N. American Army formed without Congress

In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis. The agreement, defined as a Civil Assistance Plan, was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada in the event of a wide range of domestic civil disturbances ranging from violent storms, to health epidemics, to civil riots or terrorist attacks. In Canada, the agreement paving the way for the militaries of the U.S. and Canada to cross each other's borders to fight domestic emergencies was not announced either by the Harper government or the Canadian military, prompting sharp protest. "It's kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration," Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians told the Canwest News Service. "We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites." The military Civil Assistance Plan can be seen as a further incremental step being taken toward creating a North American armed forces available to be deployed in domestic North American emergency situations. The agreement was signed at U.S. Army North headquarters, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, by U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, or USNORTHCOM, and by Canadian Air Force Lt. Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command.

Obama's Messianic Image Growing

Seventy-four year old Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan has joined the chorus of those who speak of Obama in messianic terms. Farrakhan did not specifically endorse Obama but in a rambling address in front of over 20,000 people, oddly enough in celebration of “Saviour”s Day,” he called Obama, “the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better.” He also compared Obama to Fard Muhammad saying, “A black man with a white mother became a savior to us. A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.” Farrakhan’s comments come just one week after Hollywood icon Halle Berry, speaking of Obama said she would, “Do whatever he says do.” She continued, “I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.” And it isn’t just the privileged and powerful that are measuring Obama for a celestial throne. If you Google Obama’s name you will find a plethora of websites that range from questioning the possibility of his messiahship to outright pronouncements that he is a saviour. One site (obamamessiah.blogspot.com) even offers pictures of Obama that appear to show light emanating from his very presence. ABC Nightline Correspondent David Wright said of an Obama rally, “Politics doesn’t even begin to describe it. A visit to an Obama rally is a pilgrimage.”

Civilization Built By Giants Discovered

According to Inca legend, Lake Titicaca was revered as the location where the god Viracocha [Quetzalcoatl] created a race of giants and later, the first humans. The Inca maintained that the giants built Tiahuanaco and also many other cities and structures in the area. However, due to their great evil, Viracocha destroyed the giants in a world flood. This legend is still believed by the local Indian inhabitants to this day. The geoglyphs covering this area also exhibit extreme age. In areas where ice age sediment surrounding hills and mountains has been eroded by rain and wind, patterns carved into the bedrock underneath the sediment has been exposed, suggesting their creation sometime before the last glacial melt near the end of the Pleistocene era, c. 13,000 years ago. Early researchers speculated that Inca and pre-Inca farming techniques produced the anomalous patterns on the ground around Lake Titicaca, especially in the horizontal terracing found surrounding the lake itself. However, the altitude of the Bolivian high plain presents several problems with a farming related explanation for the majority of the geoglyphs in the region. At an average of 12,500 feet above sea level, most of the shapes and patterns are located in areas that have not been conducive for growing crops for the last 10,000 years. Their creation would have required an immense workforce laboring for hundreds of years in such thin air that altitude sickness was a real danger... literally, a super human effort. Additionally, recent high-resolution satellite images suggest that most of the features are characteristic of religious and ritualistic forms of pre-Incan art. They may even represent a sophisticated yet unknown form of communication.

Terminator-style war within 10 years

Robot soldiers that can decide who to attack will soon be roaming the world's battlefields if something isn't done about the global 'robot arms race'. That is the stark warning from a leading robotics expert who spoke today of the dangers of allowing increasingly sophisticated robots to make decisions of life and death. Professor Noel Sharkey, a robotics and artificial intelligent expert from the University of Sheffield, also warned that armed robots could soon become terrorists' weapon of choice. "The trouble is that we can't really put the genie back in the bottle,” said Professor Starkey. “Once the new weapons are out there, they will be fairly easy to copy. How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act?" Over 4,000 robots are currently deployed on the ground in Iraq and by October 2006 unmanned aircraft had flown 400,000 flight hours. At the moment, humans can make the decision whether to attack or not but a recent policy shift in the U.S means that 'intelligent' autonomous attack robots will soon be given the power to decide who and when to kill. In his keynote speech at a conference organised by the Royal United Services Institute, a military thinktank, Sharkey warned: "There's a massive drive towards developing autonomous robots for more complex missions. Terminator-style robot wars could be just around the corner according to a leading robotics expert. "We are rapidly moving towards robots that can make the decision to apply lethal force, when to apply it and who to apply it to. "I think maybe we're talking about a 10-year time frame or less. Prof Sharkey, who acted as a judge in the BBC television series Robot Wars, says that deadly homebuilt robots will soon be within reach for many would-be terrorists. "With the current prices of robot construction falling dramatically and the availability of ready-made components for the amateur market, it wouldn't require a lot of skill to make autonomous robot weapons." "Current robots are dumb machines with very limited sensing capability. What this means is that it is not possible to guarantee discrimination between combatants and innocents or a proportional use of force as required by the current Laws of War. "It seems clear that there is an urgent need for the international community to assess the risks of these new weapons now rather than after they have crept their way into common use." In August last year Professor Sharkey called for a code of ethics for autonomous robots in war to be introduced. Autonomous weapon programmes, including robots and unmannned aircraft, are increasingly appealing to the world's military because they lower the risk to soldiers. However, while robot soldiers are generally believed to be extremely reliable some experts have also raised concerns about whether the software they rely upon could potentially be 'hacked' to turn the robot on its own troops.

Mega-Attack on Israel in March

The Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan quoted "top Western sources" recently saying that, "according to reliable intelligence information, Hizbullah has begun planning a large-scale attack on Israel in retaliation for its [alleged] assassination of senior Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniya." According to the report, translated by MEMRI, the attack is being planned in coordination with Syria and Iran, and is to take place before the Arab summit next month. It was also reported that there would be a simultaneous terrorist escalation by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other PA groups in Gaza.

DNA database: Make us all suspects

We seem to be busily building the world's first popular police state. Opinion polls show high levels of support for identity cards, surveillance cameras, detention without trial - and now a national DNA database covering every individual, including those who have never had any dealings with the police. Given the growing fear of crime, such attitudes are not surprising. Events in the past week have encouraged them further. Both Suffolk serial killer Steve Wright and Mark Dixie, murderer of Sally Anne Bowman, were caught largely through DNA samples. Police officers and victims' relatives want the change. The case seems open and shut. Britain already has the world's largest DNA database. Anyone arrested in England and Wales is compelled to submit to a DNA swab and the record is kept whether he is convicted or not. In Scotland this rule is restricted to violent and sex offenders, and then for only three years unless an extension is applied for. But the operation of the scheme south of the Border has led to the beginning of serious doubts. As so often with measures aimed at greater security, people are far less enthusiastic when they are affected personally. Many entirely innocent citizens have been disturbed by the way they or their children have been registered - for life - as potential criminals. There have also been suggestions that police have abused their arrest powers to collect DNA samples.

Biometrics: The Future of Credit Cards

Credit and debit cards have taken the place of cash for most modern transactions. What’s next? According to research from Emme Kozloff, a Sanford Bernstein analyst, the power to buy groceries will soon be at your fingertips. Wal Mart and Costco are looking into biometric payment systems. These work by recognizing the fingerprint of registered users. The customers place their fingertip on a pad, then select which form of payment they would like to use — check, debit, or credit. Proponents of the new system applaud its benefits to customer security and faster checkout speeds. Critics of biometric payment point out that fingerprints are left on everything a person touches. It would be fairly easy to take a piece of tape and “lift” these latent fingerprints for fraudulent use. There is also concern about having one’s fingerprint images stored in a computer, but biometric vendors insist that the prints themselves are not stored. Instead, encrypted measurements of the prints are kept. These do not permit recreation of a full print.

Automated Robots 'Threat To Humanity'

Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP. "They pose a threat to humanity," said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain's Royal United Services Institute. Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world -- from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones -- can already identify and lock onto targets without human help. There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours. The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey. But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

Florida: Track welfare workers with GPS

Florida's much-maligned child-welfare workers will soon begin carrying hand-held devices, like the ones delivery companies use to track packages, that show whether they really are checking in on the children under their supervision. The touch-screen units, about the size of a book and featuring Global Positioning System technology, will record the amount of time caseworkers spend with each family, take photos of children in state care and allow the workers to update case information on the spot, Gov. Charlie Crist and Children & Families Secretary Bob Butterworth said recently at a news conference in front of a UPS truck. The first-of-its-kind move follows a series of headline-grabbing cases in which workers lied about such visits and it turned out the children were missing or dead. In 2002, the department discovered that Rilya Wilson, a 4-year-old Miami foster child, had been missing for more than year, but her caseworker had lied about visiting the home. The girl was never found and her caregiver has been charged with murder. The caseworker was fired and pleaded guilty to official misconduct, getting probation. Last year, a 2-year-old foster girl was missing from a home for four months before police began searching for her. She was found in Wisconsin, where she had apparently been taken by her mother in violation of a court order rescinding her custody. The mother and others have been charged with murdering another woman whose body was buried in the yard.

IBM Looking To DNA To Build Future Chips

Looking for a way to continually shrink computer chips while still squeezing more transistors onto them, IBM scientists are working on a whole new way to build processors -- using DNA. For the past year and a half, researchers at IBM have been working on creating a new way to make the patterns used to lay out the transistors and wires that go on a chip. Today, semiconductor manufacturers use optical lithography, which uses light to transfer the pattern. The problem, according to Joe Gordon, senior manager for materials for advanced technology at IBM, is that it's difficult to shrink the pattern using today's techniques. And since Gordon said 50% of the improvement in processor performance comes from shrinking the pattern, scientists need to come up with a new way to create the patterns. That's where the DNA strands come into play. "Right now, the industry road map is [that] we'll get down to 22 nanometer-size features on a chip," said Gordon. "We're looking at ways to go down beyond that. It's very clear it will be difficult to go smaller than that using the optical lithography we know today. Using DNA will help us do that." Greg Wallraff, a staff scientist at IBM, explained that the researchers are laying single molecules of DNA onto the chip's surface and using them as a template for assembling electronic components, like nanotubes and nanowires. The DNA used by the researchers comes from a virus, he added. Wallraff said the IBM research team is working with California Institute of Technology scientist Paul Rothemund, who has developed a way to assemble single molecules of DNA into complex structures. Building on that research, the IBM scientists are trying to wrangle the DNA into usable templates. "People say DNA is the blueprint for life," said Wallraff. "The specific structure of DNA has unique features. It's basically programmable. You can design DNA into unique shapes, with specific attachment sites. Then we pour this DNA solution onto a silicon substrate, and the DNA assembles itself exactly where we want it to on the chip, and then we assemble the components on top of that." The attachment sites on DNA, which is where the nanowires and transistors would attach on the template, can be made much closer together than with traditional pattern manufacturing techniques. With DNA, the attachment sites are 4nm to 6nm apart. Normally, they're about 45nm apart. "Think of it as tiling a floor. These DNA pieces are like tiles," explained Gordon. "Each tile has some array of electronic components. Those tiles are placed on a chip in a larger array so there are thousands or millions on a chip. The second step, which we don't know how to do yet, would be to wire them all together. We've got sizes well below conventional lithography." Once the nanotubes and wires are laid onto the template, the DNA would be extracted. Wallraff said millions of the DNA templates would be needed for a single chip.

Nephilim City Discovered in Egypt

Egypt's Neolithic city would have possessed a ruling elite, a dynasty of individuals, who were most probably among the country's earliest rulers, or kings. If they were of post-Natufian stock, then it is possible that this elite were descendents of those who constructed the Pre-pottery Neolithic cult complexes of Gobekli Tepe and Nevali Cori in southeast Turkey, which was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. The Watchers, and their ledendary offspring the Nephilim, are said to have lived in 'Eden', and there is overwhelming evidence that they were in fact a shamanic or ruling elite attached to southeast Turkey's earliest cult centres, where the Neolithic revolution began at the end of the Last Ice Age. The descendents of these earliest Neolithic peoples of the Near East were also responsible for Catal Huyuk, the ancient world's oldest city near Konya, in southern-central Turkey. It dates to c. 7000-5500 BC, and here we find depictions of its priestly or ruling elite as shamans in coats made from the feathers of the vulture, a bird associated with the transmigration of the soul into the afterlife. It is possible that similar influences might have permeated through the Natufian peoples into Egypt, c. 5500 BC, meaning that, yes, the descendents of the Watchers and Nephilim might well have constituted the ruling elite of Karanis's Neolithic city. Once again, it is important to recall the origins of the Helwan point, which might have first been used by those who built the Pre-pottery Neolithic site of Nevali Cori, c. 8400-8000 BC, but ended up in the tool kit of the Neolithic peoples of Egypt some 3000-4000 years later. This suports the idea of a line of transmission from southeast Turkey, via the Levant, to Egypt during an age when the Karanis Neolithic city thrived.

ICs poised to get under your skin

In the near future, patients equipped with wireless wearable sensors will receive regular checkup re- ports from their doctors without having to visit a hospital, Hyung Kyu Lim, chief executive of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, said in an ISSCC keynote. "Health care devices and service robots are prime examples of emerging consumer products for such new services," said Lim. "However, the system complexity and implementation of these future services will be costly due to the high level of machine intelligence required." For example, startup Toumaz Technology (Abingdon, England) described at ISSCC a custom chip designed to power a wireless monitor that could be worn on a disposable patch. The chip is one of an emerging group of smart wearable devices that help patients and consumers get medical monitoring from the comfort of home. "We not only have an aging society, but one that does not have a healthy lifestyle," said Alison Burdett, director of technology for Toumaz. "There are increasing numbers of people with chronic ailments, and that's putting an enormous burden on health care systems worldwide." A large U.S. health care company is said to be working with Toumaz, aiming to field the silicon-backed patches in a hospital setting before the end of 2009. Companies including GE and Philips are reported to have similar projects in the lab. To keep power down and reliability up, Toumaz developed custom hardware and protocols for the 800- to 900-MHz wireless network the devices use at data rates up to 50 kbits/second. The chip draws 2.5 milliamps when communicating, but its digital control portion dissipates just 100 microwatts. "A custom media-access controller is crucial, because in short-range communications there is always interference, and we have many layers of mitigation," Burdett said. Despite the custom design, the active patch is expected to cost as little as $5 when it hits the market next year. The chip, which measures 16 mm2, will account for a small fraction of that cost. It will be made in a 130-nanometer process by Infineon Technologies.

VeriChip: VeriTrace System being shown

VeriChip Corporation, a provider of radio frequency identification (RFID) systems for healthcare and patient-related needs, will be exhibiting at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) 60th Anniversary Scientific Meeting in Washington, D.C. from February 20-22. The conference, which will take place at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, is the premier event for forensic science professionals and the industry’s source for cutting-edge information. The Company will demonstrate its VeriTrace™ System to coroners, medical examiners and other forensics experts during the conference, which has generated a majority of VeriTrace sales historically. VeriTrace is designed to assist state and federal agencies in the management of emergency situations and disaster recovery using implantable RFID technology. The VeriTrace System includes an implantable RFID microchip, a VeriTrace Bluetooth™ handheld reader, a customized Ricoh 500SE Digital Camera capable of receiving both RFID scanned data and GPS data wirelessly, and a Web-enabled database for gathering and storing information and images captured during emergency response operations. This database ensures the precise collection, storage and inventory of all data and images related to remains and the associated evidentiary items. The Web-enabled database also allows the recreation of an accurate and complete reconstruction of a disaster setting, crime scene or similar setting where recreation is necessary.

Homeland Securities LED Incapacitator

One company has received an $800,000 contract from the Department of Homeland Security to develop a new "non-lethal" method of human incapacitation for use by law enforcement. By 2010, Intelligent Optical Systems hopes to be selling a sort of high-powered flashlight, the "LED Incapacitator," which would act by not only effectively blinding its target, but overloading his or her brain, with rapidly flashing lights at varying colors and frequencies. In addition to disorientation, headache and nausea are also likely.

Beastly Beta Systems Biometrics

Biometrics involves capturing information about something unique to an individual - their voice, face, iris, fingerprint or even the pattern of their veins. That information is stored on a database or token and when an individual wants to access a computer system, enter premises or cross a border, they speak, show their face, eye, finger or wrist. If it matches the information captured about that biometric, in they go.... Admittedly no system is invincible - but biometrics technology is not standing still. The latest systems can tell the difference between a warm, moist, living human fingerprint and a gelatinous copy. Research from the University of Texas comparing human and machine face recognition has shown that when the performance of seven different face-matching algorithms was pitched against the performance of humans matching faces, a handful of the algorithms consistently outperformed the humans.

Way of Seeing Into the Future?

Deep in the basement of a dusty old library in Edinburgh lies a small black box that churns out random numbers. At first glance the box looks profoundly dull, but it is, in fact, the ‘eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future. The machine apparently sensed the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened, and appeared to forewarn of the Asian Tsunami. "It's Earth shattering stuff," says Dr Roger Nelson, Emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the USA. "But unfortunately we don't have a box for predicting the future that we can sell to the CIA. We're very early on in the process of trying to figure out what's going on here. At the moment we're stabbing in the dark." Dr Nelson's Global Consciousness Project - originally hosted by Princeton University - is one of the most extraordinary experiments of all time. It aims to ‘sense' whether all of humanity shares a single unconscious mind that we all tap into without realising it. Some might refer to it as the mind of God. But the machine has also thrown up another tantalising possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of predicting the future.

Jesus Christ born of gorilla not virgin

A new, "postmodern" edition of the Bible takes Darwin's theory of evolution as gospel and presents Jesus as being born, "not to a virgin, but to a gorilla." According to Ruth Rimm, Bronx school teacher and book artist, her version of the Scriptures titled "Lost Spiritual World", explores the emergence of a new global spirituality that mixes the best of each wisdom tradition with the latest findings in psychology, quantum physics, neuroscience, and linguistics." It is a "Bible for skeptics, seekers, and people of different faiths." The first volume in the series which will eventually present the Torah, Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist sutras, and Sufi mysticism, covers the Gospel of Mark. Rimm, however, includes parables not found in Mark, such as the Parable of the Dolphin, the Parable of the Snow Leopard and the Parable of the Gorilla, which are illustrated in a series of irreverent videos to be made available on YouTube as part of the book's marketing campaign. The Parable of the Gorilla begins with a Renaissance painting of Mary and baby Jesus. The voice over begins: He was born in a manger a long time ago, not to a virgin, but to a gorilla. Yes, if Jesus was alive today, he would understand that his ancestors, just like ours, were beasts. No, he wouldn't run around claiming he was born of a virgin. "There may be a profound message behind the miracle stories, but the big bang and evolution implore us not to read things literally," Rimm said.

Time Magazine: Obama Then Martial Law

How has political weakling Barack Hussein Obama risen from obscurity to topple Hillary's electoral votes? Evidence of a covert campaign to undermine the presidential primaries is rife, so it's curious that the Democractic Party and even some within the G.O.P. have ignored the actual elephant in the room this year. That would be Karl Rove. After rigging two previous presidential elections, this master of deceit would have us believe that he's gone off to sit in a corner and write op-eds. Not so. According to an article in Time Magazine, Republican party activists have been organized by the G.O.P. to throw their weight behind Barack Obama, the democratic rival of frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Early in Obama's campaign, top Republican fundraisers flushed his coffers with cash, something the deep pockets hadn't done for any candidate in their own party. With receipts topping $100 million in 2007, the first-term Illinois senator broke the record for contributions. It was a remarkable feat, considering that most Americans had not even heard of him before 2005. The Time magazine article goes on to explain that rank and file Republicans in red states have switched their party registrations, enabling them to vote in Democratic primaries. Some states, like Virginia and Texas, have open primaries, allowing citizens to vote for any candidate regardless of party affiliation. In Nebraska, the mayor of Omaha publicly rallied Republicans to caucus for Obama on February 9th. Called crossover voting, the tactic is playing a crucial role in the Rove push to deprive Clinton of the Democratic nomination. Even with the help of his more familiar hodge-podge of dirty tricks - swiftboating, waitlisting, bogus polling data, paperless electronic voting equipment, Norman Hsu, etc. - Rove would be hard pressed to defeat Clinton in November, since she's popular nationwide and has promised an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. If the contest isn't close, the vote-rigging won't matter.

Arizona firefighters trained for UFOs

For centuries people have looked to the skies for answers. Is there life outside our solar system? Have UFO's visited our planet? Because our sun is a star, does that mean the thousands of stars visible in the night sky could be someone else's sun? The questions, and the universe, are endless. Events like the March 1997 mass-sighting of strange night lights above the Valley, popularly dubbed "Phoenix Lights", have generated questions and turned skeptics into believers. A 600-page guide may lend credibility to UFO believers. The Fire Officer's Guide To Disaster Control can apparently be found in firehouses across the United States. It covers everything from fire and flood response to aviation disasters. Chapter 13 of the book has an unusual twist. Titled "Enemy Attack And UFO Potential", it outlines what could happen in the event of a UFO crash. The authors of the book, retired firefighters William M. Kramer and Charles W. Bahme write in part: It would be remiss to not give some part to the role fire departments might play in the even of the unexpected arrival of UFO's in their communities...In a less optimistic scenario, you may have engine trouble upon approaching the scene, and radio contact could be lost with your dispatcher. If at night, your headlights could go out, the city could be blacked out, and your portable generators may malfunction when you attempt to use them for fans and portable lights. ABC15 contacted several Valley fire agencies regarding the book and some even called us asking several questions prior to the story airing. Not one fire department we found admitted to using the guide for training, although some did recognize the guide's existence. "It just shows you that serious professional people are starting to take his whole subject of UFO's seriously," said Jim Mann, director of the Maricopa County chapter of The Mutual UFO Network. For nearly ten years, Mann has investigated UFO sightings and encounters for MUFON in what he calls a fact finding mission.
"I don't think we're crack-pots, we're just people who want to be aware of what's going on, even if the reports turn out to be false," Mann said. The authors of the guide could not be reached by ABC15 for comment regarding this story, but in a previous reports by other outlets, they said many people are missing the point regarding the chapter and a UFO does not just mean an alien spaceship. Regardless, believers like Jim Mann view the guide as an opportunity for non-believers to at least take a closer look.
"UFO-ology could possibly be taken seriously now, we don't know where we came from and we don't know where we're going," he said. Mann claims he has investigated dozens of UFO sightings in the Phoenix area, including those reported by members of the military and doctors. "These are well respected people," Mann said. "We (MUFON) aren't trying to push our beliefs on anyone. Anything could happen and this is a matter that should be taken seriously."

Miami police to test Micro-UAVs

Police in Miami, Florida want to find out whether a small unmanned air vehicle able to hover and stare can help law enforcement in urban areas. To that end, Miami-Dade Police Department plans a four- to six-month evaluation of Honeywell's ducted-fan Micro Air Vehicle (MAV). The gasoline-powered gMAV has just received an experimental airworthiness certificate from the US Federal Aviation Administration, clearing the way for the ground-breaking experiment. Approval was granted following a demonstration flight for the FAA at a remote site in Laguna, New Mexico. The wingless gMAV can take off and land vertically, transition to high-speed flight and hover and stare using electro-optical/infrared sensors. Miami-Dade is buying one gMAV and leasing a second for the FAA-sanctioned technology demonstration, says Vaughn Fulton, Honeywell's small UAS programme manager. The police department will operate the UAVs, and helicopter pilots from its aviation unit have been trained to fly the gMAV. "The demonstration will be in urban terrain, involving real tactical operations," he says. The 8.2kg (18lb) gMAV is Honeywell's second version of the man-portable UAV. Compared with the original tMAV developed for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the gMAV has a larger outside diameter housing twice the fuel and providing an endurance exceeding 55min at sea level. Military gMAVs have been used in Iraq to detect improvised explosive devices. The basic UAV has fixed sensors and Honeywell is developing a follow-on version with gimballed payload. The company is also working on diesel-powered dMAV, which it expects to fly in 2008. Another version is in development for the US Army's Future Combat Systems programme. Honeywell has begun low-rate initial production of MAVs on a new line in Albuquerque, New Mexico, sized to manufacture up to 100 vehicles a month. "We expect several large contracts in 2008," says Fulton.

Military Civil Disturbance Planning

Under the heading of "civil disturbance planning," the U.S. military is training troops and police to suppress democratic opposition in America. The master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, is code-named, "Operation Garden Plot." Originated in 1968, the "operational plan" has been updated over the last three decades, most recently in 1991, was activated during the Los Angeles "riots" of 1992, and more than likely during the recent anti-WTO "battle in Seattle." Current U.S. military preparations for suppressing domestic civil disturbance, including the training of National Guard troops and local police, are actually part of a long history of American "internal security" measures dating back to the first American Revolution. Generally, these measures have sought to thwart the aims of social justice movements, embodying the concept that within the civilian body politic lurks an enemy that one day the military might be ordered to fight. Equipped with flexible "military operations in urban terrain" and "operations other than war" doctrine, lethal and "less-than-lethal" high-tech weaponry, U.S. "armed forces" and "elite" militarized police units are being trained to eradicate "disorder," "disturbance" and "civil disobedience" in America. Further, it may very well be that police/military "civil disturbance" planning is the animating force and the overarching logic behind the incredible nationwide growth of police paramilitary units, a growth which coincidentally mirrors rising levels of police violence directed at the American people, particularly "nonwhite" poor and working people.

Pagans: Exorcisms Worse Than Occult

Pagans have hit out at the Catholic Church after a church spokesman blamed an increase in exorcisms on people dabbling in paganism. One priest, who asked not to be named, said he was carrying out at least one exorcism a fortnight. "There has been a recruitment of pagan practices, and it's sheer poison." His claim has provoked an angry reponse from the Pagan Awareness Network (PAN), an association representing wiccans, pagans, and other followers of nature-based faiths. "A pagan ritual is no more dangerous than going to a church, a temple, or a mosque," says PAN president David Garland. "The Catholic Church is once again trying to create a moral panic about devil-worship and the occult. This kind of fear-mongering belongs in the Middle Ages, not in the 21st century. Exorcisms endanger lives and physical safety. Anyone worried that they might be possessed by spirits should seek referral to a psychiatrist or other mental health expert, not a witch-doctor in a priest’s collar. The Catholic Church should ban this barbaric practice.”

Urgent Need For Nuclear Detectives

A terrorist nuclear explosion devastates Manhattan, but no group takes credit. The pressure on the U.S. president to retaliate is intense. Acting on sketchy information, the president orders an attack, but it turns out to be the wrong terrorists, in the wrong country. Things go downhill from there. To avoid that and other nightmare scenarios, a group of 12 scientists with extensive nuclear expertise, headed by Stanford physicist Michael May, is urging an international push to improve the science of nuclear forensics. May is a research professor emeritus and former co-director the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He also is the former director of the U.S. nuclear weapons design laboratory in Livermore, Calif. Other members have experience in nuclear intelligence and defense research. One member, Jay Davis, was a United Nations inspector in Iraq.

Terminator like AI: reality soon

A leading scientific “futurologist” has predicted that computer power will match the intelligence of human beings by 2030 because of the accelerating speed at which technology is advancing worldwide, ‘The Independent’ reported today. According to computer guru Dr Ray Kurzweil, there will be 32 times more technical progress during the next half century than there was in the entire 20th century, and one of the outcomes is that artificial intelligence could be on a par with human intellect in the next 20 years. He said that machines will rapidly overtake humans in their intellectual abilities and will soon be able to solve some of the most intractable problems of the 21st century. Computers have so far been based on two-dimensional chips made from silicon, but there are developments already well advanced to make three-dimensional chips with vastly improved performances, and even to construct them out of biological molecules. Three-dimensional, molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level ‘strong artificial intelligence’ by the 2020s. The more important software insights will be gained in part from the reverse engineering of the human brain, a process well under way. “Already, two dozen regions of the human brain have been modelled and simulated,” the British newspaper quoted Dr Kurzweil as saying.

Researchers Look Into Mind Over Matter

Over the last year, several high-tech firms, including EmSense, NeuroFocus, and OTX Research and Innerscope, have introduced portable, less intrusive and more affordable measurement devices to track and measure both brain waves and biologic data. Not surprisingly, a growing number of marketers and agencies are taking note, experimenting with the new devices in hopes that the resulting metrics will provide insights on ads appearing on any and all platforms.... EmSense, a privately held San Francisco company that recently hired ad industry veteran Tim Arnold as evp, business development, counts Yahoo co-founder Tim Koogle and Patrick Meyer, CEO of brand marketing consultancy Now Inc., among its board members and investors. "This is the kind of innovation we scout for," said Meyer, a former senior manager at Coca-Cola and Gillette, who helped bring Virgin Mobile USA, Nintendo, Coke and Miller Brewing on board as clients.The EmSense device reads brain waves and monitors the breathing, heart rate, blinking and skin temperatures of consumers who preview ads to measure their emotional and cognitive responses. According to Katie Bayne, CMO of Coca-Cola North America, the device not only helped whittle down the list of spots, but also aided in editing the two ads chosen to air -- "It's Mine," in which parade balloons vie for a bottle of Coke, and the "Jinx" ad with James Carville and former Senator Bill Frist. For example, she says, the music in "It's Mine" was adjusted in the days leading up to the game to build to more of a crescendo than in the original version of the spot. "It provides you with more natural and unedited responses than you get when you force people through the cognitive loop of having to annunciate how they feel," Bayne said. "It's a great new tool." According to Bayne and others, such techniques help marketers more accurately decipher consumers' feelings because they measure physical and emotional responses as they occur.

Nonlethal Weapons Mimic Schizophrenia

Of all the crazy, bizarre less-lethal weapons that have been proposed, the use of microwaves to target the human mind remains the most disturbing. The question has always been: is this anything more than urban myth? We may not have the final answer to this question, but a newly declassified Pentagon report, Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons , obtained by a private citizen under the Freedom of Information Act, provides some fascinating tidbits on a variety of exotic weapons ideas. Among those discussed are weapons that could disrupt the brain, as well as my longtime obsession, the "Voice of God" device, which creates voices in people's heads. As the report notes, "Application of the microwave hearing technology could facilitate a private message transmission. It may be useful to provide a disruptive condition to a person not aware of the technology. Not only might it be disruptive to the sense of hearing, it could be psychologically devastating if one suddenly heard 'voices within one's head.'"

States fall into line on REAL ID

All but six states have complied with federal requirements to seek an extension of the deadline they face for implementing more secure driver licenses for U.S. citizens or legal residents only under the REAL ID Act. The list of state governments falling into line in the past couple of weeks includes former hold-outs like New Jersey and Washington, according to documents posted on the Web recently by the Department of Homeland Security. New Jersey filed for an extension after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff personally called Gov. Jon Corzine, according to one account. Of the six states that have so far not filed, only Delaware was expected to ask for an extension by the May deadline, according to Brian Zimmer, president of the non-profit lobby group Coalition for a Secure Driver's License. Zimmer said the governors of Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and South Carolina "appear to have turned their face against implementing the law" -- setting their citizens up for additional document requirements at airports and federal buildings. REAL ID sets tough document security and information-sharing standards for state licensing authorities and bans the issuance of licenses except to those who can prove they are U.S. citizens or are in the country legally.

E.coli bug 'will rival MRSA threat'

The E.coli bug is becoming resistant to drugs and could be as big a problem as the superbug MRSA, scientists have warned. E.coli bacteria can cause food poisoning. It can also be responsible for some urinary tract infections and stomach bugs. Scientists have discovered that the bug is changing and increasingly becoming resistant to antibiotics. Experts say concern is growing because previously healthy patients who have not been in hospital have been found to be infected with a drug-resistant form of the bug. The Department of Health has launched a campaign to warn against the overuse of antibiotics for coughs and colds in a bid to slow down the development of resistant strains of common diseases. The hospital superbug MRSA is a drug-resistant form of the common infection staphyolococcus aureus, and is responsible for hundreds of deaths each year. The authors of the new study, in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, called for extra funding. Johann Pitout, from the University of Calgary in Canada, said: "These bacteria have become widely prevalent in the community setting in certain areas of the world and they are most likely being imported into the hospital setting."

Widespread Demonic Possessions

The Catholic Church has revealed how growing interest in satanism and the occult has led to a rise in exorcisms across Queensland. One priest, who asked not to be named for fear of "reprisals", said he was carrying out at least one exorcism a fortnight. More requests for exorcisms came from the Gold Coast than anywhere else. An exorcism involves holy water, sacrament and Bible reading and can go on for many hours, the priest said. Linda Blair made the subject famous in the 1973 film, The Exorcist. "Being possessed by a demon is terrifying in one's mental and emotional life," he said. "Some of these manifestations are extremely powerful, causing people to be plagued by disturbances. They hear voices and see hideous creatures in their sleep. "There has been a recruitment of pagan practices, and it's sheer poison. "The Gold Coast is not good at all. I do far more exorcisms there than Brisbane." The Catholic Church has vowed to "fight the devil head-on" by training hundreds of priests as exorcists. Bishop Brian Finnigan, acting head of the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane, said it was important for the church to carry out exorcisms. "People need to be freed of that burden," he said. Father Gabriele Amorth, 82, the Pope's Exorcist-in-Chief, announced the initiative recently amid church concerns about an increase in people dabbling in the occult. Under plans being considered, each bishop would have a group of priests in his diocese who were specially trained in exorcism. Father Amorth said: "Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the devil. You have to hunt high and low for a proper, trained exorcist." Queensland Catholic priests can carry out exorcisms only if they have been authorised by an archbishop. The priest source, who is based in Brisbane, is the only one permitted to do exorcisms in the state. He said he had travelled to Rockhampton, Cairns, Townsville and Toowoomba to save people. "We are not very plentiful and certainly need more of us to cope with the big occult following that is emerging today," he said. "It's frightening what can happen when you invite entities into your life which are not meant to be part of God's world." He said one woman he had met had been plagued by demonic manifestations since taking part in a playground witch game as a child.

U.S. Prepares for Arms Race in Space

The Rumsfeld report followed a series of U.S. military reports laying out plans for space weapons. Vision for 2020, produced for the U.S. Space Command website, pictures space-based laser weapons zapping targets on Earth. Its text begins with a crawl that reads "U.S. Space Command - dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict." At about the same time that Vision for 2020 appeared in 1996, General Joseph Ashy, then commander in chief of the Space Command, told aerospace publication Aviation Week & Space Technology, "Some people don't want to hear this and it sure isn't in vogue, but -- absolutely -- we're going to fight in space. We're going to fight from space, and we're going to fight into space." He added, "That's why the U.S. has development programs in directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms." It was China's test of the latter that was so sharply condemned by the U.S. media.

Iran Says Israel Soon To Be Destroyed

The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said recently Israel would soon be destroyed by the "hands of Hezbollah", the Lebanese guerilla group backed by the Islamic Republic, Fars News Agency reported. Guards commander-in-chief Mohammad Ali Jafari made the comment in a letter to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, to offer condolences after the killing of senior guerrilla commander Imad Mughniyah in a car bomb last week in Damascus. "In the near future, we will witness the destruction of the cancerous germ of Israel by the powerful and competent hands of the Hezbollah combatants," Jafari was quoted as saying.

Physicist Can't Rule Out Time Travel

It's Hollywood fiction now, but one local scientist says if we can just figure out how to avoid the massive explosions predicted from traveling through a wormhole, maybe the theoretical premise of the movie "Jumper" could be brought one step closer to reality. The new film, featuring the ubiquitous Samuel L. Jackson and Hayden Christensen (of "Star Wars" fame), is about a troubled young man who develops the ability to instantly "jump" from place to place by teleportation -- a leap across space and time. "You can't rule it out," said John Cramer, a University of Washington physicist invited to speak to a Seattle audience before a preview showing of the sci-fi flick one recent evening. Cramer is both a science fiction writer and a physicist working on an experiment perhaps no less bizarre in concept than the notion of people teleporting through wormholes. "These were once known as Einstein-Rosen bridges," the UW scientist said to a full house of moviegoers at the Oak Tree Cinemas in North Seattle. Later renamed "wormholes," Cramer explained, they are basically tunnels in space-time that instantaneously connect two otherwise disparate points in the universe.

Tagged Humans Tracked By US University

Students, engineers and staff at the University of Washington (UW) will find out first hand what it means to be tracked by RFID in what UW researchers call "the next step in social networking". "Studies like this inevitably make [RFID people tracking] more likely to be taken up," said former Linux Australia president and technical director of Internet Vision Technologies Jonathan Oxer, who RFID-tagged himself voluntarily to investigate technical and privacy issues. At first mention, people tagging seems unusual and shocking, said Oxer, but after hearing about it more and more, it loses that edge. Recent research showed that over ten percent of new RFID projects involved people tagging. "It's a dangerous path to go down," admitted Oxer, who believes that at some point there will be a special case for tagging, such as child molesters, and it will move on from there. When the technology becomes good enough, he said, clandestine tracking efforts will become better. "If the tech is there then people will use it," he said.

DARPA Building Brain on a Chip

DARPA's brain-on-a-chip project (cleverly titled SyNAPSE, or Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) sounds straight out of Cyberdyne's portfolio: They want to "develop a brain inspired electronic 'chip' that mimics that function, size, and power consumption of a biological cortex." That whole neuromorphic adaptive business sounds a whole lot like the T-800's neural net processorin the TERMINATOR movie, don't it? Here's the scary manifesto that puts us on the path to Judgment Day. As compared to biological systems, today's intelligent machines are less efficient by a factor of one million to one billion in real world, complex environments. The key to achieving the vision of the SyNAPSE program will be an unprecedented multidisciplinary approach that coordinates aggressive technology development in the following technical areas: 1) Hardware; 2) Architecture; 3) Simulation; and 4) Environment. Hardware includes neuromorphic electronics with novel, high density, plastic, synaptic components; Architecture includes neuromorphic design from microcircuits to complete system; Simulation includes large-scale digital simulation of neuromorphic circuits and functional neuromorphic systems; and Environment includes virtual training, testing and benchmarking for neuromorphic systems.

Chipping Humans: Communication, Control

Imagine that as you reach your office, audio system at the entrance recognise you and issues a warm welcome and the doors open automatically. Lights blink on and the computer says ‘hello’ as soon as you enter your cabin. This is everyday life for Professor Kevin Warwick, who hosts a microchip in his body and is, technically, the first human Cyborg. The Director of Cybernetics department at University of Reading (UK), Warwick was here on Feb 15, at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K) to deliver a special lecture on the occasion of Annual Science and Technology Festival, Techkriti ‘08. Talking about his journey from a human to Captain Cyborg, Warwick said under the Project Cyborg, he underwent a surgery by Doctor George Boulos in August 1998 to get a RFID transmitter implanted under his arm. “The chip was used to control doors, lights, heaters and other computer controlled devices based on his proximity,” he said. The chief purpose of experiment was to test the limits of what the body can accept and how easily it receives meaningful signals from the chip. Regarding the second stage of research, he said he got implanted with a more complex chip, which interfaced directly with his nervous system, in March 2002. The experiment was successful, as the signals produced by the chip were detailed enough for a robot arm developed by his colleague Peter Kyberd to mimic the action of his arm. Warwick even went on to implant a simpler chip into the body of his wife. He wanted to try telepathy, using Internet to communicate the signal from afar. The experiment was successful and resulted in the first purely electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two human beings. Though his family found it “crazy” initially, he was determined to use the technology for helping the disabled, he said. The technology, he said, can help those suffering from blindness, physical deformities, diabetes, epilepsy and others. It could even completely change communication between people. Talking about the use of microchips in human body, he said developed nations were already using the technology for recognition of patients in hospitals, officials in high security zone and others. In future, people may not need to carry passport, keys, credit cards and other identity documents. “In many countries, people wish to get their children or partners implanted with chip in order to track them, but the question whether the use of chip in human body ethical, is still debatable,” he added.

Advances Boost Mind Control Tech

Electrodes implanted directly into the brain produce much clearer signals, but are not well tolerated by the body. "The brain tries to get rid of [the electrodes] by covering them with a sheet of tissue," explains Schalk. "The signal degrades over time." Schalk and colleagues at Albany Medical College, Washington University in St Louis, University of Washington, Seattle, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, all US, think a third approach will face fewer hurdles. They cover part of the brain's surface with a polymer sheet containing a grid of electrodes 2 millimetres in diameter and spaced 10 mm apart, a method called electrocorticography (ECOG). Such electrode grids are often placed in people with severe epilepsy to identify the focus of seizures within the brain. "These grids are thin like a sheet of paper," says Schalk. "The electrodes record signals similar to those recorded by electrodes on the scalp, but with much greater fidelity."

Machines 'To Match Man By 2029'

Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted. Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil. The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health. "I've made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029," he said. "We're already a human machine civilisation; we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that." Humans and machines would eventually merge, by means of devices embedded in people's bodies to keep them healthy and improve their intelligence, predicted Mr Kurzweil. "We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons," he told BBC News. The nanobots, he said, would "make us smarter, remember things better and automatically go into full emergent virtual reality environments through the nervous system".

A "Holy Grail" Of Healing

You might become a believer in the power of magic dust, when you see how a special powder re-grew the tip of Lee Spievack's finger. He sliced off a half inch of his finger in the propeller of a hobby shop airplane. His finger never even formed a scar. "Your finger grew back flesh, blood, vessels and nail?" CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports. "InFour weeks," Spievak said. This powder is a medical product called extracellular matrix. Made from pig bladders, it is a mix of protein and connective tissue surgeons often use to repair tendons. But it's the matrix's unusual power to regenerate tissue that's helping launch a new field: regenerative medicine. "It tells the body, start that process of tissue re-growth," said Dr. Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Regenerative Medicine. Badylak believes the matrix somehow mobilizes cells, some of them adult stem cells whose job it is to maintain and repair injured tissue. "It will change the body from thinking that its responding to inflammation and injury to thinking that it needs to re-grow normal tissue," Badylak said. If this helped Mr Spievak's finger re-grow, could you grow a whole limb? "In theory," Badylak said. That theory, that it might be possible to re-grow a limb, is about to be tested by the United States Military. The Army, working in conjuction with the University of Pittsburgh, is about to use that matrix on the amputated fingers of soldiers home from the war. Dr. Steven Wolf, at the Army Institute of Surgical Research, says the military has invested millions of dollars in Regenerative research, hoping to re-grow limbs, lost muscle, even burned skin. "And it's hard to ignore this guys missing half his skin, this guy's missing his leg," Wolf said. "Is there any way we can make that grow back? Some of that technology exists and now its time to field it." Several different technologies for harnessing regeneration are now in clinical trials around the world. One machine, being tested in Germany, sprays a burn patient's own cells onto a burn, signaling the skin to re-grow. Badylak is about to implant matrix material - shaped like an esophagus - into patients with throat cancer. "We fully expect that this material will cause the body to re-form normal esophageal tissue," Badylak said. Some of the most advanced tests involve the heart. This patch of material is being put on - like a band aid - to regenerate heart muscle damaged by a heart attack. And patient Mary Beth Babo is getting her own adult stem cells injected into her heart, in hopes of growing new arteries. Her surgeon is Dr. Joon Lee. "It's what we consider the Holy Grail of our field for coronary heart disease," Lee said. The Holy Grail, because if stem cells can re-grow arteries, there's less need for surgery.

Social Security Smart Card Coming

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) is proposing a new Social Security card that would be based on the same technology the U.S. Department of Defense uses for the Common Access Card. The new Social Security card would have a photo, magnetic stripe, bar code and microprocessor chip that would contain users biometric. Exactly how individuals would obtain the card and which biometric would be stored on it were not specified. Kirk is proposing the legislation and high-tech ID to help prevent identity theft. The card would also enable employers to validate the Social Security number. The legislation would require anyone older than 15 to obtain a new card. It’s estimated that the new card would cost almost $8 each, compared to the 50 cents they now cost.

Korean Firm Begins Cloning Dead Pets

The world's first pet cloning service is to offer animal lovers the chance to recreate their dead companions, it was announced Feb 17.