The late 60′s were the dawn of the space age – the first satellite went into orbit a decade earlier, and by the end of 1969 a human being was walking on the moon. The original Star Trek series captured the imagination of people all over the world, and we began to realistically dreaming of visiting other worlds.

Now, almost 40 years after the series first aired, an engineer has stepped forward with a proposal to build the first generation Starship Enterprise. While there are many differences between his proposal and the fictional ship from the TV show (we don’t yet have warp drive technology, for example), the exterior will look similar and the purpose will be the same.

At buildtheenterprise.org, the founder of the site, who calls himself “BTE Dan,” claims that we could build his stars ship concept in as little as 20 years for the price of $40 billion per year. While that sounds like a significant investment, BTE Dan assures us it is well within our price range, only 0.27% of the US government’s yearly GDP. For comparison, between 1963 and 1972 – the heyday of the Apollo program – the US government diverted 0.50% of it’s annual GDP to NASA.

If we were to start building now and complete the ship in 20 years as per BTE Dan’s schedule, we would be ahead of the fictional Enterprise by nearly 2 centuries. However, BTE Dan’s Enterprise lacks a few of the bells and whistles of the fictional Enterprise, like a warp drive and artificial gravity. Instead, BTE Dan’s Enterprise will be powered by 2 nuclear reactors and three ion propulsion engines. This will allow the ship to reach Mars in 90 days. The saucer section of the ship will be a magnetically suspended wheel spinning at 2 RPMs to simulate Earth’s gravity. The ship will also feature a high-powered laser for research purposes, and of course to defend the ship from any hostile Klingons or Romulans.

Some people have pointed out that this configuration may not be the best layout for a space ship. For instance, if the gravity wheel were turned 90 degrees so that it was perpendicular to it’s plane of motion, there would be no need to magnetically suspend it – the entire ship could be a giant gravity wheel that spins as a single unit. However, BTE Dan points out there is a problem with this idea: “it’s not the Enterprise.” The entire premise behind the BTE website is to get people excited about space travel by having them rally around a cultural icon. More practical space ship designs don’t have the same impact and will have a much harder time getting public support.

The Enterprise would be the largest artificial structure humankind has ever created. It would be a feat of engineering that outshone all others – and it’s entirely possibly. It’s unlikely that the funding for this project will materialize, but it’s nice to know that if we really wanted to, we could build something like this.

Snow leopards stalk their prey among the highest peaks. Concealed by snowfall, the chase is watched by golden eagles circling above. On the harsh plains of the Tibetan plateau live extraordinary bears and square-faced foxes hunting small rodents to survive. In the alpine forests, dancing pheasants have even influenced rival border guards in their ritualistic displays. Valleys carved by glacial waters lead to hillsides covered by paddy fields containing the lifeline to the East, rice. In this world of extremes, the Himalayas reveal not only snow-capped mountains and fascinating animals but also a vital lifeline for humanity.

Where does this relationship come from? In Siberia, a unique breeding experiment reveals the astonishing secret of how dogs evolved from wolves. Swedish scientists demonstrate how the human/dog bond is controlled by a powerful hormone also responsible for bonding mothers to their babies.

Why are dogs so good at reading our emotions? Horizon meets Betsy, reputedly the world’s most intelligent dog, and compares her incredible abilities to those of children. Man’s best friend has recently gone one step further – helping us identify genes responsible for causing human diseases.

Recent advances in medical technology are taking us to astounding new places. As our understanding of human biology gets better and better, we will not only be able to heal the sick and disabled, but augment our senses and increase our abilities as well. Here are three technologies that promise to not only aid the disabled, but make all of our lives easier as well:

Bionic Eyes

Helping the blind to see again is certainly an important breakthrough. Current technology has just reached the stage where we can replace damaged and degenerate retinas with an electronic equivalent. Recent research at Stanford has even created a bionic eye that eliminates the need for bulky wiring and batteries, which are the main problems that have been plaguing such devices to date. A pair of glasses with a camera built into the frame record an image which is then sent via infrared light to the retinal chip at the back of the eye. The infrared signal not only sends the data but also powers the tiny implant, making the procedure much less invasive and uncomfortable.

This kind of implant will only work on those with age-related macular degeneration and retinal pigmentosa – so it won’t help those that have been blind from birth or have suffered damage to the optic nerve itself. However, successful tests with rats have shown that these devices are quit practical in allowing subjects to perceive shapes and colors after they have begun to lose their ability to see.

Eventually, it will be possible to utilize this type of implant with augmented reality technology, sending signals directly through the eye to the optic nerve. Rather than just displaying information on a pair of glasses, it will seem as if the data is actually there, floating around in the environment.

BrainGate

Simple actions that most of us take for granted can be among the most frustrating losses of disabled individuals. For the first time in 15 years, a disabled woman was able to reach out and sip from a drink on her own. However, she did not use her own arm to do so, but rather a robotic arm linked directly into her brain using the new BranGate brain-computer interface (BCI). This research has been ongoing for years, and while previous studies had proved that people can use the device to move a cursor on a 2-dimensional screen, this is the first use of the technology in physical space. The implications are incredible. No longer will disabled individuals need to rely on others, but as the system becomes more sophisticated, they will be as completely mobile as non-disabled people. Indeed, as our mastery of robotics becomes more fine-tuned, these prostheses will be able to perform better than the standard human appendages.

Research into BCIs is accelerating at a phenomenal pace. Not only will these systems allow the disabled more control over their lives, they will enhance all of our abilities as well. Future BCIs will allow direct communication between the brain and a computer – the only place you’ll see a keyboard and mouse in the future is in a museum.

Robotic Exoskeleton

Paraplegics are getting a helping hand from the Department of Defense. A program designed to create an exoskeleton to give soldiers super-human strength has led to the development of a private company named Ekso Bionics . Recently, they have begun production of a “wearable robot” that enables paraplegics to walk again. As long as the wheelchair bound individual has the upper-body strength to transition from a wheelchair to a regular chair, and balance themselves on crutches, this exoskeleton will do the rest. Comprised of four electric motors that replace the function of a person’s hips and knees, and fifteen sensors hook into a computer worn like a back-pack that functions as the unit’s control system.

While not quit as impressive as Iron Man’s robotic armor, Ekso Bionics has set itself the goal of creating an exoskeleton that’s worn “like a pair of jeans.” As this technology progresses, no doubt we will see exoskeletons on the battlefield, and more than likely in many other labor-intensive jobs as well.

It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come in just the past ten years. Our understanding of the human body and our ability to interface with technology are progressing at such a rapid pace that we are outpacing the expectations of many of the most optimistic futurists. While these kinds of research will mostly benefit the disabled initially, it’s only a matter of time before they find their way into all our daily lives. The potential is there, all we need is the will and the dedication to make it happen.

Through unprecedented access we showcase the spectacle that is Wild Russia. From east to west, via mountains, volcanoes, deserts, lakes and Arctic ice, this breathtaking six-part series uses stunning cinematography to chart the dazzling natural wonders of this vast country.

Episode 1: Siberia

Accounting for around 10 per cent of the world’s dry land, Siberia is famous as a brutally cold place. Yet it is home to a diverse range of habitats and animal life – including musk deer, camels, gazelles and the extraordinary Siberian salamander, which can spend years encased in -40°C ice and still survive. Exploring from the frozen north to the southern steppes, this is the real Siberia.

Episode 2: Kamchatka

A land of fire and ice, the volcanic peninsula of Kamchatka lies in Russia’s far east. With the land constantly being reworked by eruptions and landslides, this far-flung part of the country is dangerous, but incredibly fertile. Heading right into this magical land, this stunning film follows soaring golden eagles, scavenging wolverines, young red foxes and local brown bears partial to a dip in a natural hot spring.

Episode 3: The Arctic

The Russian Arctic is one of the world’s most extreme habitats, yet it is a haven for polar bears, lemmings, arctic foxes and walruses. In late August, massive muskoxen bulls gather together to compete for mating dominance. Each bull can weigh 400 kilogrammes and charge at a speed of 40 kilometres an hour; a head-to-head impact can be heard more than a kilometre away.

Episode 4: The Secret Forest

While Asiatic black bears hang from the trees and chipmunks search for food, the spotted sika deer travels to the coast to supplement its diet with kelp. The presence of deer on this open ground attracts the region’s big predator, the Amur tiger. But the largest cat in the world has dangerous enemies itself: poaching and habitat destruction are an ever-present threat to tigers in the Ussuriland region of Russia.

Traditional psychology tends to focus on the problems of the mind, treating it like it was any other organ in the body; only paying attention to it when something went wrong. Numerous studies have been done on depression, anxiety, and phobias, but very little was known about their opposites. “I’m in a department of psychiatry, and psychiatry does not have a good model of mental health,” says clinical instructor in psychology Nancy Etcoff, who is based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). “Is there a model of mental health beyond ‘no mental disease’?”

Recently, a new direction in psychological research has gained traction called “positive psychology.” This is the study of what makes us happy, not only in the moment, but for the long-term as well. Research in this field did not begin in earnest until 1998, when University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman hosted a conference in Akumal, Mexico. “I realized that my profession was half-baked. It wasn’t enough for us to nullify disabling conditions and get to zero. We needed to ask, What are the enabling conditions that make human beings flourish? How do we get from zero to plus five?” The goal of the conference was to shine light on the work of researchers like psychologist Edward Diener, aka “Dr. Happiness.” Ever since he received tenure, Dr. Diener had been doing research on what does and does not bring satisfaction into a person’s life.

Since the first conference, the field has exploded. The past decade has seen a shift in focus in the field of psychology away from what makes us miserable towards what makes us happy. But why has there been a focus on the negative side of psychology in the first place? Traditional medicine is geared towards fixing problems when they arise. The assumption is that the default state is the state we should attain to. However, this isn’t necessarily the case with the mind. While we certainly want to fix problems when they occur, the “default state” of “not miserable” isn’t the best we can do. The goal of positive psychology is to achieve more and lasting happiness, moving us from the “default state” into a more positive mindset.

Unsurprisingly, a number of things that make us happy and give us feelings of well-being are rooted in our evolution. For instance, people enjoy being on top of a large hill because it allows them to see the landscape around. Conversely, people also enjoy privacy and security; having some kind of refuge. These are evolutionary responses to our status as both predator and prey. Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton, in his book “The Marketplace of Perceptions,” asked thousands of people to keep diaries of their daily activities and the emotions they felt. Unsurprisingly, people felt the most negative emotions during their commutes to and from work. What made people feel the happiest were interpersonal relationships – echoing our evolutionary need to belong to a group.

In a recent study conducted by Dr. Kennon Sheldon of the University of Missouri, 481 participants were surveyed about their happiness. Six weeks later the same subjects were interviewed about a positive life change that had occurred during that time. After another six weeks, the participants were interviewed again about whether or not the boost of happiness stayed with them. What they found was that the majority of people returned to their previous levels of happiness, while only a few were able to maintain that happiness boost. The key, Dr. Sheldon says, is to keep having fresh, positive experiences. For instance, a subject that entered a new relationship with a person was able to maintain their happiness by having new experiences and doing new things with the other person. On the other hand, the majority of people stopped having new experiences and instead began focusing on what could be better.

And so it seems that the key to having a happy, fulfilling life, no matter who you are or where you’re from, is to engage in interpersonal relationships with other people, but not allowing them to stagnate. Material possessions provide a momentary boost to happiness, but unless you keep finding new and interesting things to do with it, that happiness will quickly fade.

Unknown hackers early last week claimed to have compromised and stolen data from a range of government agencies and private organizations by alleging to have gained full administrator access to their systems, including those of space agencies, defense departments, and private international companies. NASA and the ESA have apparently confirmed their systems were indeed attacked and compromised in late April 2012 but insisted no “sensitive or controlled information” was compromised. The attacks according to ESA security office manager Stefano Zatti were allegedly the result of an SQL injection exploit stating, “The group used SQL injection [...] The use of SQL injection is an admitted vulnerability [...] This needs to be addressed at a coding level.”

The new hacker group claiming to be behind the attacks refers to themselves as “The Unknown” and announced early last week opening up a new Twitter account that they had injected their way into the private systems of at least ten different organizations, and proceeded to publish private data and documents through sites like Pastebin which they claim originated from the compromised servers. “The Unknown” have since stated that all their victims had patched their systems (which was apparently their goal) and that they were no longer vulnerable to the exploits used to compromise them in the first place, all but the US Air Force apparently which they claim they would be contacting to bring to their attention.

And now, we are happy to inform you that most of the links we used to penetrate threw the databases, have been patched. This is exactly what we where looking for. This is what we want. For all our supporters out there; Thank you, help us to spread the word, help us to make this internet world more secured.

Victims The Unknown listed as allegedly having been compromised included the NASA – Glenn Research Center, the U.S. military, the U.S. Air Force, the European Space Agency, the Thai Royal Navy, Harvard University, Renault, the French ministry of Defense, the Bahrain Ministry of Defense, and the Jordanian Yellow Pages. It is not sure whether they used the same exploit to gain access to all these organizations but it would appear likely.

In addition to revealing the logins to access the compromised systems of the organizations in question, The Unknown also proceeded to post screenshots on public image sharing site Imgur showing off the access they had gained to the compromised sites. The group also apparently put together a compressed 2 part rar file of some military documents they claim to have downloaded from the hacked systems and uploaded them to the public file sharing website MediaFire (where as of of this writing they are apparently still available). Some sources covering this story claim some of the documents/data may originate from an older hack and all this is might just be a ploy to try and gain Twitter followers. At this point though I think this would seem like a rather unlikely motivation.

Rather, “The Unknowns” claim their motivation as completely altruistic in the hopes of bringing software vulnerabilities to people’s attention, something along the lines of following (as was apparently posted in one of their Pastebin posts).

We can’t call ourselves White Hat Hackers but we’re not Black Hat Hackers either…
Now, we decided to hack these sites for a reason…
These Websites are important, we understand that we harmed the victims and we’re sorry for that – we’re soon going to email them all the information they need to know about the penetrations we did.
We still think that what we did helped them, because right now they know that their Security is weak and that it should be fixed.
We wanted to gain the trust of others, people now trust us, we’re getting lots of emails from people we never knew, asking us to check their website’s security and that’s what we want to do.
Our goal was never to harm anyone, we want to make this whole internet world more secured because, simply, it’s not at all and we want to help.
We don’t want revolutions, we don’t want chaos, we just want to protect the people out there.
Websites are not secured, people are not secured, computers are not secured, nothing is…
We’re here to help and we’re asking nothing in exchange.

One can only wonder then why decide to publicly leak private data/documents instead of simply contacting the site administrators directly in private? Perhaps they believe they wouldn’t be taken seriously by the organizations otherwise? Or perhaps more likely that it wouldn’t have generated any media coverage? That it wouldn’t generate any notoriety? Either way, it will be interesting to see if more high profile sites are attacked by “The Unknowns” in the coming days/weeks and if they continue to publicly dump any private info gained.

In 1977, a NASA scientist named Franklin Chiang-Diaz began work on a new type of electrical propulsion system, the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, or VASIMR engine. The engine works by using radio waves to heat a plasma of argon or krypton atoms and using magnetic fields to blast them out of the rear of the craft, accelerating it forward at great speed. This type of electrical propulsion is favorable over the more convention ion-thruster engines, which make use of electrodes in their design which quickly wear down. The VASIMR engine, on the other hand, is entirely magnetically shielded from the plasma it creates, making it much more durable and therefore suitable for deep space missions.

In 2005, Chiang-Diaz founded Ad Astra, a company devoted to developing the VASIMR even further. In a test conducted in November of 2010, the engine achieved its greatest power efficiency and performance to date. With 200 kilowatts of power, they were able to generate 5.7 Newtons of thrust at 72% efficiency, with an exhaust speed of 50 km per second. This test exceeded their self-set efficiency requirements, indicating that the system is ready for commercial and industrial use.

The first application of the VASIMR engine will be on the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS orbits close enough to the surface of the Earth to be slowed by atmospheric drag, and so periodically it must be boosted higher up to maintain its orbit. Currently, traditional chemical rockets are used for this, but they require huge amounts of fuel; difficult to deal with in the cramped quarters aboard the ISS. The VASIMR engine requires very little fuel, eliminating this problem altogether. However, the ISS is powered by solar panels, which do not generate enough power to use the VASIMR engine continually. The energy will be stored in batteries, and used in quick busts when the ISS needs to reposition.

Ad Astra envisions VASIMR engines on all sorts of space craft, from satellites to shuttles to the moon. The engine requires the vacuum of space to operate, so VASIMR wouldn’t be involved in any launching or landing procedures. However, once beyond the atmosphere, spacecraft could save huge amounts of space by using the VASIMR engine to navigate, eliminating the need to store large quantities of fuel. The most exciting prospect for this project is its potential for deep space missions. The shortest estimates for trips to Mars using current technology are 6 months at best, while Chiang-Diaz believes a VASIMR-powered spacecraft could reach Mars in a single month’s time. The biggest hurdle for such a project would be generating the enormous amounts of power needed. Solar panels couldn’t do the job that far from the sun, and the only alternative would be a nuclear reactor. However, current nuclear reactor technology produces huge amounts of waste heat, and in the vacuum of space it would stay with the ship rather than dissipate. Chiang-Diaz has acknowledged this problem, stating “It is abundantly clear that the nuclear reactor technology required for such missions is not available today and major advances in reactor design and power conversion are needed.” Such research is being conducted however, and Chiang-Diaz is confident that eventually a solution will be found.

Life from Light: In this first episode Iain journeys from the spectacular caves of Vietnam to the remote deserts of Africa. He sees how plants first harnessed light from the sun and created our life-giving atmosphere. He uncovers the epic battle between the dinosaurs and the tallest trees on the planet. And, using remarkable imagery, he shows plants breathing – and for the first time talking to each other.

The Power of Flowers: In the second episode, Iain discovers how flowers have transformed our planet. He journeys to the remote islands of the South Pacific to track down the earliest flowers. In the deserts of Africa and rainforests of Vietnam, he sees how they brought brilliant colour to the most barren landscapes and sculpted the earth itself. And he learns how they drove the evolution of all animals – kick-starting our human story.

The Challenger: In the third episode, Iain discovers the remarkable impact of just one plant: grass. On the savannah of South Africa he sees how grass unleashed a firestorm to fight its greatest enemy, the forests. He shows how cutting your finger on a blade of grass shows us how it transformed life in the oceans. In Senegal, he meets the cleverest chimps in the world. And, in the ruins of the oldest temple on Earth, he tells the extraordinary story of how grass triggered human civilisation.

Image credit: colourdance.deviantart.com

The mascot for this debate is the humble virus. There is a large degree of disagreement about what exactly viruses are. They seem to be alive; they exist on the same scale as single-celled organisms and interact with them (often in very negative ways). However, they are unable to reproduce on their own, and require host cells to infect. They inject their own genetic structure into the nucleus of the victim cell, and force the cell to make more copies of the virus. While this is a form of reproduction, it is not self-replication, which many biologists believe is required to earn the status of “life.”

Now, the debate is about to get even more complicated. Professor Lee Cronin from Glasgow University has begun research on creating self-replicating molecules out of inorganic compounds. They have already created inorganic-chemical-cells, or “iCHELLS,” with membranes that separate different chemical reactions from each other, just like in living cells. The difference between these inorganic iCHELLs and organic, natural cells is their compositions. Cells that evolved naturally, and make up all of the life we see around us today, are made of carbon-based organic compounds – amino acids, nucleotides and sugars. ICHELLS, on the other hand, are made of compounds that are considered inorganic and not necessarily carbon based at all.

The applications of these iCHELLS are wide-ranged. Once they begin replicating and evolving, they can teach us a lot about the evolution of life on Earth. The purpose of Professor Cronin’s project in his own words is: “…to construct complex chemical cells with life-like properties that could help us understand how life emerged and also to use this approach to define a new technology based upon evolution in the material world – a kind of inorganic living technology.” Essentially, it will be technology that evolves and adapts without our guidance.

Many people are familiar with the concept of nanobots, tiny molecular machines that can perform tasks on tiny scales. Professor Cronin’s work is similar, but allowing these iCHELLS to reproduce themselves takes the project another step further. Professor Cronin is essentially freeing life and the evolutionary process from the constraints of organic matter; you can only do so much with carbon. If he succeeds in creating organisms based on different compounds, the potential abilities of these creations are nearly limitless.

Below is a link to a TED talk by Professor Cronin regarding iCHELLS and his ideas:

Professor Cronin’s Ted Talk on inorganic life

World War II was brought to a screeching halt at 8:15 A.M. on August 6, 1945 when the United States debuted the world’s first weapon of mass destruction in Hiroshima. The absolute destruction of this city, and Nagasaki a few days later, were the first and last time that nuclear weapons have been used in warfare. During the Cold War, the use of these weapons became unthinkable, as the doctrine of mutually assured destruction took hold. However, nuclear weapons aren’t the only possible way to cause massive amounts of damage, and over the years many new and horrible ideas have been proposed.

The Nazi Sun Gun

No list of super weapons would be complete without mention of everyone’s favorite super-villains: the Nazis. During World War II, these maniacal monsters conceived a plethora of methods for causing pain and death. From biological and chemical weapons aimed at the individual to bombs designed to destroy entire cities, they left no technological stone unturned in their quest of destruction. One of the most potentially terrifying of these concepts was their Sun Gun.

While it might sound relatively cute and harmless, the Sun Gun would do much more than give you a tan. It was designed as an orbital concave mirror 3.5 miles in diameter that would focus sunlight onto a specific point on the Earth, like a child burning ants with a magnifying glass. Fortunately for the Allies, and the rest of the world, the Nazis never even succeeded in putting a satellite into orbit, much less a miles-wide orbital space station of death.

The idea isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, and according to the scientists who worked on the project, it is technically feasible. It’s not even a new idea; in 212 BCE it was said that the mathematician Archimedes single-handedly defended the city of Syracuse from Roman invasion by burning their ships with focused sunlight from a polished copper mirror. This story is not likely to be true, as it would take many minutes of sunlight focused on the same spot to ignite a flame, but the theory is sound.

Project Thor

Though the idea originated with science fiction author Jerry Pournelle, Project Thor is completely feasible, and actually rather simple. Essentially, large tungsten poles would be inserted into Earth orbit, and rain like meteors onto enemy positions when called down. The huge amounts of kinetic energy gathered by these objects falling from orbit is what gives them their destructive force. It is calculated that a tungsten pole roughly 6m tall impacting the ground at Mach 10 would produce the destructive force of 11.5 tons of TNT. While not nearly as destructive as nuclear weapons, these weapons have the benefit of being rather simple to build, and easy to fire. Launches would be much more difficult to detect than nuclear launches, and it would only take a matter of minutes for the weapon to fall out of orbit and strike the target. Additionally, the destructive force can be scaled up or down by increasing or decreasing the size of the projectile.

Referred to as “Rods from God,” such weapons are not prohibited by either the Outer Space Treaty or the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, and as such are very attractive to any countries seeking a military advantage while trying to fly under the radar. Of course, the largest technical challenge of any weapons system like this is getting the projectiles into orbit in the first place. Currently, only a handful of countries have the capability to do so.

Tesla’s Death Beam

Nikola Tesla was an incredible inventor, responsible for much of the electronic gadgetry we take for granted today. If he had been better at dealing with the US patent office, it’s likely that just about every electronic device you own would have his name on it. However, Tesla was more interested in the science of his inventions than the profit, and so his name fell into relative obscurity as the 20th century marched on.

One of Tesla’s most imagination-capturing ideas was for a death ray that could annihilate targets hundreds of miles away. Tesla himself was not very militaristic, but he naively imagined that his death rays would prevent wars, rather than cause them. He proposed a series of towers arrayed along a country’s borders that would fire “concentrated beams of particles” at invading enemy craft. His idea was to use an enormous electrostatic generator to accelerate particles of mercury until they became a high-powered stream of bullets wielding several million volts. Tesla hoped that a border protected by such towers would be impregnable to enemy invasion, making war obsolete. Certainly, it would be difficult to invade any country defended by death beams, but what would stop countries from turning these death beams on each other?

While none of Tesla’s death beam towers were ever constructed, it has been widely hypothesized that he was able to create such beams anyway from his radio tower in Colorado Springs. Some have even proposed that he is to blame for the Tunguska event, a mysterious explosion that occurred in Siberia in 1908.

Tectonic Weapons

A weapon that can cause an earthquake or other seismic event is the Holy Grail of mad scientists everywhere. Not only would such a weapon be unrivaled in destructive power, it would be impossible to track and easy to avoid the repercussions of its use. The user of such a weapon could claim to have no knowledge of it and destroy whole cities at will, blaming the whole thing on “acts of God.” While this concept might turn out to be impossible or infeasible, that hasn’t stopped the governments of the world from taking the threat seriously. The Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques is an international treaty ratified by 75 states in 1978 that prohibits the use of environmental modification techniques to cause earthquakes and tsunamis, amongst other phenomena.

Some governments have even attempted to implement such weapons. Two Soviet programs, “Mercury” and “Volcano” in the late 80’s and early 90’s apparently attempted to use electromagnetism to induce Earthquakes below targets from a great distance. Three tests were conducted under the Mercury program in 1987, and Volcano’s final test was in 1992. Whether or not they were successful is unknown, but it seems unlikely as these programs were scrapped. New Zealand even had a program called Project Seal during World War II that attempted to create tsunami waves to be used as weapons of war. Although the project failed due to errors in the theoretical basis of the plan, it was reported in 1999 that such a weapon would be feasible, given a large enough explosion. So the next time there’s a huge tsunami in the Pacific or Indian Ocean, keep a watchful eye on those militaristic New Zealanders.

While nuclear weapons have been and remain the most destructive force at our command, the day is rapidly approaching when our options for annihilating each other will proliferate and become easier to produce. As more and more countries venture into space and increase their technological base, the threats from weapons systems like Project Thor become increasingly realistic. What makes these weapons even more terrifying is their ability to circumvent treaties dealing with traditional weapons of mass destruction, and the ability of their users to remain anonymous. The weapons systems in this article aren’t even at the forefront of or technological capabilities, and have only been declassified and described because they aren’t likely to be implemented. That means the plans that remains classified must be even more terrifying. Sleep tight!

In sticking with the ideals of Open Source and sharing of knowledge and innovation, Twitter today has open sourced its forked MySQL database implementation which it uses in the Twitter interest graph, timelines, user data and of course the Tweets themselves (ie. pretty much all of Twitter) and released it under the new BSD license via GitHub. MySQL, released under the GNU General Public License and principally owned by Oracle Corp is of course currently probably the most popular RDBMS system in the world and is literally used by millions upon millions of web developers for both large and small projects alike.

However MySQL by default is known to have scalability and performance issues when under the pressure of continuous high transaction rates as experienced and documented by large high traffic web projects like those hosted by Google, Facebook and of course Twitter. This is why it’s exciting news for fellow developers who are potentially working on similar scaling problems with MySQL that a private for profit company like Twitter would release their full internal customized MySQL fork with no vendor licenses or support contracts or lock-in counterweights attached. Obviously as with hugely successful web applications like those run by Google and Facebook, Twitter is definitely up there with a very high traffic and continuously growing extremely heavy DB centric web apps with transaction rates continuously pushing MySQL databases to higher and higher levels and performance requirements.

Some of the work done includes:

-Add additional status variables, particularly from the internals of InnoDB. This allows us to monitor our systems more effectively and understand their behavior better when handling production workloads.
-Optimize memory allocation on large NUMA systems: Allocate InnoDB’s buffer pool fully on startup, fail fast if memory is not available, ensure performance over time even when server is under memory pressure.
-Reduce unnecessary work through improved server-side statement timeout support. This allows the server to proactively cancel queries that run longer than a millisecond-granularity timeout.
-Export and restore InnoDB buffer pool in using a safe and lightweight method. This enables us to build tools to support rolling restarts of our services with minimal pain.
-Optimize MySQL for SSD-based machines, including page-flushing behavior and reduction in writes to disk to improve lifespan.

Source: http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/04/mysql-at-twitter.html

As it so happens, exactly a few days to this same date last year, Twitter had also open sourced some of its MySQL middleware components such as Gizzard which they use for creating distributed databases to serve tens of thousands of queries per second across distributed data and of course FlockDB which they use to build their primary databases of Twitter users and managing relationships one to another.

So it would seem Twitter’s underlying MySQL implementation and key internal development tools are slowly coming together and being shared with the open source community as a whole which is always a great think to see, one only hopes more companies would take such initiatives. Some wonder though if they are still holding anything crucial back, but so far it would appear they’re sharing with the altruistic goal of being able to collaborate with other MySQL high transaction and scaling problem solvers coming from the likes of experienced companies such as Google, Facebook, Percona, MariaDB, Tokutek, ScaleBase etc.

All in all for high performance MySQL developers this is surely great news and hopefully helping the scene head towards a little more transparency and democracy in terms of opening up the enterprise application level database options and hopefully driving down the price on enterprise lock ins like Oracle DB and others while in the process of future proofing and continuing to evolve MySQL to new levels hopefully eventually providing vital upstream commits to improve MySQL for everyone.

Over the past couple days established security experts and firms have been slowly wrapping their head around the zero-day Mac Flashback trojan exploit which a small Russian based antivirus company brought to light mid week claiming well over 600,000 Mac OSX installs were already infected and forming a fresh new Mac OS X botnet.

While more established external security companies can not confirm exact numbers as of yet, the general consensus is that there is indeed a serious botnet of infected Mac’s out there and potentially many more in the making. Russian based antivirus heavy hitter Kaspersky Labs stated that “even though the number is very, very large, it seems correct”, also acknowledging that the methodology used by their lesser known Russian antivirus colleagues from the Doctor Web seemed perfectly apt and accurate in its analysis.

The Mac OSX installs are supposedly being infected en mass with the Flashback Trojan horse which is being installed via drive-by-attacks by simply having vulnerable installs surf to comprised web sites. So far if the numbers are correct, and some experts believe still likely to rise perhaps even some more if there are determined mutations or many remaining un-patched machines, it would effectively likely be the largest known botnet ever involving Apple’s operating system.

Doctor Web security researchers were able to estimate the number of infections by “sinkholing” part of the Flashback botnet by hijacking some of the command issuing domains and proceeding to issue commands relayed through the command and control mechanism to count all the listed UUIDs (universally unique identifiers) of the infected Mac OSX machines presenting themselves available to the controlling botnet servers.

While many may wonder what the big deal is, citing known Windows based OS botnets with substantially higher numbers well into the millions, the fact of the matter is it is sort of a first and unprecedented find for Unix based OS’s like Mac OS X to be found integrated and targeted so efficiently to bring them into a botnet. It may also shock some in the mainstream who have gotten into the habit of believing that Mac’s and more generally *nix based PC’s are somehow immune and that viruses and botnets are a Windows only concern.

One of the possible exploit routes used by Flashback was to exploit a zero-day Java vulnerability which Apple only got around to patching and pushing out around mid week. Whether or not this was the only exploited escalation point is not known for sure yet but was definitely the main culprit. It is also suspected the the Mac’s were compromised with an OS independent web exploit which means Windows PC’s could also make up a sizable share of the growing botnet which would seem rather likely.

Security researchers hinted to a sort of perfect storm situation which could be the main factor for the apparent massive rapidity of the Flashback Trojan’s propagation success. First in line for the drive-by-download attacks could be a steadily growing mass compromise of WordPress based sites spreading from as early as March 2012, with evidence that many of the Flashback botnet controllers domain structures as described by Dr Web matched those of the comprised WP site structures.

WordPress based sites are of course fabulously popular and currently run on almost one in every seven websites currently online according to some estimates, which is a truly massive pool of potential propagation points if left vulnerable and would easily explain the ability for the Mac OSX Flashback botnet to have soared to such numbers so rapidly.

So while it does indeed seem like a big escalation of the targeting of Mac OS X by cyber-criminals which we’re likely to see more and more of in the future as the OS X usage grows, it is still important to note that despite the claims from Doctor Web, it is likely the Flashback Botnet is not only comprised of Mac OS X as many claim but that there are surely many Windows machines among the infected who may have even been hit by the same original OS independent Java exploit. One hopes Oracle and Microsoft are on top of this.

More information on the Mac OS X Flashback Trojan Backdoor can be found at F-Secure.

Richard Dawkins responds very precisely to what he views as a misrepresentation of his first book The Selfish Gene. In particular the response of the right wing for using it as justification for social darwinism and laissez-faire economics (free-market capitalism). Richard Dawkins has examined this issue throughout his whole career and focused much of the recent documentary, The Genius of Charles Darwin on this very issue.

The concept of reciprocal altruism is a central theme of this documentary. Dawkins also examines the tragedy of the commons and the dilemma that it presents. He uses the large area of common land Port Meadow in Oxford, England which has been hurt by overgrazing as an example of the tragedy of the commons. Fourteen academics as well as experts in game theory submitted their own computer programs to compete in a tournament to see who would win in the prisoner’s dilemma. The winner was tit for tat, a program based on “equal retaliation”, and Dawkins illustrates the four conditions of tit for tat.

1. Unless provoked, the agent will always cooperate.
2. If provoked, the agent will retaliate.
3. The agent is quick to forgive.
4. The agent must have a good chance of competing against the opponent more than once.

In a second trial, this time of over sixty applicants, tit for tat won again.

The great mystery of our evolution is how an ape could have evolved into the extraordinary creature that is a human being. There has never been another animal like us on the planet. And yet ten million years ago there was no sign that humans would take over the world. Instead the Earth was dominated by the apes. More than 50 different species of ape roamed the world – ten million years ago Earth really was the planet of the apes. Three million years later, most had vanished. In their place came something clearly related to the apes, but also completely different: human beings!

Brainy or bipedal?

For years scientists searched for the first key characteristic which had allowed us to make the huge leap from ape to amazing human. At first they thought the development of our big brains was decisive. They even found the fossil that seemed to prove it, until along came the famous three million year old fossilised skeleton Lucy. This quashed the big brain theory, because here was a human ancestor which clearly walked on two legs, just as we do, but had the tiny brain of an ape. It seemed that the development of walking on two legs (bipedalism) was the first key human characteristic, the thing that set us on the road to becoming human.

Lucy soon became even more important. She seemed to defy the laws of evolution. Normally a major evolutionary adaptation like walking on two legs is followed by what scientists call an adaptive radiation. Many related species quickly evolve from an initial evolutionary innovation. It gives a very bushy evolutionary family tree, with many different but related species. Scientists knew that the human branch of the family tree had begun about six or seven million years ago, when the planet of the apes ended. And yet there was no sign of an adaptive radiation. The family tree showed just a straight line leading from the planet of the apes through to Lucy.

Evidence for evolution

All that has changed with Meave Leakey’s spectacular new discovery, named Kenyanthropus platyops or, less formally, Flat-faced Man. Her find is the same age as Lucy’s species, but also completely different. It’s proof that there were two different bipedal human ancestors living at the same time, more than three million years ago. And it’s the first sign of the adaptive radiation that the theory of evolution says should have followed the planet of the apes.

In the near future, tubes might be used to bring you more than just internet. Cleaner and quieter than cars, faster than jets, and cheaper than trains, evacuated tube transport just might be the transportation solution we’ve been searching for.

At first glance, it seems like a ridiculous concept dreamed up by some flaky futurists. After all, people zipping around through tubes is something you would see in an old black-and-white sci-fi movie where people live in the open on the moon. Indeed, the idea is lampooned regularly on the show Futurama. However, proponents of the system aren’t laughing, and if they have their way we could soon be replacing our highways with their tubes.

Et3.com has been awarded a US patent for the Evacuated Tube Transport system they have devised. Basically, they want to build a web of tubes that stretches across the country, much like our highway system. Passengers would ride in car-sized capsules with pre-programmed destinations. The tubes themselves would be airless, but the capsules would stay pressurized, and airlocks at the boarding stations would ensure that both stay that way.

The capsules themselves ride on a frictionless, mag-lev surface, and are powered by linear electric motors that accelerate them up to 600km/h (370 mph). Since the system is entirely electric, there is no need for fossil fuels (assuming the electricity is generated without them). When stopping, the capsules actually generate power, recapturing almost all of the energy it took to accelerate them at the beginning of the journey. Et3.com claims that this makes them almost 50 times as energy efficient as electric cars or trains. Eventually, they plan on making the system international, and believe they can speed capsules up to 6,500 km/h (4,000 mph), making a trip from New York to Beijing last just two hours.

The middle of last century saw the arrival and boom of air transport. Airports sprang up all over the country and around the world, allowing people to travel quickly and safely as never before. Now, however, such technological marvels are commonplace, and have reached the limit of their usability and efficiency. Passenger flights have become less awe-inspiring and more tedium-inspiring. Supersonic flight over land is not allowed to due sonic booms. Not only that, but the fuel required for such flights is prohibitively expensive. To top it all off, supersonic planes would still be limited to 2414 km/h (1,500 mph), which is better than conventional jets, but not good enough to justify the cost.

Of course, no transportation system comes without its problems. The initial cost of creating the network would be astronomical. Not only do you have the costs associated with traditional transportation networks, but the tubes must also be depressurized, and remain that way. What happens when there is a breach in one of the tubes? With all of them networked together, an air leak in one part would affect the entire system. This issue could be solved with emergency hatches that seal a breached area, but what happens to a capsule caught next to a breach? However, there are safety and economic problems associated with any mode of transport; and given the propensity of cars to pile up on the highway it seems like ETT would be much safer than driving. It would also be more cost efficient than flying, and all without the TSA taking naked pictures of you.

When asked what the largest difference between humans and animals is, most people would respond that humans are leaps and bounds ahead of even our closest relatives in terms of intelligence. Indeed, until recently the very idea of comparing human and animal intelligence was considered insulting. However, new research into animal behavior and psychology, combined with insights into our own mental functions, indicates that this is not the case. While it is undoubtedly true that we are “smarter” than other animals, the mental abilities we take so much pride in may not be unique to us after all.

Metacognition, or the ability to think about our own thinking, has traditionally been considered the province of human beings alone. Over the past century, however, evidence has been accumulating that at least our closest relatives – chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans – share this ability. Josep Call at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology conducted a study in which apes had to choose which of two tubes contained a piece of food. The trials varied; sometimes the ape would watch which tube the researchers baited, sometimes not, and the length of time between baiting and allowing the ape to look for the food was changed. What they found was that the longer wait time the ape had between baiting and searching, the longer it would take to decide which tube to choose, and the more it would check the tubes before choosing. This indicates that the ape is aware that it might be wrong and is considering its own thoughts.

Ape intelligence isn’t so surprising; after all, they are our closest relatives. They can learn sign language, form complex social structures, and show problem solving abilities comparable to 3-5 year old children. However, they aren’t the only animals surprising researchers with their intelligence. Recently, David Smith, Ph.D., of the University at Buffalo has shown that monkeys enjoy metacognition as well. In his study, macaques trained to use joysticks were given the option of answering “uncertain” if they needed additional information from researchers on how to perform a specific task. When presented with a new task that they did not know how to perform, they indicated they needed help. This means the monkey can actually analyze its own level of knowledge and find it lacking.

Even dogs show a level of intelligence comparable to that of a 2-year-old child. Border Collies, the most intelligent breed of dog, can learn to correctly interpret up to 250 words and commands, while average dogs can learn up to about 165. Professor Stanley Coren, a leading expert on canine intelligence at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, has even shown that dogs can deliberately deceive, something that children don’t do until they are older. Interestingly, wolves do not display these abilities, even though they are genetically similar enough to dogs to interbreed. When a person points at an object, the dog will look at the object, whereas the wolf will look at the person’s finger. Canine intelligence is therefore likely a result of dogs’ close association with humans and our selective breeding for it.

Mammals aren’t the only ones that show incredible cognitive abilities, though. Parrots’ ability to learn and speak human words is well known and apocryphal. It was long thought that they were just dumbly mimicking sounds they heard, but recently it has been acknowledged that, for the most part, they actually understand what they are saying. A grey parrot named Alex was made famous by researcher Irene Pepperberg for his extensive vocabulary of over 150 words, and his ability to correctly identify and label many different objects. He even asked what color he was, and learned the word “grey” after being told only six times.

Even invertebrates are showing surprising mental abilities. Cephalopods, especially octopi, have recently been recognized for their incredible problem solving abilities, their display of emotions, and their individual personalities (they can also apparently predict soccer matches). They even play when they are bored, and alter their technique of obtaining food when the conditions are changed. Social insects, too, show a high degree of decision-making abilities. In their case, individual members of the colony are not very intelligent, but they act together as a coherent group to make decisions. With many of their tiny brains working together, they are able to make collective decisions about where to nest, where to feed, and how to respond to threats.

If other animals have all of the same mental abilities that we do, why are we so different from the rest of them? The answer lies in the degree to which these abilities are used. Humans have a huge pre-frontal cortex, even compared to our closest relatives, chimps and bonobos. This is the area of the brain responsible for planning and decision making in mammals, and this is what allows us to create all of the technology, art, and science that make our species unique. Some animals have exaggerated claws, teeth, or other attributes that are their primary tools of survival; in our case, it is our enormous pre-frontal cortex.

Militaries have traditionally been among first institutions to adopt new technologies. This is generally due to their large budgets, and the fact that a lot of research occurs within the military structure. In the past, success in battle relied largely on numbers. Now, a smaller, better-equipped force can easily dominate a larger, less advanced one.

The United States has relied on its technological superiority in warfare since the end of World War II. The possession of nuclear weapons successfully deterred an attack on the United States until 2001, when we were attacked by a stateless entity that we could not retaliate against with nukes. The battlefield of the future will be much different. Strategic, precise attacks will become more important than laying waste to whole cities, and plans for future weapons reflect this need. Here are a few of the concept weapons that may make their way onto battlefields in the near future:

The Navy’s Railgun
Railguns are not a new concept, and in fact have been around for years. Two contacts, or “rails,” are charged with electric current, which creates a magnetic field and propels a metallic projectile at incredible speed. Without any explosives, the projectile uses its huge amount of kinetic energy to destroy the target. In February of this year, the US military tested a prototype railgun that it hopes to deploy by 2020. The prototype was able to launch a 40-lb projectile at over 5,000-mph over a distance of 100 miles. Currently, the Navy has 5-inch guns that can hit targets within 13 miles. The potential of the railgun to revolutionize naval warfare is immense. The railgun, with its enormous range, could even lend supporting fire to soldiers fighting on land.

Project “Blackswift”
Recently, the US airforce launched the mysterious X-37B robotic space plane, and it caused quite a stir for anyone paying attention. The Air Force refused to divulge its classified purpose, leading many to speculate it was an anti-satellite weapon, or an orbital bomber. While the military denies these rumors, there is a project on the docket that does all of these things, and more. Called the Falcon HTV-3X, the proposed vehicle could take off from a runway, accelerate to mach 6, achieve low orbit, and land on the same runway it started from. This is no easy task, and requires three different propulsion systems: a jet for take-off, a rocket to accelerate to top speed, and a scramjet for sustained hypersonic flight. The trick is getting these 3 systems to work together seamlessly. However, if the technical challenges could be overcome, the Blackswift could be used in any number of ways; to launch satellites, spy on our enemies, and even bomb them without putting itself (or a pilot) in harm’s way.

DARPA’s Hummingbird-bots
No article weapons technology would be complete without at least one mention of DARPA, the pentagon’s research and design wing. This time, the scientists at DARPA have created tiny, flying spy-bots that are likely to see action soon. These tiny flying drones will provide invaluable intelligence to soldiers in the field, allowing them to peek at enemy positions without being in the line of fire. Currently, the tiny machines are the size and shape of a hummingbird, and to the untrained eye it looks just like the real thing. Future versions are likely to be even smaller, mimicking flies, bees, and other insects. So be careful the next time you squash a bug; you could end up owing the US military thousands of dollars.

LASERS!
After being promised they would exist by science fiction for the past 60 years, real, usable laser weapons are finally on the horizon. Every branch of the US armed forces has some kind of laser development program currently underway. The Air Force is the closest to deploying an actual laser weapon, which is mounted on a modified Boeing-747and used to shoot down ballistic missiles. For ground troops, Scorpworks, a research unit in the Laser Division of the DED, has created what they call a PhaSR (or Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response), which uses a bright laser beam to “dazzle” opponents. The beam temporarily blinds anyone looking into it and makes seeing the source and location of the soldier using the PhaSR impossible. While not as awesome as its Star-Trek namesake, it will definitely be useful to our troops in combat.

Future weapons systems are as much concerned with the safety other others as with the destruction of adversaries. This is a far cry from our policy in World War II, when nuclear weapons were deployed against civilian targets in order to end the war. Hopefully, in the future, those kinds of tragedies can be avoided by using smarter and better weapons.

TIOBE’s Programming Community Index for Q1 2012 shows a strong rise in the popularity of the ubiquitous JavaScript programming language. It’s the first time since the index was established that JavaScript has surpassed both Perl and Python in popularity. Google’s own JavaScript alternative Dart in turn dropped to position 78 in the ranking, and Google’s Go programming language also dropped out of the top 50 decisively.

Naturally the TIOBE Programming Community index is not a ranking based on quality or technical capacities of programming languages but rather simply a reflection of their popularity online by trying to determine how many lines of code are written in each of the indexed languages. To do this, TIOBE rather simplistically gathers data from online sources such as Google, Bing, Baidu and other search engines and sites like Amazon and YouTube and ranks them based on the amount of job offerings and training courses available for each programming language which is supposed to reflect their demand and popularity. It’s not exhaustive or necessarily reflective of all possible real world factors on what makes a language popular and widely used but it’s still an interesting index for programmers and technologists to follow to get some ideas of a language’s evolution.

It’s nice to see JavaScript seems to be gaining traction and continuing to rise and resit even despite company’s like Google’s attempts to introduce their own open source programming languages geared towards the Web and aimed at competing with it. Dart and Go may have been well received at first by many but clearly they are not catching on or capturing any mind-share among businesses and developers as of yet.

Of course as has been the case for the last several years, the index reveals that Java and C are is still in top spots and by far the most popular and in demand programming languages in 2012. However C# (sharp) and C++ are still holding their own respectively in third and fourth positions, C# actually having overtaken C++ for the first time. Also important to note Apple’s Objective-C has even displaced PHP for the number fith spot due to the wide spread popularity and rise of Apple’s iOS platform pushed forth by all the iPhones and iPads floating around out there. Surprisingly Visual Basic is still in seventh position, but JavaScript is on the rise and looking to overtake it. Python and Perl round up the top ten programming languages so far in 2012.

TIOBE Programming Community Index top 20, March 2012

One of the most frustrating first-world problems any of us deals with on a daily basis is the low-power device. Whether it’s a cell phone, mp3 player, laptop, or any one of the many portable electronics we tote around with us all day, that blinking battery icon will send even the most stoic among us sprinting for the closest outlet.

There are many people working on this problem, with just as many possible solutions. One of the most obvious is to create devices with a longer battery life. However, this is much easier said than done, as we have reached the limits of what can be done with our current battery technology. Longer-lived batteries are possible to make, but they are too expensive to be practical for now.

The optimal solution would be to create device that doesn’t need a stored power supply at all. In theory, such a design is possible, as there is plenty of energy all around us all the time; the trick is accessing that energy. Sunlight is the most obvious form of renewable energy; we are all familiar with solar panels and their potential to power small electronics. It’s almost impossible to buy a calculator these days that doesn’t have a line of solar panels along the top, but unfortunately, this technique is not practical for more power-hungry devices.

Researchers from the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University have taken another approach altogether. They have created a fabric that generates electricity from temperature differentials. Clothing could be made from this material; body heat on the inside and room temperature air on the outside would create the needed temperature differential and generate electric current. Named “Power Felt” by its creators, the fabric is composed of carbon nanotubes interwoven with plastic fibers that work together to harness power through the thermoelectric effect. Head researcher David Carroll explained the process like this: “if you grab a piece of metal at one end with your hand, you warm it up. The electrons there become warm and move rapidly. Many of those hot electrons move away from the heat to settle in the cooler regions of the material. The difference in the number of electrons in the warm region and the cool region is what give the voltage that is used to create power.”

Other attempts to create fabrics that generate electricity have relied on wearable solar panels, or the piezoelectric effect. Tokyo-based company Ideal Star has even created weavable threads that harness solar energy, however these threads have only a 3% efficiency, much lower than the 15-20% of conventional solar panels. Currently the fabric is expensive to produce, although mass production may reduce the cost. Over at Berkeley, researchers have created nanofibers that can be woven into conventional clothing that generate energy. These fibers have piezoelectric properties, which means they generate power as they bend and flex, but are not able to generate enough power to be practical as yet.

By utilizing temperature differentials to create power, the researchers at Wake Forest University have not only created cost-effective, practical fabric that meets the needs of our mobile technology, they have opened to doors to generating power from all sorts of waste heat. They envision integrating their Power Felt anywhere there is a temperature difference: around hot water pipes, underneath roof shingles, in car seats, medical monitors – the possibilities are nearly endless. What’s more, they plan to get the price down to about $1 for a piece the size of a cell-phone cover. Investors are already interested, and it looks like this fabric may be soon hitting the stores. Hopefully, by the next time your phone runs out of power, all you’ll have to do is plug it into your shirt.

New advances in computer and neuroscience are making immortality more possible than ever. That is, if one Russian media-mogul’s vision of the future comes true. At the three-day Global Future 2045 conference in February, Dmitry Itskov announced his plan to make himself immortal by his consciousness out of his brain and uploading it into a computer equivalent.

It may sound ridiculous, but Dmitry is entirely serious. At the conference he outlined the three major steps that would have to be taken it order to make his dream come true. Phase one of the project Dmitry has dubbed “Avatar” is remarkably similar to a project currently underway at the Pentagon also named “Avatar.” The goal of the project is similar to the premise of the movie by the same name, except that instead of controlling blue cat-aliens, human brains would be directly controlling robots. It’s not as far-fetched as it seems, and many steps have already been taken along this road.

While the pentagon simply wants soldiers to control battle-bots with their minds, Dmitry’s vision extends much further. Phase two of Dimitry’s plan is to rid himself of his physical body completely, storing his brain inside a robotic host that would allow him to interact with the outside world. This seems like a logical extension of phase one, and Dmitry plans to have that accomplished within 10 years.
However, replacing the body with a robotic one would not necessarily lead to immortality. It would replace many health problems associated with the body – you would never have to worry about having a heart attack, for example – but the brain would still be subject to the same biological aging process that it would under normal circumstances. Dmitry plans to address this problem in phase three of his project, in which he plans to upload his consciousness directly into a computer, removing the need for a slowly failing, biological brain.

Obviously, phase three of the project is the most difficult. The human brain is extremely complex, and we have just begun to scratch the surface of its mysteries. Yet even here progress is being made , and it seems likely that we will see artificial human minds within our lifetime. Dmitry’s vision might not be so impossible after all. However, “downloading” of information is simply the process of copying it from one place to another. In essence, if Dmitry created a computer that he was capable of downloading his mind into, he would simply be making an electronic copy of his mind, and not transferring his consciousness at all.

While it may be comforting to think that a copy of your mind will live on after you die, that is a far cry from the goal of immortality that Dmitry has set for himself. However, as we learn more and more about how consciousness arises and where it is stored, it’s not impossible to imagine that we may someday find a way to preserve it past physical death.

As of this morning, Wikileaks has officially started publishing some of the 5 million plus emails lifted from Stratfor during Anonymous’s December 2011 hack against Stratfor the global intelligence and analysis company. In the so called “Global Intelligence Files”, Stratfor is portrayed as an intelligence publisher providing confidential intelligence and analysis services to private companies such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Dow Chemical and even government agencies such as the US Department of Homeland security, the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the US Marines.

The emails are also alleged to contain “privileged information” regarding the US government’s actions against Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange including information proving Stratfor itself was enlisted and involved in attempts to subvert, silence and disrupt Wikileaks. Other emails to be released allege to contain sensitive insider information revealing how Stratfor CEO George Friedman was working for Goldman Sachs to help them create yet another sketchy hedge fund, this fund being one that would apparently somehow exploit Straftor’s intelligence to their economic advantage. Goldman Sachs is a major investor in Stratfor with seats on the board of directors and planned on launching the new hedge fund later this year although they might slightly alter some of those plans and time lines if these leaks prove to revealing.

Strafor of course has responded swiftly stating that “Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them”. The statement also sought to reiterate that the company still trusted and stood behind the “continued leadership of founder and Chief Executive Officer George Friedman”.

So far in the initial Wikileaks dump, there are emails which show how Strafor was paid by Dow Chemicals and “monitored and analyzed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the ‘Yes Men’”. Dow Chemicals of course being the owners of the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal India which leaked toxic chemicals in 1984 causing tens of thousands of deaths. The Bhopal emails released so far are apparently mostly press clippings and press releases compiled by another company, Allis Information Management.

Through analysis of the emails, Wikileaks also claims that Stratfor was routinely using “secret cash bribes to get information from insiders” and that it has a “global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards”. This insiders network also apparently includes mainstream media outlets and journalists who routinely exchange information with the company in “corrupt and corrupting” situations of bribery.

Anonymous apparently decided to hand the data over to Wikileaks for release after it deemed that it would be a better suited organization to analyze and publish the information. The Stratfor emails are expected to continue to be published and released via Wikileaks over the next week and half.

A new era in space exploration may soon begin. Traditionally, spacecraft have relied on the combustion chemical fuel to propel them out of our atmosphere and through the solar system. Nearly every craft we have so far launched, manned or unmanned, has relied on this method of propulsion. The only other propulsion method we have ever used in spacecraft are ion thrusters, which lack the force needed to lift a craft out of the Earth’s gravity well, are unable to operate in the atmosphere anyway, and are only used to maneuver in deep space.

This isn’t for lack of imagination, however. Numerous propulsion systems have been proposed over the years, from NASA’s practical but unpalatable nuke-propelled project Orion, to the theoretically possible but technically infeasible Alcubierre Warp Drive. So far, our ability to exploit these propulsion techniques is only limited by our level of technology or our concern for safety, but soon, one of these fantastic-sounding visions may become a reality. Enter the Tokyo-based Obayashi Corp., which announced on Feb. 22nd that they are working on plans to create an elevator capable of lifting people and cargo into space.

The idea of a “space elevator” is not new. The basic concept dates back more than 100 years, to a Russian scientist named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Inspired by the recently constructed Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tsiolkovsky had the idea for a huge, stationary tower reaching 22,238 miles above sea level into space. Over the past 60 years, however, physicists have refined this idea into something more practical. Rather than a standard tower, relying on compression forces to hold it up, recent ideas of space elevators have instead focused on the idea of tensile forces holding the structure up. Essentially, the idea is that a large counter-weight would be placed into space above geostationary orbit, with a cable snaking down to a spaceport on the ground. An elevator “car” would then be attached to the cable so it can climb up into orbit and back down to the ground again.

The advantages of such a system are obvious. Once the structure is built, ferrying people and cargo into orbit will be much cheaper than with conventional chemical rockets, and the ride promises to be a little smoother. On the other hand, building the structure in the first place will be extremely expensive. Until recently, the idea was not even possible, due to the enormous forces exerted on the cable. Conventional materials would not be able to handle the stress, or if they could, they are much to heavy to be practical. Obayashi Corp. plans on using newly-developed carbon nanotubes in the construction of their elevator cable, however, which should be light and strong enough to work. However, the current going rate for carbon nanotubes is $95 – $500 per gram. The cable Obayashi Corp plans to build will stretch 60,000 miles from Earth’s surface (one quarter of the way to the Moon) into space. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that at a minimum of $95 per gram, that is one expensive tether.

Obayashi plans on finishing their space elevator sometime by the middle of the century, so don’t pack your bags just yet. But as we reap the benefits of venturing into space more and more, technologies like this one will become indispensable. Throughout history, we have invested in transportation projects that seem too big for us at the time, but quickly become necessary for society. The Roman Empire’s road network, the transcontinental railroad, and the Moon landing are all examples of this. Once this enormously expensive project is complete, it will likely begin paying for itself right away. Let’s just hope they pick a better selection of music than they do for conventional elevators.

More often than not, science is a tedious process of checking, rechecking, cross-checking, and finally starting over from scratch. Throughout history, most important technological advances have occurred not with a “eureka!” moment, but with the slow, steady grinding away of researchers and academics. This allows us not only to hone in on the truth, but also to make predictions about what we may discover in the future.

These predictions are usually not completely accurate, and further research is required. This is how the process of science works: a theory is tested, problems with the theory are identified, and a new theory is proposed. Sometimes, however, the results are so surprising that researchers are left scratching their heads and struggling for an explanation. Here are some of the more surprising results from the past couple decades of research.

Starting with the Caveman in the Mirror
Neanderthals – our thick-browed, stooped-shouldered cousins, disappeared 30,000 years ago. They were a species doomed to extinction. Though they were very closely related to us, they failed to make any kind of art or use tools more advanced than sharp rocks and thrusting spears. No wonder then, that as our ancestors spread across the globe, Neanderthals vanished, obviously out-competed by their more intelligent and graceful relatives.

But that’s not the entire story. After careful comparison of the genome of modern humans with that of the Neanderthals, it appears that we share as much as 1-4% of our DNA with those distant relatives, indicating that they interbred with our ancestors. For a long time, scientists didn’t know whether to classify them as another species, or just a very odd subspecies of humanity. This new finding puts that debate to rest; biologically speaking, humans and Neanderthals were the same species because we are able to interbreed. Only modern Africans show no sign of Neanderthal genes in their genome, indicating that the two populations interbred after they left Africa. Interestingly, there is just as much Neanderthal DNA in areas where no Neanderthals ever lived as in places like Europe where the two populations lived side-by-side. This means that the interbreeding took place very early in our diffusion out of Africa, before we split into the various ethnic groups seen today.

The Pioneer of Anomalies
In 1972, the Pioneer 10 spacecraft was launched on its mission to study the planet Jupiter. It became the first spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt on July 15 of the same year. In 1973, Pioneer 11 was launched on a similar mission that would also take it to Saturn to study that planet as well. However, by 1980, something appeared to be going wrong. The spacecraft weren’t where they were supposed to be and were climbing out of the sun’s gravity well more slowly than expected. By 1994, NASA scientists were struggling to come up with an explanation, as the discrepancies between predicted and actual positions continued to grow until the spacecraft were out of position by many thousands of kilometers.

There is still no universally accepted explanation for this phenomenon which affects all craft we send into deep space. All known forces have been accounted for, yet there is a 8.74±1.33×10^−10 m/s^2 constant acceleration towards the sun. Explanations range from the mundane: measurement error; to the extraordinary: a new understanding of physics is required. Some say that our understanding of gravity is incomplete; that at the distances involved in these calculations gravity behaves differently than we understand here on Earth. However, this explanation ignores the fact that gravity acts exactly as we think it should regarding the planets in the outer solar system. Recently, a simpler explanation has gained traction: that thermal radiation pressure inherent in the spacecraft is somehow to blame.

This is Your Brain on Agriculture
By now, everyone knows the basic story of human evolution. Our ancestors clambered down from the trees, stretched their legs, began walking and running across the savannah, eventually started making tools, agriculture, roads, cities, etc. All along, our brains were increasing in size as they struggled to comprehend the changing landscape and increasingly complex social structures. This seems obvious, especially if we look at our close evolutionary relatives that are smarter than most animals but still nowhere near our level of intelligence.

Yet this seemingly obvious, common-sense observation is false. For the last 20,000 years, the size of our brains has actually been shrinking, in all populations everywhere on the globe. How could this possibly be, when 99% of our technological advances occurred during this time? This result is not only surprising, it seems counter-intuitive and impossible. However, the results are undeniable. If the trend continues at the same rate, in another 20,000 years our brains will have regressed to the size of Homo Erectus’.

So what could possibly be the cause of this? The past 20,000 years have born witness to many changes on our planet, namely: the climate has warmed and the population of human beings has exploded. Evolution isn’t a steady, improving process that makes organisms smarter and stronger each generation, but rather an economical process that adapts organisms to the conditions of their environment. As the climate warmed, larger brains and bodies became less efficient, and so natural selection may have favored people with smaller builds and smaller brains. However, there have been numerous periods of warming in our evolutionary past, and our brain size did not show the same decrease during those events. Alternatively, the explosion of the human population may have something to do with it. When the global population was small, tiny, isolated bands of humans needed to be self sufficient, and an individual needed to know how to perform all of the tasks necessary for survival. Additionally, as resources were scarce, only the most intelligent were able to survive until breeding age. They could not rely on a larger tribe or nation to take care of them in the event of a disaster, and there was very little social safety-net for a person that fell on hard times. As population densities grew, however, it was possible to divide up the labor and take care of the less fortunate. Now, individuals could focus on specific tasks, neglecting their knowledge of others.
This trend only intensified with the advent of agriculture and modern medicine, as there was always work for the less intelligent, and surplus food to feed them. This is known as the “idiocracy theory,” and fans of the movie Idiocracy will understand why. While this may seem rather bleak, and comes close to being an argument for eugenics, the news isn’t all bad: for the past 200 years or so, our brain size seems to be on the increase again. This indicates that perhaps its not evolution causing this trend, but nutrition, which has gotten much better in that time, but which was on the decline since the introduction of agriculture. The real cause will likely turn out to be a combination of factors, and researchers are constantly coming up with new theories.

Drug Users Want Decriminalization – And So Should Law Enforcement
If you want to keep people from doing something, make it illegal. This has been the principal behind our legal system for as long as it has existed. Ideally, laws reflect the values of that society; we value life so murder is illegal, we value property so theft is illegal, etc. The abuse of drugs seems like one of these simple issues, it obviously causes problems, and so it should be made illegal.

However, as we all know, making something illegal doesn’t stop people from doing it. People still murder and steal, despite the fact that they know it’s wrong and know it’s illegal. When the law becomes less about morals, and more about standards, you find even more people willing to break that law; for instance it would be difficult to find a single driver that doesn’t break the speed limit at some point during their commute. And people still abuse drugs, even though they know the consequences if they are caught. The United States has one of the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine abuse anywhere in the world despite having some of the most stringent anti-drug laws on the books.

That brings us to Portugal’s surprising experiment. In 2001, the small Atlantic nation decriminalized possession of all drugs, from marijuana to methamphetamine. Experts at the time predicted a disaster; Portugal would soon be drowning under hordes of junkies and “drug tourists.” Yet the experiment proved to be a success. Treating drug abusers as a health issue rather than a criminal justice issue, Portugal now has one of the lowest rates of drug abuse in the West. Proportionally, more Americans have tried cocaine than Portuguese have tried marijuana.

The idea is that treating drug addicts as criminals only drives them underground, making it impossible for them to get treatment for their problem. Treating addiction as a health issue is not only more effective, it is cheaper than incarceration. This should be of particular interest to the United States which has some of the highest rates of drug abuse in the world and stringent drug laws that fuel terrible gang violence in Mexico. Based on the Portugal model, many addiction experts now believe that if the United States took an approach similar to Portugal, not only would the drug gangs lose their funding, but our shameful prison population would decrease to a reasonable number.

A Hole in the Universe
In June of 2001, The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) was launched into space in order to study the cosmic microwave background radiation. This is radiation left over from the Big Bang itself, and this map is the most complete picture of the early universe we have to date. The probe registers tiny fluctuations in the temperature of this radiation, which allows us to determine the positions of clumps of matter and energy at this early stage of the Universe’s life. This map is a series of “hot” and “cold” spots that relate these positions in two dimensions.

When going over the results, researchers found something anomalous in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus: a cold spot that seemed much to large to be explained by natural fluctuations. This may not seem significant, but if the finding is accurate it represents a part of the universe devoid of matter and energy at least 500 million light-years across, and would by the largest structure ever observed. Such structures should not exist according to our current understanding of physics and our simulations of the large-scale evolution of the Universe. The discovery was later confirmed by the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope. It is such a surprising find that it has lead one researcher to claim: “It is the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own.” Her theory is that the hole was caused by quantum entanglement between our two universes before they were separated due to cosmic inflation. Other, less exciting theories, focus on measurement error and misinterpretation of the data.

Science continues to surprise us. The more we learn, the more we learn we need to learn. The universe is full of strange and surprising events and objects, many of which we can’t even imagine. The process of science is the exploration of these events, and the struggle to understand and make sense of them. Undoubtedly, we’re not always going to get the results that we expect, but that’s half the fun of science, and also when the most important discoveries are made. In the words of Isaac Asimov: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’, but ‘That’s funny…’”

After over a decade long competition, India, currently the world’s ninth largest military spender with annual expenditures topping $40 billion and growing has renewed its long standing strategic relationship with France the worlds third largest military spender for decades to come in a decision to purchase 126 French multi-role Rafale combat aircraft. Dassault Aviation’s omnirole Rafale beat out the American F-16IN/F-18 Super Hornet, Russian Mig-35, Swedish Gripen and the last final contender of the Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition the Eurofighter Typhoon in the largest military arms deal so far this century. In the process they likely secured the first ever major Rafale export deal in almost two decades valued at over $20 billion with countless more billions of dollars in support and upgrades rolling in over the following decades.

India’s choice of the Rafale jet fighter will provide a truly vital boost to France and Europe’s international economic and industrial prestige and solidifies their geopolitical alliance with Europe and the West in general on defense matters. Naturally, the deal would likely not have been possible without the past relationship between the two nations in military deals and of course the vital transfer of technology agreement between France and India which will help the world’s most populous democracy develop their own aerospace industry, which up to date has mostly been producing aircraft under strict licenses with foreign partners, mostly Russian.

All is not won yet though, the final negotiations between France’s Dassault and the Indian Air Force (IAF) and respective governments are expected to carry over the coming month and you can certainly count on competitors lobbying, offering sweetened deals and trying to shift India’s decision before the final contract is signed irregardless of whether the Indian Air Force has picked its new personal favorite or not.

Under the new deal the first 18 ready to fly Rafales built in France would arrive in the Indian Air Forces hands by 2015. The rest of the Rafales would be built assembled on a production line in India.

The massive contract is expected to shape India’s aerospace and military industries for the next three decades at least and would renew a long standing and highly sought after strategic partnership between India and highly interested International powers and arms manufacturers. It would also provide an important boost to the French military industrial complex in a time when national budget deficits are forcing most European military’s to down size and cut back heavily. India’s own defense sectors would of course also benefit enormously from the transfer of technology and gain decades of research and development against its regional competitors almost overnight.

With the help of key Eurofighter Typhoon consortium partners, the UK’s prime minster David Cameron is publicly taking the forefront to heavily lobby and put all of the UK’s political, economic and geopolitical clout over India in a bid to try to force the deal to breakdown during the months of final financial negotiations between the French and Indians, hoping to bribe, coerce and convince the Indian politicians and put pressure on the Indian Air Force to drop the Rafale completely signaling the projects likely death in favor of the EF. Pretty low posturing from the UK considering they’re supposed to be a part of the EU after all.

The Eurofighter was of course the only other finalist to remain in the decade long competition against the Rafale and it is a truly a major blow to the EF consortium’s project, with the Indian Air Force having took the strategic and calculated political decision to go with the French Rafale due the the transparent almost scientific technical merits and the important beneficial military partnership India has had with France for decades now.

Unusually enough when it comes to arms deals like this, the whole deal so far has apparently been without much political interference, and Indian politicians decided this time to keep the process transparent and leave it in the hands of the Indian Air Force, the most apt to decide on these types of matters, hence the Rafale’s victory.

Jasjit Singh, the former air commodore and director of the Delhi-based Center for Air Power Studies, “This process, systematic and almost scientific, even if rather prolonged, should finally lay the ghost of Bofors – that has been the major cause of delays in defense modernization for the past century – to rest.” He is of course referring to past arms procurement deals India has been involved in which were marred by bribery and political influence, which neither got India the best weapons needed nor for the best cost and caused much outrage amongst the Indian military, experts and tax paying public alike.

Mr Singh went on to add that the Indian aerospace industry was in its infancy, and the most prominent Indian company, Bangalore-based Hindustan Aeronautics and others in the Indian military industrial complex desperately needed to accelerate building an independent and self grown defence industry base that can equip the Indian military against strategic regional competitors like China and Pakistan and at the same time prepare home grown technology to compete with Russia and China in export markets in Asia and Africa.

France’s Dassault and transfer of technology agreements would definitely provide a massive boost and technological edge in positive economic times where India clearly has the necessary revenue patterns to devote much on R&D and military production to secure their edge in the face of future economic downturns in an attempt to catch up with long standing regional and neighboring rival China which currently holds a strong and defined military advantage over India. The Rafale would definitely likely do well in the geographic conditions and mountainous border regions as an omnirole fighter with air, ground, and nuclear strike capacities all wrapped into one affordable package. India would definitely have a strong military hand, particularly if as they have been doing continue to build up their navy and air craft carrier capabilities, of course the Rafale also comes in a naval variant which the Eurofighter does not.

Now of course all this is not purely down to which is the better air craft, in air to air roles the EF is likely as capable as the Rafale in many aspects, however economic concerns also factor in heavily here, and believe it or not the Rafale as a more mature platform than the EF apparently has the the lower unit price and lifetime maintenance cost. Naturally the Rafale probably would not have won this bid had Nicholas Sarkozy and the French military not decided to take such a decisive and prominent lead operational role in the recent NATO led campaign against Libya in 2011, as besides Afghanistan the Rafale had not seen much action. Unfortunately though, war does pay off, at least for those those who showcase size-able advantage and end up on the victorious side.

The question remains, is France risking anything offering to hand over more sensitive technology then any of the competitors are apparently willing to do? Part of the deal of course is that the Indians plan on squeezing the French for every bit of French technology and aerospace know how possible in the deal. Does France have a technological trump card here or are they truly willing to sell the baby with the bath water to gain some commercial advantage? Or does this strategic partnership between France and India go much further then the mere sale of Rafales and outweigh the short term commercial and geopolitical advantages?

Many analysts believe the deal goes well beyond the aerospace industry, and that France has agreed to a deep and long standing renewed strategic partnership with India as it has been doing in a lesser or greater degree for decades now. Particularly in crucial civilian and military areas where India wants more advanced technological advances then they currently have at their disposal or capacity to catch up in, areas such as as nuclear, submarine, naval and software capacities. This is indeed a pretty good deal for India, but then again, so long as France and the Europeans continue to innovate and develop their technology above and beyond the competition which these contracts will supposedly financially permit, why should the sellers be worried? It’s not as if Europe and India are going to war anytime soon is it? India definitely seems like the most logical strategic partner when compared to most in the region today.

Still, despite being the strongest critics of the deal today, many of these same critics inadvertently back the French commercial position in terms of “maintaining their edge” and would likely do the same to bring home the sale, claiming that India is effectively buying obsolete technology that the French themselves were potentially planning on dumping where the “best before date” is just only now in its prime and expiry is only a decade or two around the corner. In a couple decades from now though, will that technology effectively be expired? Will France and Europe have something far better in production by then?

No matter the case, in reality India was only bidding on 4th generation fighters for cost reasons, the same fourth gen fighters the West have had for over two decades now, of course the 5th generations fighters are truly only in their test phases and nothing has truly been proven yet. Considering the Rafale’s would be replacing India’s aging old school (and I mean “super old school”) Russian Migs, I think they’ve definitely taken a massive step forward in modernization and are ushering a whole new geopolitical era into the region. Let’s wait and see though if this potentially massive deal will be closed or if some corrupt Indian political bribery will come into the picture last minute and blow the whole thing off course for the Indian Air Force.

Manipulating the human mind has been has been field of battle throughout our entire history. In any conflict, the mental battle is just as important, and sometimes more so than the physical one. Even animals instinctively know this: they would much rather engage in displaying and frighten competitors off than resort to actual combat. In the past, this mental warfare was limited to propaganda and displays of superior strength. Recent research into the human brain, however, has opened up new avenues of attack. Rod Flower, a professor of biochemical pharmacology at Queen Mary University of London, was recently quoted in a Royal Society report on neurological weapons as saying: “[…]understanding of the brain and human behavior, coupled with developments in drug delivery, also highlight ways of degrading human performance that could possibly be used in new weapons.”

As research into how to enhance the performance of the human brain and repair damage has lead to new and novel ways to conduct warfare. From man-machine interfaces that allow soldiers to pilot drones with their minds to new systems for delivering debilitating drugs to the enemy, world militaries are beginning to open up to the idea of the brain as a weapon.

As reported before, the military has been interested in brain-to-brain communication, allowing soldiers to hold a conversation without making a sound and giving away their position. New research indicates that soon it could be possible for a soldier in the field to remotely operate a drone aircraft or other robot with an implant in their brain. This raises interesting ethical questions, as Flower postulates: “This idea brings about a bit of a blur in the distinction between mind and machine, which obviously has to be addressed very carefully,” he said. “If we got to the point where we could control a sophisticated machine, and the machine did something … like committing a war crime of some sort, who would be responsible for that, you or the machine?” From my point of view, if you are controlling the machine that commits the war crime, obviously you are responsible. But using technology like this puts another barrier between the soldier and the target – effectively dehumanizing the act of destruction. And while accountability questions may seem straightforward, in reality any court case involving a situation like this would be a legal nightmare, nearly impossible to unravel.

Other research is looking at ways to enhance or disable the brain itself. DARPA is funding research into preventing the effects of sleep deprivation in soldiers. Their aim is to find ways to stimulate the brains of soldiers, enhancing their awareness on the battlefield. Additionally, dealing effectively with stress while in combat is high on their priority list. They plan on using brain scans of recruits to identify those that have high tolerance to stress and to improve upon it both non-medically and biochemically.

Another area of interest mentioned in this report is the science of “brain reading,” although the report admits it is still in its infancy. Mentioned in an earlier article, this technology would allow us to peer inside the mind at a person’s thoughts. Obviously, it would be of great usefulness in a law enforcement or counter terrorism situation. Currently, these devices must be calibrated for the individual, so it’s not likely to be used in the field anytime soon, but simpler devices could be developed sooner that give simple “lie/no lie” responses.

Since the end of the World War Two, militaries around the globe have been taking the threat of mental warfare seriously. Research into purported psychic abilities actually took place during the Cold War, with the Soviet Union claiming to have a woman that could stop and start a frog’s heart with just her mind. The United States had similar projects under the heading “Project Stargate” that researched phenomena like remote viewing. While none of this research bore fruit, with modern advances in neuroscience and computing, we are making these ideas possible. The next war may be fought as much in the mind as in the field.