DARPA sets aside $7 million for ‘Avatar’ robot pals in battle
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced this week that it will be setting aside $7 million out of its $2 billion budget to work on a next-step robotics program called Avatar. Beyond battlefield robots built like big dogs, and beyond a headless robot called Petman, the Avatar result will be a “semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine” that can smartly and effectively behave as a soldier surrogate. DARPA’s Avatar robots will be able to perform human-like military operations such as room clearing, sentry control and recovering combat casualties, tasks that may help minimize injuries and deaths.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-darpa-million-avatar-robot-pals.html
Rare Earth element tellurium detected for the first time in ancient stars
Nearly 13.7 billion years ago, the universe was made of only hydrogen, helium and traces of lithium — byproducts of the Big Bang. Some 300 million years later, the very first stars emerged, creating additional chemical elements throughout the universe. Since then, giant stellar explosions, or supernovas, have given rise to carbon, oxygen, iron and the rest of the 94 naturally occurring elements of the periodic table.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-rare-earth-element-tellurium-ancient.html
Physicists discover evidence of rare hypernucleus, a component of strange matter
Physicists in Italy have discovered the first evidence of a rare nucleus that doesn’t exist in nature and lives for just 10-10 seconds before decaying. It’s a type of hypernucleus that, like all nuclei, contains an assortment of neutrons and protons. But unlike ordinary nuclei, hypernuclei also contain at least one hyperon, a particle that consists of three quarks, including at least one strange quark. Hypernuclei are thought to form the core of strange matter that may exist in distant parts of the universe, and could also allow physicists to probe the inside of the nucleus.
As its name suggests, 6ΛH is a large type of hydrogen nucleus that consists of six particles: four neutrons, one proton, and one Lambda (Λ) hyperon. Since an ordinary hydrogen nucleus contains one proton and no neutrons, hydrogen nuclei that contain one or more neutrons are sometimes called “heavy hydrogen.” The most common types of heavy hydrogen are deuterium (which has one neutron) and tritium (which has two neutrons). Since 6ΛH has four neutrons plus a L hyperon, physicists refer to it as “heavy hyperhydrogen.”
The L hyperon, which consists of one up, one down, and one strange quark, does an even more interesting thing to 6ΛH: it increases its lifetime from 10-22 seconds (the lifetime of the hypernucleus core 5H without L) to 10-10 seconds. When scientists first discovered the L hyperon in 1947, they observed a similarly longer lifetime than predicted for this “strange” object. That observation led to the idea of the existence of the strange quark, with strangeness being the property that causes the quark to live so long.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-physicists-evidence-rare-hypernucleus-component.html
Drones Set Sights on U.S. Skies
A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors — from selling real estate and dusting crops, to monitoring oil spills and wildlife, even shooting Hollywood films. Local police and emergency services will also be freer to send up their own drones.
But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information. Safety concerns like mid air collisions and property damage on the ground are also an issue.
