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The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), a Department of Defense (DOD) organization that accelerates commercial technology for national defense, announced the availability of five U.S.-manufactured drone configurations to provide trusted, secure small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) options to the U.S. Government. The announcement is the culmination of an 18-month effort with DIU’s initial work supporting the U.S. Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) program of record for sUAS. The SRR program is developing an inexpensive, rucksack-portable, vertical take-off and landing small unmanned aircraft that provides the small unit with a rapidly-deployed situational awareness tool. Small drones have been widely available in consumer...

How long can tiny gears and other microscopic moving parts last before they wear out? What are the warning signs that these components are about to fail, which can happen in just a few tenths of a second? [R]esearchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a method for more quickly tracking microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) as they work and, just as importantly, as they stop working. [U]sing this method for microscopic failure analysis, researchers and manufacturers could improve the reliability of the MEMS components that they are developing, ranging from miniature robots and drones to tiny...

Found this video on youtube, just had to share. Unbelievable skill. The guy turns a plain bolt into a miniature knife.

A PLANE passenger was booted off a flight because her rowdy emotional support PIG caused mayhem on board. The woman was given her marching orders after the havoc-wreaking hog began walking up and down the aisles. Even attempts to strap the farmyard animal to an arm rest failed. One shocked onlooker said the brown swine looked around five stone as it was tossed over the unidentified woman's shoulder and marched off.

At first glance, these rooms could easily be mistaken for museum snapshots, taken from various locations around the world. In fact, each one of these spectacular interior displays - from a 13th Century English Gothic church and a 16th Century French boudoir, to a range of 19th century American estates - could fit into a dollhouse. Painstakingly crafted by American artist Narcissa Niblack Thorne between the 1930s and her death in 1966, these are exceptionally detailed scale models - one-inch to one-foot - of real period rooms she had visited during her life. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2872170/Around-world-70-rooms-Incredible-miniature-models-offer-glimpse-extravagant-period-homes-13th-Century-Europe-20th-Century-America.html#ixzz3LpZ67bsr Follow us: @MailOnline on...

A few impressions of the new airport in section Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg. part 1

A brave 7-pound pooch trying to protect three little kids in his family was heartlessly slapped out a third-story window by a cop on a failed drug raid, a lawsuit charges. Chuwie, a miniature Doberman-Pomeranian mix, miraculously survived, but his owner says the family pet hasn’t been the same since. “How could a police officer do that to a tiny dog?’’ said Iris Ramos, whose son-in-law, Ronald Estevez, 27, owns Chuwie. The dog never tried to attack a cop -- all he did was bark, according to the family’s Bronx Civil Court lawsuit against the city and NYPD for unspecified...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Meat-eating dinosaurs the size of a small chicken roamed areas of North America 75 million years ago, according to research by Canadian paleontologists. The mini-dinosaur, similar in appearance to the Velociraptor, is named Hesperonychus elizabethae and is the smallest carnivorous dinosaur known to have lived in North America. "Hesperonychus is currently the smallest dinosaur known from North America," said University of Calgary paleontologist Nick Longrich. "Its discovery just emphasizes how little we actually know, and it raises the possibility that there are even smaller ones out there." Longrich, together with University of Alberta paleontologist Philip Currie, are...

We Freeper men love cars and our women, but we love our cars more (sarc). So, when they come and take your guns and other rights just relax, don't even stress, just engage yourself so fully in his new hobby you won't even notice, check it out. Chevy V8They're miniature but very real car engines, with photos that you can click on to make larger, and YouTube video's that show them running, very, very cool.

June 4, 2007 We've long been excited by the possibilities offered by wearable micro-screens. The ability to mount a miniature display in a set of glasses opens up a whole new portable video experience where any seat on the bus can be a personal movie theatre and you'll be able to enjoy your video in complete privacy. Now, with the anouncement of a volume manufacturing facility in Dresden, Germany, MicroEmissive Displays (MED) is ready to step beyond the prototype and bring commercial microscreens into the mass market. They'll start things off with mass production of the eyescreen ME3204, a 320...

LOS ANGELES – Astronomers peering through ground- and space-based telescopes have discovered what they believe is the birth of the smallest known solar system. Scientists found a tiny brown dwarf – or failed star – less than one hundredth the mass of the sun surrounded by what appears to be a disk of dust and gas. The brown dwarf – located 500 light years away in the constellation Chamaeleon – appears to be undergoing a planet-forming process that could one day yield a miniature solar system, said Kevin Luhman of Penn State University, who led the discovery. It's long believed...

SAN FRANCISCO: Two non-resident Indian scientists have created history by making the world's tiniest transistor entirely from carbon nanotubes. Nanotubes are rolled up sheets of carbon atoms and are more than a thousand times thinner than human hair. The discovery heralds a new era of ultra miniature electronics where standard silicon transistors are replaced with much smaller versions fashioned from carbon nanotubes. The new transistor is a Y-shaped nanotube with two branches that meet a central stem at a junction. The current flowing from one branch to another can be switched on and off by applying a voltage to the...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Mechanical engineers at Purdue University have new findings offering promise for modifying household refrigeration technology with small devices to cool future weapons systems and computer chips. The devices, called "micro-channel heat sinks," circulate coolant through numerous channels about three times the width of a human hair. Such devices might be attached directly to electronic components in military lasers, microwave radar and weapons systems, as well as in future computers that will generate more heat than present computers, said Issam Mudawar, a professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the research. The researchers are adapting refrigeration systems...

RAUL Hernandez, a Cuban rancher, claims to have bred a family pet that pays its way - a mini-cow about the size of an Alsatian dog. Although the same basic shape as any of the world’s famous breeds of cattle, such as Holstein or Aberdeen-Angus, those bred by Mr Hernandez are less than half the size. Standing about 23 inches (58 centimetres) to 28 inches (71 centimetres) tall, the mini-cows can be kept in a small area, graze simple grasses and weeds, and are, Mr Hernandez says, "a perfect source of milk for Cuban families". "They are patio cows -...

The Israel Defense Forces is equipping its forces with a new range of spy drones small enough to fit in a soldier's backpack, including one that weighs less than a can of soda, the army said Thursday The Israel Air Force has frequently used larger unmanned spy planes to track and target Palestinian militants during airstrikes. The new mini-drones would also give army forces in the field on-the-spot access to aerial intelligence. The small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) and the futuristic looking micro UAV's were displayed Thursday at a conference held by the army's Ground Force Command on low intensity...

Explorers View 'Lost City' Ruins Under Caribbean FROM REUTERS CUBA, Dec 8 (VNN) — Author: Andrew Cawthorne HAVANA (Reuters) - Explorers using a miniature submarine to probe the sea floor off the coast of Cuba said on Thursday they had confirmed the discovery of stone structures deep below the ocean surface that may have been built by an unknown human civilization thousands of years ago. Researchers with a Canadian exploration company said they filmed over the summer ruins of a possible submerged ''lost city'' off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on the Caribbean island's western tip. The researchers cautioned that they did...

MITEE - A Miniature Nuclear Propulsion Engine Chemical rockets have reached their limits. The hydrogen/oxygen chemical rocket can only deliver a specific impulse of about 450 seconds. The specific impulse is a measure of the thrust delivered by the rocket per unit mass of propellant consumed. Increasing the specific impulse to 1000 seconds, which is possible with Nuclear Thermal Propulsion, enables the spacecraft velocity to be over 2 times greater than that for a hydrogen/oxygen rocket, for the same mass of propellant consumed. Sidebar 1 compares the IMLEO (Initial Mass in Low Earth Orbit) for hydrogen/oxygen rockets with those for...