Back From Vacation!

ottawa-panoramaHey all! I just got in last night from Ottawa and let me tell you, it was quite the trip. We managed to do many things while we were there, including visiting my childhood home, my old neighborhood, my favorite watering holes and restaurants, and visited with many of my old friends! But at the same time, it’s good to be home. Visiting your old hometown and friends can be wonderful, but so can being back in the place you love with your wife and cat.

And I can tell, I have a lot of catching up to do. Seriously, if I thought I was behind before I left, I’m way behind now! Luckily, I have a revised to do list that covers what I hope to do in the coming weeks. While I was away, I actually managed to get some serious reading and editing done, and decided it was time to get back to a few ongoing projects that also begging for completion.

  • Catch up on sleep
  • Cut back on beer (sampled too many this time around!)
  • Watch the season premier and episode 2 of The Walking Dead
  • Review of the Akira graphic novel
  • Review of the Batman graphic novels – Arkham Asylum, The Killing Joke, The Man Who Laughs
  • Review of Rami Ungar’s The Quiet Game (overdue)
  • Catch up on Yuva stories
  • Catch up on other people’s posts

Sound like a plan? Good, then let’s get this party started! Good to be home…

Going to Ottawa!

Skating-on-the-Rideau-Canal-500x400Hi Folks. Just wanted to let people know that I will be away for the next week as the wife and I do our biannual trip to my old hometown of Ottawa. This means regular post by me will cease for that time. I know my output has been sluggish lately, but it will be less so as the darling bride and I visit with my old friends and take in the sites and sounds.

We don’t get much in the way of Autumn out here on the West Coast. Sure, its get cold and rainy, but fall colors don’t happen much since most of our trees are evergreens. So it will be a treat to be surrounded by that this year! And we’re certainly looking forward to visiting plenty of the old haunts with plenty of my old crew! I love living here in BC, but I would very much like to have better access to these people.

When I get back, be prepared to hear all about the following topics:

  • Papa Zulu done editing and ready for beta testing!
  • a review of the season four opener of The Walking Dead and The Oath webepisodes
  • the latest from the Revengers
  • more chapters of Oscar Mike
  • more updates on the Yuva anthology
  • more updates on tech developments that are both awe inspiring and scary!

Take care you all and hope to catch up again soon!

The Future is Here: Self-Healing Metal

self-healing_metalYou’ve heard of self-healing concrete, you’ve heard of self-healing polymers. And now, it seems that researchers at MIT have found a way to make metals heal themselves after tiny cracks form. As the latest in a series of materials that is capable of maintaining itself, this discovery could very well help pioneer the revolution in manufacturing everyone has been waiting for.

Led by graduate student Guoqiang Xu and professor Michael Demkowicz, the process of getting metals to heal themselves was made almost entirely by accident. The discovery first came when they were modelling a sheet of nickle and tiny microscopic cracks were applied. Once tension was applied, the cracks became smaller and then disappeared as the edges fused together.

crystallineApparently, the key has to do with the fact that most metals are composed of microscopic crystalline grains, the size and orientation of which affect the overall strength and characteristics of the material. Nickel has always been of interest because of its use in so many superalloys, many of which are used in harsh environments – jet turbines, deep sea oil rigs, heavy industry joints.

It turns out that the grains making these materials so strong are not as static as scientists thought. As the metal is pulled outward, the edge of the crystalline grains begins to migrate and can eventually fill in the crack completely. The migration of this crystalline boundary is what heals the gaps in the material. And while it is not exactly polymorphic alloy (see pic below), its certainly big news.

metal_fatigueAnd while researchers have only been able to reproduce this healing behavior with cracks at the microstructural level (known as disclination), these micro-defects are the source of much larger and sometimes catastrophic cracks and metal fatigue. The geometry of disclinations can actually reverse an applied force locally, which is how the tension leads to the metal pulling itself back together.

The team believes this newfound knowledge can be used to prevent superalloys from accumulating structural cracks that could lead to real damage with time. Materials could also be designed to direct damage into disclination-type structures, areas that could absorb damage and then heal themselves. Given time, it could even lead to metals that don’t weaken with age.

t1000Still, you shouldn’t be expecting something like this guy anytime soon! And be sure to enjoy this brief but poignant video of the self-healing effect in action:


Source: extremetech.com

The Future of Fusion: Milestone Hit Amidst Funding Fears

fusion_reactorThe National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermoore, California has made quite a bit of headlines lately. But when you’re goal is to harness fusion power – a clean, unlimited and cheap source of energy – that is abound to happen. For decades, the challenge of harnessing fusion has been to create a process that produces more energy than it consumes; a goal which has remained elusive.

However, a recent breakthrough at NIF has brought us all one step closer to viability. Apparently, the breakthrough happened in late September, where the amount of energy released through the latest controlled fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel. This was the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility anywhere in the world.

fusion_energyNIF, based at Livermore in California, uses 192 beams from the world’s most powerful laser to heat and compress a small pellet of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place. Viability, in this case, meant producing more energy from a fusion reaction than was consumed by the lasers themselves and any inefficiencies that cost power along the way.

As already noted, this breakthrough has been decades in the making. After nearly 50 years of experimentation and failure, the NIF announced in 2009 that its aim was to demonstrate nuclear fusion producing net energy by 30 September 2012. But unexpected technical problems ensured the deadline came and went; the fusion output was less than had originally been predicted by mathematical models.

NIF Livermore July 2008Soon after, the $3.5 billion facility shifted focus, cutting the amount of time spent on fusion versus nuclear weapons research – which was part of the lab’s original mission. However, the latest experiments showed that net energy  output is possible, which in turn will provide a welcome boost to ignition research at NIF as well as encouraging fusion research in general.

Despite this breakthrough, there are worries that the research will not be able to continue. Thanks to the government shutdown, federal funding for major research labs like the NIF is threatened. A suspension in funding can be just as harmful as it being cut off altogether, as delays at a crucial juncture can mean all progress will be lost.

NASA_coldfusionLuckily, the NIF is just one of several projects around the world aimed at harnessing fusion. They include the multi-billion-euro ITER facility, currently under construction in Cadarache, France. However, ITER will take a different approach to the laser-driven fusion, using magnetic fields to contain the hot fusion fuel – a concept known as magnetic confinement.

What’s more, NASA’s own research into cold fusion that relies on weak nuclear forces – as opposed to strong ones – is likely to continue, regardless of whether it meets the requirements for emergency exemption. And given that the prize of this research is a future where all our energy needs are provider for using a cheap, abundant, clean alternative, there is no way we’re stopping now!

Sources: bbc.co.uk, IO9.com

Crypto Wars: The Tech World vs. the NSA

cyber_securitySix years ago, something interesting took place at Microsoft’s Windows annual Crypto conference in Santa Barbara. In the course of the presentations, two members of the company’s security group (Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson) gave a talk that dealt with internet security and the possibility that major systems could be hacked.

They called their presentation “On the Possibility of a Back Door in the NIST SP800-90 Dual Ec Prng”. That’s a name few people outside of the techy community would recognize, as it refers to a pseudorandom number generating program that is used extensively in cryptography. And thought the presentation was only nine slides and a few minutes long, they managed to capture the attention of the crowd with some rather stark observations.

cyber_security1Basically, they laid out a case showing that the new encryption standard, given a stamp of approval by the U.S. government, possessed a glaring weakness that made one of the program’s algorithms susceptible to cracking. But the weakness they described wasn’t just an average vulnerability, it had the kind of properties one would want if one were intentionally inserting a backdoor to make the algorithm susceptible to cracking by design.

At the time, no one thought much of it. But today, that’s all changed, thanks to Edward Snowden. Apparently, cryptographers and journalists are seeing a connection between the talk given by Shumow and Ferguson and the classified NSA documents Snowden leaked. Apparently, some of that information confirms that the weakness in the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm might be indeed a backdoor.

nsa_aerialEarlier this month, an article appeared in the New York Times that implied that the backdoor was intentionally put there by the NSA as part of a $250-million, decade-long covert operation by the agency to weaken and undermine the integrity of a number of encryption systems used by millions of people around the world.

Naturally, these allegations not only stoked the fires over the NSA’s long history of spying on databases, both domestic and foreign, it has also raised questions over the integrity of the rather byzantine process that produces security standards in the first place. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) approved Dual_EC_DRBG and the standard, is now facing criticism alongside the NSA.

nist_aerialbigAnd while NIST has since been forced to re-open the program to examination and public discussion, security and crypto firms around the world are scrambling to unravel just how deeply the suspect algorithm infiltrated their code, if at all. Some even went so far as to publicly denounce it, such as corporate giant RSA Security.

But of course, a number of crypto experts have noted that the Times hasn’t released the memos that purport to prove the existence of a backdoor. What’s more, the paper’s direct quotes from the classified documents don’t mention a backdoor or efforts by the NSA to weaken it or the standard, only the efforts of the agency to push the standard through NIST’s committees for approval.

nsasecurity_primary-100041064-largeOne such person is Jon Callas, the CTO of Silent Circle – a company that offers encrypted phone communication. Having attended the Crypto conference in 2007 and heard the presentation by Shumow, he believes that the real problem may lie in the fact that the algorithm was poorly made:

If [the NSA] spent $250 million weakening the standard and this is the best that they could do, then we have nothing to fear from them. Because this was really ham-fisted. When you put on your conspiratorial hat about what the NSA would be doing, you would expect something more devious, Machiavellian … and this thing is just laughably bad. This is Boris and Natasha sort of stuff.

Sources at Microsoft agree. In addition to the presenters – who never mention the NSA in their presentation and went out of their way to avoid accusing NIST of any wrongdoing – a manager who spoke with WIRED on condition of anonymity believes the reporters at the Times saw the classified documents dealing with the program, read about the 2007 talk, and assumed their was a connection.

cryptographyBut Paul Kocher, president and chief scientist of Cryptography Research, says that regardless of the lack of evidence in the Times story, he discounts the “bad cryptography” explanation for the weakness, in favor of the backdoor one:

Bad cryptography happens through laziness and ignorance. But in this case, a great deal of effort went into creating this and choosing a structure that happens to be amenable to attack.

Personally, I find it interesting that the NSA would be so committed to making sure a program passed inspection. Especially one that had a fatal flaw that, when exploited properly, could be used to give someone who knew about it access to encrypted information. But of course, it’s not like the NSA has been known to invade people’s privacy, right? RIGHT?

Clearly, all there is at this point is speculation. One thing is certain though. In the coming weeks and months, the NSA is going to be the recipient of even more flak over its monitoring and cryptographic activities. Whether this effects any change in policy remains to be seen, but I doubt anyone will be holding their breaths.

Sources: wired.com, nytimes.com

3-D Printed Prosthetics: The Open Hand Project

Open_Hand3-D Printing has been a boon for a number of industries, offering a cheaper method of production and sending those savings onto the consumer. One such industry is prosthetics, which is taking advantage of the new technology to cheaply generate all the components needed to create robotic replacement limbs. And with the proliferation of models, amputees and accident victims have a range of options that was previously unimaginable.

The latest comes to us from Bristol in the UK, where the robotics company known as The Open Hand Project has developed a robot limb that is cheaply produced and can be purchased for under £650 (or roughly $1000 US). At this price, their prosthetic device – known as the Dextrus robot hand = is significantly cheaper than existing robotics technology.

Open_hand3Inventor Joel Gibbard first came up with the idea for the Dextrus robotic hand while studying Robotics at the University of Plymouth in 2011. He developed a prototype for his final-year project before leaving to work for National Instruments. After two years in the workplace, he left his job in March 2013 to launch the Open Hand Project, an open-source venture that aims to make robotic prosthetic hands accessible for people in the developing world.

Gibbard’s hand relies entirely on off-the-shelf DC motors with a spool on the end that connects to a steel “tendon” that can be tightened and loosened when the user wants to move their fingers. The outer casing is composed of 3D-printed plastic parts that act like bones while a rubber coating acts as the skin. The user can control the fingers using electomyographical signals picked up from the muscle in their arm using stick-on electrodes.

open_hand2As Gibbard explained in an interview with Wired magazine:

Each finger is individually actuated so you can grasp funny shaped objects. It’s not all that complicated. I’ve put a little tensioner in between each one so you have a bit of mechanical compliance. Even if an amputee has lost their hand, all of the muscles are still in the forearm and they can still flex them, so you can use that signal.

Already, the prosthesis was tested out by a chef named Liam Corbett, who lost his hand to meningitis two years ago and contacted Gibbard via Facebook when he heard about the Open Hand Project. According to Corbett, he was very impressed with the device and said that:

I think it’s certainly going to enable me to do the finer things in life which I certainly haven’t been able to do with a hook… I would be proud to wear this, it would make me feel more confident.

open_hand1Gibbard hopes to refine the design to cut down on the electrical noise it produces, and to develop specialized software to configure the electrodes to simplify the calibration process. Back in September, he opened up a crowdfunding campaign with Indiegogo to raise the necessary money. As of writing this article, he has surpassed his goal of £39,000 and raised a total of £41,065.

However, there is still four days left before the campaign closes. So if you want to donate, thus enabling GIbbard and his colleagues to refine the design further, simply click here and follow the prompts. And be sure to check out the Indiegogo video to see how the hand works:


Sources: wired.co.uk, indiegogo.com

The Future is Here: Carbon Nanotube Computers

carbon-nanotubeSilicon Valley is undergoing a major shift, one which may require it to rethink its name. This is thanks in no small part to the efforts of a team based at Stanford that is seeking to create the first basic computer built around carbon nanotubes rather than silicon chips. In addition to changing how computers are built, this is likely to extend the efficiency and performance.

What’s more, this change may deal a serious blow to the law of computing known as Moore’s Law. For decades now, the exponential acceleration of technology – which has taken us from room-size computers run by punched paper cards to handheld devices with far more computing power – has depended the ability to place more and more transistors onto an individual chip.

PPTMooresLawaiThe result of this ongoing trend in miniaturization has been devices that are becoming smaller, more powerful, and cheaper. The law used to describe this – though “basic rule” would be a more apt description – states that the number of transistors on a chip has been doubling every 18 months or so since the dawn of the information age. This is what is known as “Moore’s Law.”

However, this trend could be coming to an end, mainly because its becoming increasingly difficult, expensive and inefficient to keep jamming more tiny transistors on a chip. In addition, there are the inevitable physical limitations involved, as miniaturization can only go on for so long before its becomes unfeasible.

carbon_nanotubecomputerCarbon nanotubes, which are long chains of carbon atoms thousands of times thinner than a human hair, have the potential to be more energy-efficient and outperform computers made with silicon components. Using a technique that involved “burning” off and weeding out imperfections with an algorithm from the nanotube matrix, the team built a very basic computer with 178 transistors that can do tasks like counting and number sorting.

In a recent release from the university, Stanford professor Subhasish Mitra said:

People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics moving beyond silicon. But there have been few demonstrations of complete digital systems using this exciting technology. Here is the proof.

Naturally, this computer is more of a proof of concept than a working prototype. There are still a number of problems with the idea, such as the fact that nanotubes don’t always grow in straight lines and cannot always “switch off” like a regular transistor. The Stanford team’s computer’s also has limited power due to the limited facilities they had to work with, which did not have access to industrial fabrication tools.

carbon_nanotube2All told, their computer is only about as powerful as an Intel 4004, the first single-chip silicon microprocessor that was released in 1971. But given time, we can expect more sophisticated designs to emerge, especially if design teams have access to top of the line facilities to build prototypes.

And this research team is hardly alone in this regard. Last year, Silicon Valley giant IBM managed to create their own transistors using carbon nanotubes and also found that they outperformed the transistors made of silicon. What’s more, these transistors measured less than ten nanometers across, and were able to operated using very low voltage.

carbon_nanotube_transistorSimilarly, a research team from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois managed to create something very similar. In their case, this consisted of a logic gate – the fundamental circuit that all integrated circuits are based on – using carbon nanotubes to create transistors that operate in a CMOS-like architecture. And much like IBM and the Standford team’s transistors, it functioned at very low power levels.

What this demonstrated is that carbon nanotube transistors and other computer components are not only feasible, but are able to outperform transistors many times their size while using a fraction of the power. Hence, it is probably only a matter of time before a fully-functional computer is built – using carbon nanotube components – that will supersede silicon systems and throw Moore’s Law out the window.

Sources: news.cnet.com, (2), fastcolabs.com

The Future of Medicine: Anti-Bleeding Clamps

itclamp2For centuries, medics have been forced to deal with cuts and lacerations by simply binding up wounds with bandages and wraps. Time has led to refinements in this process, replacing cloth with sterile bandages. But the basic process has remained the same. But now, severe cuts and bleeding have a new enemy, thanks to a new breed of clamping devices.

One such device is the iTClamp Hemmorage Control System, which won an award for top innovation in 2012 and was recently approved by the FDA. Basically, this clamp is placed over an open wound and then controls bleeding by sealing the edges shut to temporarily create a pool of blood under pressure and thereby form a clot that helps reduce more blood loss until surgery.

itclampThis past summer, the clamp got its first field test on a man who fell prey to a chainsaw wound on his upper arm just outside of Olive Branch, Mississippi. The hospital air crew who arrived on scene quickly determined that a tourniquet would not work, but were able to stop the bleeding and stabilize the patient within minutes, at which point they transported him to the Regional Medical Center of Memphis.

The clamp was invented by Dennis Filips, who served three tours in Afghanistan as a trauma surgeon for the Canadian Navy. With the saving of a life in the US, he has watched what began as an idea turn into a dream come true:

To have our first human use in the US turn out so well is thrilling, and we look forward to getting the iTClamp into the hands of first responders across the country and around the world.

ITClamp3The clamp is currently being sold for around $100 via various distributors across the US, and it’s available in Canada and Europe as well. At that price it could very well end up being adopted not only by first responders, but climbers and other adventurers looking to beef up their first-aid kits — and maybe the cautious chainsaw wielders among us as well.

And be sure to check out this video simulation of the iTClamp in action:


Sources: news.cnet.com, theepochtimes.com

Dead in Space: Government Shutdown, NASA and Mars

marsAs the government shutdown goes into its second week, there is growing concern over how it is affecting crucial programs and services. And its certainly no secret that a number of federally-funded organizations are worried about how it will affect their long term goals. One such organization is NASA, who has seen much of its operations frozen while the US government attempts to work out its differences.

In addition to 97% of NASA’s 18,000 employees being off the job, its social media accounts and website going dark, and its television channel being shut down, activities ranging from commercial crew payouts, conferences, and awards and scholarship approvals are all being delayed as well. Luckily, certain exemptions are being made when it comes to crucial work on Mars.

NASA_mavenThese include the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter. Following two days of complete work stoppage, technicians working on the orbiter were granted an exemption and permitted to continue prepping it for launch. And not a moment too soon, seeing as how a continued shutdown would have caused the orbiter to miss its crucial launch window.

Designed to survey the Martian atmosphere while orbiting the planet, NASA hopes that MAVEN will provide some clues as to what became of the planet’s onetime atmosphere. MAVEN was been scheduled to blast off for the Red Planet on Nov.18 atop an Atlas V rocket from the Florida Space Coast until those plans were derailed by the start of the government shutdown that began at midnight, Oct. 1.

But as Prof. Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN’s chief scientist, stated in an interview just two days later:

We have already restarted spacecraft processing at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) today. [Today, we] determined that MAVEN meets the requirements allowing an emergency exception relative to the Anti-Deficiency Act.

Curiosity-roverAnother merciful exception to the shutdown has been the Curiosity Rover. Since contract workers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) oversee the rover’s mission, the Curiosity team is not subject to the same furloughs as other NASA employees. At JPL, the technicians and workers at the lab are employed by the California Institute of Technology, and are therefore able to keep the mission going.

However, the management at JPL and Cal Tech will continue to assess the situation on a weekly basis, and it’s possible the team may not remain completely intact in the event of a prolonged shutdown. This would be particularly detrimental for Curiosity since the Mars rover requires daily maintenance by scientists, engineers and programmers and cannot run on autopilot.

curiosity_sol-177-1As Veronica McGregor, a media relations manager at JPL, said in a recent interview:

Right now, things continue on as normal. Curiosity is one where they literally look at the data each day, sit down, create a plan, decide what science instrument is going to be used tomorrow, they write software for it and upload it. [It’s] is kind of a unique mission in that way.

Other programs running out JPL will also continue. These include the Opportunity and Odyssey rovers, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the HiRISE camera, Dawn, Juno, and Spitzer space probes, and the Voyager satellites, APL, MESSENGER, and New Horizons.  In addition, operations aboard the International Space Station will continue, but with the bare minimum of ground crew support.

cassini_spaceprobeRobotic missions that are already in operation – such as the Cassini spacecraft circling Saturn, or the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) winging its way to the moon – will have small crews making sure that they are functioning properly. However, no scientific analysis will be conducted during the shutdown period.

As the shutdown continues, updates on which programs are still in operation, which ones will need to be discontinued, and how they will be affected will continue to be made available. One can only hope the politically-inspired deadlock will not become a prolonged affair. It’s not just current programs that are being affected after all.

Consider the proposed 2030 manned mission to Mars, or the plans to tow an asteroid closer to Earth. I can’t imagine how awful it would be if they were delayed or mothballed due to budget constraints. Politics… bah!

Sources: universetoday.com, (2), mashable.com

News From Space: XS-1 Reusable Spacecraft

sx-1_spaceplaneWhen it comes to the future of space exploration, the ongoing challenge has been to find a way to bring down the costs associated with getting things into orbit. In recent years, a number of solutions have been presented, many of which have been proposed by private companies like SpaceX and Reaction Engines. Not to be outdone, the US government has its own proposal, known as the XS-1.

Developed by DARPA, the XS-1 is the latest in a string of designs for a reusable spacecraft that would be capable of taking off and landing from an airfield. But unlike its predecessors, this craft would be a two-stage craft that has no pilot and is controlled much like a drone. By combining these two innovations, DARPA foresees an age where a “one day turnaround,” or daily launches into space, would be possible.

skylon-orbit-reaction-enginesBasically, the XS-1 will work as a two-stage flyer, beginning as a regular high-altitude drone meant to fly as high as possible and reach hypersonic speed. Once this has been achieved, the payload will separate along with an expendable launch system with a small tank of rocket fuel which will then be automatically delivered to its final destination. The plane, meanwhile, will automatically return to base and begin prep for the next day’s mission.

In addition to being cheaper than rockets and space shuttles, an XS-1 space plane would also be much faster than NASA’s now-retired STS shuttles. Much like Reaction Engines Skylon concept, the ship is designed for hypersonic speeds, in this case up to Mach 10. While this might sound incredibly ambitious, NASA has already managed to achieve a top speed of Mach 9.8 with their X-43A experimental craft back in 2004 (albeit only for ten seconds).

x-43a The XS-1′s payload capacity should be around 2300 kilograms (5000 pounds) per mission, and DARPA estimates that a single launch would cost under $5 million. Currently, it costs about $20,000 to place a single kilo (2.2lbs) into geostationary orbit (GSO), and about half that for low-Earth orbit (LEO). So while DARPA’s requirements are certainly stringent, they would cut costs by a factor of ten and is within the realm of possibility.

As it stands, all ideas being forth are centered around reinventing the rocket to make launches cheaper. When it comes to long-term solutions, grander concepts like the space elevator, the slingatron, or space penetrators may become the norm. Regardless, many of the world’s greatest intellectual collectives have set their sights on finding a more affordable path into space. These advanced launch jets are just the first step of many.

Sources: extremetech.com, news.cnet.com