All posts tagged ‘Science!’

The U.S intelligence community has a long history of blowing big calls — the fall of the Berlin Wall, Saddam’s WMD, 9/11. But in each collective fail, there were individual analysts who got it right. Now, the spy agencies want a better way to sort the accurate from the unsound, by applying principles of mathematics to weigh and rank the input of different experts.

Iarpa, the intelligence community’s way-out research arm, will host a one-day workshop on a new program, called Aggregative Contingent Estimation (ACE). The initiative follows Iarpa’s recent announcement of plans to create a computational model that can enhance human hypotheses and predictions, by catching inevitable biases and accounting for selective memory and stress.

ACE won’t replace flesh-and-blood experts — it’ll just let ‘em know what they’re worth. The intelligence community often relies on small teams of experts to evaluate situations, and then make forecasts and recommendations. But a team is only as strong as its weakest link, and Iarpa wants to fortify team-based outputs, by using mathematical aggregation to “elicit, weigh, and combine the judgments of many intelligence analysts.”

The system Iarpa’s after should be able to collect and evaluate expert opinion based on each expert’s specific expertise, learning style, prior performance and “other attributes predictive of accuracy.” It’ll then parse out the different predictions offered by analysts, and assign them degrees of probability based on where a particular expert sits in the rankings.

If Iarpa is able to master the mathematical art of aggregated probability, the agency’s program would likely be in hot demand. Using probabilistic expert aggregation to make decisions has been toyed with in circles as diverse as big business, climatology and even criminal court. But until Iarpa’s also mastered their plan to nip biases and memory lapses, they’ll still be forced to contend with the inevitability of human imperfection. Notes risk communications expert Professor Morgan Granger in a decades-old paper, “One can only proceed with care, simultaneously remembering that elicited expert judgments may be seriously flawed, but are often the only game in town.”

[Photo: Wikimedia.org]

Flights are resuming at European airports as the cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruptions clears, but some airspace is closed after reports that a new plume may be on its way from Iceland. And the U.S. military is still working overtime to re-route crucial flights going to and from the United States. 

In an update provided last night to Danger Room, Air Mobility Command said top-priority aeromedical evacuation missions on C-17 Globemaster IIIs ”continue without fail.” According to Roger Drinnon, a spokesman for the command, the Air Force had as of yesterday moved 37 patients to medical care in the United States since the ash cloud closed European airspace.

“We have flown one Aeromedical Evacuation mission per day from the U.S. Central Command AOR [area of responsibility] to the U.S., which is actually an increase in AE [aeromedical evacuation] mission arrivals when compared our standard routing,” he said in an e-mail.

Continue Reading “As Volcanic Cloud Drifts, Air Force Medical Flights Continue” »

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania — First stop: the spray gun that shoots out skin cells. Next, the blind man who “sees” by using his tongue. Finally, a shake of a marine’s transplanted hand.

The nation’s top military officer today took a look at some of the Pentagon’s wildest medical research projects. But once the seemingly-sci-fi demonstrations at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center were over, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen voiced some concerns. The technologies and techniques seemed promising. But when would they be available, really, to help wounded veterans? And why did the corporal with the replacement hand have to rely on his girlfriend’s mom to find out about his revolutionary treatment?

In 2008, the Department of Defense and academia set aside $250 million to set up a consortium to fund bleeding-edge research into the science of rebuilding human muscle, tissue, and minds. Today, that Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM) project is beginning to show results. Whether those results will come in time for the tens of thousands of wounded veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq remains an open question.

“That’s the challenge you always have with research: How do you get research to full production levels,” Mullen said. “I’m satisfied we can. I’m not satisfied we’re doing it rapidly enough. And one of the things I take away from this trip is to go back and see if I can push from where I am to roll this out more rapidly.”

One of the researchers here, Dr. Douglas Kondziolka, mentioned it might be another decade before his treatment of transplanted brain cells might be widely available to troops who have suffered in war. The research was proceeding methodically. And approval for large-scale tests on human brains takes forever to obtain. Mullen seemed less than enthused. ‘”10 years doesn’t satisfy any of us,” he later said.

Continue Reading “Seeing Tongue, Spray-On Skin, Transplanted Hand: Top Officer Encounters Military’s Extreme Medicine Wing” »

The plume of ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruptions has been a nightmare for commercial airlines, forcing massive flight cancellations and stranding thousands of travelers. But it also appears to have had a quiet impact on military operations as well.

Late last week, the Air Force grounded aircraft at Royal Air Force Lakenheath and Royal Air Force Mildenhall, air bases in the United Kingdom. As of today, mail service there is still delayed. And the Air Force is also being forced to re-route crucial flights to avoid the cloud of ash over northern Europe. 

According to an Air Force news item published today, Air Mobility Command’s 618th Tanker Airlift Control Center has shifted aircraft, crews, and maintenance personnel from bases in Germany to more southern staging locations in Spain. Medical evacuation missions into and out of the Middle East and Central Asia have also been re-routed: Instead of moving casualties from Afghanistan or Iraq to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, patients are being flown directly to the United States, lenghty flights that may require several in-air refuelings.

In this photo, Air Force airmen are shown unloading a patient from a bus for transfer to the Air Force Theater Hospital at Joint Base Balad, Iraq. According to the photo caption, the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Group at Balad is expecting the average patient load at Balad to increase by about 50 patients per day because of the shift in operations.

Continue Reading “Volcanic Cloud Disrupts Military Operations” »

Since her appointment as Darpa chief last June, Regina Dugan has kept a low profile, at least compared to long-serving predecessor Tony Tether. Now, a year after taking the top job at Darpa, Dugan’s finally talking.

In a statement last week [.pdf] to the House Armed Service Committee’s panel on terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities, Dugan outlined her vision for the future of the Pentagon’s blue-sky research arm, with everything from plant-based vaccines to biomimetics making the short list. But none of it’s possible, she told the panel, without more investment in American universities and industry to cultivate the techies of the future.

Or as Dugan herself put it, Darpa needs more troops for its “elite army of futuristic technogeeks.”

The agency first took note of America’s looming shortage in computing, science and tech experts in January, when the agency requested proposals that would attract more teens to careers in the field. The agency then suggested tactics like career days, mentorships and more scholarship money to get the job done. Dugan, however, is touting flashier options. “Box O’ Radar,” for one, would give kids the chance to build and test their own radar devices. Or, she told the panel, we could turn teens into app-making machines.

“Additional ideas included the development of an application ‘marketplace’ devoted to STEM [science, technology, engineering, mathematics] that would post challenges such as ‘apps to teach electronics’ or ‘apps to teach radar’ or just ‘coolest app with a practical use,’” she said. “Prizes might range from iPods to scholarships.”

The geek-recruitment schemes were just a few of the ideas tossed around at Darpa’s recent Industry Summit — a meeting between Darpa managers and 120 American industry heads that Dugan said was meant “to engage the leadership of US industry.”

Continue Reading “Darpa Chief: Fix America’s Critical Geek Shortage” »

For the first time ever, the U.S. Air Force has flown one of its jets powered entirely by a biofuel blend. The flight took place at Eglin Air Force Base in Flordia with an A-10 Thunderbolt II — an aircraft affectionately known as a Warthog — burning a combination of a fuel derived from camelina oil with conventional JP-8 jet fuel.

In a bid to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels, the Pentagon has been looking to new energy alternatives. Under the Air Force’s current energy plan, the goal is to acquire 50 percent of the domestic aviation fuel from an alternative blend by 2016. Terry Yonkers, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and logistics, said in a statement the goal was to encourage a major shift in the way the service powers its aircraft. “Our goal is to reduce demand, increase supply and change the culture and mindset of our fuel consumption,” he said.

The Air Force is the largest user of jet fuel within the Department of Defense, and plans to have all of the aircraft in its inventory certified to fly using alternative fuels by the end of 2012. The current fleet of aircraft consumes 2.4 billion gallons of jet fuel per year. The A-10 test flight went well with “no problems whatsoever” according to the pilot.

Biofuel used in the A-10 flight is referred to as hydrotreated renewable jet, or HRJ. The biomass-derived fuel is created from animal fats and plant oils. The camelina plant, the feedstock for the demonstration flight, is just one of the biofuels being looked at by the military.

Continue Reading “Air Force Debuts Biofuel-Guzzling Warthog” »

Military helicopters have sophisticated electronic countermeasures to detect and defend against surface-to-air missiles, by jamming or fooling the seekers that guide the missiles to target. Now the Pentagon’s far-out research arm wants to take things a step further, by protecting against unguided — but equally dangerous — small arms fire.

In testimony yesterday, Regina Dugan, the new head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, described a new acoustic sensor the agency was developing to alert aircrews to ground fire.

The system — called HALTT, for Helicopter Alert and Threat Termination — is a hostile-fire indicator that would give the pilot a warning of attack, and pinpoint its origin. It would work by detecting the distinct acoustic signature (or “crack”) of a bullet as it passes through the air. It would then indicate the shooter’s position. HALTT, Dugan said, “would make it very dangerous to shoot at U.S. forces — because the first shot may very well be the adversary’s last.”

Dugan also gave an interesting statistic: Incoming small arms fire, she said, accounted for 85 percent of hostile engagements against helos. A prototype of the system has been installed on an Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, and Dugan said the military was planning to deploy several systems to Afghanistan for real-world evaluation.

Continue Reading “Military Helicopters May Get Gunshot Location System” »

Drones are an indispensable tool in modern warfare: They can loiter for hours, providing crucial surveillance of distant targets. But what if you need to get a drone somewhere in a hurry?

That was the idea behind Rapid Eye. In 2007, Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out science arm, announced plans to package a folding drone inside the nose cone of an intercontinental ballistic missile. The concept was fairly straightforward: In the event of an emerging crisis, you could launch Rapid Eye. Within an hour, the drone would be on station, and once its mission was complete, it could be replaced by another long-loitering, pilotless aircraft.

Tony Tether, the previous director of Darpa, was a fan of the idea. But the rocket-launched drone had some serious conceptual flaws. For starters, lobbing an ICBM across the planet without warning could be mistaken for a surprise nuclear attack. That’s the same general issue that plagues other high-speed, hit-anywhere-in-the-world weapons concepts like Prompt Global Strike. If you want to put non-nuclear payloads like a drone or a conventional warhead on a ballistic missile, you need to make sure you don’t trigger Armageddon.

In a statement to Danger Room, Darpa spokeswoman Johanna Jones confirmed the cancellation of Rapid Eye. “Program and budget priorities resulted in Darpa not continuing to fund the Rapid Eye program,” she said.

Continue Reading “Rocket-Launched ‘Rapid Eye’ Drone’s Rapid Demise” »

The Pentagon’s risk-taking research agency is kicking off a new program to turn everyday cameras into autonomous ‘bots with problem-solving smarts.

Darpa is already after all kinds of highly intelligent robo-critters. In the past few months, they’ve launched projects to create a real-life C3PO and a surveillance system to pinpoint threats in heaps of visual data. Now, the agency wants artificial intelligence-powered cameras that can recognize objects — and then tell a story about them.

Next month, Darpa will host a one-day conference to launch the project, which has been given a slightly Orwellian title: “The Mind’s Eye.” (.pdf) The idea is to create machines that are endowed with what remains an exclusively human ability: visual intelligence.

We’ve got the ability to take in our surrounding, interpret them and learn concepts that apply to them. We’re also masters of manipulation, courtesy of a little thing called imagination: toying around with made up scenes to solve problems or make decisions.

But, of course, our intellect and decision-making skills are often marred by emotion, fatigue or bias. Enter machines. Darpa wants cameras that can capture their surroundings, and then employ robust intellect and imagination to “reason over these learned interpretations.”

Continue Reading “Darpa Wants Self-Guiding, Storytelling Cameras” »

For a while now, the Pentagon has been concerned about U.S. dependence on rare-earth metals. Precision weapons, Priuses and iPhones depend on components made from rare earths like terbium, dysprosium, yttrium and thulium. And the dependence threatens more than just national security: It’s a major issue when it comes to developing renewable energy sources.

The House Committee on Science and Technology’s investigations and oversight panel is holding a hearing today on rare-earth metal supplies, focusing on China’s near-monopoly on the stuff. As we’ve reported here before, China has raised concerns by threatening to limit exports. And to make matters more complicated, U.S. mining companies are dependent on China for processing. As a recent LiveScience story points out, U.S.-based Molycorp Minerals has to ship rare earths to China for final separation.

Testimony is embargoed until the hearing begins today at 2 p.m., but you can read a hearing overview (.pdf) and watch a live webcast once the hearing begins.

The hearing will include testimony from Mark Smith, the CEO of Molycorp Minerals, which is trying to restarting a mine in Mountain Pass, California, which is the primary source for rare earth minerals in the United States. (That mining operation closed in 2002.)

It’s not all doom and gloom: China has reportedly backed away from a sweeping ban on the export of some rare earths. And the United States is sitting on significant reserves of rare-earth metals (.pdf), as a U.S. Geological Survey report points out. Perhaps more importantly, policymakers and politicians are now catching on to their strategic value.

Image: Google Earth