Good Morning,

The first article touches on a new technology that paints
a rather futuristic portrait. Robots that can map unknown
structures for--say--firefighters or soldiers have been
developed. It sounds to me like some video game feature,
but these little robots are very real.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Tiny robots map buildings -- without help

ATLANTA - Tiny robots working by themselves and communicating only with each other can explore and map buildings, a team of U.S. researchers that built the machines says. The robots, with advanced autonomous capability, developed by a team from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and the California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "When first esponders -- whether it's a firefighter in downtown Atlanta or a soldier overseas -- confront an unfamiliar structure, it's very stressful and potentially dangerous because they have limited knowledge of what they're dealing with," said Henrik Christensen, a professor in the Georgia Tech College of Computing. "If those first responders could send in robots that would quickly search the structure and send back a map, they'd have a much better sense of what to expect and they'd feel more confident." The team developed tiny autonomous robots that operate as a group, carrying sensors and transmitting a detailed floor plan of a building to nearby humans within minutes. "There is no lead robot, yet each unit is capable of recruiting other units to make sure the entire area is explored," Christensen aid. "When the first robot comes to an intersection, it says to a second robot, 'I'm going to go to the left if you go to the right.'"


Endeavour travels in space one last time

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. - The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour blasted off for the last time Monday, taking its crew of six astronauts on a 16-day mission to the International Space Station. Weather cooperated for the 8:56 a.m. EDT liftoff from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the space agency reported on its Web site. The climb to orbit took about 8 1/2 minutes. The crew members for space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission are Commander Mark Kelly, husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords who attended the launch while undergoing rehabilitation for from a gunshot wound to the head, Pilot Gregory H. Johnson, Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff and Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori. The Endeavour and its crew will deliver to the ISS the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and spare parts.


New memory can protect computer data

RALEIGH, N.C. - U.S. researchers say encryption hardware can address security concerns hampering the adoption of new memory technology in next-generation computers. on-volatile
main memory, set to replace dynamic random access memory in
computers, offers the promise of faster computer start times and more memory capacity. However, NVMM poses a security risk, because data written to such memory -- like a credit card number -- remains stored in the memory even when the computer is turned off, unlike DRAM memory that "forgets" the data as soon as the power is removed. This could give criminals access to personal information or other data if a computer is stolen. Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a hardware encryption system dubbed i-NVMM to solve this problem, a university release said Tuesday. I-NVMM relies on a self-contained encryption engine that is incorporated directly into the memory module. Data still remains in memory when the computer is shut off but it is completely and automatically encrypted. "Basically, unless someone accesses your computer while you're using it, all of your data is protected," North Carolina State professor of electrical and computer engineering Yan Solihin said.


New fossil primate found in Texas

AUSTIN, Texas - A fossil from a previously unknown species of primate that lived 43 million years ago has been discovered in the badlands of West Texas, researchers say. Physical anthropologist Chris Kirk from the University of Texas at Austin said Mescalerolemur lived during the Eocene and would have most closely resembled a small present-day lemur, a university release reported Monday. Mescalerolemur is a member of the extinct primate group the adapiforms, found throughout the Northern Hemisphere in the Eocene, but was more closely related to Eurasian and African adapiforms than those from North America, Kirk said. "These Texas primates are unlike any other Eocene primate community that has ever been found in terms of the species that are represented," Kirk said. "This is significant because it provides further evidence of faunal interchange between North America and East Asia during the Middle Eocene." By the end of the Eocene, primates and other tropically adapted species had all but disappeared from North America due to climatic cooling, but West Texas offered warm-adapted species a greater chance of survival after the cooling began, he said. Fossils of Mescalerolemur indicate it was a small primate, weighing only about 13 ounces, a body weight similar to that of the living greater dwarf lemur. The new genus has been named Mescalerolemur after the Mescalero Apache, which inhabited the Big Bend region of Texas from about 1700 to 1880.

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