Week of Sun, 2007-06-24 00:00 to Sat, 2007-06-30 23:59

Microsoft Corp. has filed 23 lawsuits against merchants in California and Florida that Microsoft contends are selling counterfeit software.

Software piracy cost the U.S. economy around $7.3 billion in revenue in 2006, according to a study conducted by industry analyst firm IDC and commissioned by the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

Given that approximately 70 to 90 percent of U.S. youths play video games, the American Medical Association (AMA) has called for more research on the long-term beneficial and detrimental effects of video game and Internet use, as well as a review of the current video game ratings system.

To spur additional study, the AMA will submit the full report and recommendations to the American Psychiatric Association and other appropriate medical specialty societies for review and consideration in conjunction with the upcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The Federal Trade Commission’s Internet Access Task Force today issued a report, “Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy,” which summarizes the Task Force’s findings in the area of broadband Internet connectivity and, in particular, so-called network neutrality regulation. Based on these findings, and FTC staff’s experience with the operation of myriad markets throughout the economy, the report identifies guiding principles that policy makers should consider in evaluating proposed regulations or legislation relating to broadband Internet access and network neutrality.

The DOE will invest up to $375 million in three new Bioenergy Research Centers that will be located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Madison, Wisconsin; and near Berkeley, California. The Centers are intended to accelerate basic research in the development of cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels, advancing President Bush’s Twenty in Ten Initiative, which seeks to reduce U.S. gasoline consumption by 20 percent within ten years through increased efficiency and diversification of clean energy sources. The Department plans to fund the Centers for the first five years of operation (Fiscal Years 2008-2013).

Imagine a mechanical Pelé or David Beckham six times smaller than an amoeba playing with a “soccer ball” no wider than a human hair on a field that can fit on a grain of rice. Purely science fiction? Not anymore.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) invites the media to witness the first nanoscale soccer games at the 2007 RoboCup in Atlanta, Ga., on July 7-8, 2007.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] conducted a successful low endo-atmospheric test of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Weapon System interceptor, at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), NM. Last night’s flight test was of the THAAD interceptor only; there was no target.

Mars rover Opportunity is scheduled to begin a descent down a rock-paved slope into the Red Planet's massive Victoria Crater. This latest trek carries real risk for the long-lived robotic explorer, but NASA and the Mars Rover science team expect it to provide valuable science.

Opportunity already has been exploring layered rocks in cliffs around Victoria Crater. The team has planned the descent carefully to enable an eventual exit, but Opportunity could become trapped inside the crater or lose some capabilities. The rover has operated more than 12 times longer than its originally intended 90 days.

LogMeIn, Inc. has new software that enables customer care representatives at wireless carriers, IT support organizations and corporate IT departments to quickly and securely access and remote control smartphones to diagnose and fix problems – or even train end users.

LogMeIn Rescue Mobile is the first web-based service that enables technicians to remotely access and take control of a smartphone—and optionally the connected PC—simultaneously. Technicians have a replica of the smartphone on their computer screen and can push buttons, manipulate the screen and control the device as if it were in their own hands.

Tiny plastic fibers could be the key to some diverse technologies in the future -- including self-cleaning surfaces, transparent electronics, and biomedical tools that manipulate strands of DNA.

In the June issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, Ohio State University researchers describe how they created surfaces that, seen with the eye, look as flat and transparent as a sheet of glass. But seen up close, the surfaces are actually carpeted with tiny fibers.

EMI Music has reached an agreement with SNOCAP which enables U.S. fans to purchase DRM-free, higher-quality MP3s by EMI artists through artist websites, social networking pages and fan blogs. EMI will have the ability to place SNOCAP MyStores – digital storefronts that work on nearly any standard website – on the web pages of hundreds of its artist sites, making EMI the first major record company to partner with SNOCAP to sell its music in a DRM-free, higher-quality format.

Motorola, Inc. has formed an industry-wide consortium that will assume administration of the OpenSAF™ project. The "project" has released the first open source code related to the project. The consortium also will manage any future development of the OpenSAF code base.

The open source project will establish a broadly adopted high availability operating environment that can be useed by computing technology companies, network equipment providers (NEPs) and other industries requiring high availability. Independent software vendors (ISVs) will be able to use OpenSAF as a benchmark for creating highly available applications. OpenSAF includes an implementation of the Service Availability™ Forum Application Interface Specification (AIS). Details of the OpenSAF code release and additional information on the OpenSAF initiative can be found at www.opensaf.org.

The Grant Program is offered to open source developers who wish to experiment creating or enhancing applications for mobile devices. Under the Grant Program, accepted applicants will receive a complimentary Qtopia Greenphone and Qtopia SDK.

To participate in the Innovation Grant Program simply submit your entry form that includes a description of the application you intend to develop. Created applications will be promoted on Trolltech’s website.

The Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processors, code-named “Barcelona,” are planned for shipment in both standard and low power versions later this summer. This would be the first time AMD has made both standard and low power parts immediately available as part of a new processor launch.

AMD today updated its projected timing on “Barcelona” availability and provided additional product details. AMD expects that the processors will begin shipping for revenue in August 2007, with systems from AMD platform partners beginning to ship in September 2007. Due to its enhanced architecture – it is the world’s first x86 CPU to integrate four processing cores on a single die of silicon – Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processors can deliver significant performance and performance-per-watt enhancements over existing processor architectures yet are designed to be backwards compatible with existing AMD Opteron platforms.

Ethanol to fuel cars, trucks and other vehicles might tomorrow take less energy to produce, thanks to a device invented by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in California.

Chemical engineers Richard D. Offeman and George H. Robertson at the ARS Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif., think it may be possible to cut energy costs by using a series of specially designed permeable plastic sheets, or membranes, to produce ethanol from fermented broths of corn, or straw and other kinds of biomass feedstocks.

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) fiscal 2007 Q4 GAAP earnings per share were up 27% to $0.31, compared to the same quarter last year. Fourth quarter GAAP revenues were up 20% to $5.8 billion, while quarterly GAAP net income was up 23% to $1.6 billion. Total GAAP software revenues were up 19% to $4.8 billion. GAAP new license revenues were up 17% with GAAP database and middleware new license revenues up 18% and GAAP applications new license revenues up 13%. GAAP services revenues were up 26% to $1.1 billion compared to the same quarter last year.

A bio-friendly nano-sized light source capable of emitting coherent light across the visible spectrum, has been invented by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of California at Berkeley. Among the many potential applications of this nano-sized light source, once the technology is refined, are single cell endoscopy and other forms of subwavelength bio-imaging, integrated circuitry for nanophotonic technology, and new advanced methods of cyber cryptography.

The VIA EPIA LT-Series Mini-ITX mainboard based on the VIA CX700 system media processor. Powered by the 1.5GHz or the fanless 1.0GHz VIA C7 processor, the VIA EPIA LT has a maximum operating power consumption of less than 20 watts.

This new mainboard incorporates a number of features for the x86-based embedded market, such as greater device performance, clearer definition video and storage technologies, and a full feature I/O set including two LAN ports and native support for two LVDS panels, four COM ports, a PCI slot and up to six USB 2.0 ports. Project-based customers also have the option of a VIA CX700M2 version with added TV-out functionality.

GDDR4 (Graphics Double Data Rate, version 4) high-speed graphics memory chip, from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., are being used in both the 1GB ATI Radeon™ HD 2900 XT and the 256MB ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 XT graphics processing cards. The 1GB card has the widest bus in the industry designed for full-performance, high dynamic range (HDR) rendering in PCs.

Jupiter's turbulent clouds are always changing as they encounter atmospheric disturbances while sweeping around the planet at hundreds of miles per hour. But these Hubble images reveal a rapid transformation in the shape and color of Jupiter's clouds near the equator, marking an entire face of the globe.

The planet is wrapped in bands of yellows, browns, and whites. These bands are produced by air flowing in different directions at various latitudes. Lighter-hued areas where the atmosphere rises are called zones. Darker regions where air falls are called belts. When these opposing flows interact, storms and turbulence appear.

The Lockheed Martin Space Radar team has successfully completed on-schedule an Integrated Baseline Review (IBR) with the U.S. Air Force, an important program milestone that precedes the System Requirements Review. Space Radar is being developed to provide global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) for the military and intelligence community.

Representatives from the U.S. Air Force, the intelligence community and other Department of Defense agencies participated in a thorough examination that began on Feb. 21 and culminated in a three-day review at Lockheed Martin's Denver, Colo. facilities in mid-April.

Web searchers who evaluated identical search-engine results overwhelmingly favored Yahoo! and Google, providing evidence that branding matters as much on the Internet as off, according to a Penn State study.

Researchers in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) copied Google results pages from four different e-commerce queries, ascribing them to four different search engines -- Google, MSN Live Search, Yahoo! and an in-house engine created for the study. Then the researchers showed the pages to 32 study participants who were asked to evaluate the engines’ performance in returning relevant results.

IDC predicts regulation around net neutrality will be decided in favor of facilities-based broadband providers like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. However, unlike most observers, IDC believes that keeping the Internet free from net neutrality regulation will ultimately benefit large scale Internet incumbents like Google, eBay, and Amazon - the very companies leading the charge against net neutrality regulation.

The Department of Justice has recently become aware of fraudulent spam e-mail messages claiming to be from DOJ. Based upon complaints from the public, it is believed that the fraudulent messages are addressed “Dear Citizen.” The messages are believed to assert that the recipients or their businesses have been the subject of complaints filed with DOJ and also forwarded to the Internal Revenue Service. In addition, such email messages may provide a case number, and state that the complaint was “filled [sic] by Mr. Henry Stewart.” A DOJ logo may appear at the top of the email message or in an attached file. Finally, the message may include an attachment that supposedly contains a copy of the complaint and contact information for Mr. Stewart.

DOE announced on June 25th that it will invest up to $4 million to develop large-scale wind blade test facilities in both Boston, Massachusetts, and Ingleside, Texas, near Corpus Christi. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Partnership and the Lone Star Wind Alliance will each receive up to $2 million in test equipment to develop the facilities. The two consortia will negotiate cooperative research and develop agreements with DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to design, build, and operate the new facilities, which are expected to be operational in 2009. The ultimate goal of the testing facilities is to test blades up to 330 feet long.

A USC Information Sciences Institute researcher thinks she has found a new source of artificial intelligence computing power to solve difficult IT problems of information classification, reliability, and meaning.

That tool, according to ISI computer scientist Kristina Lerman, is people, human intelligence at work on the social web, the network of blogs, bookmark, photo and video- sharing sites, and other meeting places now involving hundreds of thousands of individuals daily, recording observations and sharing opinions and information.

The ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 and ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 series, the mid-range and entry-level graphics processors in the ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 series, will soon be available. These next-generation graphics processing units (GPU) bring support for Windows Vista® with feature-rich DirectX® 10 graphics, and built-in multimedia functions for an immersive HD video experience on the PC. Ranging from USD $89-$149 (SEP) for the ATI Radeon HD 2600 series and USD $50-$85 (SEP) for the ATI Radeon HD 2400 series2, the new graphics solutions deliver compelling performance and image quality at an unbelievable price point. The ATI Radeon HD 2600 and ATI Radeon 2400 series have enjoyed broad customer adoption and are designed into a significant number of major OEM mainstream and value DirectX® 10 PCs to be shipped in 2007.

Boeing has successfully demonstrated the simultaneous command and control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) by a single operator, using advanced autonomous control software, three ScanEagle aircraft and an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) console.

This next-generation capability will enhance interoperability with current and future command and control systems through an open, standards-based system and significantly reduce the workload of unmanned vehicle operators.

Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed an X-ray jet blasting away from a neutron star in a binary system. This discovery may help astronomers understand how neutron stars as well as black holes can generate powerful beams of relativistic particles.

The jet was found in Circinus X-1, a system where a neutron star is in orbit around a star several times the mass of the Sun, about 20,000 light years from Earth. A neutron star is an extremely dense remnant of an exploded star consisting of tightly packed neutrons.

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. will incorporate a message alert against drunk-driving into its CARWINGS (HDD) navigation systems, as a part of a wider campaign to help prevent drunk-driving. Nissan will gradually incorporate this new feature into its navigation systems on board new vehicles being built from late June for the Japan market.

The industry's first 65 nanometer (nm) multi-standard channel decoder (S3C4F31) and multi-band radio frequency (RF) tuner (S5M8602) chipset, from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., which supports multi digital mobile TV standards including DVB-H/T, DAB-IP, ISDB-T, and terrestrial DMB for the multiple standards in the different countries around the world.

Researchers have used nanotechnology to create transparent transistors and circuits, a step that promises a broad range of applications, from e-paper and flexible color screens for consumer electronics to "smart cards" and "heads-up" displays in auto windshields.The transistors are made of single "nanowires," or tiny cylindrical structures that were assembled on glass or thin films of flexible plastic.

With U.S. biodiesel production at an all-time high and a record number of new biodiesel plants under construction, the industry is facing an impending crisis over waste glycerin, the major byproduct of biodiesel production. New findings from Rice University suggest a possible answer in the form of a bacterium that ferments glycerin and produces ethanol, another popular biofuel.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) announced the launch on Monday of the Western Renewable Energy Generation Information System (WREGIS), a renewable energy registry and tracking system for electricity generation. The system is the largest of its kind in the world in terms of coverage and includes the western United States, western Canada, and a small portion of Mexico. It will be used to meet renewable portfolio standard requirements and other renewable energy policies for states and provinces within the Western Interconnection transmission area, which covers Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming; the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta; and the northern portion of Baja California in Mexico.

Without a “killer application” to drive new PC sales, manufacturers are leveraging emerging markets to boost global PC sales in 2007, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. Worldwide PC shipments are projected to total 257.1 million units in 2007, an 11.1 percent increase from 2006 shipments of 231.5 million units.

Much of the growth in emerging markets is being driven by new PC penetration (not replacement purchases). Approximately 55 percent of PC shipments to emerging markets reflect new PC penetration. Gartner analysts expect emerging markets to contribute approximately 128 million new PC placements to unit shipment growth during the next two years (77 million desk-based PCs and 51 million mobile PCs). This will constitute about 25 percent of all PC units expected to be shipped globally in 2007 and 2008.

Wind River Systems, Inc. has been selected by Honeywell Aerospace to support the development of NASA's New Millennium Program Space Technology 8 (ST8) Dependable Multiprocessor. The contract marks the first time a Linux platform has been selected by Honeywell for a space mission. Honeywell Aerospace is the prime contractor for NASA's ST8 Dependable Multiprocessor project. Wind River® Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition, will be the underlying operating system to support the processing of science and experiment data onboard the ST8 spacecraft.

During a test, Lockheed Martin's [NYSE: LMT] Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) System intercepted and destroyed a separating ballistic missile target during its midcourse phase of flight.

The test represents the Aegis BMD system's ninth successful ballistic missile intercept in 11 attempts and is the first ballistic missile intercept conducted by an Aegis BMD destroyer. This also marks the third time the Aegis BMD system has demonstrated its target discrimination capabilities by intercepting a ballistic missile with a separating reentry vehicle. In addition to its record of intercepts, Aegis BMD has successfully supported more than 15 ballistic missile defense system tracking tests since June 2004.

The Orbital Express system, a program to validate spacecraft servicing capability led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has performed a fully-autonomous "fly-around and capture" of its NextSat client spacecraft, marking another industry first for the innovative program.

During the five-hour test on June 16, Boeing's Autonomous Space Transport Robotic Operations (ASTRO) servicing spacecraft used its onboard cameras and advanced video guidance system to separate from, circle and re-mate with the Ball Aerospace NextSat client spacecraft. The test primarily used passive sensors with no active exchange of relative navigation information or involvement by ground controllers.

Any machinist will tell you that a little grease goes a long way toward making a tool work better. And that may soon hold true for plastic electronics as well.

Carnegie Mellon University chemists have found that grease can make some innovative plastics vastly better electrical conductors. This discovery, published June 25 in Advanced Materials (www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/114282726/PDFSTART), outlines a chemical process that could become widely adopted to produce the next generation of tiny switches for transistors in radio frequency identification tags, flexible screen displays, and debit or key cards.

Honda's next-generation FCX Concept fuel cell vehicle made its European driving debut at the Gotland Ring in Sweden. The vehicle is highly efficient, with an energy efficiency of around 60 percent; approximately three times that of a petrol-engine vehicle, twice that of a hybrid vehicle and 10 percent better than the current FCX.

A prototype of what may be the next generation of personal computers has been developed by researchers in the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering. Capable of computing speeds 100 times faster than current desktops, the technology is based on parallel processing on a single chip.

Parallel processing is an approach that allows the computer to perform many different tasks simultaneously, a sharp contrast to the serial approach employed by conventional desktop computers. The prototype developed by Uzi Vishkin and his Clark School colleagues uses a circuit board about the size of a license plate on which they have mounted 64 parallel processors. To control those processors, they have developed the crucial parallel computer organization that allows the processors to work together and make programming practical and simple for software developers.

BASF and IBM have an agreement to jointly develop electronic materials required in the production process of the most advanced integrated circuits (ICs). Under the agreement, BASF and IBM will develop chemical solutions for the IC manufacturing process of new high-performance, energy-efficient chips based on 32-nanometer (nm) technology. The technology as well as its related chemicals and materials are expected to be commercialized by major companies in the semiconductor industry in North America, Asia and Europe as early as 2010.

The DOE will award up to $340,000 in fellowships to eight graduate student fellows to advance research in the nuclear fuel cycle. The fellowships are valued at up to $42,500 per student over two academic years and are part of the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) - a program within DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy – aimed at increasing research into closing the nuclear fuel cycle and recycling components of used nuclear reactor fuel.

BAE Systems has begun production of the head equipment assembly (HEA) for the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft. Deliveries are scheduled to begin early in 2009.

The Typhoon HEA is the first binocular, visor-projected, night-vision-capable helmet-mounted display developed for a fighter aircraft. The helmet’s fully integrated design ensures compatibility of the electro-optics with head protection and life support, and also incorporates a respirator for protection in nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare environments.

IBM will soon ship its first external Blue Gene/P system to the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF). This state-of-the-art system will provide the computational science community with a leading computing capability dedicated to advancing knowledge and solving the most challenging scientific problems facing the nation, including predicting climate change or understanding complex biological systems.

Physicists at the University of Pennsylvania are using a new technique to craft some of the tiniest metal nanostructures ever created, none larger than 10 nanometers, or 10,000 times smaller than the width of a single human hair.

The technique employs transmission electron beam ablation lithography, or TEBAL, to “carve” nanostructures from thin sheets of gold, silver, aluminum and other metals. TEBAL provides a more dependable method for producing quality versions of these microscopic devices, which are studied for their novel mechanical properties and their potential use in next-generation sensors and electronics. The method also permits simultaneous, real-time atomic imaging of the devices as they are made.

Nimsoft Inc. is providing an end- to-end, service level monitoring and reporting for VMware environments. The in-depth and real-time reporting brings enterprise customers and managed service providers central management of multiple VMware Virtual Centers and 360 degree monitoring for all levels of the VMware stack, including hosted business applications. Nimsoft data collection and intelligent reporting delivers clearer visibility for ongoing management and helps protect service level agreements in dynamic VMware environments. NimBUS for VMware is available today.

New technology can do much to improve certain aspects of aviation in terms of sustainable development over the next fifty years, but this will be nowhere near enough to compensate for the expected growth in air travel. This is the view of researcher Alexander de Haan, who will receive a Ph.D. at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands on Wednesday, June 27 for his research on this subject.

Mars mission Job One: Get there. Job Two: Find rocks and zap them with your laser tool. Now learn the nature of the debris by spectrographically analyzing the ensuing dust and fragments. It’s every kid’s dream, vaporizing pebbles on other planets, and thanks to a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, it’s going to happen.

Two more defendants pleaded guilty in Milwaukee to charges of criminal copyright infringement as a result of their selling counterfeit software on eBay, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher for the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Steven M. Biskupic for the Eastern District of Wiscon­sin announced today.

Robert Koster of Jonesboro, Ark., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge J.P. Stadtmueller, and Yutaka Yamamoto of Pico Rivera, Calif., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, to selling counterfeit Rockwell Automation computer software over the Internet. The software sold by the two defendants had a combined retail value of almost $6 million. Each defendant faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release. The defendants will be sentenced before Judge Stadtmueller in November 2007 along with four additional defendants who previously pleaded guilty in Milwaukee on April 26, 2007.

Public administrations face growing pressure to provide better service and trim costs at the same time. Traditional automated call centres were heralded as the solution, except people hate using them. Thanks to the EU HOPS project, callers to public administrations in several European cities will finally be talking to 'intelligent' machines using a mixture of natural and scripted dialogue.

With an increasing percentage of the nation's corn harvest going to ethanol production, some are questioning the wisdom of taking away corn as food for people. But Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Kurt Rosentrater has a way to at least partially allay that concern: create new foods from an edible byproduct of ethanol production, distiller's dried grains (DDGs).

IBM Researchers are conducting pioneering research into active safety and driver assist technologies in vehicles that exchange information with each other and with the road infrastructure, take corrective action where appropriate, and provide essential feedback to the drivers to help avoid dangerous situations.

Much like automatic transmission, anti-lock brakes, and cruise control, advanced driver assist technologies will relieve the driver from having to perform some manual operations in complex driving situations. An intelligent vehicle receiving information from its environment will be able to react to the rapidly changing situation on the road as if it had "reflexes."

Intel Corporation and CableLabs* have signed an OpenCable* Platform Agreement and will include support for the OpenCable Platform in future Intel consumer electronic (CE) system-on-a-chip (SoC) products. Incorporating support for OpenCable allows digital televisions, set-top boxes, digital media recorders and other networked consumer electronics devices to run standard applications and services delivered by cable operators, consumer electronics companies, program networks, and other software developers.

Cars that talk to each other and warn of potentially dangerous road conditions highlight the GM Continuous Safety Tour that visits Reliant Park on Thursday, June 28, and Friday, June 29.

From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursday and 9 a.m. to noon on Friday, GM will demonstrate Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) Communication in two-car scenarios that show how these vehicles can alert drivers and automatically brake during panic situations. The new automotive technology features the first wireless all-around, instantaneous driver advisory system and the first wireless automated collision-avoidance system that can help avoid crashes.

“There is no doubt that nanotechnology has the potential to make the world a better place,” said Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies Chief Scientist Andrew Maynard. “But if consumers and other stakeholders are not convinced that the benefits outweigh the risks, many applications will not see the light of day. Likewise, if the benefits are unclear and the risks uncertain, the products of nanotechnology will be a hard sell.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to authorize subpoenas related to the National Security Agency (NSA)'s domestic spying program, setting the stage for a Congressional showdown over the surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. The subpoenas demand certain legal documents that the Administration has withheld despite Congress' repeated requests.

"This subpoena authorization is a critical first step toward uncovering the full extent of the NSA's illegal spying and the role that telecommunications companies like AT&T played in it," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "Considering that it's been almost six years since the NSA started spying on Americans without warrants and over a year since that spying was revealed publicly, these subpoenas are long overdue. It's high time for Congress to get to the bottom of this mess."

Boeing and its industry teammates recently demonstrated the advanced capabilities the Transformational Satellite Communications System (TSAT) will offer the nation's warfighters during a critical Space Segment Design Review (SSDR).

Funded by Boeing's "TEAM TSAT," the demonstration to more than 500 government and industry officials implemented all of the U.S. Air Force-defined TSAT critical missions, including strategic; communications-on-the-move; and airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (AISR).

Solving one of the biggest problems in commercialization of fuel-cell-powered automobiles is the goal of a new $1.88 million research project on on-board hydrogen storage at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

To be practical, researchers say, the hydrogen storage system must be able to hold enough of the fuel for a driving range of 300 miles before refilling; no current technology meets this goal within the constraints of allowable weight and volume for passenger cars.

CDW Government, Inc. (CDW-G) has released the findings of the CDW-G School Safety Index, a research project benchmarking the current status of public school district safety. Based on 14 elements of physical and cyber safety, the survey of 381 school district IT and security directors highlights the indicators of strong district safety programs, as well as the barriers to school safety.

With research backgrounds ranging from materials engineering to molecular biophysics, seventeen leading scientists issued a statement today announcing that, much as the discovery of DNA and creation of the transistor revolutionized science, there is a new scientific field on the brink of revolutionizing our approach to problems ranging from eco-safe energy to outbreaks of malaria.

That research area is synthetic biology – the construction or redesign of biological systems components that do not naturally exist, by combining the engineering applications and practices of nanoscience with molecular biology.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) urged a California court Friday to overturn a dangerous ruling that would require an Internet search engine to create and store logs of its users' activities as part of electronic discovery obligations in a civil lawsuit.

The ruling came in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by motion picture studios against TorrentSpy, a popular search engine that indexes materials made publicly available via the Bit Torrent file sharing protocol. TorrentSpy has never logged its visitors' Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Notwithstanding this explicit privacy policy, a federal magistrate judge has now ordered TorrentSpy to activate logging and turn the logged data over to the studios.

One of the challenges large e-government projects, like the nearly €12 million EU-funded Intelligent Cities, face is finding sustainable solutions which integrate all known variables and user needs. How well this is managed, along with effective follow up and implementation, can influence the project’s success on the market. Project partners in Finland show how.

MontaVista® Software, Inc. will support the Freescale Semiconductor's MPC8349E-mITXE platform. This platform is ideal for hardware and software development for the tightly integrated PowerQUICC® II Pro processor and its ability to leverage a cost-effective mix of on-chip and external components. By increasing peripheral support, MontaVista has created a more realistic development environment. The collaborative solution accelerates the performance of richer, more tightly integrated embedded applications and provides customers with faster time to market.

An impressive line-up of government and industry leaders will take the stage at SPACE 2007, September 18-20, at the Long Beach Convention Center, in Long Beach, Calif., to host “SPACE: The Next 50 Years.” Organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), SPACE 2007 will highlight the numerous advances in space technologies and applications over the past half-century and look toward the next 50 years.

The Nokia Eseries business devices are now available in the U.S. through a variety of channels.

Designed to mobilize the most-used business applications and processes, Nokia Eseries business devices offer advanced voice features with superior voice quality, business email with attachment handling, and manageability with business-class device security to the most demanding business users. Nokia Eseries business devices bridge the converging worlds of mobile telephony, corporate telephony, and Information Technology (IT). Dual-mode Nokia Eseries devices with wireless LAN, including Nokia E61i and Nokia E65, are ideal for integrating into fixed corporate telephony systems with voice solutions.

The Lockheed Martin led team developing the Department of Defense's (DoD) next generation narrowband tactical satellite communications system, known as the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS), has successfully completed a series of production readiness reviews with the U.S. Navy ahead of schedule.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Sunnyvale, Calif., prime contractor and systems engineering lead for the MUOS program, is under contract to design, build and deploy the first two MUOS satellites and the associated MUOS ground system. The Navy’s Program Executive Office for Space Systems, Chantilly, Va., and its Communications Satellite Program Office, San Diego, Calif., are responsible for the MUOS program. The contract also provides for options on three additional spacecraft. With all options exercised, the contract for up to five satellites has a total potential value of $3.26 billion.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has begun mass producing 1.8-inch solid state drives (SSD) at 64GB (gigabytes).

SSDs feature far greater reliability, faster boot times and faster application start-up times than hard disk drives. SSD can also improve battery life by up to 20 percent in notebooks.

The 64GB SSD consists of 64 eight Gigabit (Gb) single-level cell flash memory chips. Use of 51nm process technology permits fabrication of much smaller components, with each chip having circuitry 1/2500th the width of a human hair.

Kingston® Technology Company, Inc. is shipping HyperX 1375MHz and ValueRAM 1066MHz double-data-rate three synchronous dynamic random access memory (DDR3 SDRAM) modules. Hailed as the successor to the current DDR2 memory standard, DDR3 promises significant performance gains at lower voltage levels, resulting in lower overall power consumption.

DDR3 technology is expected to be twice as fast as today’s highest speed DDR2 memory and the greater bandwidth promised by DDR3 is a perfect match for systems using dual and quad core processors.

Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. have announced their development of a platform technology for 45 nanometer (45nm) generation LSI logic chips, which combines technologies for low power consumption and high-performance interconnect.　Compared to previous 45nm technologies on record, the new platform reduces the leakage current that occurs when current is wasted in wait states to one-fifth that of previous levels and reduces interconnect-induced lag times by approximately 14%. The realization of these new 45nm generation platform technologies will enable Fujitsu to offer its customers LSI logic chips that feature even higher speeds, smaller size and lower power consumption than currently available.

Technology resellers and solution providers are poised to add radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions to their portfolios, but their customers have been slow to embrace the technology, a survey by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) reveals.

The survey found that 84 percent of technology resellers, solution providers, systems integrators, and consultants will or may offer RFID products and solutions in the next three years.

The iWebcare project is training a computer investigator to detect cases of the estimated €30 billion in healthcare fraud carried out across Europe each year. It will mean that the long arm of the law will have a few new, high-tech tricks up its sleeve.

The iWebcare project kicked off in January 2006 with a three-year, €2.3 million brief to find better ways to track healthcare cheats.

The government should not search travelers' computers at border crossings without suspicion, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) in an amicus brief filed today in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Over the past several years, U.S. customs agents have been searching and even seizing travelers' laptops when they are entering or leaving the country if the traveler fits a profile, appears to be on a government watch list, or is chosen for a random inspection. The Supreme Court has ruled that customs and border agents may perform "routine" searches at the border without a warrant or even reasonable suspicion, but EFF and ACTE argue that inspections of computers are far more invasive than flipping through a briefcase.

The Hubble Space Telescope pointed its powerful cameras and instruments toward the asteroid belt to take images of the large asteroids Ceres and Vesta. The pictures will help mission planners detail the flight path of the Dawn spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on July 7.

Dawn will be the first spacecraft to travel to and orbit Vesta and Ceres, both residents of the asteroid belt. Scientists want to examine asteroids to unravel clues about the origins of our solar system. Ceres has a special appeal since it is the largest member of the belt, which lies between Mars and Jupiter.

The DOE will make available nearly $60M to increase the use of solar power across the country. Secretary Bodman announced: up to $2.5 million for Solar America Cities cooperative agreements, in which thirteen selected cities will receive awards to promote increased use of solar-powered technologies throughout each city; the issuance of a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for up to $30 million for universities to research near-term improvements in solar products; and the competitive selection of ten cost-shared Photovoltaic (PV) Module Incubator projects that will receive up to $27 million in DOE funding over 18 months.

A technology tested by U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) designed to locate enemy combatants by the sound of their weapons is ready for testing in a combat environment, according to USJFCOM officials.

ShotSpotter, a technology that could help locate insurgents by zeroing in on the sound of their gunfire is making great strides, according to the USJFCOM Joint Intelligence Directorate's Ted Ferrazano.