Shooting for the stars
Scientists in Australia launched a supersonic scramjet engine into space for the second time last week, as they develop a device which could revolutionise air travel. University of Queensland scientists launched the scramjet, which reached an altitude of more than 325km and travelled at about 7,500km/h. The launch, carried out with researchers from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, followed the first blastoff at the outback Woomera Rocket Range a week earlier. 'The rocket launch looked as expected, we had another clean liftoff,' designer Michael Smart said. Scramjet engines are hi-tech devices which fly above the Earth's atmosphere at several times the speed of sound. It is hoped they will ultimately see commercial flight times slashed and be used to cut the cost of launching satellites. The tests are designed to compare the differences between various engine shapes. Scramjets do not have to carry their own oxygen supplies for combustion and have the advantage of having no moving parts. But the launch of the engines is problematic as they only start working at about five times the speed of sound. Scientists are aiming to refine the engines to devise one which would be good enough to be incorporated into a vehicle.?Agence France-Press
Rugged in Rajasthan Intel has launched a new 'ruggedised' PC platform to meet the needs of rural villages and communities in India. The Intel-powered community PC platform is equipped to operate in a community setting while accommodating the varying environmental conditions prevalent in the country, such as low power supply, dust, humidity and high temperatures. Intel also announced its Jaagruti (awakening) initiative designed to provide rural communities in India with greater economic and social opportunities and reduce the digital divide. By collaborating with business, government, education, online services and internet service providers, Intel's Jaagruti programme aims to support the spread of rural internet 'kiosks' to help accelerate access to information and communications technologies in villages across India. The kiosks are operated by local entrepreneurs and provide neighbouring communities with access to services such as e-government forms, including land records and marriage licences.
RFID lifts lid on disasters
Pasco, Bitcorn, and KDDI Network & Solutions last week announced that it will co-develop a so-called Intelligent Manhole System. RFID tags will be embedded in manhole covers to support critical tasks during disaster situations. The tagged manhole covers are used to provide information about items that are underground such as sewerage pipes. Since the system is linked to a local government's geographic information system (GIS), rescue workers can use a handheld RFID reader (possibly Bluetooth-enabled), mobile phones and PDAs to display the data stored in the tags, and the relevant information from the GIS system such as photo maps or scheme drawings of a city's infrastructure. The information should help speed up repairs.
A tiny ray of light
MIT researchers have developed a tiny light detector that may allow for super-fast broadband communications over interplanetary distances. At present, still images from other planets are difficult to retrieve. The new detector improves the detection efficiency of single photos to 57 per cent at a wavelength of 1,550 nanometers (billionths of a metre), the same wavelength used by optical fibres that carry broadband signals to offices and homes today. That's nearly three times the current detector efficiency of 20 per cent. The result will be a real-time collection of large amounts of data from space. The work may ultimately permit the transmission of colour video between astronauts or equipment in outer space and scientists on Earth. The detector can sense extremely low light or laser signals in the infrared part of the optical spectrum - down to a single photon, the smallest and most basic unit of light. That has not been possible using conventional optical systems. The work was funded in part by the United States Air Force.