Radar-Detector Customers Get Personal Valet

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If you don’t already know about Escort Live, you probably should.
The app links up with an Escort radar detector via Bluetooth, and when your detector catches a signal bandwidth that might be a police speed gun or red light camera, it sends the data into the software’s global database. It works like Trapster or Waze by sharing speed-trap sites and plotting trouble spots on its integrated map. Should you hit a false alarm, the software lets you store the signal, so on your morning commute you’re not dealing with constant beeps triggered by the convenience store’s automatic door sensor. The price comes to $50 annually, plus $100 for the Bluetooth-enabled SmartCord.
The latest addition to Escort Live’s features list is access to MyAssist’s services, which means access to a live concierge who will set up hotel reservations, get you sports tickets, call a tow truck, find a translator, or send an ambulance. The service can be found in integrated Ford models with communications and entertainment setups. Customers who buy an Escort radar detector and Escort Live receive membership to MyAssist for free. Users launch the MyAssist app and it direct-dials to a service rep.


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From Bug Drones to Disease Assassins, Super Weapons Rule US War Game

Sailors train for chemical and biological warfare. Photo: U.S. Navy

CARLISLE, Pennsylvania — A rogue state is on the verge of developing a deadly biological weapon against which the rest of the world has no defense. Through its connections to extremist groups and smugglers, the regime could be planning to launch bio attacks on U.S. allies and interests.
With tensions mounting, a cabal of American military officers, intelligence agents, scientists, industry officials and theoreticians gather at a secure facility within the Defense Department’s oldest base. Their mission: to plot America’s response to the bio-weapon threat. The ideas — some good, some bad, a few downright horrifying — flow freely.
A quiet man wearing a dark suit stands and the room grows silent. In clinical terms he describes a new technology, previously unknown to most of the cabal, that could disrupt the rogue state’s bio-terror scheme — but at a cost. If the Pentagon unleashes this weapon now, it will forever alter the strategic landscape, with unpredictable results. The new system, the man says, is a “game changer.” Like the atom bomb.

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China second only to US in app downloads

An iPhone. (File photo/CFP)

Chinese people download apps like crazy, according to the latest reports. China is second to only the US in the amount of apps it downloads.
Free apps are much more common than pay apps in China. The average amount Chinese smartphone users pay for an app is US$0.13, less than the US$0.19 average global cost, and half the average in Vietnam, according to China Times, our Chinese-language sister newspaper.
Stenvall Skoeld, a market research firm, recently released a survey showing that Chinese users downloaded 18% of the world's apps in the second quarter of the year, yet their spending on apps only accounted for 3% for the total. The US downloaded 28% of apps but made up 42% of the spending on apps — the most in the world on both fronts — reports web portal Sina Science and Technology Net.


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Army’s vehicles not tough enough for bombs

Enlarge Photo

**FILE ** U.S. military vehicles in Kuwait being returned to the U.S.

The July 8 roadside explosion that killed six Army soldiers in Afghanistan has analysts worried that the Taliban are turning to bigger homemade bombs to take down the best armored U.S. vehicles.
What is particularly troubling to the military is that the enemy was able to penetrate the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, whose V-shaped hull disperses a blast away from the troops inside.
A military source said in an interview that the July 8 bomb likely was a huge fertilizer-based homemade device hidden in a culvert close to where the vehicle passed. An enemy tactic is to place a bomb underneath or alongside a road and detonate it with a remote electronic signal, such as from a cellphone.
The command in Kabul is generally tight-lipped about how the Taliban, al Qaeda and other insurgents use homemade bombs.
“It’s hard to discuss our estimates of the size of the IED [improvised explosive device] or other tactics used by the insurgents in public without giving the enemy valuable information, but I can say that our investigation leads us to believe the IED was considerably larger than the average IED used against mounted patrols,” said James Graybeal, a command spokesman in Afghanistan.

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Self-Guided Bullets and Super Sniper Scopes Deliver Death From 2 Km

As the technology facilitating the expansion of the surveillance state becomes more advanced, the need for proximity to the target of the surveillance diminishes. For example, very soon drones will be equipped with lasers that can penetrate walls, map the interior of a home or other building, and scan a targeted individual’s genetic code from 50 yards with dizzying speed and accuracy. Additionally, the ability to keep drones perpetually airborne is being engineered thanks to multi-million dollar research and development grants offered by the Pentagon to companies on the edge of technological advancement.
One such grant was recently awarded by DARPA (the secretive research and development agency inside the Pentagon) to a company working on reducing the size and increasing the power of laser-based optics used by snipers. Earlier this week, DARPA awarded Cubic Corporation $6 million to develop a “laser-emitting targeting computer” for American military snipers. According to a story in Wired, the “goal is to reduce the number of calculations the sniper and his teammate — a spotter — have to do before they can make an accurate shot.”
The government wants the device not only to have pinpoint accuracy, but to be small enough to fit on the sniper’s weapon, eliminating the need for the spotter altogether and enabling the shooter to identify and kill the target from heretofore impossible distances. Cubic Corporation is accustomed to making historic strides in distance-measuring devices. The company’s website boasts that in the 1960s its engineers created “Electrotape Distance Measuring Instrument — the world's first commercial distance surveying system to provide centimeter accuracy from 100 meters to 50 kilometers.”


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Human vs ant: Animal athletes in action

Olympic weightlifter in action and a leaf-cutter ant carrying a piece of leaf

Continue reading the main story

Related Stories

• Olympic wildlife: Track and field
• Olympians of the botanical world
• Bear's epic nine-day 'swimathon'

The London 2012 Olympic Games are in full competitive glory and world records in weightlifting, swimming and archery have been smashed. But how do the world's strongest animals, most accurate archers and champion boxers measure up?

The remarkable achievements of one athlete have earned him the accolade of the most successful Olympian in history, after winning his 20th gold from three Games.
But are Michael Phelps and the other record-breaking Olympians any match for nature's best? BBC Nature has previously examined animal track and field stars, but other incredible feats have also been recorded.


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What the octopus can teach us about national security

(Copyright: Science Photo Library)

When American soldiers were killed in Iraq by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, it was the slow, bureaucratic, centralised nature of the Department of Defense that failed them, says Rafe Sagarin, a marine ecologist at the University of Arizona. It was only once soldiers were authorised to make their own decisions – a move known as the Petraeus Doctrine, after the general who invented it – that they could communicate effectively with locals in order to find out in advance where IEDs might be.
Why was a marine ecologist suggesting ways of protecting armed forces? Well, according to Sagarin, the Petraeus doctrine is exactly the sort of thing an octopus would do. Despite its well-organised central nervous system, many of an octopus's reactions are decentralised. Its individual cells make their own decisions for dealing with the immediate situation – enabling, for example, the invertebrate's famously varied camouflage. Switching to this kind of adaptive tactics provided greater protection for soldiers in Iraq.

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WORLDS BIGGEST ENGINE

Maximum power: 108,920 hp at 102 rpm

Maximum torque: 5,608,312 lb/ft at 102rpm

The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the most powerful and most efficient prime-mover in the world today. The Aioi Works of Japan 's Diesel United, Ltd built the first engines and is where some of these pictures were taken. It is available in 6 through 14 cylinder versions, all are inline engines. These engines were designed primarily for very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them. The cylinder bore is just under 38" and the stroke is just over 98". Each cylinder displaces 111,143 cubic inches (1820 liters) and produces 7780 horsepower. Total displacement comes out to 1,556,002 cubic inches (25,480 liters) for the fourteen cylinder version.

Some facts on the 14 cylinder version:

Total engine weight:	2300 tons (The crankshaft alone weighs 300 tons.)

Length:	89 feet

Height:	44 feet

Maximum power:

108,920 hp at 102 rpm

Maximum torque:

5,608,312 lb/ft at 102rpm

Fuel consumption at maximum power is 0.278 lbs per hp per hour (Brake Specific Fuel Consumption). Fuel consumption at maximum economy is 0.260 lbs/hp/hour. At maximum economy the engine exceeds 50% thermal efficiency. That is, more than 50% of the energy in the fuel in converted to motion.

For comparison, most automotive and small aircraft engines have BSFC figures in the 0.40-0.60 lbs/hp/hr range and 25-30% thermal efficiency range.

Even at its most efficient power setting, the big 14 consumes 1,660 gallons of heavy fuel oil per hour.

A cross section of the RTA96C:

The internals of this engine are a bit different than most automotive engines.

The top of the connecting rod is not attached directly to the piston. The top of the connecting rod attaches to a "crosshead" which rides in guide channels. A long piston rod then connects the crosshead to the piston.

I assume this is done so the the sideways forces produced by the connecting rod are absorbed by the crosshead and not by the piston. Those sideways forces are what makes the cylinders in an auto engine get oval-shaped over time.

Installing the "thin-shell" bearings. Crank & rod journals are 38" in diameter and 16" wide:

The crank sitting in the block (also known as a "gondola-style" bedplate). This is a 10 cylinder version. Note the steps by each crank throw that lead down into the crankcase:

A piston & piston rod assembly. The piston is at the top. The large square plate at the bottom is where the whole assembly attaches to the crosshead:

Some pistons:

And some piston rods:

The "spikes" on the piston rods are hollow tubes that go into the holes you can see on the bottom of the pistons (left picture) and inject oil into the inside of the piston which keeps the top of the piston from overheating. Some high-performance auto engines have a similar feature where an oil squirter nozzle squirts oil onto the bottom of the piston.

The cylinder deck (10 cylinder version). Cylinder liners are die-cast ductile cast iron. Look at the size of those head studs!:

The first completed 12 cylinder engine:

Court Demands TSA Explain Why It Is Defying Nude Body Scanner Order

Images: TSA

A federal appeals court Wednesday ordered the Transportation Security Administration to explain why it hasn’t complied with the court’s year-old decision demanding the agency hold public hearings concerning the rules and regulations pertaining to the so-called nude body scanners installed in U.S. airport security checkpoints.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s brief order came in response to the third request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center for the court to enforce its order.


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Exclusive Pics: Apple Breaks Ground at Mystery Data Center

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Apple is building something new at its Maiden, North Carolina data center, and thanks to our 1949 Piper PA-11 (Cub Special) iSpy Plane, we can give you an exclusive first look.
In our photos, taken Monday, you can see construction crews laying the foundations for a new approximately 20,000-square-foot structure in a wooded area just northwest of the main data center. Apple appears to be finally building its 4.8-megawatt array of Bloom Energy fuel cells, which convert biogas into electricity.
Apple is one of many web giants that are now building their computing facilities in an effort to save both money and power, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft. In many ways, Maiden is the model of the modern data center. It’s home to a mammoth 500,000-square-foot building that houses rack after rack of Apple servers used to power the iCloud, but Apple is also tacking on a few extras that you won’t find in most data centers: a 100-acre solar farm, and an array of Bloom Energy fuel cells.


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Samsung Accused of Destroying Evidence, EU Bans Galaxy Tab 7.7

_{Samsung is accused of destroying evidence. [Image Source: Office Products NYC]}

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Apple demands $2.5B USD from Samsung -- plus complete sales ban on most of its smartphones/tablets

Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) is in the middle of a tough week in the courts.

I. Samsung Accused of Destroying Evidence

The South Korean gadgetmaker recently celebrated outselling arch-rival Apple, Inc. (AAPL) nearly two-to-one in smartphone sales in the recent quarter.  Those strong sales are driven by the Galaxy S III, a smartphone whose hardware beats Apple's flagship iPhone 4S in nearly every category.

Apple is struggling to keep up in sales despite continuing to haul in record profits as the world's most profitable tech company.  Apple attorney Josh Krevitt sums up his company's plight, remarking, "Samsung is always one step ahead, launching another product and another product."

But Apple has been relatively effective at looking to stifle its competitor in court.

In recent weeks it scored sales bans on the Samsung Nexus smartphone and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, although it failed to secure its most hoped for ban -- a kill shot on the Galaxy S III.

Now it's scored another small victory in its U.S. court battle, with Judge Paul Grewal of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose/San Francisco) granting an Apple request to give an "adverse jury instruction." The judge told the jury that Samsung destroyed evidence that might have been pertinent to the case. 

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How to Defeat the Air Force’s Powerful Stealth Fighter

An F-22 over Alaska. Photo: Air Force

The fast, stealthy F-22 Raptor is “unquestionably” the best air-to-air fighter in the arsenal of the world’s leading air force. That’s what outgoing Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz wrote in 2009.
Three years later, a contingent of German pilots flying their latest Typhoon fighter have figured out how to shoot down the Lockheed Martin-made F-22 in mock combat. The Germans’ tactics, revealed in the latest Combat Aircraft magazine, represent the latest reality check for the $400-million-a-copy F-22, following dozens of pilot blackouts, and possibly a crash, reportedly related to problems with the unique g-force-defying vests worn by Raptor pilots.
In mid-June, 150 German airmen and eight twin-engine, non-stealthy Typhoons arrived at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska for an American-led Red Flag exercise involving more than 100 aircraft from Germany, the U.S. Air Force and Army, NATO, Japan, Australia and Poland. Eight times during the two-week war game, individual German Typhoons flew against single F-22s in basic fighter maneuvers meant to simulate a close-range dogfight.

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A Working Assault Rifle Made With a 3-D Printer

3-D Printed Gun HaveBlue

Get ready. It's now possible to print weapons at home.
An amateur gunsmith, operating under the handle of "HaveBlue" (incidentally, "Have Blue" is the codename that was used for the prototype stealth fighter that became the Lockheed F-117), announced recently in online forums that he had successfully printed a serviceable .22 caliber pistol.
Despite predictions of disaster, the pistol worked. It successfully fired 200 rounds in testing.
HaveBlue then decided to push the limits of what was possible and print an AR-15 rifle. To do this, he downloaded plans for an AR-15 in the Solidworks file format from a site called CNCGunsmith.com. After some small modifications to the design, he fed about $30 of ABS plastic feedstock into his late-model Stratasys printer. The result was a functional AR-15 rifle. Early testing shows that it works, although it still has some minor feed and extraction problems to be worked out.


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Apple iPhones Outsold by Samsung 2-to-1 in Q2, Profit Suffers

  (Source: Reuters)

Apple still logs record profit, but sees shareholder confidence shaken by miss

The good news Apple, Inc. (AAPL) fans is that Apple is forecast to be the most profitable American company for 2012 [source].

The company's calendar Q2 2012 (fiscal Q3) results, just reported, revealed a 20 percent spike in profits on a year-to-year basis, soaring to $8.8B USD on a revenue of $35B USD, a profit of about $9.32 USD/diluted share.

The bad news is that Apple's iPhone sales slumped, moving only 26 million units versus an analyst consensus of 28.4 million units.  Analysts had already scaled back their expectations earlier in the month from 30.5 million units.

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GPS NEWS GPS Can Now Measure Ice Melt, Change In Greenland Over Months Rather Than Years

Composite photograph of a GNET GPS unit implanted in the southeastern Greenland bedrock. Image by Dana Caccamise, courtesy of Ohio State University.

Researchers have found a way to use GPS to measure short-term changes in the rate of ice loss on Greenland - and reveal a surprising link between the ice and the atmosphere above it. The study, published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, hints at the potential for GPS to detect many consequences of climate change, including ice loss, the uplift of bedrock, changes in air pressure - and perhaps even sea level rise.
The team, led by earth scientists at Ohio State University, pinpointed a period in 2010 when high temperatures caused the natural ice flow out to sea to suddenly accelerate, and 100 billion tons of ice melted away from the continent in only 6 months.
They were able to make the measurement because the earth compresses or expands like a spring depending on the weight above it, letting them use the Greenland bedrock like a giant bathroom scale to weigh the ice atop it. As ice accumulates, the bedrock sinks, and as the ice melts away, the bedrock rises.

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Spy Satellite Companies Form Space Monopoly

A satellite image of Washington D.C. during the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009. Photo: DailyM/Flickr

Earlier this year, the spy satellite industry was hit hard by defense budget cuts. For the top two commercial satellite companies, which survive largely by providing imagery to the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies, the cuts left only enough money for one to survive. Now budget austerity has forced the companies to merge together and create a new space monopoly with control over what we see from orbit.
On Monday, Colorado-based satellite firm DigitalGlobe announced it’s merging with Virginia-based competitor GeoEye in a stock and cash deal worth $900 million. The merger works out in DigitalGlobe’s favor, which keeps its name intact and whose shareholders will control 64 percent of the new company. DigitalGlobe will also take over GeoEye operations. Best known for providing imagery for applications like Google Earth, the companies combined provide more than three-quarters of the U.S. government’s satellite images.
The company also has somewhat of a codependent relationship with the Pentagon. For one, the companies help serve a need for satellite images that the government’s own aging fleet of satellites can’t always fulfill. Meanwhile, the companies are dependent on funding from Congress and the Pentagon’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in order to stay afloat. This year, that funding got cut — severely.

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Apple estimates $2.52 billion damages in Samsung battle

Tue Jul 24, 2012 10:05am EDT

(Reuters) - Apple Inc claims it is entitled to $2.525 billion of damages in its high-stakes battle against Samsung Electronics Co over patents for technology used in smartphones and tablets, such as the iPhone and iPad.
According to a partially redacted filing on Tuesday with a federal court in San Jose, California, Apple believes Samsung owes "substantial monetary damages" because the Korean company illegally "chose to compete by copying Apple."
Apple said this allowed Samsung to overtake it as the world's largest maker of smartphones, and reap "billions of dollars in profits" while costing Apple $500 million of profit.
It said damages, including reasonable royalty damages, reach "a combined total of $2.525 billion." Apple said it also plans to seek a permanent injunction to stop future violations.


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