For many reasons this was the best page you have sent in a long time, but I still would like more info & discussion of Israelis nuclear weapons production systems running concurrent with propaganda that obfuscates the possibility all nations have the same right to any weapons they wish to maintain there sovrignity...
Israel's Nuclear Program - Dimona Facility in Negev Desert
UPDATE !! Breaking News : Former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu has been freed after spending nearly 18 years in jail for leaking atomic weapons secrets. Vanunu was released from Shikma prison in Ashkelon after completing his sentence for treason. He is not allowed to have a passport, is forbidden to approach ports and airports, and has been told not to talk to foreigners without permission. Read here for more Transcribed from Website of Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
In 1949, HEMED GIMMEL a special unit of the IDF's Science Corps, began a two-year geological survey of the Negev desert with an eye toward the discovery of uranium reserves. Although no significant sources of uranium were found, recoverable amounts were located in phosphate deposits.
The program took another step forward with the creation of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) in 1952. Its chairman, Ernst David Bergmann, had long advocated an Israeli bomb as the best way to ensure "that we shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter." Bergmann was also head of the Ministry of Defense's Research and Infrastructure Division (known by its Hebrew acronym, EMET), which had taken over the HEMED research centers (HEMED GIMMEL among them, now renamed Machon 4) as part of a reorganization. Under Bergmann, the line between the IAEC and EMET blurred to the point that Machon 4 functioned essentially as the chief laboratory for the IAEC.
By 1953, Machon 4 had not only perfected a process for extracting the uranium found in the Negev, but had also developed a new method of producing heavy water, providing Israel with an indigenous capability to produce some of the most important nuclear materials. For reactor design and construction, Israel sought the assistance of France. Nuclear cooperation between the two nations dates back as far as early 1950's, when construction began on France's 40MWt heavy water reactor and a chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule. France was a natural partner for Israel and both governments saw an independent nuclear option as a means by which they could maintain a degree of autonomy in the bipolar environment of the cold war. In the fall of 1956, France agreed to provide Israel with an 18 MWt research reactor. However, the onset of the Suez Crisis a few weeks later changed the situation dramatically.
Following Egypt's closure of the Suez Canal in July, France and Britain had agreed with Israel that the latter should provoke a war with Egypt to provide the European nations with the pretext to send in their troops as peacekeepers to occupy and reopen the canal zone. In the wake of the Suez Crisis, the Soviet Union made a thinly veiled threat against the three nations.
This episode not only enhanced the Israeli view that an independent nuclear capability was needed to prevent reliance on potentially unreliable allies, but also led to a sense of debt among French leaders that they had failed to fulfill commitments made to a partner. French premier Guy Mollet is even quoted as saying privately that France "owed" the bomb to Israel.
On 3 October 1957, France and Israel signed a revised agreement calling for France to build a 24 MWt reactor (although the cooling systems and waste facilities were designed to handle three times that power) and, in protocols that were not committed to paper, a chemical reprocessing plant.
This complex was constructed in secret, and outside the IAEA inspection regime, by French and Israeli technicians at Dimona, in the Negev desert under the leadership of Col. Manes Pratt of the IDF Ordinance Corps.
A satellite photo of Dimona. Red squares indicate the development of the nuclear reactor over the past 30 years Both the scale of the project and the secrecy involved made the construction of Dimona a massive undertaking.
A new intelligence agency, the Office of Science Liasons,(LEKEM) was created to provide security and intelligence for the project. At the height construction, some 1,500 Israelis some French workers were employed building Dimona.
To maintain secrecy, French customs officials were told that the largest of the reactor components, such as the reactor tank, were part of a desalinization plant bound for Latin America.
In addition, after buying heavy water from Norway on the condition that it not be transferred to a third country, the French Air Force secretly flew as much as four tons of the substance to Israel.
Trouble arose in May 1960, when France began to pressure Israel to make the project public and to submit to international inspections of the site, threatening to withhold the reactor fuel unless they did. President de Gaulle was concerned that the inevitable scandal following any revelations about French assistance with the project, especially the chemical reprocessing plant, would have negative repercussions for France's international position, already on shaky ground because of its war in Algeria. At a subsequent meeting with Ben-Gurion, de Gaulle offered to sell Israel fighter aircraft in exchange for stopping work on the reprocessing plant, and came away from the meeting convinced that the matter was closed. It was not. Over the next few months, Israel worked out a compromise. France would supply the uranium and components already placed on order and would not insist on international inspections.
In return, Israel would assure France that they had no intention of making atomic weapons, would not reprocess any plutonium, and would reveal the existence of the reactor, which would be completed without French assistance.
In reality, not much changed - French contractors finished work on the reactor and reprocessing plant, uranium fuel was delivered and the reactor went critical in 1964.
The Dimona reactor.
The United States first became aware of Dimona's existence after U-2 overflights in 1958 captured the facility's construction, but it was not identified as a nuclear site until two years later. The complex was variously explained as a textile plant, an agricultural station, and a metallurgical research facility, until David Ben-Gurion stated in December 1960 that Dimona complex was a nuclear research center built for "peaceful purposes."
There followed two decades in which the United States, through a combination of benign neglect, erroneous analysis, and successful Israeli deception, failed to discern first the details of Israel's nuclear program.
As early as 8 December 1960, the CIA issued a report outlining Dimona's implications for nuclear proliferation, and the CIA station in Tel Aviv had determined by the mid-1960s that the Israeli nuclear weapons program was an established and irreversible fact. United States inspectors visited Dimona seven times during the 1960s, but they were unable to obtain an accurate picture of the activities carried out there, largely due to tight Israeli control over the timing and agenda of the visits. The Israelis went so far as to install false control room panels and to brick over elevators and hallways that accessed certain areas of the facility.
The inspectors were able to report that there was no clear scientific research or civilian nuclear power program justifying such a large reactor - circumstantial evidence of the Israeli bomb program - but found no evidence of "weapons related activities" such as the existence of a plutonium reprocessing plant.
Although the United States government did not encourage or approve of the Israeli nuclear program, it also did nothing to stop it. Walworth Barbour, US ambassador to Israel from 1961-73, the bomb program's crucial years, primarily saw his job as being to insulate the President from facts which might compel him to act on the nuclear issue, alledgedly saying at one point that "The President did not send me there to give him problems. He does not want to be told any bad news."
After the 1967 war, Barbour even put a stop to military attachés' intelligence collection efforts around Dimona.
Even when Barbour did authorize forwarding information, as he did in 1966 when embassy staff learned that Israel was beginning to put nuclear warheads in missiles, the message seemed to disappear into the bureaucracy and was never acted upon.
(Note: Today there is a American International School near Yovel in Israel established with the assistance of the American Embassy and State Department in 1958 renamed Walworth Barbour American International School)
In early 1968, the CIA issued a report concluding that Israel had successfully started production of uclear weapons. This estimate, however, was based on an informal conversation between Carl Duckett, head of the CIA's Office of Science and Technology, and Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. Teller said that, based on conversations with friends in the Israeli scientific and defense establishment, he had concluded that Israel was capable of building the bomb, and that the CIA should not wait for an Israeli test to make a final assessment because that test would never be carried out.
CIA estimates of the Israeli arsenal's size did not improve with time.
In 1974, Duckett estimated that Israel had between ten and twenty nuclear weapons. The upper bound was derived from CIA speculation regarding the number of possible Israeli targets, and not from any specific intelligence. Because this target list was presumed to be relatively static, this remained the official American estimate until the early 1980s. The actual size and composition of Israel's nuclear stockpile is uncertain, and is the subject of various estimates and reports. It is widely reported that Israel had two bombs in 1967, and that Prime Minister Eshkol ordered them armed in Israel's first nuclear alert during the Six-Day War.
It is also reported that, fearing defeat in the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israelis assembled 13 twenty-kiloton atomic bombs. Israel could potentially have produced a few dozen nuclear warheads in the period 1970-1980, and might have possessed 100 to 200 warheads by the mid-1990s.
In 1986 descriptions and photographs of Israeli nuclear warheads were published in the London Sunday Times of a purported underground bomb factory. The photographs were taken by Mordechai Vanunu, a dismissed Israeli nuclear technician. His information led some experts to conclude that Israel had a stockpile of 100 to 200 nuclear devices at that time.
By the late 1990s the U.S. Intelligence Community estimated that Israel possessed between 75-130 weapons, based on production estimates. The stockpile would certainly include warheads for mobile Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 missiles, as well as bombs for Israeli aircraft, and may include other tactical nuclear weapons of various types.
The Dimona nuclear reactor is the source of plutonium for Israeli nuclear weapons, and the number of nuclear weapons that could have been produced by Israel can be estimated on the basis of the power level of this reactor. Information made public in 1986 by Mordechai Vanunu indicated that at that time, weapons grade plutonium was being produced at a rate of about 40 kilograms annually. If this figure corresponded with the steady-state capacity of the entire Dimona facility, analysts suggested that the reactor might have a power level of at least 150 megawatts, about twice the power level at which is was believed to be operating around 1970. To accomodate this higher power level, analysts had suggested that Israel had constructed an enlarged cooling system.
An alternative interpretation of the information supplied by Vanunu was that the reactor's power level had remained at about 75 megawatts, and that the production rate of plutonium in the early 1980s reflected a backlog of previously generated material. The upper and lower plausible limits on Israel's stockpile may be bounded by considering several variables, several of which are generic to any nuclear weapons program. The reactor may have operated an average of between 200 and 300 days annually, and produced approximately 0.9 to 1.0 grams of plutonium for each thermal megawatt day. Israel may use between 4 and 5 kilograms of plutonium per weapon [5 kilograms is a conservative estimate, and Vanunu reported that Israeli weapons used 4 kg].
A plutonium separation plant's control room,with equipment recognizable by nuclear scientists as part of a nuclear weapons production facility. Dimona Nuclear Weapons Facility Machon 2, Negrev Desert, Israel The key variable that is specific to Israel is the power level of the reactor, which is variously reported to be at least 75 MWt and possibly as high as 200 MWt. New high-resolution satellite imagery provides important insight this matter. The imagery of the Dimona nuclear reactor was acquired by the Public Eye Project of the Federation of American Scientists from Space Imaging Corporation's IKONOS satellite.
The cooling towers associated with the Dimona reactor are clearly visible and identifiable in satellite imagery.
Comparison of recently acquired commercial IKONOS imagery with declassified American CORONA reconnaissance satellite imagery indicates that no new cooling towers were constructed in the years between 1971 and 2000. This strongly suggests that the reactor's power level has not been increased significantly during this period. This would suggest an annual production rate of plutonium of about 20 kilograms.
Based on plausible upper and lower bounds of the operating practices at the reactor, Israel could have thus produced enough plutonium for at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not significantly more than 200 weapons.
Some type of non-nuclear test, perhaps a zero yield or implosion test, occurred on 2 November 1966 [possibly at Al-Naqab in the Negev].
There is no evidence that Israel has ever carried out a nuclear test, although many observers speculated that a suspected nuclear explosion in the southern Indian Ocean in 1979 was a joint South African-Israeli test.
Still no discussion of Israel's nuclear-weapons production systems running - Google Images
Selective Vision: Iran, Israel and Nuclear Arms Mar 17, 2009 ... There is no in-depth reporting or analysis of Israel`s hugely ...Worse still, Amnesty had this to say on the claim that rockets have been ... Estimates for Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile range from 70 to 400 warheads. ... Where is the in-depth discussion that Israel might have a reason to ... http://www.mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=618722 -
Israel 21C Beyond the Conflict News Service Issues #425 Week of September 2, 2009
Israeli company sends gas reserves into the deep An Israeli company is developing an underwater technique for storing highly volatile petroleum gases in an effort to prevent accidents and terror attacks.
TODAY'S VIDEO-ONLY NEWS FEATURE Last year, he came second in the World Championship for remote control helicopter pilots. Now, aged nine, Israeli Alon Barak is going for the title again.
Using the power of light to deliver sound When they needed a non-electrical, state-of-the-art device to facilitate communication in the MRI room, top US companies turned to Israel for the solution.
A solar-powered Comet lights up Palestinian homes Israeli project COMET is bringing electricity to off-grid Palestinian communities, sending a clear message that Israeli-Palestinian cooperation can work.
As it succeeds in bringing electricity to off-grid Palestinian communities, the Israeli COMET project sends a clear message that Israeli-Palestinian cooperation can work.
When they needed a non-electrical, state-of-the-art device to facilitate communication in the MRI room, top US companies turned to Israel for the solution.
Israel's one chip solution Bid farewell to communications towers, antennas and tangles of wires. A new silicon chip from Israel can provide all your connectivity solutions in one tidy box.
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a ... History - Definition and types - Acquisition - Justifications en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty - Cached - Similar
Sovereignty, though its meanings have varied across history, also has a core meaning, supreme authority within a territory. ... plato.stanford.edu/entries/sovereignty/ - Similar by D Philpott - 2009 - Cited by 41 - Related articles - All 3 versions
Sovereignty in government is that public authority which directs or orders what is to be done by each member associated in relation to the end of the ... www.hawaii-nation.org/sovereignty.html - Cached - Similar
Sovereignty International, Inc., focuses on threats to national sovereignty in public policies, international treaties and agreements, and in educational ... sovereignty.net/ - Cached - Similar
Raw@man Says" Yes I can design a superior device price weight etc. and off the shelf... remember "flying fence " and "cop cam", I trade you your do cop cam & I'll give you the plane at cost if you still need it after cost. see this cheese...
Ask any scientist (even your High school science teacher) all of the real questions about the American goals in space. Many of us never question the most basic of the so called space mission issues like fuel wasted for ethnic ego. Question:
#1. What is the total absolute number of human beings that will ever be able to live in "space or off this planet ?
#2 What is the total amount in money, fuel, food what ever of the Innumerable materials required to maintain that life . #3 How much time will it take to place our resources wherever?
Based on Fuel and Weight costs what is the total cost of the maximum number of humans that can ever be deployed ( in any possible future ) in permanent habitat in living quarters off earth in outer space or on a moon or a " better planet " ?
#4 What does that mean to majority of human beings left on earth with less resources and no means of "escape"?
Brasscheck TV Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:18 UTC Earlier this year, we posted a video called the "9/11 Solution." After a huge run up a viewers it was removed from Google Video three days later. I tried to post it to YouTube and it was rejected by YouTube too. I appealed to subscribers to repost the video on as many sites as possible. Someone re-posted the video to YouTube Canada and surprisingly it stuck. The result? So far 585,567 views which makes it one of the most viewed News videos on YouTube Canada of all time. Currently, this video is the most discussed new video on YouTube Canada of all time. On YouTube Canada the video is called: "Here's the video that Google Video pulled down!"
This video is an important companion piece to the video that I call "Inside Job" (see the Brasscheck TV archive.) "Inside Job" shows that thousands of eye witnesses and millions of live TV viewers heard and heard about MULTIPLE explosions in the Twin Towers that preceded their sudden and inexplicable collapse.
"The 9/11 Solution" shows that even as the World Trade Center was burning and immediately after the collapses, a stream of disinformation laying down the key official 9/11 myths was being actively being put in place via the US mass media (i.e. the impact of the planes weakened the structures, the "intense" fires caused the collapses, Bin Laden was the only possible suspect.)
Police officers in Orange County, New York are having their guns fitted with pistol cameras, which show the view of the barrel and target. When an officer removes the gun from its holster, it starts recording. The resulting video will help justify lawful shootings, as well as aid in disciplining officers responsible for wrongful shots. If nothing else, this new arrival should provide for some pretty interesting Youtube footage.
Please note I was unaware of the Philadelphia tragedy at the time of initial commentary.
http://www.therawfeed.com/2007/10/pistol-cam-offers-police-gun-barrel.html Orange County, New York, Sheriffs and also cops with the nearby Newburgh Police Department plan to start field-testing PISTOL CAMS -- cameras mounted on the barrels of their guns. When an officer pulls the gun from its holster, the camera starts videotaping. Police are hoping the cameras will help either prove that shooting perps was justified, or help discipline officers that shoot unlawfully.
It remains to be seen whether the powerful pro-police and conservative law and oeder groups will allow such "civilian: oversight of police use of deadly force. Having known numerous cops and lawyers , and some judges and their interns over the years, I see a lot of trouble convincing more than a small plurality of legislators and , even voters, to allow this. All the Right Wing will collect to back police officers even to the pint where it is obvious they are using defeat of such laws to allow them to continue to commit criminal behavior. Most cops would have been criminals but they didn't catch them in time. As a result, we have the same people acting as police who the police arrest and incarcerate. I am not sanguine about the possibility that any police ever will caught doing anything they have to fear for.
Monday, July 06, 2009 9:51:00 PM
6/04/2009 Permalink Small flying fully autonomous military surveillance bot
Wasp is a hand-launched, recoverable flying-wing UAV, which uses synthetic materials that act both as a battery and as main wing structure. It is waterproof, weighs only one pound and is recovered automatically by a horizontal landing on land or water. The UAV can fly for up to an hour, and is equipped with a GPS-based navigation system for fully autonomous missions. However, it can also be manually flown via the same remote control equipment, which is also used by other AeroVironment mini-UAVs, e.g. the FQM-151 Pointer, RQ-11 Raven, Puma and RQ-14 Swift. The Wasp's payload consists of forward and side-looking miniature EO (Electro-Optical) video cameras. Its typical mission altitude is 15-300 m (50-1000 ft) above ground, where it is very hard to detect because of its small size and very low noise level. Labels: Bots
- - - - - - - - - 6/02/2009 Permalink The Coming Urban Terror - systems disruption, networked gangs, and bio-weapons
2009 is the year, researchers estimate, that humanity crossed over, with more of us now living in cities than in rural areas. Unfortunately, living in cities may prove to be incompatible with the super-empowerment of individuals and small groups offered by new technologies like smart machines, networks and genetic manipulation. Some comments worth thinking about: Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states. But the underlying processes of globalization have made us exceedingly vulnerable to nonstate enemies. The mechanisms of power and control that states once exerted will continue to weaken as global interconnectivity increases. Small groups of terrorists can already attack deep within any state, riding on the highways of interconnectivity, unconcerned about our porous borders and our nation-state militaries. These terrorists likeliest point of origin, and their likeliest destination, is the city.
The first, and most general, standing order of any modern insurgency is simple...break networks... the only caveat being: avoid breaking communications networks. These networks are small group enablers/catalysts, and enable the spread of social contagion virally.
All insurgent groups, regardless of their motivation, are allies by default. Every group that joins the insurgency, makes it stronger, even if it is ideologically antagonistic. Most bio-terror experts seem to believe that a single clever microbiologist could probably already mod a virus to wipe out much of the population of a city and the technology for doing mods of this kind improves with each passing day. As we have seen recently in a number of cities, such concentrations of people, make attractive terror targets. Until we learn more about the shape of the threat matrix created by the amazing wave of smart bot, nano, bio, and cloud technologies sweeping in on us today, choosing to live outside the large cities might prove to be a wise decision. Labels: Bots, Cloud, Nano, Next
- - - - - - - - - 6/02/2009 Permalink Farmers can sleep-in as autonomous tractor-bots harvest their crops ... Technologies developed for DARPA's autonomous vehicle grand challenge are now allowing bots to plant and harvest farmer's crops. Labels: Bots
- - - - - - - - - [What a Sad Pseudo Science Fantasy no wonder we kill more than we heal and poison ourselves with pesticides . Then they're not farmer Just farm owner land hogs and besides farming will be obsolesced by urban greenhouse LED' solar farms mot mega death wimp fantasies real hands on real Green Grosser growers no shipping fuel costs no murderous suicidal pesticides no Cancerous run off no more monopoly price gouging war mongers manulipating prices of so-called super grains and HFCS and super artificial toxic waste no bags boxes bottles trucks cad save fuel the air will be cleaner think clean. not just pseudo green bull shit, fuck war.]
The Solar Human Hybrid is a street-legal quadricycle with a solar-powered electric motor to help you along, room for three friends to join you in the fun and even a spot for groceries and your dog. Best of all, it was built by an eighth-grader who’s willing to show you how to make one yourself.Fourteen-year-old David Dixon of Novato, Calif., built the Solar Human Hybrid (SOHH) for a middle school project. He started with a ZEM (Zero Emission Machine), a four-person quadricycle built in Sweden Switzerland.He and his father David Dixon Sr. added some solar panels and an electric motor and - voila! - a solar-human hybrid.“[The SOHH] has replaced our cars for errands around town, and it has grown into more than we envisioned with a lot of interest from the community,” David Dixon Sr. told Wired.com. Continue Reading “Homemade Solar Quadricycle With Room For The Dog” »
Raw@man Says" Yes I can design a superior device price weight etc. and off the shelf... remember "flying fence " and "cop cam", I trade you your do cop cam & I'll give you the plane at cost if you still need it after cost. see this cheese...
Carbon Nanotube Artificial Muscles for Extreme Temperatures
Invented at UT Dallas Super-Fast, Strong Artificial Muscles
Exploiting a Strange State of Matter
March 20, 2009
"That stuff may be very useful for solar sail solar satellite" or a DYI UAV. You have seen the Flexible Photocell think of it as a formed wing ultra light with poly batteries and a high speed super strong DC motor so it all the parts run on sun power and store electricity in a flat ultra light polymer battery for later would make a nifty WY-FI net work to replace Nasa Super-satilites with lo flyers don't need to fly all the time they just expand the hub parameters as people subscribe. They can nest in trees hang onto rock cliffs with climbers researchers campers farmland can be remote sensor packages insect pests can be battled or monitored...
Wasp is a hand-launched, recoverable flying-wing UAV, which uses synthetic materials that act both as a battery and as main wing structure. It is waterproof, weighs only one pound and is recovered automatically by a horizontal landing on land or water. The UAV can fly for up to an hour, and is equipped with a GPS-based navigation system for fully autonomous missions. However, it can also be manually flown via the same remote control equipment, which is also used by other AeroVironment mini-UAVs, e.g. the FQM-151 Pointer, RQ-11 Raven, Puma and RQ-14 Swift. The Wasp's payload consists of forward and side-looking miniature EO (Electro-Optical) video cameras. Its typical mission altitude is 15-300 m (50-1000 ft) above ground, where it is very hard to detect because of its small size and very low noise level.
Chris writes - “Here are cool electric planes made from $4.00 Wal-Mart toy planes. The best plane for the money and easy to build, check out the gallery to see how many have been built.” - Link.
The researchers are tuning the strength of the laser so that it kills mosquitoes without harming other insects or, especially, people. The bot can even distinguish between males and females mosquitoes by the frequency of their wing movements, which may be important since only females spread the parasite.... MORE
BELLEVUE, Wash. -- A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists proposed the "Star Wars" defense system to knock Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito.
In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light.
The insects survived this particular test, which used a non-lethal laser. But if these researchers have their way, the Cold War missile-defense strategy will be reborn as a WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction.
Weapons of Mosquito Destruction
A new global arms race is escalating: the one to protect us from the mosquito.
"We'd be delighted if we destabilize the human-mosquito balance of power," says Jordin Kare, an astrophysicist who once worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the birthplace of some of the deadliest weapons known to man. More recently he worked on the mosquito laser, built from parts bought on eBay.
The scientists' actual target is malaria, which is caused by a parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people. Ended in the U.S. decades ago, malaria remains a major global public-health threat, killing about 1 million people annually.
Efforts to eradicate the disease languished for years until recently.
Big-money donors like Bill Gates, the United Nations, the U.K. and non-profit such as Malaria No More re-launched the war on malaria, devoting billions of dollars to vaccines, methods of prevention and novel ways to kill mosquitoes.
"You can say we are very lucky -- the right place at the right time," says astrophysicist Szabolcs Márka, a Columbia University specialist in black holes. He has a grant to develop a "mosquito flashlight" designed to knock out the bugs' eye-like sensors.
More
Scientists around the world are testing ways of thwarting mosquitoes with microwaves, rancid odors, poisoned blood and other weapons that disrupt the sense of sight, smell and heat mosquitoes use to find their prey.
There's work on genetically altering a bacterium to infect and kill a mosquito, and a project to build a malaria-free mosquito genetically enhanced to overtake the natural kind.
There's also a researcher in Japan who thinks mosquitoes can be a force for good. He is working on transforming them into "flying syringes" that deliver vaccines with every bite.
The mosquito laser is the brainchild of Lowell Wood, an astrophysicist who worked with Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and architect of the original plan to use lasers to shield America from the rain of Soviet nuclear arms.
A mosquito
President Ronald Reagan embraced the idea in the 1980s, dubbing it the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Senator Edward Kennedy mocked it as "Star Wars." Eventually it became a footnote in history.
Its rebirth as a bug killer came thanks to Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who now runs Intellectual Ventures LLC., a company that collects patents and funds inventions. His old boss, Mr. Gates, had asked him to explore new ways of combating malaria. At a brainstorming session in 2007, Dr. Wood, the Star Wars architect, suggested using lasers on mosquitoes.
Soon Dr. Wood, Dr. Kare and another Star Wars scientist teamed with an entomologist with a Ph.D in mosquito behavior and other experts. They killed their first mosquito with a hand-held laser in early 2008.
"We like to think back then we made some contribution to the ending of the Cold War" with the Star Wars program, Dr. Kare says. "Now we're just trying to make a dent in a war that's actually gone on a lot longer and claimed a lot more lives."
The scientists envision their technology might one day be used to draw a laser barrier around a house or village that could kill or blind the bugs. Or, laser-equipped drone aircraft could track bugs by radar, sweeping the sky with death-dealing photons.
They now face one big challenge: deciding how strong to make the weapon. The laser has to be weak enough to not harm humans and smart enough to avoid hitting useful bugs. "You could kill billions of mosquitoes a night, and you could do so without harming butterflies," says Mr. Myhrvold.
Demonstrating the technology recently, Dr. Kare, Mr. Myhrvold and other researchers stood below a small shelf mounted on the wall about 10 feet off the ground. On the shelf were five Maglite flashlights, a zoom lens from a 35mm camera, and the laser itself -- a little black box with an assortment of small lenses and mirrors. On the floor below sat a Dell personal computer that is the laser's brain.
The glass box of mosquitoes across the room is an old 10-gallon fish tank. Each time a beam strikes a bug, the computer makes a gunshot sound to signal a direct hit.
To locate individual mosquitoes, light from the flashlights hits the tank across the room, creating tiny mosquito silhouettes on reflective material behind it. The zoom lens picks up the shadows and feeds the data to the computer, which controls the laser and fires it at the bug.
In a video, researchers showed what happens when they deploy deadly rays.
A mosquito hovers into view. Suddenly, it bursts into flame. A thin plume of smoke rises as the mosquito falls. At the bottom of the screen, the carcass smolders.
There's ready supply of fresh recruits nearby, where an intern feeds a saucer of goat blood to a colony of Anopheles stephensi, one species of mosquito that transmits malaria.
Not only can the laser target a mosquito, it can also tell a male from a female based on wing-beat.
That's a crucial distinction, since only females feed on blood and thus transmit disease. Males in the wild eat sugary plant nectar. (In the lab they get raisins.)
"If you really were a purist, you could only kill the females, not the males," Mr. Myhrvold says. But since they're mosquitoes, he says, he'll probably "just slay them all."
Bob posted up a follow up to the previous PCB post - his photo resist PCB process - “Don’t be scared away with this method. It’s easy! The only thing I do different is I use regular ordinary fluorescent lights ($8.00 at WalMart for a small fixture with bulb). Exposure times go from 90 seconds to 10 minutes but it works just the same. I don’t have much in the way of descriptions but I have pictures of every step I use here” - Link.
Weconway wasn’t allow to have a BBQ at his condo, so he made a DIY smoker - “The bottom pot is a 14″ terra cotta pot from Wal-Mart. The hot plate inside was an all-metal 1500W unit I bought on E-bay. The Char-Broil grill thermometer and 13.5″ smoker grate came from Home Depot. I got an el cheapo steel pie plate (holding the burnt hickory chips) from a local housewares place. The hardest part was finding the shallow pot for the top (I got it at Pike Nursery). The pie plate rests directly on the burner, with the grate going inside the bottom pot.” - Link.
Joel writes - “This artist makes all sorts of interesting stuff like a rocking chair with one leg that rocks in an arc, and the one you should really check out under his sculptures is a self playing harmonica machine… He has video of some of them including the harmonica machine. It looks like it would run like a player piano.” - Link.
While driving at night, have you ever noticed other people’s headlights that appear to be shaking and bouncing around? Isn’t it annoying and distracting? Your brain is so good at noticing motion that it’s hard to ignore those bouncing headlights, especially if they’re in your rear view.
Embarrassingly, I found that I was one of those “other people, bad citizens” when I replaced a headlight bulb and noticed the reflector was loose. By: ewilhelm
Laser transmitter from Electronics Australia - “Laser based projects used to be expensive, until the development of solid state lasers. This project is designed for the entry level laser experimenter. The circuit allows any two computers with serial (RS-232) communication capability to communicate over 200 meters using a laser beam. A low cost transmitter only circuit is also presented here for use in one way communication and other laser based projects.” - Link.
Alan writes “This article goes through the steps required to photo etch your own copper clad circuit boards. There is a relatively small amount of hardware that is required and the steps are quite simple. If you have done the toner transfer method in the past why not move to the next level?” - Link.
UGR researchers Miguel Delgado, Waldo Fajardo and Miguel Molina decided to design a software program that would enable a person who knew nothing about composition to create music. The system they devised, using AI, is called Inmamusys, an acronym for Intelligent Multiagent Music System, that can create and play emotive music in real-time in response to emotions that arise in the listener. Now instead of being driven nuts by the intrusive and repetitive canned music played in public places, your music-bot can generate a pleasant, non-repetitive musical environment with endless original tunes that always match your moods. Labels: Bots
Contact: SINC info@plataformasinc.es 0091-425-1820 FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology
Endless original, copyright-free music UGR researchers Miguel Delgado, Waldo Fajardo and Miguel Molina decided to design a software programme that would enable a person who knew nothing about composition to create music. The system they devised, using AI, is called Inmamusys, an acronym for Intelligent Multiagent Music System, and is able to compose and play music in real time.
If successful, this prototype, which has been described recently in the journal Expert Systems with Applications, looks likely to bring about great changes in terms of the intrusive and repetitive canned music played in public places.
Miguel Molina, lead author of the study, tells SINC that while the repertoire of such canned music is very limited, the new invention can be used to create a pleasant, non-repetitive musical environment for anyone who has to be within earshot throughout the day.
Everyone's ears have suffered the effects of repetitively-played canned music, be it in workplaces, hospital environments or during phone calls made to directory inquiries numbers. On this basis, the research team decided that it would be "very interesting to design and build an intelligent system able to generate music automatically, ensuring the correct degree of emotiveness (in order to manage the environment created) and originality (guaranteeing that the tunes composed are not repeated, and are original and endless)".
Inmamusys has the necessary knowledge to compose emotive music through the use of AI techniques. In designing and developing the system, the researchers worked on the abstract representation of the concepts necessary to deal with emotions and feelings. To achieve this, Molina says, "we designed a modular system that includes, among other things, a two-level multiagent architecture".
A survey was used to evaluate the system, with the results showing that users are able to identify the type of music composed by the computer. A person with no musical knowledge whatsoever can use this artificial musical composer, because the user need do nothing more than decide on the type of music".
Beneath the system's ease of use, Miguel Molina reveals that a complex framework is at work to allow the computer to imitate a feature as human as creativity. Aside from creativity, music also requires specific knowledge.
According to Molina, this "is usually something done by human beings, although they do not understand how they do it. In reality, there are numerous processes involved in the creation of music and, unfortunately, we still do not understand many of them. Others are so complex that we cannot analyse them, despite the enormous power of current computing tools. Nowadays, thanks to the advances made in computer sciences, there are areas of research – such as artificial intelligence – that seek to reproduce human behaviour. One of the most difficult facets of all to reproduce is creativity".
Farewell to copyright payments
Commercial development of this prototype will not only change the way in which research is carried out into the relationship between computers and emotions, the means of interacting with music and structures by which music is composed in the future. It will also serve, say the study's authors, to reduce costs.
According to the researchers, "music is highly present in our leisure and working environments, and a large number of the places we visit have canned music systems. Playing these pieces of music involves copyright payments. Our system will make these music copyright payments a thing of the past".
###
References: Miguel Delgado; Waldo Fajardo; Miguel Molina-Solana. "Inmamusys: Intelligent multiagent music system". Expert Systems with Applications. número 36, páginas 4574-4580, 2009.
Carbon Nanotube Artificial Muscles for Extreme Temperatures Invented at UT Dallas Super-Fast, Strong Artificial Muscles Exploiting a Strange State of Matter March 20, 2009 http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2009/03/20-001.php
3/21/2009 Permalink Light-as-air, nearly indestructible, flexing nano-ribbon bot muscles Carbon-nanotube ribbons have been developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas from long, entangled 11-nanometer-thick nanotubes, that can stretch to more than three times their normal width but are stiffer and stronger than steel or Mylar. They can expand and contract thousands of times and withstand temperatures ranging from -190 to over 1,600 °C and are almost as light as air, transparent, conductive, and flexible They appear to provide the perfect material for tendon-driven bot arms and legs.... MORE http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2009/03/20-001.php http://humods.com/labels/Bots.html
Ten years ago solar headlamps would have been relegated to the same bin as glow-in-the-dark sunglasses and inflatable dartboards. Today, they’re just another innovation in the EV/hybrid race to a green Shangri-La and a nice feature on a slick solar hybrid built by college kids.
Members of the Georgia Tech Solar Jackets yanked the engine out of an Audi TT and replaced it with a solar-electric drivetrain that offers a 70-mile range and retains the TT’s all-wheel drive. They call the car a solar-assist electric vehicle. http://www.wired.com/autopia/tag/solar/
2. http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/transparent-electronics-a-solar-energy-breakthrough/ Solar > PhotoVoltaics > Transparent Electronics: A Solar Energy Breakthrough - The Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials in Germany is developing transparent solar cells that would make it possible to be able to look out a window that is simultaneously producing energy. Not only windows but the facade of the house, too, might be harnessing solar power. (Alternative Energy News; June 19, 2009) June 19th, 2009 - 4 Comments Not even in our wildest dreams have we anticipated that while we are simply looking out the window enjoying the outside view our windows can simultaneously produce energy for our household needs! Not only windows but the facade of the house, too, might be harnessing the power of solar energy. This might be our future domestic power supply scenario. This can be possible with the help of transparent solar cells. These solar cells can increase the surface area to produce energy.
Researchers in Germany have taken help of advanced physics models to develop transparent materials that could act as solar cells. The team from Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials (IWM) is developing transparent base materials that could be doped with atoms to attain conductive coatings. The transparent base requires one coating to conduct the electricity via electrons. That will be acknowledged as the n-conductors. They will need another coating in which electron holes facilitate the electricity to flow, known as the p-conductors.
But the IWM team is facing few hurdles. While n-conducting transparent materials are easily available for their work, they are facing some problems with p-conducting materials. First problem is their conductivity that is too low and the second difficulty is their transparency that is poor. So manufacturers have to find a transparent material that gels well with both n and p doping.
Wolfgang Körner, who is the research scientist at the IWM, said: “If transparent p-conductors with adequate conductivity could be produced, it would be possible to realize completely transparent electronics.”
ito cost sky rocket becaus of speculation and poching Researchers are utilizing indium tin oxide for the n-conductors, but the hitch is that this is costly. Indium is considered an extraordinary commodity and it has reported a tenfold increase in price since 2002. We know that for commercial success of transparent solar cells they have to use cheaper materials. Therefore the research team is looking for alternatives. The team has to confront other questions too, such as best suitable material, what they should be doped with to acquire first-rate conductivity, and how high-quality their transparency is. Researchers are trying to find out the grain boundaries i.e. irregularities in the ordered crystal structure. They have a herculean task ahead of them because they want to duplicate these defect structures atom by atom. Special replication methods compute how the electrons are distributed in the structures and thus in the solid body. From the data the researchers will determine how conductive and transparent the material is. Körner said, “We have found, for example, that phosphorus is suitable for p-doping zinc oxide, but that nitrogen is more promising.”
Neutralize Radio-Active Waste Starting at: $37.50 The information contained in the 'Neutralization of RadioActive Waste' Proof package has been acquired by Eagle-Research over many years and from many sources. Package contains: a compilation of 80+ pages verifying the remarkable ability of Brown's Gas to neutralize radio-active waste; a spectrum of articles about radio-active waste and a video clip demonstration of the neutralization of radio-active waste. (Digital Download: Neutralize Radio-Active Waste [4901.99.00.503] - $37.50 : Eagle-Research Store http://www.eagle-research.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=53
PDF & video clip download; Hard Copy: 80+ paper pages & video clips on CD-ROM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poor quality, irreplaceable documents & footage: In greater than 95% of the cases, the 'original' that we acquired was, in fact, not an original in the sense of the quality of the print. What we received was, at best, 10th generation copies. However, since much of this information is not only vital to the continued development of the technology, but impossible to replace, we chose to complie for posterity. (Where possible, we have enhanced our 'original' through PhotoShop technology.) SKU ER1-D2-0041 (CD-ROM)
Digital Download Hard Copy ( +$12.50 ) Customers who bought this product also purchased... Pneumatic/Hydraulic Power Report Energy Conserver Theory, Book 1 Electronic Fuel Injection Enhancer (EFIE) Device
Health Specialist Cathy Diaz Reports On Her Experience Using Resveratrol Cathy Diaz Monday, June 15, 2009 "Scientists have identified a substitute to red wine called Resveratrol that they believe might do more than just protect the heart but could, in very high concentration, significantly extend life by preventing a number of age-related illnesses."
NEW YORK - I'm a 35-year-old news veteran, who's been covering health and wellness news for more than a decade. I admit I can sometimes be jaded and skeptical with an 'I've seen it all attitude.' http://www.news13direct.com/
June 3, 2009 Is It Illegal to Collect Rainwater In Your State? ReTweet This! It is if you live in Colorado. Here’s an interesting story coming out of the Groovy Green blog. A year ago in Colorado homeowners could not harvest rainwater from their roofs. This is downright shocking to me.
Apparently the argument is that if homeowners collect and harvest rainwater from their roofs, they then won’t need the services of the city municipal water system. How absurd! Homeonwers would have to collect barrels upon barrels to be free of city water. C’mon. We’re nowhere near that level of productivity. However the city of Colorado is making some strides as of late, when a new ordinance recently went up which allows some level of rainwater harvesting if you have a well. If you live in the city and rely on Municipal water, it is still illegal to collect it. Wow!!!
http://mingusart.com/greetings-2Cnews-2Clinks-_65.html Christopher Columbus The Untold Story Pope Gives the Americas to Spain Following Columbus' "discovery", Pope Alexander VI issued a May 4, 1493, papal bull granting official ownership of the New World to Ferdinand and Isabella. To these monarchs, the Pope declared: "We of our own motion, and not at your solicitation, do give, concede, and assign for ever to you and your successors, all the islands, and main lands, discovered; and which may hereafter, be discovered, towards the west and south; whether they be situated towards India, or towards any other part whatsoever, and give you absolute power in them."
Pope Gives the Americas to Spain Following Columbus' "discovery",
Pope Alexander VI issued a May 4, 1493, papal bull granting official ownership of the New World to Ferdinand and Isabella. To these monarchs, the Pope declared: "We of our own motion, and not at your solicitation, do give, concede, and assign for ever to you and your successors, all the islands, and main lands, discovered; and which may hereafter, be discovered, towards the west and south; whether they be situated towards India, or towards any other part whatsoever, and give you absolute power in them."
[#9] That is the geopolitical equivalent of the nazi's declaration that the world and its population are there property, so does that make Christopher Columbus and the Pope his paid accomplices Nazi murders?
Its very interesting that they said that all the indigenous people they killed had no souls because they were "pagan" when the so called Classical social systems they were from also were pagan savages who went daily to the so-called Coliseums to watch humans be murdered as entertainment...
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: a video: "Bloodlines of power part 2 Of 31" Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:59:15 -0700 (PDT) From: YouTube Service Unholy trinity: the Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss banks - Google Books Result by Mark Aarons, John Loftus - 1998 - History - 432 pages
Unholy Trinity exposes Turkul's "Red Nazi" operation for the first time and shows how Kim Philby, the infamous British-Soviet double agent, and... http://www.books.google.com/books?isbn=031218199X...
Free Architectual software The great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed hundreds of houses throughout his long and distinguished career. Each home was uniquely fashioned to meet the needs of its owners and the particular qualities of its location. Wright inspired a generation of architects. Are you one of them? On this Web site, you can design a house, walk through it in 3D, and then share it with the world. You can also learn more about architecture, past and present, and explore Frank Lloyd Wright's life and work. http://www.architectstudio3d.org/AS3d/people_nautilus.html
Scripps Howard News Service and others have recently reported that thousands of everyday products and materials a across the U.S. and around the world have turned out to contain radioactive metals. Things like common kitchen cheese graters, reclining chairs, women's handbags and tableware, at least in some cases, have been manufactured with contaminated metals. Some have been identified after having been in circulation for as long as a decade. So have fencing wire and fence posts, shovel blades, elevator buttons, airline parts and steel used in construction. A Scripps Howard News Service investigation says that no one knows how many tainted goods are in circulation in the United States, for example, due to haphazard screening, an absence of oversight and substantial disincentives for businesses to report contamination. But thousands of consumer goods and millions of pounds of unfinished metal and its byproducts have been found to contain low levels of radiation, and experts think the true amount could be much higher, perhaps by a factor of 10. The Scripps report gives the following contributing factors to this problem: Reports are mounting that manufacturers and dealers from China, India, former Soviet bloc nations and some African countries are exporting contaminated material and goods, taking advantage of the fact that the United States has no regulations specifying what level of radioactive contamination is too much in raw materials and finished goods. Compounding the problem is the inability of U.S. agents to fully screen every one of the 24 million cargo containers arriving in the United States each year. U.S. metal recyclers and scrap yards are not required by any state or federal law to check for radiation in the castoff material they collect or report it when they find some. No federal agency is responsible for determining how much tainted material exists in how many consumer and other goods. No one is in charge of reporting, tracking or analyzing cases once they occur. It can be far cheaper and easier for a facility stuck with "hot" items to sell them to an unwitting manufacturer or dump them surreptitiously than to pay for proper disposal and cleaning, which can cost a plant as much as $50 million. For facilities in 36 states that want to do the right thing, there is nowhere they can legally dump the contaminated stuff since the shutdown last year of a site in South Carolina, the only U.S. facility available to them for the disposal. A U.S. government program to collect the worst of the castoff radioactive items has a two-year waiting list and a 9,000-item backlog -- and is fielding requests to collect an additional 2,000 newly detected items a year. Humans are subjected to background radiation from low-level, naturally-occurring radiation all the time. Clearly a little radiation is not detrimental to health. Obviously, though, exposures to higher levels of radiation can be detrimental. Scripps reports that the precise degree of that danger has not yet been definitively determined for low-level radiation, such as that contained in commonplace goods and materials. Because the amount of tainted metals in circulation is unknown, the cumulative overall health effect -- now and over time -- is impossible to calculate. Whatever it is, there is little debate that unnecessary exposure to radiation is best avoided. Below are a few news reports about this situation as well as a range of Geiger counters for detecting radiation.
Contents [hide] 1 News Reports on the Radioactive Contamination of Consumer Goods 1.1 Key Reports 1.2 Other Reports 2 Forum 3 Geiger Counters 4 See also
News Reports on the Radioactive Contamination of Consumer Goods Key Reports Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products - Basis for introduction above. (Scripps News; June 3, 2009)
Carter 2008 Entry Dresser Riftsawn White Oak w: 43", d" 15", h: 36" Leslie Webb http://lewebb.com/work_Carter.asp [6/24/2009 7:04:41 PM]
Inspired by a Burtynsky print,the stack of drawers recreates its movement and texture in riftsawn white oak. Its arrangement is an investigation of light, shadow, volume, and mass. Designed for an entry hall, the drawers are sized to hold the objects that accompany us in the world every day.
=== Lainie 2006 Media Cabinet Quartersawn Ash w: 48", d: 8.5", h: 48" Two of man’s oldest crafts unitein this celebration of warp and weft. It is a deceptively simple idea yet amazingly complex in its design and flawless execution.
The linear quality of the quartersawn ash enhances this composition. Every horizontal and every vertical is a drawer,designed to hold CDs and DVDs. artist statement Leslie Webb http://lewebb.com/work_Lainie.asp [6/24/2009 7:04:33 PM] All the pieces shown are available in custom sizes, materials, and finishes. If you like what you see, yet feel a piece needs to be modified in order to work for you, please contact us.
We create commissioned work for private and corporate clients. We will work with you to create an exceptional piece that is not only unique and beautiful but suits your needs and will function in its intended role. Please contact us directly and we will discuss requirements with you personally. All commissioned pieces are priced accordingly once a scope of work has been decided.
5. Why haven't you heard of this car? http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/645.html FYI Why haven't you heard of this car? http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/645.html Reported by Reuters Reuters Asia reported on the existence of this car last year. I bet you haven't heard of it. Why not? The "hydrogen cell" technology pushed by Bush & Co. is a preposterous over-complication of a simple idea. Hydrogen is already in water and the energy from hydrogen can be released from water in the car. There's no reason on earth to produce hydrogen centrally, truck it around and create hydrogen fillings stations. The fact that Obama & Co. are not all over this is a sign of how profoundly compromised he is by the oil industry. There are already several replacements for gasoline powered cars ready to go right now. We know what the hold up is.
