A Canadian airport has found a unique use for traditional radar that puts it to work scouring the ground — instead of the sky — for hazardous objects.

Vancouver International Airport has just installed a system of networked radar meant to help keep runways clear of potentially dangerous foreign object debris, or FOD.

The Tarsier system, developed by security and defense company QinetiQ (pronounced “kinetic”), uses powerful radar scans trained at the ground to detect FOD as small as a 2-inch bolt.FULL STORY…

A constellation of microsatellites launched into low Earth orbit earlier this year is proving to be a worthwhile investment, providing more accurate weather forecasting and climatic data than ever gathered before. FULL STORY…

If you’ve ever wished you could bill spammers for the time spent reading and deleting unsolicited e-mail pitches, your day has come. A new e-mail-forwarding service hopes to make senders pay for access to your eyeballs, and is offering you a piece of the action.

San Francisco-based Boxbe lets you set up an e-mail address and add your friends, family and co-workers to an approved senders list, allowing them to e-mail you for free. FULL STORY…

For one guy it will be a homecoming. For the other, it’s boldly going where he, at least, has not gone before.

On Dec. 6, the desert silence near Upham, New Mexico, will be shattered by the roar of a SpaceLoft XL rocket hurtling skyward from Spaceport America. The payload: individual capsules containing the ashes of 179 people, part of the Legacy Flight program, among them the late actor James (Scotty) Doohan and Gemini program astronaut Gordon Cooper. For them, a final ride into space is a totally appropriate tribute. FULL STORY…

Digital humans. The very words conjure images of the polygon personas created for the next blockbuster by production houses like Industrial Light and Magic or Pixar Animation. But there is more to this technology than big-screen eye candy. Take Santos, for example. Full story…

For the first time, researchers have created a working prototype of a radical new chip design based on magnetism instead of electrical transistors. Full story…

University of Michigan scientists have created the first quantum microchip, which could be a giant stride in the race to produce a new generation of brawny, super-fast computers. Leave a Comment more...