Students create portable device to detect suicide bombers

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

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

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

“Their invention outperforms everything that exists in the market today,” said Nilton Renno, a professor in the U-M Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences.

Click image for video

A video from the team illustrates the network and the background details of the project (3:40 min). The students recently won an Air Force-sponsored competition with Ohio State University.

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base sponsored the project as well as the contest. Such contests are regularly held across the country to “provide rapid reaction and innovative solutions to the Department of Defense’s urgent needs,” says Capt. Nate Terning, AFRL rapid reaction projects director.

The students will continue to work on this project through the summer. There is no information as to whether or not the Air Force plans to use the technology or aspects of it.

HP's newest supercomputer geared for energy and environment

The newest supercomputer in town isn’t for simulating nuclear explosions or the human brain, but rather take on arguably more pressing problems in areas such as climate science, hydrogen storage and molecular chemistry.

Built by HP, the $21.4 million Chinook is a custom-made machine specifically designed for the demands of computational chemistry. It was commissioned for use by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Department of Energy, and is housed at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL).

The Chinook (named after the king salmon via a user contest) can perform more than 160 trillion calculations per second, ranking it among the top 40 fastest computers in the world. It’s almost 15 times faster than its predecessor, the EMSL MPP2, which could run 11.2 trillion calculations per second.

Chinook is a high performance computer that has been tailored to meet the

current and future operational needs of Department of Energy

(Photo: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

As for specs, the DOE says “the Chinook has 4620 Quad-core processors built into 2310 nodes. Each node can be thought of as the equivalent of four personal computers. But Chinook’s nodes are more like supercharged PCs: the Quad-cores give each node the equivalent of eight processor-cores and 32 gigabytes of memory.”

Anna Palmisano, DOE associate director for Biological and Environmental Research, said, “This new supercomputer will allow scientists to develop a molecular-level understanding of the complex biological, chemical and physical processes that underlie the environmental and energy challenges facing DOE and the nation.”

The supercomputer is open to scientists the world over, not just EMSL researchers. So any researcher can sign-up and submit a proposal, but they’d have to compete for time through a peer review process and conduct research that generally supports the DOE’s missions in energy, the environment, or national security.

Chinook’s top job is to run NWChem, a computational chemistry program that allows researchers to simulate and predict the chemistry within and between molecules. However, the supercomputer can run a wide variety of programs to tackle problems involving gas hydrates, bacterial transformers and green plastics, each of which you can find more detail on here

Heads up! Interactive data eyeglasses

A team of scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS in Dresden, Germany, is working on a device which incorporates eye tracking to influence the content presented to the viewer. Without having to use any other devices to enter instructions, the wearer can display new content, scroll through a menu or shift picture elements simply by moving her eyes or fixing on certain points in the image.

The data eyeglasses display information and respond to commands. Credit: Fraunhofer IPMS

“We want to make the eyeglasses bidirectional and interactive so that new areas of application can be opened up,” says Dr. Michael Scholles, business unit manager at IPMS.

According to Scholles, the bidirectional data eyeglasses will yield advantages over current head-mounted displays (HMDs) by providing information at the point of task to people who do not have their hands free to operate a keyboard or mouse. For example, mechanics could view superimposed schematic diagrams over machinery that they’re working on, and an operating surgeon can access a patients’ vital functions, MRT and x-ray images.

According to a news item on the IPMS site, the team have integrated their system’s eye tracker and image reproduction on a CMOS chip, making the HMDs small, light, easy to manufacture and inexpensive. Below is how the eyeglass display works:

The chip measuring 19.3 by 17 millimeters is fitted on the prototype eyeglasses behind the hinge on the temple. From the temple the image on the microdisplay is projected onto the retina of the user so that it appears to be viewed from a distance of about one meter. The image has to outshine the ambient light to ensure that it can be seen clearly against changing and highly contrasting backgrounds. For this reason the research scientists use OLEDs, organic light-emitting diodes, to produce microdisplays of particularly high luminance.

With his team and colleagues from other Fraunhofer institutes, Scholles is already working on the next development stage of the bidirectional eyeglasses, but there is no word on when the devices will be available on the market.

First developed for use in military aircraft, head-mounted displays (HMDs), aka head up displays (HUDs), may eventually be as commonplace as Bluetooth headsets, but hopefully not as conspicuous