Innovations

A couple of links to potential innovations.

From Wired, on DARPA's Super-Resolution Vision System (SRVS), a system that aims (pun intended) to provide enhanced optics for snipers:

Heat haze ordinarily throws off snipers. But SRVS changes heat haze from an obstruction into a means of enhancing the view. An effect called " turbulence-induced micro-lensing" means that every instant the heated air acts as a series of lenses; at a given moment you may be able to look right through them and see a magnified view of the scene beyond. The trick is to use digital technology to identify the "lucky regions" or "lucky frames" when a clear view appears and assemble them into a complete picture.

The end result is a portable device 35 centimeters long and weighing two kilogram with an unprecedented capability. This sniper scope can beat the 'diffraction limit,' which defines the best that any other optical device can do -- in conditions of severe heat haze, no less.

And from AFCEA (Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association) on SRVS and on developing radar-based sensors that can "see" through buildings:

If tracking targets at extreme visual range is challenging for U.S. forces, an even more pressing concern is locating enemy units hiding in buildings. The Visibuilding program is designed to meet the military’s need to extend intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in urban operations.

Visibuilding relies on radio frequency (RF) technology, predominantly radar, to scan structures. The main challenge is developing the means to gain deeper RF penetration into buildings and forming the reflected signals into an accurate building model, says Program Manager Dr. Edward J. Baranoski. He explains that DARPA’s approach is very different from traditional radar techniques, such as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. Conventional radars can image relatively clearly in open space, but in high, multipath environments, such as in built-up urban areas, sensing becomes more difficult. DARPA scientists are trying to improve sensing characteristics to sharpen and produce more data than a standard SAR image, which only produces data when it scans a building’s internal spaces. “We are trying to give warfighters the layout of the building—where insurgents would be inside the building and also to help find large quantities of materials that are inconsistent with the building. This particular technology won’t be able to identify materials, but if you have two tons of metal in an upstairs bedroom, it could be a weapons cache—that certainly is not consistent with the standard use of a residential building,” Baranoski shares.

Your tax dollars at work.

Army's casualty treatment innovation saves lives

Combat casualty care is one of the areas where military medical professionals have made tremendous strides with each major conflict, and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are no exception. One such innovation has garnered the Army's award for being one of the top 10 inventions of 2007:

FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas -- A new lifesaving standard of care has garnered the Institute of Surgical Research here a prestigious Army title - invention of the year.

The innovation, called Damage Control Resuscitation of Severely Injured Soldiers, was named one of the Army's "Top Ten Greatest Inventions of 2007."

"The American Association for Trauma Surgeons calls this one of the biggest improvements to trauma care in the last 10 years," said Dr. Michael Dubick, senior research pharmacologist for the ISR.

The invention is aimed at saving severely injured Soldiers with non-compressible injuries, meaning internal injuries that cannot be compressed using a tourniquet or other device, Dubick said.

The ISR focused its attention on severely injured Soldiers after analyzing data from an autopsy study, which showed that 79 percent of service members killed in combat died of hemorrhage, and 70 percent had an injury that couldn't be compressed.

"We needed to find a better way to stop bleeding," Dubick said. "In theater, there was no solution for people with non-compressible injuries."

The innovation involves the fluid resuscitation process, which is when IV fluids and blood products are used to stabilize a patient's physiology.

The standard method is to administer IV salt solutions in an amount that is three times the patient's blood volume. If the patient is still bleeding, blood transfusions are given to restore lost blood.

In most cases, this method is effective for the wounded, but for some severely injured warriors, the massive volume of fluids and blood can create a negative effect, Dubick said. "The body has only a finite amount of clotting factors, and a large volume of fluids can dilute those clotting factors, which reduces their ability to slow down or stop the bleeding."

Under the new standard of care, fluid resuscitation with salt solutions is limited, which keeps the blood pressure from rising too high and "popping" newly formed blood clots. Additionally, blood volume is restored using plasma as the primary resuscitation fluid, along with packed red blood cells.

But rather than using the standard of four times the amount of red blood cells to plasma, "we use a ratio of 1:1 of plasma to red blood cells," Dubick said.

Dubick said early use of a clotting factor called rFVIIa has also been beneficial. The factor is normally used for hemophiliacs but has proven beneficial for severely injured warriors. Additionally, other blood products, such as platelets and cryoprecipitate, are used as needed.

The reduction in fluids not only increases the patient's short-term chances of survival, but also the long-term treatment since "there is less fluid built up in organs and surgeons have a better field of operation," Dubick said.

While the innovation is gaining recognition stateside, the invention has already had a striking impact downrange on the survivability of severely injured Soldiers in the field, decreasing the mortality rate from 65 to 17 percent.

The impact of this change in the standard of care is so striking, Dubick said, that "some liken this standard of care to the first time someone applied antibiotics."

The military innovation is also gaining civilian attention.
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Read the rest here. As the article notes, these life-saving innovations will spread to the civilian arena, helping to save lives there as well.

3-D Printers

Scientific American reports on printers that print 3-D objects:

George Jetson had one. So did Captain Picard. Now you too can tell a machine what you want and watch as it appears before your eyes. The technology goes by many names—3-D printer; rapid prototyper; fabber—but the concept is the same: Feed a device with blueprints for a solid object of your choosing, then let the machine build it for you from plastic or other simple materials.

Industrial designers have had access for years to fabbers that use powerful lasers to fuse plastic powder—great for mocking up jet turbines or architectural plans—but with a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars, 3-D printing has been out of reach for most of us. Now all that has started to change, as do-it-yourself types and imaginative engineers have found ways to bring the technology to the people. Here are five ways that you can harness the power of fabbing.

Read the article here. Imagine one day being able to print out a three-dimensional "photo" of your trip to Disney World! Or shots from your visit to Yellowstone. Or last month's coed of the month from your favorite bunny magazine. Oh, oh. If and when this technology matures, I suspect people will be printing a lot more of the latter, and less of the former. :)

In fact, like several innovations, I'll bet the adult industry will be an early-adopter of such technology, much as it did with video-on-demand and using the Internet as a delivery mechanism for its products. Eventually, acceptance and usage of the technology will percolate to the rest of us. Here's to progress!

New Paper Stronger than Iron

Some people couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. Soon, this might include you, too. From the Better Living Through Chemistry files:

Punching your way out of a paper bag could become a lot harder, thanks to the development of a new kind of paper that is stronger than cast iron.

The new paper could be used to reinforce conventional paper, produce extra-strong sticky tape or help create tough synthetic replacements for biological tissues, says Lars Berglund from the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Despite its great strength, Berglund's "nanopaper" is produced from a biological material found in conventional paper: cellulose. This long sugar molecule is a principal component of plant cell walls and is the most common organic compound on Earth.
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Mechanical testing shows it has a tensile strength of 214 megapascals, making it stronger than cast iron (130 MPa) and almost as strong as structural steel (250 MPa).

Normal paper has a tensile strength less than 1 MPa. The tests used strips 40 millimetres long by 5mm wide and about 50 micrometres thick.

Who knows? Perhaps in the future we'll all be wearing our recyclable Level IIIA bullet-resistant vests made of ... paper! And so long as we don't sweat and it doesn't rain, we'll be all set. :)