Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The first space-based hyperspectral imaging sensor built by San Francisco startup Orbital Sidekick, founded in 2016, literally went from the garage of CEO and co-founder Dan Katz to the International Space Station as an experiment for Air Force Research Laboratory. “That was a kick ass little sensor we … integrated in my garage in San Francisco, and then handed it off to SpaceX, which launched it. And then NASA, the astronauts, took it from the Dragon capsule and installed it,” Katz told Breaking Defense in an interview. Hyperspectral cameras break down pixels into hundreds of frequency bands and...

Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor Provides a PreviewWe are less than one week away from the release of the first full-color images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, but how does the observatory find and lock onto its targets? Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) – developed by the Canadian Space Agency – was designed with this particular question in mind. Recently it captured a view of stars and galaxies that provides a tantalizing glimpse at what the telescope’s science instruments will reveal in the coming weeks, months, and years. FGS has always been capable of capturing imagery, but its primary...

Wearable sensors are evolving from watches and electrodes to bendable devices that provide far more precise biometric measurements and comfort for users. Now, an international team of researchers has taken the evolution one step further by printing sensors directly on human skin without the use of heat. Led by Huanyu "Larry" Cheng, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor in the Penn State Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, the team published their results in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Cheng and his colleagues previously developed flexible printed circuit boards for use in wearable sensors, but printing directly on skin has been...

Army-funded research developed a new microwave radiation sensor with 100,000 times higher sensitivity than currently available commercial sensors. Researchers said better detection of microwave radiation will enable improved thermal imaging, electronic warfare, radio communications and radar. Researchers published their study in the peer-reviewed journal Nature. The team includes scientists from Harvard University, The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pohang University of Science and Technology, and Raytheon BBN Technologies. The Army, in part, funded the work to fabricate this bolometer by exploiting the giant thermal response of graphene to microwave radiation. “The microwave bolometer developed under this project...

This could help set up an underwater Internet of Things, according to MIT, which would allow for real-time sea temperature and marine life monitoring, without requiring regular equipment and power swaps to make it work. Without that requirement, it would even be possible to set up networks of underwater sensors in the seas of distant planets. The system, devised by MIT researchers, uses a transmitter that sends out sound waves underwater, which then hit sensors with embedded receivers, transmitting a tiny amount of energy in the process. The sensor then either uses that energy to answer back — or doesn’t,...

It's fair to assume that question was on the minds of many people who traveled along Colo. 128 south of Boulder this week if they happened to catch a glimpse of what appeared to be a large, silver projectile perched alongside the highway and pointed north toward town.

The speed limit on Kelly Drive near Fountain Green Drive is 35 mph, but the average speed of motorists is nearly 55. In an attempt to slow everybody down, the city has installed sensors in the roadway that determine the speed of vehicles approaching Fountain Green, about a half-mile north of the Girard Avenue Bridge. If a vehicle passes the sensor going above the speed limit, the light at Fountain Green turns red. … In another safety measure, the city will add a nonslip surface on Kelly Drive next year to help reduce accidents on rainy days, (acting Streets Commissioner...

Cameras fitted with a new revolutionary sensor will soon be able to take clear and sharp photos in dim conditions, thanks to a new image sensor invented at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The new sensor made from graphene, is believed to be the first to be able to detect broad spectrum light, from the visible to mid-infrared, with high photoresponse or sensitivity. This means it is suitable for use in all types of cameras, including infrared cameras, traffic speed cameras, satellite imaging and more. Not only is the graphene sensor 1,000 times more sensitive to light than current imaging sensors...

We tend not to get too excited about sensor dust problems at LensRentals; we clean sensors on every camera after every rental, so it’s just routine. When we started carrying the Nikon D600, they all arrived with a fair amount of dust, but that’s pretty routine, too. Manufacturing and shipping can be a dusty experience. When our techs started complaining that D600s were all coming back from their first rental with a lot more dust (despite being freshly cleaned before leaving) we didn’t pay much attention to that either. We all remember the oil/dust issues the D3x and D3s had....

The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.

The United States, land of the free, home of the brave…..unless you’re a Comedy Central executive. They are not free to publish what they wish because they are not brave enough to resist those that are trying to suppress their freedom. What I am referring to is the threats received by Comedy Central regarding the controversial cartoon South Park. The 200th episode of “South Park” included a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad disguised in a bear suit. A Muslim radical named Zachary Adam Chesser, who now goes by the name Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, posted a warning on the website RevolutionMuslim.com...

Remember when the swine flu panic began to build ? The day after President Obama urged the flu-worried masses to stay calm, Joe Biden went rogue announcing he has urged family members to avoid airplanes and subways. Biden, told NBC's "Today" show that he'd tell family members to avoid traveling in "confined spaces." "It's not just going to Mexico. If you're any place in a confined aircraft and one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft. That's me. I would not be, at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway."...

I've tried searching Google multiple times, and I guess I'm not using the right words, because I can't seem to find the answer I'm looking for. I turn to you (all) for wisdom. I have two floodlights (same electrical circuit) on the back of my house that I have added motion sensors to for security. (My house backs up to the woods). The problem I'm having is that even though they have their own sensor, when one gets tripped (on), so does the other, and then they both stay on. I am sure that the surge created when one goes...

Today, Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) researcher Martin Nweeia, DMD, DDS, answers a marine science question that has eluded the scientific community for hundreds of years: why does the narwhal, or “unicorn,” whale have an 8-foot-long tooth emerging from its head, and what is its function? Nweeia, a clinical instructor in restorative dentistry and biomaterials sciences at HSDM, will be presenting his conclusions at the 16th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in San Diego. The narwhal has a tooth, or tusk, which emerges from the left side of the upper jaw and is an evolutionary mystery...

U.S. Banks on Technology in Revised Military Plan for a Possible North Korea ConflictBy THOM SHANKER Published: August 29, 2005 CAMP CASEY, South Korea - American commanders are making significant changes in their plans in the event of a military conflict with North Korea, to rely in large measure on a new generation of sensors, smart bombs and high-speed transport ships to deter and, if necessary, counter that unpredictable dictatorship, the senior United States commander in South Korea says. The shift in strategy is being undertaken even as the United States cuts the number of troops here by one-third and...

LOS ANGELES - A major transmission line feeding electricity to millions of Southern California customers shut itself off because of a faulty sensor, triggering scattered blackouts in the middle of a heat wave, officials said Friday. The Thursday afternoon outages, lasting about 30 minutes, affected about 500,000 Southern California Edison customers in several communities east and south of Los Angeles. "There was an oil flow alarm that went off," said Carol Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which co-owns the transmission line. "Upon checking into it, we determined that there was no problem with...

NASA officials think they have found the source of the problem that delayed the launch of space shuttle Discovery, and if they can fix the glitch in time, they could launch on Tuesday, 26 July. A launch attempt on 13 July was called off when one of the four hydrogen fuel sensors at the bottom of the external tank failed a pre-launch test. These sensors read “wet” or “dry” to indicate whether there is fuel near the bottom of the tank, and trigger engine cut-off when the tank is empty. Since then, hundreds of engineers around the US have tried...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - NASA said on Friday it would be at least late next week before the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia accident can be launched, after Discovery's liftoff was postponed two days ago because of a fuel sensor problem. "The simple things did not provide us any resolution to the problem," said deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale. The sensors are designed to shut off the shuttle's three main engines before fuel runs out to avoid damaging them. A premature shutdown could force a shuttle to make an emergency landing or prevent it from reaching...

Just think how eerie it would be, yet also how peaceful - people all around having conversations on their mobile phones, but without uttering a sound. Thanks to some military research, this social nirvana just might come true. DARPA, the US Department of Defense's research agency, is working on a project known as Advanced Speech Encoding, aimed at replacing microphones with non-acoustic sensors that detect speech via the speaker's nerve and muscle activity, rather than sound itself. One system, being developed for DARPA by Rick Brown of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, relies on a sensor worn around the neck...

In 1970s a publishing house approached author Ray Bradbury asking to reprint his short story, “A Fog Horn,” for a high-school textbook. Bradbury refused upon learning that the editor of the reader deleted two phrases from the story: “in the Presence” and “God-Light.” This particular incident prompted Bradbury to add a coda to his most well-known work, Fahrenheit 451, in which he wrote: There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist,...