November 19th, 2009

7 things you should know about Body Area Networks (BANs)

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 12:08 am

Categories: Computers & Internet, Defense & Security, Health & Medicine, Wireless & Telecom

Tags: Communication, Sensor, IEEE, Wireless, Body Area Networks Technology, Wi-Fi, Wireless And Mobility, Chris Jablonski

The budding field of Body Area Networks gives new meaning to the term “personal” in PCs. In a nutshell, the technology leverages wireless communications protocols that allow for low-powered sensors to communicate with one another and transmit data to a local base station and to remote places like hospitals.

For instance, small flat sensors placed on the skin, or even under it, could be used to create a “medical” body area network that provides doctors with real-time data about their patients’ bio-signs. Another key application is short-range person-to-person communications that could help protect front line soldiers in combat.

BAN technology is still in its infancy and mainstream adoption is still over the horizon as engineers and researchers work to overcome challenges involving interoperability, sensor design constraints (i.e. power and complexity), privacy, and security to name a few. Once these issues are overcome, expect BANs to first revolutionize healthcare allowing for concepts like telemedicine and mHealth to become real, and potentially allow for groundbreaking uses in communications, security, and sports.

Below, in no particular order, is a list of facts, news, and generally good things to know about BANs: Read the rest of this entry »

October 28th, 2009

Software that automatically fixes itself, without shutting down

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:58 pm

Categories: Computers & Internet, Defense & Security

Tags: Software, Team, Patch Management, Attack, ClearView, Patches, Tools & Techniques, Security, Management, Chris Jablonski

Software vulnerabilities that take days or weeks to fix may one day be a thing of the past. A team of researchers have presented new software, called ClearView, that automatically patches errors in deployed software in a matter of minutes.

As Technology Review reports, ClearView works without assistance from humans and without access to a program’s underlying source code. Instead, it monitors the behavior of a binary: the form the program takes in order to execute instructions on a computer’s hardware.

A paper, Automatically Patching Errors in Deployed Software, published by the Association for Computing Machinery, explains how ClearView works as five sequential steps:

1. It observes normal executions to learn invariants that characterize the application’s normal behavior
2. Uses error detectors to distinguish normal executions from erroneous executions
3. Identifies violations of learned invariants that occur during erroneous executions
4. Generates candidate repair patches that enforce selected invariants by changing the state or flow of control to make the invariant true, and;
5. Observes the continued execution of patched applications to select the most successful patch

Read the rest of this entry »

August 13th, 2009

Flapping 'nano' aircraft takes flight

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 4:54 pm

Categories: Defense & Security, Engineering & Innovation, Robotics, Science & Nature

Tags: Aircraft, DARPA, Nano Air Vehicle, Aerospace & Defense, Manufacturing, Chris Jablonski

Engineers at Aeronvironment (AV) of Monrovia, California, have demonstrated the world’s first successful flight of the smallest ever self-powered, rudderless, aircraft with flapping wings.

The nano air vehicle (NAV) is modeled after a large insect or small bird, such as a hummingbird. It can hover indoors under radio control and without wires. “It is capable of climbing and descending vertically, flying sideways left and right, as well as forward and backward,” says the company. (See the video at end of the post).

Nano Air Vehicle Concept (Credit: Aeronvironment)

The NAV carries its own power supply and operates by using two flapping wings, which also function as the rudder, elevators, ailerons and engine. “It’s extremely complicated and technically challenging to come up with ways to control an aircraft with two flapping wings,”  AV’s Matt Keennon recently told Discovery News. “But this is the closest anyone has come to a rudderless, flapping aircraft.”

Read the rest of this entry »

August 9th, 2009

Reseachers run one million virtual machines to help flight botnet problem

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 2:52 pm

Categories: Computers & Internet, Defense & Security

Tags: Sandia National Laboratories, Virtual Machine, Computer, Cybersecurity, Botnets, Productivity, Internet, Chris Jablonski

Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) have demonstrated a supercomputer running more than one million virtual computers that will provide insight into the behavior of botnets.

Botnets are networks of infected computers (zombies) that can be remotely controlled, and are difficult to protect against and study since they are geographically spread allover the world.

Sandia National Laboratories computer scientists Ron Minnich (foreground) and Don Rudish (background) have successfully run more than a million Linux kernels as virtual machines. (Credit: Randy Wong)

Now, with a mini model of the Internet, Sandia computer scientist Ron Minnich says that it will allow them to study how a small number of machines can attack and bring down larger networks. They can also study, for example, why some botnets prefer to be small and others large.

Previously, Minnich said, researchers had only been able to run up to 20,000 kernels concurrently (a “kernel” is the central component of most computer operating systems). The more kernels that can be run at once, the more effective cyber security professionals can be in combating the global botnet problem, he said.

Read the rest of this entry »

June 24th, 2009

Students create portable device to detect suicide bombers

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 11:52 pm

Categories: Defense & Security, Engineering & Innovation, Wireless & Telecom

Tags: Student, Air Force, Portable Device, Corporate Communications, Handhelds, Networking, Marketing, Hardware, Chris Jablonski

According to latest reports, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the weapons of suicide bombers, are responsible for about half of soldier casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To help contain this urgent threat, specialized contractors are being called in to provide services like counter IED training and technologies like counter-IED jammers. But a group of undergraduate engineering students at the University of Michigan has developed a new way to detect IEDs that appears to be magnitudes cheaper than comparable approaches.

The students invented a wireless network of portable hand-held metal detectors that could be hidden in trash cans, under tables, in flower pots, and, ideally, in inconspicuous roadside objects, for example. The network of palm-sized detectors conveys to a base station where suspicious objects are located and who might be carrying them. Compared with existing technology, the sensors are cheaper, lower-power and longer-range.  Each of the sensors weighs only about 2 pounds.

Read the rest of this entry »

June 12th, 2009

Robotic ferret to detect hidden drugs and weapons

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 8:26 pm

Categories: Defense & Security, Engineering & Innovation, Robotics

Tags: Container, Substance, Scanners, Robots, Hardware, Peripherals, Emerging Technologies, Chris Jablonski

The monumental task of inspecting containers that come in to and out of seaports and airports may get a bit easier with a new type of robot being developed to detect drugs, weapons, explosives and illegal immigrants concealed in cargo containers.

Credit: Hammer411 via Flickr

Dubbed the ‘cargo-screening ferret,’ the device has been in development since early 2008 at the University of Sheffield, and is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

According to a press release, the ferret (sorry no image available as of time of writing) will be the world’s first cargo-screening device able to pinpoint various illicit substances and the first designed to operate inside standard freight containers.

When placed inside a steel freight container, the ferret will attach itself magnetically to the top, and then automatically move around and seek out contraband using a suite of sensors that are more comprehensive and more sensitive than any currently employed in conventional cargo scanners. It will send a steady stream of data back to its controller.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 13th, 2009

Noise from our ears a basis for biometrics

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 5:19 pm

Categories: Computers & Internet, Defense & Security, Science & Nature

Tags: Ear, Scientist, OAE, Biometrics, Call Centers, Authentication/Encryption, Social Security, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Telecom & Utilities, Security

Imagine being on the phone with a call center rep who instead of asking you for the last four digits of your social security number, authenticates your identity through a system that elicits and listens to specific sounds emitted by your ear.  If the groundbreaking work of British scientists proves successful, such a biometric technique may become commonplace according to an article published today in New Scientist.

The concept is based on otoacoustic emissions (OAE), which are sounds emitted by the mammalian inner ear in response to an audio stimulation. Their existence was first demonstrated experimentally by David Kemp in 1978, but since, the noises haven’t found an application beyond testing for hearing defects.

Credit: New Scientist

Thanks to a research grant awarded in 2007, Stephen Beeby, an engineer at the University of Southampton, UK, and his team of investigators have been working to establish OAE as a robust biometric characteristic. According to the New Scientist article, what sparked interest among the researchers was; “The fact that the power and frequency distribution in the OAEs provoked by specific series of clicks seem to be highly distinctive, driven by the internal shape of the person’s ear.”

Read the rest of this entry »

March 14th, 2009

A robot that follows a human commander and responds to gestures

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 3:55 pm

Categories: Defense & Security, Robotics, Science & Nature

Tags: Brown University, Robots, Emerging Technologies, Chris Jablonski

This week marks another incremental step forward in the field of robotics, specifically around gestural control.  Brown University reports that their researchers have demonstrated  how a robot can follow nonverbal commands from a person in a variety of environments — indoors as well as outside — all without adjusting for lighting. The modified iRobot PackBot can physically follow a person at a select distance without the person needing to wear special clothing, be in a special environment, or look backward at the robot, according to Chad Jenkins, assistant professor of computer science at Brown University and the team’s leader (pictured here).

Jenkins and his team presented the achievement and a paper at the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2009) in San Diego this week. The video below shows the robot following gestures and verbal commands.

Read the rest of this entry »

December 20th, 2008

New tape to protect buildings from explosions

Posted by Roland Piquepaille @ 9:32 am

Categories: Defense & Security, Engineering & Innovation

Tags: Tape, Wall, X-FLEX Blast Protection System, Construction, Roland Piquepaille

According to Scientific American in this short article, the U.S. Army has developed a new blast-protection adhesive tape. This X-FLEX tape would be used to coat the interior sides of exterior walls in order to absorb the shock of a blast, protecting the occupants from flying concrete and metal turned into projectiles. Of course, such a material could also be used to protect civilians. After the Mumbai attacks last month, the hotel industry might be interested in such a protection for its customers. …

You can see on the left how the X-FLEX can be used as a wallpaper. (Credit: Berry Plastics Corp., via Scientific American.

This X-FLEX Blast Protection System has been developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers‘ Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) and Evansville, Ind.–based Berry Plastics Corporation’s Engineered Protective Systems division.

According to Scientific American, it is “made from a polymer composite laced with reinforcing fibers that make it strong yet flexible. The material is applied by wiping away dust or particles from the wall surface, peeling away a protective film liner and pressing the tape against the wall. The wall may be coated with a water-based primer, developed by Berry, after cleaning to reduce the time it takes for the adhesive to stick to the concrete. The material is further secured at the top and bottom with fasteners to ensure it stays in place if hit by an explosion.”

Read the rest of this entry »

December 18th, 2008

The Army's brain lives in Seattle

Posted by Roland Piquepaille @ 11:51 am

Categories: Computers & Internet, Defense & Security, Engineering & Innovation

Tags: Supercomputer, Cray Inc., U.S. Department Of Defense, Roland Piquepaille

The title of this Seattle Weekly article is so good that I’m using it for this post. In fact, the newspaper revisits the different contracts that Cray Inc. has signed with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in 2008. It says that with this $30 million commitment, Cray Inc. is helping the DoD to ‘test its newest bulletproof vests, gauge the accuracy of modern missiles, and even forecast the weather on battlefields.’ These contracts, which were unveiled in February 2008, concern the delivery of four XT5 massively parallel, blade-style supercomputers. One of these supercomputers is already having an upgrade: the Army Research Laboratory Major Shared Resource Center (ARL MSRC) has increased its computing capability from 100 to 200 teraflops.

You can see above a picture of one of these Cray XT5 supercomputers. (Credit: Cray XT5 product page on Cray Inc. website) Of course, you know that a Cray XT5 system named Jaguar installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the world’s fastest supercomputer for science with a peak performance of 1.64 petaflops. But did you know that ORNL has already start to install a second petaflops machine named Kraken? (Source: Frank Munger, Knoxville News Sentinel, November 15, 2008)

Now, let’s go back to the Seattle Weekly article more for the tone than for exclusive revelations. The author, Rick Anderson asked Cray “what tasks, exactly, its computers are capable of performing for the Department of Defense today. Thanks but no thanks, said Cray. ‘I wouldn’t say the work is hush-hush,’ Cray spokesperson Nick Davis said. ‘But we prefer not to comment.’ Davis referred us to some company press releases, which, for the average PC user, require deciphering. The notices speak of ‘advanced parallel global addressing programming models,’ used by ‘critical defense applications in solid and structural mechanics that require extremely low latency communications.’”

Read the rest of this entry »