This is a "death van" used in China as an alternative to the traditional method of execution by firing squad. Manufactured by Jinguan Auto, a maker of ambulances, the van has a sliding stretcher that comes out the back, so as to avoid the brutal scene of dragging the condemned prisoner onboard for their lethal cocktail. It also comes equiped with a live video feed to broadcast the executions. Certain critics argue that the vehicle makes it easier for authorities to engage in illegal organ harvesting of the prisoners, difficult to verify, since no one is allowed to view the corpses of the executed prior to cremation. Amnesty International reports that the profits from organ sales may be part of the reason China refuses to abandon the death penalty. According to Kang Zhongwen, designer of the vehicle, the shift from shooting people in the back of the head to poisoning them in the back of a bus reflects how China "promotes human rights now." It’s also a horror movie begging to be made.

China Makes Ultimate Punishment Mobile, USAToday.com

According to Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA), "High prices and climate change are definitely creating a renaissance in geothermal interest, particularly on a state and local level." So, to further geothermal research, Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas plans to lease out its Mount Spurr (a 2 mile tall, snowcapped volcano near Anchorage, which erupted in 1992 covering much of the city in ash) to energy companies who would search for ways to harness the mountain’s power. A wise move on both parts, as geothermal projects are eligible for numerous tax benefits, with many already in effect in most Western States and on the coast between Texas and Florida. Gawell: "If we really want to go all out for it, we could easily achieve a substantial amount, 20, 25 per cent of US energy needs within a few decades. We’re limited more by public policy than the resource - the resource is enormous." Though mentioned recently by Sen. Barack Obama, geothermal energy has had little play in the alternative energy debate. Nonetheless, the GEA estmates that by 2010, the number of countries producing geothermal energy will double to 46.

Harness volcanoe power, energy experts say, Telegraph.Co.Uk

The Gunwharf Quays mall in Portsmouth, UK, turns out to have been monitoring its shoppers’ movements via their cell phones. Using Path Intelligence software, the management was able to see the ‘slug trail’ left by people as they went around the mall, monitoring which stores they went to, how long they stayed there, and when they went to the bathroom. This is but another instance of Big Brother tactics, as councils nationwide misuse the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act designed to combat terrorism. Over 900 reported phone and email records have been accessed under the act to investigate misdemeanors like dog quarantine breaches, unlicensed storage of petrol, and underage smoking. Peter Emery, the operations manager at Gonwharf, defended the system saying that it’s not as invasive, since there is no data capture, however, some are still outraged that their phone numbers are used for market research without their consent. This is a portent of the looming panopticon future, for those who think they are not being watched. If covert surveillance bothers you, consider taking out the battery and SIM from your phone next time you go shopping.

Shopping centre tracks customers via mobile phones, Telegraph.co.uk

An 81-year-old Australian man killed himself using a suicide robot built with plans off the internet. The machine was attached to a .22 semi-automatic pistol, which fired four bullets into the man’s head after being activated. According to his note, he decided to die after demands from his interstate relatives that he move out of his house, where he lived alone, and into care. He set up the death robot in his driveway around 7 a.m. Wednesday, so that nearby workers would hear the gunshots and find his body, which was what happened.

Granted, suicide machines are nothing new to Australia. In 2002, Dr. Philip Nitschke launched a machine that would allow people to die peacefully by breathing in pure carbon monoxide through a face mask. In fact, Nitschke successfully campaigned to have a legal euthanasia law passed in the Northern Territory, which helping four people to kill themselves before the law was overturned by the Federal government. Nitschke also designed an ‘exit bag’, a plastic bag with an elasticized opening used to commit suicide through suffocation, and last year published The Peaceful Pill Handbook, which was banned in Australia and New Zealand quickly after its release, supposedly not so much because of its stance on euthanasia but its instructions on making drugs and committing other crimes.

Suicide-assisting robots are nothing new to scifi, from I, Robot to the suicide-booths on Futurama, machines continue to make difficult decisions simpler. So we continue towards a hyperreal future where even life-death decisions can be made at the push of a button. The growing death-toll of people killed by robots may also be a point of concern for those who dismiss the possibility of a violent robot uprising. Fortunately, so far they only kill us when we want them too.

Australian Man Gunned Down in Driveway by Killer Robot, FoxNews.com 
Nitschke launches suicide machine, SMH.com.au

Holosonic is a company that makes “audio spotlights” that can focus soundwaves into a targeted beam. An amusing use of this technology is in an advertisement on Prince St. in NYC’s SoHo (or one in Watertown, MA). If you walk through the right spot, you can hear a woman’s voice asking “Who’s there? Who’s there? It’s not your imagination,” which may have some doubt their sanity until they notice the big billboard for A&E’s new show Paranormal State ‘73% of American’s Believe’. Originally intended for museums and libraries, where quiet is a priority, this is the first time this technology has been used on such a massive scale. This may lead to a whole new kind of noise pollution in the future. Somewhat disconcerting, it’s bad enough that with bluetooth and other headsets it’s hard to tell if people are talking to you, themselves, or on the phone, now you have to worry whether there is even a person behind the voice.

A&E’s Manhattan billboard ‘whispers’ at passersby with the Audio Spotlight, Holosonics.com

Toshiba’s new Micro Size Nuclear Reactors measure only 20 feet by 6 feet, making them small enough to fit in a basement, and produce 200 kilowatts, enough to power a remote village, small business, or secret laboratory. The reactor is fail safe, totally automatic, and will not overheat. It does not work with control rods like traditional reactors, but a new technology that uses liquid lithium-6 reservoirs, which connect to a vertical tube fitted into the reactor core. The end result is electricity for about 5 cents per kiowatt hour, which is half the price of grid energy (making the pricetag around $3,500,000). Lithium-6 is a controlled material because of its use as a ‘thermonuclear secondary’, that is, you cannot make a nuclear weapon out of Lithium-6 (primaries like Uranium or Plutonium are needed), however it can be used to deliver a greater nuclear yield from a smaller, lighter package, when part of a two-stage "dry" nuclear weapon. So, while Lithium-6 can make a nuke more powerful, having a micro nuclear reactor is not the same as sitting on a bomb. It is control over existing ‘primaries’ that is of greater concern. Moreover, a wider use of small nuclear reactors could help decentralize power production, thus reducing the risk of massive outages like the great Northeast blackout of 2003. Besides, of the 441 major nuclear powerplants in the world today, 104 are in the US supplying over 1,000 megawatts of power. The first reacor will be installed in Japan in 2008, with marketing in Europe and America to start in 2009.

Toshiba Seeks U.S. Approval for Micro Reactor for Rural Power, Bloomberg.com
Toshiba Builds 100x Smaller Micro Nuclear Reactor, NextEnergyNews.com

An experimental art installation, the Bacterial Orchestra is a musical organism composed of several audio ‘cells’, which listen to their environment by microphones and play back sounds they pick up in sync via speakers. The individual cells ‘die’ if there us too much or too little imput and each has their own ‘DNA’ that determines how it will react to stimuli. The result is a living musical composition that changes in harmony with its environment. A noise heard by a single cell can grow, as it infects other cells during playback. The Bacterial Orchestra premiered at the New Media Meeting in Norrkoping, Iceland, (December 1, 2006), in an underground corridor, where the reverberationg naked stone walls provided excellent acoustics, while the water dripping on the concrete floor, a constant, base rhythm. As the whole point of the orchestra is its interactive nature, there are no mp3s on their website, and as of now there are no performances scheduled. Support bacteria, it’s the only culture some people have.

Bacterial Orchestra

Aqua Sciences Inc, has produced a machine that can remove water from air, up to 500 gallons a day. This device is perfect for off-grid houses, not connected by conventional plumbing. The price tag is currently $500,000, offset in part by the end-cost of the water being about $0.25 per gallon. The machine was created for Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, they sponsored the self-driving car contest last year), which sought a sustainable water-source in arid climates like Iraq. The US Army plans to buy many of these devices to hydrate its troops. Aqua Sciences Inc, is also working on a cheaper consumer model, but it will be a while before it comes out. It’s neat though, now we can both get air from water and water from air. But remember to drink in moderation, you don’t want to end up like the woman who died of a water overdose trying to win a Nintendo Wii.

Magic water harvesting machine, Off-Grid.net

The U.S. Defense Security Service, in a warning issued to Pentagon’s contractors, has revealed a new espionage threat: Canadian coins with hidden radio frequency transmitters, which were found on at least three seperate occasions on contractors with high security clearances travelling through Canada between Octover 2005 and January 2006. The top suspects: China, Russia and France.

Experts said that such small transmitters probably have a range limited to a few feet, but could communicate with nearby sensors hidden, say, inside a doorway. Amusingly, the Associated Press image circulated with this story is not a Canadian coin, but a U.S. dollar, one of the hollow coins the CIA acknowledged using to hide messages and film. All this recalls the British spy ‘rock’ fiasco in Russia around this time last year. Nothing is what it seems.

Canadian spy coins planted on workers, DetNews.com
If you’re a spy, Canadian money talks, TheGlobeandMail.com
Russia: British used ‘rock’ to spy, CNN.com

I’ve written before about home-brewed brain imaging via the OpenEEG project at SourceForge.net. Now, please welcome the Open-rTMS. As noted previously, rTMS, or repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation is a technique that uses variable magnetic fields to stimulate specific areas of the brain for various ends, e.g. to treat depression, relieve pain, even enhance intelligence and creativity. Because of safety regulations, it takes forever before medical hardware is made available to the public. But, thanks to SourceForge, you will not only be able make your own EEG to monitor the magnetic fields in your brain, but also an rTMS to mess with them. Naturally, tweaking with new technology has its risks, in this case brain seizures, though these dangers are low when basic precautions are observed. All in all, the OpenEEG/Open-rTMS projects are revolutionary in that they open a vast new unmapped horizon, allowing anybody to explore and experiment with new mental states, advancing our understanding of our understanding.

Open-rTMS Project
OpenEEG Project

In November of last year, the cruise liner Seabourne Spirit was attacked by pirates off the East African coast. After being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, the crew defended the liner with a sonic weapon, a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD - not to be confused with the Lilac Rainbow Allience of the Deaf). The device has a diameter of 84cm (33in) and a weight of only 24kg (53lb), consisting of a dish that can generate a frequency of between 2100 and 3100htz at 150dbls, and focus the sound wave into a beam 15°-30°, effective for up to 300 metres (985ft). In addition to potentially damaging hearing, the intensity of the sound at such frequencies physically compels the target to get away. The LRAD was devised to protect American Navy vessels following the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. Since then, it has been used in regions of Baghdad, Fallujah, and other parts of Iraq. It was also used against civilians in New York City, during the protests of the 2004 Republican National Convention.

But non-leathal sonic warfare does not stop there. In parts of Britain, some shops have Mosquitos. Developed by Compound Security Service, the Moscquito is a pretty simple device that produces a continuous high frequency tone. The frequency, however, is inaudible to most adults, who have already suffered some hearing loss by age 20. So, its primary use is to keep young people away, loiterers and troublemakers. The device also has a Pavlovian conditioning effect, in that people unwittingly exposed to the sound in a certain place will avoid going there again, possibly without knowing why. I wonder if it works on dogs too.

Louder, louder, louder! ForteanTimes.com

Forget individual artificial intelligence programs for a moment, because a whole artificial society has just opened up. New and Emergent World models Through Individual, Evolutionary, and Social Learning or the NEW TIES project is deveping an artificial computer simulated society composed of agent programs (adaptive, artificial beings that have independent behaviors). The aim is to create an artificial society capable of exploring and understanding its environment through cooperation and interaction. The agent programs are complex enough to develop a communication system and learn to work together.

At first, the world will be running across a grid of 60 computers and contain about 1,000 agents (one day to grow into the millions). Each agent will have its own characteristics (gender, life expectancy, fertility, size, and metabolism), some of which they will pass to their offspring. They will be able to learn from experience as well as from others. NEW TIES is the first to create such a complex large-scale artificial society. The results may have curious implications for evolutionary computing systems, artifical intelligence and linguistics.

New Ties Portal
Artificial Personalities to Populate Virtual World, ScienceaGoGo.com

Vannevar Bush (1890-1974), unrelated to W., was an American engineer, science administrator, and advisor to President F. D. Roosevelt, mostly known for his role in the creation of the atomic bomb. In the 1930’s he developed the concept of what he called the memex (portmanteau of "memory extender"), a microfilm-based "device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility… It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory." The memex is considered by many to be the precursor of the internet, hypertext and general intellect augmenting computer systems. He understood the difficulty involved in predicting the technology of the future, in the July 1945 article in the Atlantic Monthly ‘As We May Think’ Bush wrote: "It is a far cry from the abacus to the modern keyboard accounting machine, it will be an equal step to the arithmetical machine of the future." There, he also predicted Wikipedia, saying that "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified." Moreover, he foretold the development of speech-recognition in the same article. Despite this, Bush earned an unfair eponym: a vannevar is a bogus technological prediction or a foredoomed engineering concept. This may have been largely because of his strong opposition to sending people into space, which he considered too expensive and risky. When the Apollo Program and the two before went off without problem, Bush was labelled a bad prophet, and by the time of the Shuttle Challenger and Shuttle Columbia disasters, his warning have been forgotten. Note also that NASA has long since realized it is far more frugal to send robots into space.

As We May Think, TheAtlantic.com
Vannevar Bush, Wikipedia.org
MemexSim, SourceForge.net

Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, have engineered blood-compatible nanoscale materials using an anticoagulant called heparin, a therapeutic used to maintain blood flow and prevent clotting during medical procedures. Robert Linhardt and co. have shown that a composite heparin membrane with nanopores can work as a dialyzer, an artificial kidney, filtering the flood and maintaining blood flow. Furthermore, now that nanotech is hemo-compatible, it opens the door for nerve and tissue repair, as well as nanomed cancer treatments. Just imagine, a swarm of nanobots swimming around your bloodstream, fighting bad cholestarol, cleaning up carcinogens, unclogging capillaries, improving circulation, and easing stress on the heart. Stick them in my vein.

Blood-compatible nanoscale materials possible using heparin, EurekAlert.org

NASA’s Charles Jorgensen is developing sebvocal speech recognition technology, which can recognize what you say even if you don’t make a sound. Normally, when we speak we shape words with our articulator muscles as we force air past the larynx. However, these muscles work even when there is no air pushed through. Just saying words to yourself sends weak electrical signals, known as electromyograms, to your mouth. Electromyograms can be recorded, processed with statistical algorithms, and turn into speech, all without wasting precious air. This technology would be especially useful to astronauts, scuba divers, fighter pilots, as well as anybody working in loud, chaotic environments. Researchers have already used subvocal commands to drive a car (virtually) and navigate the web, while Japanese NTT Docomo hopes to apply subvocal speech recognition to make a silent cel phone. This would be great, because then we would not have all these people with tiny headsets going around seemingly talking to themselves like schizophrenics.

Silent Speaker, Forbes.com

At the Motor Show ‘06 in Geneva next week, German company Loremo AG will show off it’s LS with a 2 cylinder Turbo diesel engine, 20 horse-pwer and a 160 km/h (100m/h) top speed. The kicker’s that it uses 1.5 literes per 100 km, that’s 157 miles per gallon. The car only weighs 450 kg (992 lb), but still seats four. The planned pricetag on the LS is less than 11,000 Euro ($13,000). Later, Loremo plans to release the GS, which will have a stronger engine (50 hp, 27l/100km) and a top speed of 220km/h (136m/h).

Loremo.com

Fosfor Gadgets has an interesting list of the "Top 10 Weirdest USB Devices". Have a summary:

10. George Foreman’s iGrill
9. Air darts
8. Ghost radar (electromagnetic field detector)
7. Heated slippers
6. Massage ball
5. Self-destruct button
4. Flowerpot speaker
3. Heated gloves
2. Eye massager
1. Vibrator (w/5 interchangable probes)

The 10 weirdest USB devices ever, Fosfor Gadgets

Bruce DePalma, former physics professor at MIT, claims to have an electrical generator capable of providing cheap, self-sustaining, non-polluting energy - the N machine. Modelled after the Faraday homopolar generator, it’s basically a simple magnetized flywheel, a cylindrical conductor rotating at high speed with the help of a motor. According to DePalma, the current versions of the N Machine can generate 5x more power than it consumes. Prototypes have been built as early as 1978, when a large N machine called Sunburst was constructed in Santa Barbra, CA. Sunburst was independently tested in 1986 by Dr. Robert Kincheloe of Stanford, who noted the drag of the gyroscope was only 13-20% of a conventional generator operating at 100% efficiency, meaning the machine could generate power at 500% normal. DePalma believes his machine releases free energy present in the space around us. Basically, there is no such thing as empty space, even in a vacuum, there are fluctuations that suddenly release large amounts of energy. A theory of zero point energy developed by Puthoff of Stanford, accounts for the copious power found in space.

While applications are in the hundreds, no one has a patent for the N machine because the U.S. Patent office flat out denies patents to anything that purports to make more energy than it consumes (though according to DePalma the N machine is a new way of extracting energy, rather than a perpetual motion machine based on conventional power sources). Meanwhile, there has been a growing interest in the machine from Japan’s scientific community, largely thanks to Shiuji Inomata, president of the Japan Psychotronics Institute. Panasonic/National is pursuing research, while Kazama Giken Co. is commercially supplying small N machines for research and educational purposes. The Japan Science Foundation has also awarded several grants to advance the technology.

Unfortunately, I don’t have one of these gadgets, so I can’t say if it really works. But if it does, it may soon revolutionize energy production forever. The research on the N machine is something to keep a keen eye on, maybe buy some Panasonic stock.

Homopolar "free energy" generator test, Robert Kincheloe
Scientists claim to tap the free energy of space, ForThePeople
Bruce Depalma: the man who wouldn’t be stopped, RumorMillNews.com
The Home of Primordial Energy

Israeli inventor Alon Bodner is developing an underwater breathing system "LikeAFish" that squeezes oxygen from seawater. The battery-powered artificial gill uses a high-speed centerfuge to lower the pressure of seawater in a sealed chamber, allowing the dissolved air to turn into gas (like CO2 is released when you change the pressure in a soda can by opening it). This air is then transferred to an airbag for the diver’s use. On average, a liter of water is about 1.5% oxygen, so the device needs to circulate about 200 liters/minute to provide enough air for a single person. The air-supply is limited only to battery-power, which at this point rounds out to about 1 kg. (battery)/hour of dive time. There are concerns, like dead-zones that have less oxygen and water pollution, so Bodner does not expect a functional prototype for another two years.

Inventor develops ‘artificial gills’, BBC.co.uk
LikeAFish.biz

As our computing power grows bigger and our iPods get smaller, the question of cybernetic implants becomes more a reality. Though some still dismiss it as science fiction, scientists have already made the blind see, the deaf hear, and the paralyzed type and move cursors, all through a brain-machine interface. So it’s only a matter of time before entire portions of the brain can be enhanced/replaced by implants.

We see commercials for Red Bull and FocusFactor, promoting concentration and awareness, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The prescription of cerebral enhancers like Adderall and Ritalin is growing every year, with a significant portion of the drugs overflowing into the black market. As this trend continues, people without learning disabilities might be forced to take cerebral enhancers just to compete in their school/work environment (this argument echoes the movie Gattacca). That, or we have a whole generation hopped up on goof balls.

Later, as cybernetic brain implants develop, at first to battle things like Alzheimer’s - only to spread into the general market, people will have to choose again, enhance or fall behind (evolve or perish, if you’re extremist). Some think this won’t happen for a while, but as soon as the technology arrives, there’ll be someone who’s willing to put it inside them. We already have plenty of unneccesary surgery: nose jobs, breast implants, hair grafts. If you’re going to put silicone in your breasts, why not silicon in your head?

All this raises a curious question in the philosophy of mind, one that echoes a riddle from the classics. If you have a ship and, as parts of it break, you replace them to the point that none of the original parts remain, is it still the same ship? (Further, if someone takes the discarded parts and reassembles them into another ship, which one is the original?) Now apply this to the brain. If you replace it bit by bit until it’s all cybernetic, is it still you? Those who don’t believe that a machine can be conscious will say no, but then what happens to you as you replace those parts? Does your consciousness fade gradually? Is there a specific point when you go from man to machine and your self-awareness vanishes? Perhaps soon we’ll find out.

There’s no stop in the race for human re-engineering, Guardian.co.uk

Several Ancient Greek and Roman sources (Polybius, Plutarch and Pliny the Elder) tell that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (mathematician and subject of Hiero II) constructed a burning glass to set fire to the Roman warships, anchored within arrow range. Though it’s often pictured as a large lens, the death ray was probably an assembly of mirrors, as recorded by Anthemius of Tralles (474-534), architect of the Hagia Sophia. Purportedly, Proclus used a similar method in 514 against the ships of Vitellius. The death ray is still considered by many as fiction, TV’s MythBusters were not able to recreate the feat. But after doing some calculations to see if it was possible, the MIT’s 2.0009ers decided to give it a try. Running into some difficulties at first, once the clouds cleared they succeeded in setting fire to 1" thick red oak using only mirrors.

2.009 Product Engineering Processes: Archimedes, MIT.edu

The island nation of Iceland, which has brought us Björk and Sigur Rós, was formed by volcanoes and to this day has huge boiling underground lakes heated by molten rock. Cities pipe the hot water and store it in giant tanks to heat homes and business. Now, the environmentally friendly country is the first to take the step of abandoning gasoline power in favor of hydrogen. In electric engines, electrodes split water into hydrogen and oxygen, as hydrogen electrons pass through a conductor they create a current of power. Hydrogen fuel is 2-3 times more expensive than gas, but also gets up to 3 times the mileage, all without carbon emissions (only water vapor). Capital Reykjavik is already testing three electric buses. Marie Maack of the Hydrogen Research Project believes that "If we make hydrogen and use that as a fuel for transportation then we can run the whole society on our own local renewable energy sources." Iceland hopes to be free of gasoline-powered cars by the middle of the century.

Iceland the First Country to Try Abandoning Gasoline, ABCNews.com