Armed with Science | Providing You Information on Military Science and Technology

Understanding The Brain = Supporting National Security

Filed under Technology by jtozer on April 19, 2013 at 7:45 am {no comments}

The President unveiled a bold new research initiative designed to revolutionize the understanding of the human brain, and it could change the way we think about national security.

DARPA plans $50 million in 2014 investments to increase understanding of brain function and create new capabilities. (Photo illustration provided by DARPA)

As part of this initiative, DARPA intends to invest roughly $50 million in 2014 with the goal of understanding the dynamic functions of the brain and demonstrating breakthrough applications based on these insights.

“The President’s initiative reinforces the significance of understanding how the brain records, processes, uses, stores and retrieves vast quantities of information,” explained DARPA Director, Arati Prabhakar.

“This kind of knowledge of brain function could inspire the design of a new generation of information processing systems; lead to insights into brain injury and recovery mechanisms; and enable new diagnostics, therapies and devices to repair traumatic injury.”

DARPA plans to explore two key areas to elicit further understanding of the brain.

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Shooting Down Drones With Lasers

Filed under Videos by jtozer on April 18, 2013 at 7:13 am {no comments}

When you need to shoot down a drone, what better way to do it than with a laser?

The Laser Weapon System (LaWS) temporarily installed aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey (DDG 105) in San Diego, Calif., is a technology demonstrator built by the Naval Sea Systems Command from commercial fiber solid state lasers, utilizing combination methods developed at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Video provided by the USNavy YouTube Channel

LaWS can be directed onto targets from the radar track obtained from a MK 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon system or other targeting source. The Office of Naval Research’s Solid State Laser (SSL) portfolio includes LaWS development and upgrades providing a quick reaction capability for the fleet with an affordable SSL weapon prototype.

This capability provides Navy ships a method for sailors to easily defeat small boat threats and aerial targets without using bullets.

U.S. Navy video by Office of Naval Research/ Released

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Top Tech: Mighty, Mighty Cable

Filed under Top Technology by jtozer on April 17, 2013 at 7:16 am {no comments}

Top Technology is an Armed with Science series that highlights the latest and greatest federal laboratory inventions which are available for transfer to business partners. Want to suggest an invention? Email us at science@dma.mil

Technology: High Temperature, High Strength, High Voltage Communications Cable

Agency: Naval Research Laboratory

Hey cables! Mighty, mighty cables. Can you take the heat? Because if not, NRL has made a cable that can. The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has developed a cable for high voltage electrical and/or optical transmission capable of operating at temperatures up to 1000 °C, hundreds of degrees higher than existing cables.

What is it?

This is a turbo-cable. Industrial strength. This is no phone charger cord or hair dryer coil. We’re talking the real deal, folks. For people who work with a lot of technical equipment – like people who run power stations, for example – having a cable that can do the job and withstand the heat that comes with it is more than beneficial. The fact that it can do both fiber optic and high voltage is interesting. The NRL cable also has superior tensile strength at high temperatures compared to existing cables.

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The ‘Green’ Military Installation Of The Future

Filed under Energy by jtozer on April 16, 2013 at 7:02 am {no comments}

Army and sustainability?

Solar panel arrays form a canopy at a construction site in Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif., March 12, 2013. The construction site is for phase 1 and 2 of a solar microgrid project at the installation, managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District. (Photo by John R. Prettyman, USACE)

Using those two words in the same sentence several years ago would have probably been considered the punch line to a joke.

But today, a military base that is both environmentally friendly and meets the needs of warfighters, is quickly becoming a reality.

Fort Hunter Liggett, with nearly 162,000 acres of forest, mountains and rivers, is located in Monterey County, Calif., and is one of several U.S. Army pilot installations selected to be net zero energy and net zero waste by 2020.

This means the installation will create as much energy as it uses, and reuse and recover all of its waste products.

“The net zero initiative is going to provide energy security for this installation and it’s also a priority for the Army,” said Col. Donna Williams, garrison commander for Fort Hunter Liggett.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is leading the way in managing construction on major energy projects at Fort Hunter Liggett and is nearing completion on the second phase of four solar microgrids.

“Phase one of the solar project was completed last year and it’s generating one megawatt of power. Phase two is going to add another one megawatt of power,” said Bob Roy, project engineer with the Corps’ Sacramento District.

One megawatt is enough energy to power up to 300 homes.

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Bio-inspired Flight for Micro Air Vehicles

Filed under Earth Sciences, Videos by jtozer on April 15, 2013 at 7:55 am {no comments}

Isn’t it fun when science and technology come together?

In this case we’re talking about biology. Biology – specifically how things already work in the natural world – can teach us how to manufacture more efficient machines. Especially machines designed for flight.

“Biology has taught us a huge amount about flight,”‘ says Kenny Breuer, professor of engineering at Brown University.

“We’re trying to understand that so we can inspire micro-air vehicles for future Air Force applications.”

So how are they doing that? By using lasers and bats, of course. Wait, what?

“The animals fly and we take their video at very high speed so we can really see the detail. At the same time we shine a laser behind them so that we can see the motion of the air that the animals make as they fly.”

I hope they call these things the Flying Bat-a-tron 6000. Because that would be cool, that’s why.

Information for this story provided by the Air Force Research Laboratory YouTube Channel

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The BRAIN Initiative

Filed under Videos by jtozer on April 14, 2013 at 7:10 am {no comments}

President Barack Obama has announced a new research initiative to prevent, treat and cure brain injuries. The “BRAIN Initiative” gives scientists the tools they need to get a better picture of how the brain functions.

In his upcoming budget, the President plans to propose $100 million in 2014 –or what he calls a “significant investment” in the project– by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to start the BRAIN Initiative.

The goal is to better understand how brain cells interact to help crack the code of brain injury and disease.

Specifically, DARPA plans to explore new tools to measure and analyze electrical signals to the brain, as well as, researching the vast spectrum of the brain’s functionality.

To learn more about traumatic brain injury awareness, visit Health.mil.

Story and information provided by Health.mil

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Saturday Space Sight: New York City Nightlife

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on April 13, 2013 at 7:42 am {no comments}

One of the Expedition 35 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station exposed this 400 millimeter night image of the greater New York City metropolitan area.

For orientation purposes, note that Manhattan runs horizontal through the frame from left to the midpoint. Central Park is just a little to the left of frame center.

Image Credit: NASA

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NRL Scientists “See” Flux Rope Formation for the First Time

Filed under Space, Videos by jtozer on April 12, 2013 at 7:20 am {no comments}

Naval Research Laboratory scientists have observed, for the very first time, the formation of solar flux ropes, which are a type of solar magnetic field.

Models of flux ropes have been drawn by theorists in the past, but scientists had never before observed them at the time they formed.

The NRL team made their discovery using high-resolution images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) aboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and from the NRL-developed Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) telescopes aboard NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO).

These flux ropes have been seen with coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, before, but scientists had argued for years about whether the flux ropes formed before the CME or were formed on-the-fly as the eruption occurred.

The answer will determine whether the dominant mechanism for CMEs is plasma instability or changes in the magnetic field connectivity via magnetic reconnection, respectively.

The observations made by visiting scientist Dr. Spiro Patsourakos, and NRL researchers Drs. Angelos Vourlidas and Guillermo Stenborg clearly reveal that the flux rope forms before the CME occurs.

In observations from July 18, 2012, the NRL team observed a small burst of light off the West limb of the sun. These flares of light are usually the evidence of an eruption of solar material, in a CME. But the July 18th burst of light was not a CME.

As the scientists continued their observations, they saw magnetic field lines that twisted and kinked to form slinky shapes.

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