The Largest Communication Antenna Ever Put Into Space Will Beam 4G Where Towers Won't

SkyTerra Under Construction at Boeing Boeing

Boeing has received the first signals from SkyTerra 1, a communications satellite it built for LightSquared that was hurled into orbit aboard a Proton rocket launched from Kazakhstan yesterday. The satellite, which will provide signal coverage where terrestrial towers can’t reach, is part of a new LightSquared 4G-LTE mobile broadband wireless system and boasts the largest antenna reflector ever launched into space.
The mesh structure on SkyTerra 1 is an ultra-wide 72 feet across, and the increase in hardware up there should lead to space savings down here. The larger reflector will reduce the need to build bigger antennas and receivers into next-gen 4G devices, so a larger footprint in the sky translates into real estate savings in your pocket.
Boeing and Lightsquared will next initiate on-orbit maneuvers to move the 6-ton satellite into its geosynchronous orbit. It will be joined by SkyTerra 2 next year, and over the next 15 years will augment LightSquared’s ground coverage of North America, which should serve 90 percent of the U.S. population by 2015 under a deal inked with the FCC.

Kinect Camera Data Could Be Sold for Ad Targeting

Kinect is Watching You Microsoft

When the multinational corporation began tempting us to purchase a network-connected camera to place in our living rooms, the Orwellian parts of us should have predicted this: Microsoft is hinting that it would like to use the Kinect to better target its content to users. That means gathering data from the camera – everything from basic demographics to what shirt you’re wearing – and use it to tailor its media offerings. That is, to better cater marketing to you by allowing marketers access to Kinect-driven data.
That’s not to say that Microsoft is toying with ideas that other companies like Facebook don’t already employ, nor does it mean your Kinect is spying on you right now (although it could be – it’s probably best just not to think about it). But at a conference last week Microsoft’s Dennis Durkin, a VP in the company’s interactive department, said at a conference he would like to use the Kinect to better target the media and advertising it presents to users.

Durkin's example: among people watching a sporting event, Kinect could differentiate between what jerseys they are wearing and deduce what team or teams they support (it would ostensibly do all this while also determining how many people are watching, the gender and age breakdown of the room, etc.). Advertisers could then target all or part of that group of people.

As DigitalTrends points out, that’s not so different from what Facebook ads do, though culling information from a public profile someone voluntarily puts on the Web is a bit different than watching someone watch TV in their skivvies at four in the morning.
Microsoft, in response, has made it clear that no data from the Kinect is being used for marketing purposes. But by toying with the idea that it might sometime in the future the company is more or less admitting that it could do so if it wanted to. This seems unlikely to go over well with privacy advocates, and may run afoul of President Obama’s new Internet privacy policy office, if and when one finally materializes.

President Obama Meets the Robots of Japan

Obama and Fembot The commander-in-chief with a Geminoid F. NECN

Along with meeting heads of state and talking free trade, President Obama made some new friends at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit last week. Before entering a meeting in Japan, he met a Geminoid F robot and a group of yowling robotic seals.
In the video below, Obama bemusedly listens to a speech by a Geminoid, as robotic seals are heard mewling in the background. He talks to Takanori Shibata, the creator of Paro, and acknowledges the seal 'bots could be helpful in hospitals or other places in need of a pick-me-up. Is the commander-in-chief stressed out? He seems particularly taken with the seals.Finally, Obama takes a spin in Toyota's i-REAL personal mobility vehicle. He drives about an inch forward and almost leaps out when the machine suddenly tilts back.
We don't care how much the trip cost.

To Clear IEDs, a Secret High-Tech Beam Bypasses Triggers and Detonates Explosives Early

The U.S. Army Clears an IED IEDs are the leading cause of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, but a new high-tech beam countermeasure could clear roadways of threats from a safe distance.

The U.S. military has been searching high and low for a technological answer to the relatively simple but extremely deadly improvised explosive device – the top killer of U.S. troops in Afghanistan – and a relatively vague but interesting article in USA Today suggests they may have found it. According to the article, the military has been testing a secret high-tech beam that bypasses the explosive triggers of IEDs to detonate their payloads prematurely in Iraq since 2005, but researchers still have a ways to go to make the device battlefield-ready.
There are few details available about the highly classified technology, about which the Pentagon is remaining silent. USA Today describes it as a beam which “bypasses the triggering device of an IED and detonates its explosive.” As such, it can not only be used to detonate explosives on the ground, but explosives that are still being built and transported by insurgents.
While the idea of leveraging technology to give insurgents a taste of their own medicine may sound attractive to military on the ground, it also opens the door to potential problems, namely the collateral damage caused when an unexpected explosion of indeterminate magnitude is triggered in the middle of a street. It’s easy to see how such incidents could quickly get crosswise with Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s mandate to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

Which brings military researchers to yet another problem – the countermeasure is reportedly huge, big enough in fact that a tractor trailer is needed to haul the thing around. It’s allegedly been tested at checkpoints in Iraq in both 2005 and 2008, but it’s highly cumbersome for mobile, outside-the-wire operations. In rugged terrain like that of Afghanistan, this presents a major logistical problem.
One U.S. Joint Forces Command official has suggested using the device from airborne platforms that could clear roadways ahead of convoys. In the meantime the Office of Naval Research, which developed the device, is looking to create a smaller, more mobile IED hunter.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Poised For First Flight Today [Update: Orbit Achieved]

Falcon 9 Launch

After launching their smaller Falcon 1 last summer (the first privately-developed liquid-fuel rocket ever to reach orbit), SpaceX is now ready for the first test launch of its larger, more advanced Falcon 9 rocket today. A four-hour, weather-dependent launch window begins now, and you can watch the countdown live. Update: Looks like the test was successful.
This first Falcon 9 is carrying a test version of SpaceX's Dragon capsule, a manned craft NASA has contracted (to the tune of $1.6 billion) to ferry cargo (and perhaps eventually astronauts) to the ISS in a post-Shuttle world.
The Dragon capsule on board today's test is a structural mockup without a heatshield, so it will not be returning to Earth. The test today is primarily for the rocket; SpaceX has learned the hard way that brand new launch vehicles often need the tires kicked, with several of their early attempts to launch the smaller Falcon 1 ending in misfires.
Stay tuned to SpaceX's live webcast here. Update: Watch an archived video of the launch here (via Fast Company):

Falcon 9 Launch 2:

Update 2:55 PM EST: After a brief delay due to an unexpected system shutdown during the first countdown, Falcon 9 lifted off at around 2:45 PM EST. It appears that stage separation, the second stage burn and final orbital insertion went off without a hitch.
Excellent photos of the launch can be seen at Spaceflight Now, taken by Ben Cooper.

Neural Networks Designed to 'See' are Quite Good at 'Hearing' As Well

Architecture of an Auditory Neural Network Tom LH. Li, Antoni B. Chan and Andy HW. Chun

Neural networks -- collections of artificial neurons or nodes set up to behave like the neurons in the brain -- can be trained to carry out a variety of tasks, often having something to do with pattern or sequence recognition. As such, they have shown great promise in image recognition systems. Now, research coming out of the University of Hong Kong has shown that neural networks can hear as well as see. A neural network there has learned the features of sound, classifying songs into specific genres with 87 percent accuracy.
The network is composed of three "thinking" layers stacked one atop the other, with the first taking in the raw data and the third outputting a genre. Drawing from a database that spanned 10 musical genres, the machine went to work. Within each layer, each neuron only hears a snippet of the song about 23 milliseconds long. But each node overlaps the one next to it by half, so in total each node really gets to hear about two seconds worth of audio.

The algorithms employed by the network needed only that amount of time to process and identify the genres of songs from the database. However, when turned loose on songs not included in the library that it learned on, it didn't perform well at all. Which tells us a few things.

For one, to work universally the network needs to be trained on a more universally representative library, as there are more than 10 genres in the entire universe of music. But more importantly, as Technology Review points out, this neural network shows that a device designed for one function -- this particular neural network was inspired by the visual cortex of a cat -- can be re-wired to do something different (in this case, to hear).
Similar networks based on auditory cortexes have been rewired for vision, so it would appear these kinds of neural networks are quite flexible in their functions. As such, it seems they could potentially be applied to all sorts of perceptual tasks in artificial intelligence systems, the possibilities of which have only begun to be explored.

Before Orbit in 2014, James Webb Space Telescope Makes a Stop in Manhattan

Traveling Telescope The JWST display model, which was built entirely for promotional purposes, has traveled from the Paris Air Show to Ireland to events and public spaces across the US, Atkinson says. John Mahoney

View Photo Gallery

When it becomes the successor to the illustrious Hubble later this decade, the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared eye will peer further into the edges of space (and time) than any telescope before it. But while the real thing is undergoing final construction at Northrop Grumman HQ, an exact 1:1 scale model has been touring the world, giving us a chance to get close to a realistic representation of an unconventional-looking spacecraft that will soon be the source of the most amazing images of the cosmos we've every seen.
We paid a visit to the JWST in Lower Manhattan's Battery Park city. Take a look at our photo gallery to see more:

Click to launch the photo gallery