Feature Articles S&T News Articles - Defense Innovation Marketplace

Advanced materials (1) 

Autonomous systems & 

robotics (2) 

Big data (2) 

Biotechnology (2) 

Feature Articles 

Breakthrough technology (4) 

Counter WMD (1) 

Energy (2) 

Environmental science (2) 

Government S&T (2) 

Artificial jellyfish 

swims in a heartbeat 

Harvard University, 

22JUl2012 

Using recent advances in 

marine biomechanics, materials 

science, and tissue 

engineering, a team of 

researchers at Harvard 

University and the California 

Institute of Technology have 

turned inanimate silicone 

and living cardiac muscle 

cells into a freely swimming 

“jellyfish.” VIDEO 

Tags: Breakthrough technology, Featured Article 

A still of the artificial jellyfish 

"swimming" in container of 

ocean-like salt water. Note: the 

color and contrast of the artificial 

jellyfish has been digitally 

enhanced to make it easier to 

view. (Image courtesy of Harvard 

University and Caltech.) 

Scientists read monkeys’ inner thoughts: 

Brain activity decoded while monkeys 

avoid obstacle to touch target 

science daily, 22JUl2012 

By decoding brain activity, scientists were able to 

“see” that two monkeys were planning to approach 

the same reaching task differently—even before they 

moved a muscle. By chance the two monkeys chosen 

for the study had completely different cognitive styles. 

One was a hyperactive type, the other was a smooth 

operator. The scientists had been aware that they had 

very different personalities, but they had no idea this 

difference would show up in their neural recordings. 

Tags: Neuroscience, Breakthrough technology, Featured 

Article 

Radiation damage bigger problem in 

microelectronics than previously thought 


The amount of damage that radiation causes in 

electronic materials may be at least 10 times greater 

Information technology (4) 

Materials science (3) 

Medical Sciences (1) 

Microelectronics (5) 

Neuroscience (3) 

Volume 2, Issue 30 ■ 27JUL2012 

than previously thought. Researchers at Vanderbilt 

University developed new characterization method 

that uses a combination of lasers and acoustic waves 

that allows scientists to peer through solid materials 

to pinpoint the size and location of defects buried deep 

inside with unprecedented precision. 

Tags: Microelectronics, Featured Article 

S&T News Articles 

AdvAnced mAteriAls 

Hollow iron oxide nanoparticles for lithium-ion 

battery applications 

nanowerk, 22JUl2012 

A new concept of electrode fabrication based on sealing 

nanoparticles between layers of pure carbon nanotubes 

was developed. The new electrodes allow for reversible 

lithium-ion intercalation, which resulted in high capacity 

and efficiency, superior rate performance, and excellent 

stability (no fading over more than 500 cycles). When this 

novel electrode was used as a cathode, the inherent iron 

vacancies allowed for significantly increased performance 

in a lithium-ion battery. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Tags: Advanced materials, Energy 

AUtonomoUs systems & robotics 

Video Friday: Pretending to Learn Things at 

Stanford, Emys Likes Colors, and a Girlfriend 

for Robonaut 

ieee spectrum, 20JUl2012 

Instead of teaching their robotic limb to throw and 

punch and kick using powerful motors, researchers at 

the University of Edinburgh are programming elastic 

actuators to store up and then explosively release energy 

for throwing and punching and kicking. 

Tags: Autonomous systems & robotics 

continued... 

Quantum science (1) 

S&T policy (1) 

Sensors (1) 

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ASD(R&E) S&T News Bulletin 

Robot Eyes Track Ping Pong Balls 

ieee spectrum, 19JUl2012 

Using a 1,000-frames-per-second camera and a pan-tilt 

system researchers in Japan have built a robot eye to 

track a ping pong ball. The device is so fast it can always 

keep the ball in the center of the frame. The camera uses a 

custom vision chip that monitors what pixels are changing, 

and by doing that one thousand times per second it can 

keep track of fast moving objects. VIDEO 

Tags: Autonomous systems & robotics, S&T Japan 

big dAtA 

DataONE answers the call for new tools to 

study the Earth in this era of Big Data science 

eurekAlert, 24JUl2012 

Today DataONE, the Data Observation Network for Earth, 

released technology capable of providing researchers 

around the world access to globally distributed, 

networked data from a single point of access and to make 

their own data available for innovations over the long 

term. Through this network, a single search interface 

queries data centers distributed globally. 

Tags: Big data 

10 Big Predictions About Big Data 

information Week, 23JUl2012 

The Pew Internet Center asked more than 1,000 Internet 

“experts,” including educators, business executives, 

pundits, scientists, and other tech industry observers. 

“The Future of Big Data” survey posed a series of thoughtprovoking 

questions centered on one main theme: How 

will Big Data influence our lives in 2020? 

Tags: Big data, Forecasting 

biotecHnology 

Team to develop ‘microbrain’ to improve 

drug testing 


Take a millionth of a human brain and squeeze it into 

a special chamber the size of a mustard seed. Link it to 

a second chamber filled with cerebral spinal fluid and 

thread both of them with artificial blood vessels in order 

to create a microenvironment that makes the neurons and 

other brain cells behave as if they were in a living brain. 

Then surround the chambers with a battery of sensors 

that monitor how the cells respond when exposed to 

minute quantities of dietary toxins, disease organisms or 

new drugs under development. The five-year program 

is a cooperative effort on the part of NIH, the Defense 

Advanced Research Projects Agency and the FDA. 

Tags: Biotechnology, DARPA 


Harvard bioengineers to develop smart suit 

that improves endurance 

Harvard University, 20JUl2012 

Lightweight, efficient, and nonrestrictive, the proposed 

suit will be made from soft wearable assistive devices that 

integrate several novel technologies already developed at 

the Wyss Institute. One is a stretchable sensor that would 

monitor the body’s biomechanics without the need for the 

typical rigid components that often interfere with motion. 

Tags: Biotechnology, Military technology 

breAktHroUgH tecHnology 

UCSB researchers achieve world’s first violet 

nonpolar vertical-cavity laser technology 

e! science news, 23JUl2012 

Researchers at UCSB have demonstrated working, electrically-injected 

nonpolar m-plane nitride VCSELs lasing at 

room temperature. Such devices are naturally polarizationlocked 

along the crystallographic a-direction of the wurtzite 

crystal. This device could be used for a variety of applications, 

such as lighting, displays, sensors, and technology that 

requires energy efficiency and small form-factor. 

Tags: Breakthrough technology, Materials science 

Researchers produce first complete computer 

model of an organism 


Researchers at Stanford University used data from more 

than 900 scientific papers to account for every molecular 

interaction that takes place in the life cycle of Mycoplasma 

genitalium, the world’s smallest free-living bacterium. Not 

only does the model allow researchers to address questions 

that aren’t practical to examine otherwise, it represents a 

stepping-stone toward the use of computer-aided design in 

bioengineering and medicine. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Tags: Breakthrough technology, Biotechnology 

The first printable magnetic sensor that relies 

on the giant magnetoresistive effect 

nanowerk spotlight, 19JUl2012 

Researchers in Germany have fabricated the first printable 

magnetic sensor that relies on the giant magnetoresistance 

(GMR) effect. Magneto-sensitive ink can be painted on any 

substrate—such as paper, polymers, ceramics, and glass. 

It retains a GMR ratio of up to 8% at ambient conditions. This 

value is beyond the state of the art. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Tags: Breakthrough technology, Sensors 

coUnter Wmd 

An Anti-Chemical Weapon Paint 

mit technology review, 24JUl2012 

Researchers in the UK have developed a special kind of 

paint that can absorb dangerous chemicals. The paint’s 

topcoat contains silica gel, which can absorb nerve gas and 

continued... 

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ASD(R&E) S&T News Bulletin Volume 2, Issue 30 ■ 27JUL2012 

“ For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, 

for nature cannot be fooled.” 

RichaRd Feynman 

prevent it from getting in, say, a tank. The undercoat of 

the paint is designed with the optimal amount of stickiness—enough 

of an adhesive to hold the topcoat in place, 

but weak enough that you can easily scrub away the 

topcoat should it become contaminated. 

Tags: Counter WMD 

energy 

Innovation promises to cut massive power use 

at big data companies in a flash 


Researchers have developed a technique to allow flash 

memory to substitute RAM in many applications, allowing 

for savings in equipment costs and power consumption. 

Tags: Energy, Information technology 

UCLA researchers create highly transparent 

solar cells for windows that generate electricity 


The UCLA team describes a new kind of polymer solar cell 

(PSC) that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared 

light, not visible light, making the cells nearly 70% transparent 

to the human eye. They made the device from a 

photoactive plastic that converts infrared light into an 

electrical current. 

Tags: Energy, Advanced materials 

environmentAl science 

Tiny ‘Firefly’ Satellite Set To Flash Straight 

Into Lightning and Thunderstorms 

nsF news, 19JUl2012 

CubeSats, named for the roughly four-inch-cubed dimensions 

of their basic building elements, are stacked with 

modern, smartphone-like electronics and tiny scientific 

instruments. Firefly is designed to help solve the mystery 

of a phenomenon that’s linked with lightning: terrestrial 

gamma rays, or TGFs. The CubeSat will look specifically 

for gamma-ray flashes coming from the atmosphere, not 

space, conducting the first focused study of TGF activity. 

Tags: Environmental science 

Why won’t the UK make the sun shine for the 

Olympics? 

bbc news, 17JUl2012 

Cloud-seeding is used around the world to prevent fog at 

airports, stop hail damage in cities or to boost snowfall 

at ski resorts. The Chinese government seeded clouds 

ahead of the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony to create 

a downpour elsewhere and keep the stadium dry. This 

involved firing rockets packed with silver iodide crystals 

into rain clouds over the suburbs of Beijing. 

Tags: Environmental science 

government s&t 

NASA successfully tests hypersonic inflatable 

heat shield 


An inflation system pumped nitrogen into the IRVE-3 

aeroshell until it expanded to a mushroom shape almost 

10 feet in diameter. Then the aeroshell plummeted at 

hypersonic speeds through Earth’s atmosphere. Engineers 

in the Wallops control room watched as four onboard 

cameras confirmed the inflatable shield held its shape 

despite the force and high heat of reentry. 

Tags: Government S&T, NASA 

The electric atmosphere: Plasma is next NASA 

science target 


A new NASA mission called the Radiation Belt Storm 

Probes (RBSP), due to launch in August 2012, will improve 

our understanding of what makes plasma move in and out 

of Van Allen Radiation Belts wrapped around our planet. 

RBSP will also measure a wide range of energies from the 

coldest particles in the ionosphere to the most energetic, 

most dangerous particles. Information about how the 

radiation belts swell and shrink will help improve models 

of Earth’s magnetosphere as a whole. 

Tags: Government S&T, NASA 

inFormAtion tecHnology 

‘Rattle memory’, new computer memory 

thanks to nanotechnology 


Using concentrated ion bundles researchers in the 

Netherlands have influenced the magnetic wires the bits 

move through, and they have successfully controlled bits at 

the nanometre scale and subsequently constructed a new 

memory. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Tags: Information Technology 

Searching for 1,000 times the capacity of 4G 

wireless 


Researchers at Polytechnic Institute of New York University 

have assembled a powerful consortium of government and 

business to advance beyond today’s fourth generation (4G) 

wireless technologies toward 5G cellular networks that 

could potentially increase cell phone capacity by more than 

1,000 times. 


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ASD(R&E) S&T News Bulletin 

New IBM Software Transforms the Digital 

Experience 

r&d magazine, 13JUl2012 

The new software brings together the power of social 

networking, analytics and mobile computing to front office 

operations and externally to clients. As a result, organizations 

can gain faster insight on customer buying patterns 

and consumer sentiment allowing them to more quickly 

reach and engage their audiences. 


CNNIC Sends World’s First Email with 

“Internationalized Email Address” 

chinese Academy of sciences, 29JUn2012 

Issue of the standard embodies the technical capability 

and influence power of China in the international Internet 

field. RFC6531 is the fourth IETF RFCs published by CNNIC 

following RFC3743, RFC4713, and RFC5336 in the field of 

domain name internationalization. 

Tags: Information Technology, S&T China 

Featured Resource 

Physics Spotlight (APS) 

A selection of papers from the Physical Review 

journals. Three kinds of articles are featured: 

Viewpoints—commentaries written by active researchers; 

Focus stories—written by professional 

science writers; Synopses—brief editor-written 

summaries. RSS 

mAteriAls science 

Optimizing a novel superconducting material 

Physorg.com, 24JUl2012 

Magnesium diboride (MgB2), a recently discovered superconducting 

material with the highest known transition 

temperature (at which it becomes superconducting) has 

generated much enthusiasm. EU researchers initiated the 

Hipermag project to enhance the performance of MgB2. 

Researchers successfully optimised the microstructure of 

precursor powders, demonstrating enhanced superconducting 

properties of carbon-doped nanosized precursors 

and wires. 

Tags: Materials science, Advanced materials 

Splitting Matter Waves with Light—Synopsis 

American Physical society, 22JUl2012 

A new design for a matter-beam splitter developed by 

researchers in France uses crossed lasers to make a “fork 

in the road” for traveling matter waves. Like some previous 


designs, theirs uses lasers as waveguides, or conduits, to 

control the path of matter waves. One difference is that this 

new device works for a range of different beam “temperatures,” 

which are characterized by the degree of transverse 

excitations in the beam. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Tags: Materials science 

Disorderly conduct 


Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) in New York examines the 

relationship between quantum coherence, an important 

aspect of certain materials kept at low temperature, and 

the imperfections in those materials. These findings should 

be useful in forging a better understanding of disorder, and 

in turn in developing better quantum-based devices, such 

as superconducting magnets. 

Tags: Materials science, Quantum science 

medicAl sciences 

Viruses’ copying mechanism demystified, 

opening the door to new vaccine strategies 


Certain kinds of viruses such as those that cause the 

common cold, SARS, hepatitis, and encephalitis, copy 

themselves using a unique mechanism, according to a team 

of Penn State scientists. The research is an important step 

toward the improvement of existing vaccines, as well as 

toward the design of vaccines against viruses that have 

eluded vaccination strategies in the past. 

Tags: Medical Sciences, Biology 

microelectronics 

A giant bid to etch tiny circuits 

nature news, 24JUl2012 

On 9 July, Intel announced that it would invest €3.3 billion 

(US$4.1 billion) in ASML in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, a 

leading supplier of lithography equipment to the semiconductor 

industry. One-quarter of the funding is earmarked 

for research and development of EUV equipment. 

Tags: Microelectronics 

Printed photonic crystal mirrors shrink on-chip 

lasers down to size 


Researchers in the US have devised a new laser for on-chip 

optical connections that could give computers a huge boost 

in speed and energy efficiency. They propose replacing 

layers and layers of reflectors necessary in the traditional 

distributed Bragg reflector laser design with two highly 

reflective photonic crystal mirrors. Composed of compound 

semiconductor quantum well materials, each mirror is held 

in place with silicon nanomembranes, extremely thin layers 

of a silicon. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 


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ASD(R&E) S&T News Bulletin Volume 2, Issue 30 ■ 27JUL2012 

Data storage: Adopting changes 


Phase-change semiconductors have the ability to switch 

back and forth between amorphous (non-crystalline solid) 

and crystalline phases upon heating. As such, they are used 

widely in data storage and computer memory applications. 

Researchers in Singapore have completed an in-depth 

analysis of GST (germanium, antimony and tellunium) and 

its ability to maintain stable ferromagnetism when doped 

with iron. 

Tags: Microelectronics, Semiconductors 

Electrons get off the track—Scientists find new 

principle for spin transistor 


Researchers in Germany have made a significant step in 

utilizing the electrons’ spin for transistor action. If spinbased 

electronics prevails the new switching concept 

might turn out to be useful as it allows for switching the 

spin-polarization of an electric current on and off, tuning it 

continuously or reading it off electrically by simple resistance 

measurements. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 


neUroscience 

Study Offers New Clue on How Brain Processes 

Visual Information 

newswise, 23JUl2012 

The process is known as selective attention and scientists 

have long debated how it works. But now, researchers at 

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have shown that the 

prefrontal cortex is involved in a previously unknown way. 

Tags: Neuroscience 

Triangles Guide the Way for Live Neural 

Circuits in a Dish 

science newsline, 22JUl2012 

Korean scientists have used tiny stars, squares and 

triangles as a toolkit to create live neural circuits in a dish. 

They hope the shapes can be used to create a reproducible 

neural circuit model that could be used for learning and 

memory studies as well as drug screening applications. 

TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Tags: Neuroscience, Biotechnology 

QUAntUm science 

UK research paves way to a scalable device for 

quantum information processing 


Researchers at NPL, UK, have demonstrated for the first 

time a monolithic 3D ion microtrap array which could be 

scaled up to handle several tens of ion-based quantum 

bits. They show how it is possible to realise this device 

embedded in a semiconductor chip, and demonstrate the 

device’s ability to confine individual ions at the nanoscale. 

Tags: Quantum science, S&T UK 

s&t Policy 

State Research and Development Expenditures 

Total $1.2 Billion in FY 2009 

nsF news, 19JUl2012 

State agency expenditures for research and development 

totaled $1.2 billion in FY 2009, a 7% increase over the 

FY 2007 total of $1.1 billion, according to a new InfoBrief 

that reported data from the FY 2009 Survey of State 

Government R&D Expenditures. The InfoBrief details 

nationwide and state-by-state totals of R&D activities 

performed and funded by state government agencies. 

NSF Statistics Website 

Tags: S&T policy, R&D Funding 

sensors 

Rapid diagnostic test for pathogens, 

contaminants 


Researchers at Georgia Tech used nanotechnology to 

combine two well-known techniques and create their new 

diagnostic test—surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy 

(SERS) and thin layer chromatography (TLC). They arrayed 

silver nanorods at a precise angle to significantly amplify 

Raman signal. The silver nanorod surface allows them to 

use a miniscule amount of sample. The scientists were able 

to detect compounds such as lactic acid and albumin in 

highly diluted samples and in mixtures that included dyes 

and other chemicals. Their results suggest the same system 

could be used to detect pathogens and contaminants in 

biological mixtures. 

Tags: Sensors, Biosensing ■ 

About This Publication 

The appearance of external hyperlinks in this publication 

does not constitute endorsement by the United States 

Department of Defense (DoD) of the linked web sites, nor 

the information, products or services contained therein. 

In addition, the content featured does not necessarily 

reflect DoD’s views or priorities. 

To subscribe (or unsubscribe), visit https://tin-ly.sainc.com/ 

ASDRE. To provide feedback or ask questions, contact us at 

asdre-st-bulletin-reply@sainc.com. 

This publication is authored and distributed by: 

Dr. Melissa Flagg 

Director, Office of 

Technical Intelligence (OTI) 

Ms. Hema Viswanath 

OTI Corporate Librarian 

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