Sprinkling RFID sensor tags from the Sky

The Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) started developing a system that allows for detailed information gathering about a disaster area by sprinkling RFID sensor tags from the sky (possibly using helicopters.) The sensor tags will be used to collect various information about a disaster — perhaps most importantly, if anyone is alive. The tags are about several centimeters wide/high and equipped with heat, infrared, and vibration sensors.

The plan is to sprinkle the tags at a disaster area where communication infrastructure is destroyed (imagine a big earthquake) and use them to detect the heat from fire and the heat and vibration from survivors’ body and send out the gathered data through a mesh-like network. The ministry thinks that about 10,000 tags will be needed to cover an area as large as a big airport. They aim at finishing their technology R&D by 2007 (and deploying the technology in the “real” world.)

from RFID In Japan

First molecular-machine combination revealed

It twists and swims – and little else – but the first combination of two molecular machines is an important step on the long path to nanodevices sophisticated enough to, for example, perform repair functions within our cells.

“The next step is to integrate multiple molecular machines” into much bigger devices, says Kazushi Kinbara, who developed the tiny contraption with colleagues at the University of Tokyo, Japan. “That project is now in progress.”

The last decade of research has produced a wide array of nanoscale widgets – ranging from a 350-atom propeller to an elevator with a 2.5-nanometre rise. But virtually all have been a demonstration of principle, and of little or no real use in isolation.

“The motion of just one of these types of constructs is something that researchers spend years on,” says Ross Kelly, who built a molecular motor in 1999 at Boston College. “Joining two moving pieces, and actually getting them to work together, is a considerable achievement.”

full at the New Scientist

The mirror provides us with phenomenal images of our appearance according to physical laws. Mirror_SPACE is a system of reflections of a type which involves not only optical appearances but also forces which act on us and which we cannot control affecting our phenomenal image.

The person is viewed as a node which is networked with the whole of existence. Effects which can be grasped by our perception are presented in this system as dynamic data and converted into three-dimensional objects. This process also involves the compilation of a virtual image, but the filter is the calculation on the part of the computer, which not only processes our extended characteristics but also data supplied simultaneously from the world.

more at Mirror_Space