Ready and waiting at an arms reach from the government, the Research and Development Corporation (RAND) has helped the U.S. think through some of the toughest scientific and regulatory challenges since the 1940s. This year, the think tank is opening its first office in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its positioning itself to weigh in on some of Silicon Valleys largest research projects, like autonomous vehicles, drones, AI, cybersecurity and telemedicine.
But unlike the RAND of the past, this new version embodies the scrappiness of startup culture. Formally based out of a WeWork space, office director Nidhi Kalra and the rest of her SF team largely work decentralized from homes and coffee shops around the Bay Area.
The team of a dozen researchers is here to study the development of new technologies and the way in which state and local authorities are working side-by-side with startups to keep everyone safe without sundering innovation.
Read more
I Could Kill You with a Consumer Drone
Posted in drones
As a former intelligence soldier who now sells drones for a living, I can tell you that this problem is bigger than almost anyone realizes.
Right now, I’m holding a drone that can fly thousands of feet in air in less than 30 seconds, getting it to an altitude where no one could see it. My drone could be up in the air, ready to strike a target before you even had time to blink.
A range extender I’ve added to the antenna allows me to control it up to seven miles away. Or I can click a button to activate a tracking device, ordering my drone to follow a vehicle or person, filming every movement in 4K high-definition video. If it ever loses its radio link to the controller, it can automatically return to its launch location. Except — this drone is not meant to come back. It is not meant to take nice photos of my vacation. It is meant to strike. A small mechanism allows it to carry and drop a 2.5-pound payload — potentially grenades, bombs, even poison.
Read more
Dr. Lara Boyd, a physiotherapist and neuroscientist, and is a professor at the UBC MPT program in Vancouver, British Columbia, describes how neuroplasticity gives you the power to shape the brain you want.
“So how do we learn? And why does some of us learn things more easily than others? So, as I just mentioned, I’m Dr. Lara Boyd. I am a brain researcher here at the University of British Columbia. These are the questions that fascinate me.”
Read more
New capacitors offer big power storage and transmission in a mini-package, with benefits beyond electro-cannons.
The U.S. Navy’s shipboard railgun is moving from the lab to the testing range, a big step for a weapon designed to fire massive bullets at hypersonic speeds. But a separate breakthrough in electrical pulse generation — capacitors that provide a bigger jolt in a smaller package — that may reshape the future of naval power.
The railgun’s electromagnets are designed to accelerate a Hyper Velocity Projectile from zero to some 8,600 kmph, about Mach 7. That velocity requires a lot of power. In early testing, the Office of Naval Research had relied on banks of commercial capacitors to pulse electricity to the gun. But they were “not suitable for integration aboard a ship” — too large to fit aboard Zumwalt-class destroyers, as Thomas Beutner, head of ONR’s Naval Air Warfare and Weapons Department, explained during a July event in Washington.
Read more
