in ( 3.3 Mb, WMV format ) 

The Day the Earth Stood Still 

Klaatu gives his message, while Gort looms in the background

So the next time you think that you’ve seen a UFO or a flying saucer in the sky above…maybe you have.  One thing is certain, what was once science fiction is real time today…and its getting better and more exciting every day.  “Klaatu barada nikto!”

Coanda Effect, flying saucer, GFS Projects, Klaatu barada nikto!, science fiction, The Day the Earth Stood Still

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This post is not about counterterrorism per se, and clearly could be categorized under “future vision” (maybe more appropriately, “flights of fancy” or simply conjecture), but still, it could warrant my effort in writing this post, and perhaps be interesting to anyone fascinated by technology and innovation, and how both can impact on the future…even the future of the world in which we live (including the future wars on terrorism).

Back in July, I began what I had hoped to be a series of expanded posts on the relationship betwene swarm intelligence and jihadism.  Swarm Intelligence and Jihadist Terrorism

I still hope to convert some of the research I had done on the subject into a longer post when my “day job” allows me the fredom to spend the time required.  I will say that I have learned that others have looked into this subject.  The question of distributed intelligence and how dispersed, but like-minded groups could exhibit seemingly coordinated or linked actions and behavior is fascinating.  In fact, it is possible that I will collaborate on a paper on this subject at some later time.

The reason for all of this build-up is some information that came my way through my Homeland Security Daily Newswire.   Under the heading of Shape of things to come, we get this:

New robots imitate insects in jointly accomplishing complex tasks
It is one thing to be a smart and adaptive animal, and it is another thing for smart and capable animals to accomplish complex and demanding building and maintenance projects, projects which depend on a tacit specialization of role, division of labor, and a high degree of coordination among ever-moving individual units. Just think bees or ants. Now, the award-winning Information Society Technology (IST) research team has developed what can only described as unusual mini-robots — called, appropriately enough, swarm-bots — which work as a team to overcome challenges and accomplish goals. The cooperative behavior of the swarm-bots is inspired by the actions of ants, but their abilities could take them to outer space. Before they go to outer space, the swarm-bots could accomplish a few tasks here on earth, among them replacing soldiers in dangerous urban warfare missions, aiding first responders in tackling terrorists or criminals holed in a building, and more. The key is that the highly mobile small robots can accomplish physical tasks that no individual robot, capable as it is, could manage on its own.

Swarm-bots is one of technology projects run by the IST. The IST is part of the European Union’s Future and Emerging Technologies program. The Université Libre de Bruxelles’ Marco Dorigo, who coordinated the project, explains: “We produced thirty-five complete s-bots [the individual bots that make up one swarm-bot], and completed many experiments with them. Only twelve centimeters in diameter, the mini-robots are packed with computing power, sensors and actuators,” he adds. In one trial, the s-bots linked up to bridge and thus pass over a hole in the ground. In another they jointly carried objects too weighty for a single robot to handle.

Here is a link to the Swarm-bots Project.
Swarm-bots is a project sponsored by the Future and Emerging Technologies program of the European Community (IST-2000-31010), aimed to study new approaches to the design and implementation of self-organizing and self-assembling artifacts.

Project Summary (as well as objectives and description of results)

The main scientific objective of the Swarm-bots project is to study a novel approach to the design and implementation of self-organising and self-assembling artefacts. This novel approach finds its theoretical roots in recent studies in swarm intelligence, that is, in studies of the self-organising and self-assembling capabilities shown by social insects and other animal societies…

…The expected result is a novel swarm intelligence-based method for the design and the implementation of self assembling and self-organising artefacts. Milestones will be prototypes of hardware, simulator, and   control of swarm-bots…[more and etc.]

And here is a link to the Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et de Développements en Intelligence Artificielle - Université Libre de Bruxelles (IRIDIA) at the University of Brussels.

Google link to information on Swarm-bots…and from Google news.

Now, I am fairly certain that the scientists involved in the project described aren’t thinking too far beyond the applications described in their papers on the websites…I am fairly certain that in their academic universe, nefarious applications of their work cannot be fathomed. 

And yet, the ways in which we wage war have changed in unfathomable ways in recent years.  Compare even the methods of battle during World War I and World War II, and even through the War in Vietnam.  Those wars were fought by men and then men and machines…no too much unlike the ways in which wars of our early history…we they not fought by thousands of soldiers on each side facing eachother, and then marching or charging forward?  As we are now learning, the war of jihad is conducted in very different ways.  On September 11th, the U.S. was attacked savagely by 19 jihadists who hijacked airplanes and used them as missiles.  In Madrid and London and Bali, jihadists struck using, not battallions of men, but a few, armed and willing to kill dozens, hundreds or thousands of others.

It has been written and said that a failure of imagination was a factor leading to Sept. 11th. Who among us could have ever imagined those attacks? Yet, some believe that with our inability to imagine things even worse, events even more unimaginable could occur.

What is in store for the future?  Intelligent swarm-bots programmed to do…the “unimaginable?”

National Security, Opinions, Technology

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