Ares: A Defense Technology Blog

Blood Pharm

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to make blood from scratch, without donor blood.

Darpa is short on details and will be until it issues a solicitation for proposals sometime after this June 29 workshop. Here's the explanation:

The Defense Sciences Office (DSO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is hosting a Workshop to discuss innovative research that will enable development of an automated progenitor cell-based culture system to produce a donor-less supply of universal donor (Type 'O' negative) red blood cells (RBCs) for combat casualty care. It is envisioned that RBCs of normal structure and function will be produced and that the automated culture system would process cells from starter population to packaged RBC unit ready for transfusion. . . . The goal of the workshop is to explore: 1) culture techniques that stimulate and support the efficient and large-scale production of mature red blood cells from human progenitor cells and 2) automated cell culture systems capable of large-scale implementation of progenitor cell expansion and RBC differentiation protocols. Workshop participants are strongly encouraged to prepare posters describing previous or potential research in the area in order to facilitate discussions and formation of well-rounded teams. It is expected that the successful team will possess expertise in human progenitor cell biology and erythroid differentiation; RBC physiology, cellular support matrices/scaffolds; automated cell culture systems, and cell sorting, purification and packaging. In addition, teams should be led by a strong Systems Integrator and have experience with the FDA approval process for transfusable products.

--Catherine MacRae Hockmuth

Medicine Via Satellite

Attention E.R. fans: Bulgaria has leapfrogged many Western nations by implementing a satellite communications-based armed forces telemedicine network. The system is based on SkyWAN technology provided by German-based ND SatCom and on VSAT (very small aperture terminal) services provided by local service provider Interactive Technologies.

The telemedicine network is used by the Bulgarian armed forces in permanent and in field hospitals for applications such as live video transmissions of surgery, videoconferencing and the transfer of medical files between military hospitals and other medical centers of competence, ND SatCom says. 

Less Lethal Still Hurts

The conversation's electric in the leafy confines of Ettlingen, the small town between the Pfalz and Black Forest regions of Germany, where a multinational confab on non- (or less-, actually) lethal weapons is ongoing.

Actually, the conversation is about electricity. How to better tune it, how to make it travel across spaces and zap someone, and whether it might cause damage at the genetic level. Three successive experts laid out their cases yesterday, one Russian, two Italian. The moral of the story is, most clearly, if you're ever in Russia, it's a bad idea to screw around with the militia; that the Italians are pursuing shocking water cannons, and that at the cellular level, it's an interesting question whether your very DNA might get jangled around while your muscles are convulsing on the wrong end of a Taser.

Nerds Prove Pentagon Wrong

The next time some Defense Department official tells me kids aren't interested in science and engineering anymore I think I'm going to flip. You can't read the news these days without reading about some pimply-faced kid discovering, for example, that carbon nanotubes are thermodynamically soluble.

Case in point: Philip Streich was one of three top three winners of a $50,000 college scholarship from the Intel Engineering and Science Fair in Albuquerque, N.M. According to the contest organizers, Streich's research may be the key to realizing the potential of nanotubes as a supermaterial.

Intel has been hosting the science fair since 1996 and says that since that time, participation has grown about 40 percent to more than 1,500 students from 51 countries. Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Robert Gates attended the Team America Rocketry Challenge in The Plains, VA, where 100 high school teams built and launched their own rockets.

--Catherine MacRae Hockmuth

National Guard for the 'Net?

Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry over at the Personal Democracy Forum are proposing the creation of a government-run emergency response force for information technology. It's part of their 6-point platform for America's first "'TechPresident."

"Create a National Tech Corp," the authors advise,

because as our country becomes more reliant on 21st century communications to maintain and build our economy we need to protect our communications infrastructure and be able to have an emergency response capability to establish emergency communications, rebuild networks and databases, and provide tech support for all relief and recovery efforts. It's time to create a "National NetGuard" of technically skilled Americans who can volunteer to be trained and deployed to respond to any terrorist attack or natural disaster. Part of this program should be the creation of a tech equivalent of the federal oil reserve, but for computer and communications equipment, that would be maintained by our country's computer equipment manufacturers in a revolving inventory and would be available to be used in an emergency.

Recruiting Job for iPods

The nation's top aerospace companies are finally recognizing that attracting college co-eds means showing a little Web savvy and, maybe, getting a Facebook page, the Associated Press reported Sunday. Facebook is a social networking site popularized by college kids. The shift marks a turn from more traditional forms of recruitment such as leaflets and booths at college career fairs as aerospace companies prepare to deal with widespread retirement of its workforce. Boeing has been advertising on Facebook and last year offered a chance to win a free iPod Nano or iTunes music card to anyone willing to watch a short promotional video and answer a short multiple-choice quiz. The company also uses Facebook to keep in touch with its new recruits and interns, according to the AP story. Lockheed Martin started a chat room on its own Web site earlier this year to answer questions from potential recruits.

--Catherine MacRae Hockmuth

Has U.S. Lost Technological Edge?

The approximately $70 billion the Defense Department spends on research and development each year has but one aim: technological superiority. Technological superiority is at the heart of almost every DOD PowerPoint slide on a program or technology concept that I've ever seen, and it's usually explained by asserting that the objective is to ensure that the United States is never on the receiving end of a technological surprise perpetrated by an adversary.

So it seems preposterous to consider whether the United States has lost its technological edge in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's just what one national security analyst suggested in a recent speech at the Australian Defence College and the Royal United Services Institute security seminar n Sydney. Max Boot, the speaker, is a senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Nano-developments

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have grown the world's longest nanotubes: 3 millimeters beyond the prior world record!

A report says that while "still slightly less than 2 centimeters long, each nanotube is 900,000 times longer than its diameter," but: "More important for manufacturing, the research team grew a 12-millimeters-thick, uniform carpet of aligned carbon nanotubes on a roughly 10-centimeter silicon substrate, opening the door for scaling-up the process."

Teens Love Science and Technology

Who says kids aren't interested in science and technology? Check out this video from YouTube of high school students competing last month in the 2007 First Championship for robotics.

Sea Spotter at Singapore Show

Israel's Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd will be unveiling its Sea Spotter, a passive staring naval infrared search and track system for ship self-defense, at next week's IMDEX maritime defense show in Singapore.

According to the Israeli firm, Sea Spotter is a third generation system with staring rather than rotating sensors, that is capable of automatically locating both surface and airborne targets, supersonic and slow-speed as well as very small targets above and around the vessel, from horizon to zenith. Following detection, target tracks are then transferred to the ship's combat system for interception.

Based on infrared sensors, the Sea Spotter is passive, emitting no signals so that it does not give away the ship's position.

Targets that can be detected and tracked this way include surface-to-surface missiles, supersonic and subsonic sea skimming missiles, combat aircraft, glide bombs, anti-radiation missiles, helicopters, ships, submarine periscopes and terrorist threats like jet skis, Rafael claims.