Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions

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ARTICLE: Myscienceacademy.org
EDITOR: Mike-Lee
IMAGE: Time Lapse Map

For people with paralysis, living life confined to a wheelchair can be a pretty frustrating existence.

But technology is helping to give these folks some newfound independence. Technology like Mindwalker – the world’s first robotic exoskeleton that operates just through the power of thought. Sounds like science-fiction, doesn’t it? Well, European scientists are making this futuristic concept a reality. Mind Over Matter

Similar to the i-Transport invention that we reported on back in February, the first Mindwalker exoskeleton prototype helps lift wheelchair-bound people into a standing position. It then holds them upright and moves their legs via a computer.

However, the researchers now want to take the exoskeleton technology even further by using it to actually help make paralyzed people walk.

And it will all happen through the power of the mind.

Neurophysiologist Guy Cheron at the University of Brussels is leading the project to improve the technology to the point where operating instructions come direct from the person’s brain.

How?

Cheron explains, “We will use a cap that measures electrical activity from the surface of the scalp. Through calculation, we will detect the regions involved in the control of walk. We will only record signals emitted from the brain region that commands walking. This is the first step. Then, we will train the patient to take control of his brain’s signals.”

That’s not all…

In this age of increasing wearable technology, the scientists are taking a page out of Google (GOOG) and Samsung’s (SSNLF) books by working on a pair of glasses that will respond to the wearer’s eye movements to control the exoskeleton.

Needless to say, both the physical and psychological impact of the Mindwalker is significant.

Dr. Marco Molinari is leading clinical trials of the Mindwalker in Rome and will now set about testing the system in real-world situations like at home and while shopping. His team is aiming to have the Mindwalker ready for the market by 2018.

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ARTICLE: Tech & Innovation Research
EDITOR: Mike-Lee
IMAGE: Exoskeleton

Want X­ray vision like the man of steel? A technology that lets you see behind walls could soon be built in to your cell phone.
MIT professor Dina Katabi and graduate student Fadel Adib have announced Wi­Vi, a demonstration of a technology that uses Wi­Fi to allow a viewer to “see” a person moving behind a wall. (Wi­Vi stands for “Wi­Fi” and “vision.”)

Previous work demonstrated that the subtle reflections of wireless inter signals bouncing off a human could be used to track that person’s movements, but those previous experiments either required that a wireless router was already in the room of the person being tracked, or “a whole truck just to carry the radio,” said Katabi.

The new device uses the same wireless antenna as is found in a cell phone or laptop and could in theory one day be embedded in a phone. [See also "WiSee Detects Your Gestures Using WiFi."]
The trick is canceling out all interfering signals – Wi-Fi doesn’t just bounce off humans, but also walls, floors, and furniture. And those signals are 10,000 to 100,000 times more powerful than the reflections off a human body.

Katabi’s wi­vi sends out two wireless signals, one of which is the inverse of the other. In what Katabi calls “interference nulling,” the two signals cancel each other out unless they hit a moving target – such as a human.

“To silence the noise, we change the structure of the Wi-Fi signal so all the undesired reflections cancel,” she said.

The device is meant to be portable so, for example, a person worried that someone was hiding in the bushes could do a quick scan for her personal safety.

Wi­Vi could also serve as a high tech baby monitor or help Superman – or just cops – catch baddies.

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ARTICLE: LiveScience.com
EDITOR: Mike Lee
IMAGE: Wi-Vi MIT

In a profile published online over the weekend in New Yorker magazine, President Barack Obama continued his softening towards legalization. The president alluded to his own youthful marijuana consumption and clarified that while he doesn’t believe it to be a healthy pastime and has discouraged his daughter’s against its use, he also believes it is a less dangerous substance than alcohol and that current moves towards legalization are important experiments that can help end discriminatory arrest practices.

“As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.” President Obama stated when asked about the growing public support for ending marijuana prohibition.

“Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do and African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.” he continued, “we should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing.”

“It’s important for it [marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington] to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.”

Perhaps President Obama will continue to evolve and find himself on the right side of history when it comes to marijuana legalization. It would take just one simple Executive Order to deschedule marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and help institute some real lasting change in our nation’s failed war on cannabis.

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ARTICLE: Blog.Norml.com
EDITOR: Mike Lee
IMAGE: TalkAndroid.com

The newest humanoid robot from NASA just might be mistaken for a superhero.

The space agency’s new Valkyrie — a 6 foot 2 inch tall (1.9 meters) robot with a glowing NASA logo on its chest — bears an uncanny resemblance to Marvel’s superhero Iron Man, but this space age automaton was built for work, not comic book heroics. A team of engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Tex., designed and built Valkyrie in just nine months, according to press reports.

The robot was developed for the DARPA Robotics Challenge taking place at the end of the month and is designed to help humans during disasters. To test its capabilities, the DARPA competition will run Valkyrie through a variety of scenarios that it might encounter in extreme situations. Valkyrie will need to drive a vehicle, clean up debris, cut through a wall and perform other tasks to show that it has the right stuff.

“We want to get to Mars,” the team leader for Valkyrie, Nicolaus Radford told IEEE Spectrum in a video about the robot. “Likely, NASA will send robots ahead of the astronauts to the planet. These robots will start preparing the way for the human explorers and when the humans arrive, the robots and the humans will work together in conjunction building habs [habitats], laying foundation and just working together in that tight relationship. Technologies such as Valkyrie are going to really lead into the type of robotic systems that will one day be the precursor missions before the astronauts go to Mars.”

Some team members working with Valkyrie also worked with the space agency’s Robonaut, NASA officials said. Robonaut was the first humanoid robot to fly on the International Space Station, and the agency recently announced that Robonaut 2 — currently attached to a pole in the orbiting outpost — will get its space legs sometime in 2014.

While Robonaut also has a sleek look, Valkyrie seems to take it to the next level.

“We really wanted to design the appearance of this robot to be one that when you saw it you were going to be like, ‘Wow, that’s awesome,” Radford said. “It’s a 44 degree of freedom robot, very capable, very strong, completely self contained. We have a two kilowatt hour battery, lots of onboard computing.”

The 2013 DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials are set to take place from Dec. 20 to 21 in Florida. The finals are scheduled for the end of 2014, with the winning team awarded a $2 million prize.

Valkyrie: NASA’s Superhero Robot

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ARTICLE: Space.com
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IMAGE: NASA

A secret, new surveillance drone has been developed by defense giant Northrop Grumman. The drone, which is designed to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions, could enter operational service in the U.S. Air Force by 2015, according to news reports.
The classified drone, dubbed RQ-180, is being tested at Area 51, a clandestine military base in the Nevada desert that has famously been used to test different spy planes since the 1950s. Northrop, headquartered in Falls Church, Va., and the Air Force have been reticent to talk about the project, but the existence of the RQ-180 was first revealed in a report last week by Aviation Week.

“The Air Force does not discuss this program,” Air Force spokesperson Jennifer Cassidy told Aviation Week.

The RQ-180 drone will likely be used for intelligence-gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. The vehicle, which is equipped with radars, radio-frequency sensors and surveillance instruments, could also be used to carry out electronic warfare, an unnamed defense official told Aviation Week. [9 Totally Cool Uses for Drones]
The new drone is a larger, more advanced version of the Air Force’s RQ-170 Sentinel, which was built by Lockheed Martin Corp. The RQ-170, which has been in service since 2007, was used to carry out several high-profile clandestine missions, including the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed the al-Qaida leader.

Aviation Week combed through Northrop Grumman’s corporate financial statements and publicly available satellite images for clues about the new RQ-180 drone.

Overhead photos showed new hangars were built at Northrop’s plant in Palmdale, Calif., to accommodate aircraft with wingspans of more than 130 feet (40 meters), according to the trade magazine. For comparison, the RQ-170 Sentinel’s wingspan is estimated to be between 65 feet and 90 feet (20 m and 27 m).

But Lockheed appears to be embracing the robust competition in the field of drone technology. Last month, the Bethesda, Md.-based aerospace company announced that it plans to develop an unmanned, hyper-sonic spy plane capable of flying up to six times faster than the speed of sound. The so-called SR-72 will prednisone be able to travel at speeds of more than 3,500 mph (5,600 km/h), and will be able to fly to any location within an hour, company officials said.

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ARTICLE: Live Science
EDITOR: Mike Lee
IMAGE: Aviation Week Concept

If your car was powered by thorium, you would never need to refuel it. The vehicle would burn out long before the chemical did. The thorium would last so long, in fact, it would probably outlive you.

That’s why a company called Laser Power Systems has created a concept for a thorium-powered car engine. The element is radioactive, and the team uses bits of it to build a laser beam that heats water, produces steam, and powers an energy-producing turbine.

Thorium is one of the most dense materials on the planet. A small sample of it packs 20 million times more energy than a similarly-sized sample of coal, making it an ideal energy source.

The thing is, Dr. Charles Stevens, the CEO of Laser Power Systems, told Mashable that thorium engines won’t be in cars anytime soon.

“Cars are not our primary interest,” Stevens said. “The automakers don’t want to buy them.”

He said too much of the automobile industry is focused on making money off of gas engines, and it will take at least a couple decades for thorium technology to be used enough in other industries that vehicle manufacturers will begin to consider revamping the way they think about engines.

“We’re building this to power the rest of the world,” Stevens said. He believes a thorium turbine about the size of an air conditioning unit could more provide cheap power for whole restaurants, hotels, office buildings, even small towns in areas of the world without electricity. At some point, thorium could power individual homes.

Stevens understands that people may be wary of Thorium because it is radioactive — but any such worry would be unfounded.

“The radiation that we develop off of one of these things can be shielded by a single sheet off of aluminum foil,” Stevens said.” “You will get more radiation from one of those dental X-rays than this.”

This Radioactive Element Could Power the Planet

A Quick Glimpse of Thorium

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ARTICLE: Mashable
EDITOR: Mike Lee
IMAGE: Industrytap.com